“No? If the United States cosponsors it in the Security Council, what option have you?”
“The United States mustn’t cosponsor it. Possibly you can help —”
“Hold it right there!” Christian Cunningham held up both hands and shoved them palms out toward Barak. “Diplomatic semantics are not my turf, Zev.”
“Intelligence is your turf. What’s the CIA’s personality profile of our Prime Minister?”
“Eshkol?” Cunningham drank off his bourbon, and somewhat unsteadily went to the bar and poured more. “Shadowy weak successor to Ben Gurion.”
“Utterly wrong, like some other CIA estimates. A mild-mannered compromiser, yes. But at any threat to Israel’s survival he’ll be tougher than B.G. ever was. Chris, he’ll defy Lyndon Johnson over this. Does your President want that kind of trouble with Congress? Or with the American Jews?”
Cunningham refilled Barak’s glass, handed it to him and sat down. “What’s in that envelope, Zev?”
“Documents Gideon Rafael sent me. Abba Eban’s clear and copious handwritten comments show why Israel will have to say no.”
“Zev, what’s the nub of all this? Where does your government draw the line?”
“You’ll smile. At two little words.”
“I’m not smiling. Go ahead.”
“Goldberg-Gromyko calls for ‘the withdrawal of parties from all the territories occupied during the war.’ Since the Arabs occupied no territory but ran away in all directions, that means only the Israelis.”
“It sure does.”
“Okay. Way back in June we offered withdrawal linked to peace treaties. The Russians and Arabs pounced on withdrawal and ignored peace treaties. That’s been their game ever since. But that principle — withdrawal linked to peace treaties, not otherwise — is where Israel draws the line.”
His eyes screwed almost shut, Cunningham slouched far down on the couch, and drank. “And the two little fighting words?”
“ ‘All … the …’ If we pull out altogether from the territories without treaties, what room for negotiating a real peace will we ever have?”
“All … the …” Slowly Cunningham nodded, rolling the words on his tongue. “True enough. If that wording stands, you’ve lost the war.”
“You’ve got it,” said Barak.
“Tough,” said Cunningham with a bony helpless shrug. “A balk by Israel will go right up to LBJ. He’s well aware of the Soviet threat in the Middle East, and maybe he sees Israel as an asset, but he’s got Vietnam on his hands, riots in the universities, an election year coming up, and Bobby Kennedy snapping at his heels. He’s not in a mood to be defied, and for better or worse, you’re a client state.”
“Can’t you at least correct the CIA’s estimate of Levi Eshkol? It’s dangerously misleading.”
Cunningham again held up flat palms. “I haven’t been asked. Sorry.”
“Well, thanks for the bourbon.” Barak stood up, hiding his disappointment and not too surprised. “And thanks for hearing me out.”
“My pleasure. Incidentally, can you leave those papers with me? At least the one with Eban’s copious comments?”
On the instant Barak handed him the envelope. “Take them all.”
“Why, thank you. Just curious. I’m a Middle East history buff, as you know. You can have them back tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow I’ll be in Colorado Springs.”
“Right, for that air colonel’s lecture. Well, when you return, then.” The CIA man flourished the envelope. “Next best thing to Hopalong Cassidy, the Middle East nowadays.”
Rows on rows of blue-clad air cadets rose to attention with a great clatter of seats when the slender tall superintendent, a gray-blond man with a big splash of combat ribbons on his uniform, entered the auditorium. Halliday, Emily Cunningham, Zev Barak, and Danny followed him. Benny Luria already sat alone on the stage. At dinner in his quarters the superintendent had been jocular with Halliday, his old wingmate, they had called each other “Bud” and “Sparky,” but now he was all stern dignity, escorting the guests to reserved seats, then mounting to the podium beside a tall white screen.
“As you were, cadets.” They slammed down into their seats, backs straight, eyes front. Looking around at these hundreds of intent bristle-headed youths, it struck Barak that the entire Israeli pilot force, cadets and all, would fit into the three rows in front of him. Sitting beside Emily, smelling the faint wildflower scent she favored, was a poignant distraction. So they had sat through the Mahler cycle and many a play and opera at the Kennedy Center, before Nakhama had come to Washington with the girls. But now there was Halliday on Emily’s other side.
“Politics stops at the gateway of the academy, gentlemen,” the superintendent began. “Not long ago the academy hosted the air chief of Saudi Arabia. Today we welcome Colonel Benny Luria of Israel, commander of Fighter-Bomber Squadron Twelve. Air combat is the cutting edge of the military calling in our time, cadets, something like a world brotherhood. The recent victory of Israel’s air force is worthy of serious professional study by all modern nations. We don’t expect Colonel Luria to disclose military secrets or plead his country’s cause. He is here as a man of arms like yourselves, a squadron leader whose record betokens an integrity of purpose and a striving for excellence, which the fledgling eagles of the academy can well aspire to emulate.”
The superintendent turned to Luria, and his severe mien relaxed. “Okay, Colonel Luria, now tell us how you guys did it.”
The cadets rose, courteously applauding. The superintendent joined in. Walking to the podium, Benny smiled down at Danny, standing beside Zev Barak. Looking very mature in a dark suit and tie, Danny clapped hard and winked at his father, but Barak knew how nervous the boy was. Taking Danny’s hand as they crossed the grounds, he had felt a very damp palm.
Benny thanked the superintendent, and all rustling ceased in a dead hush.
“At 0745 hours on Monday, June fifth,” he began, “our air force struck simultaneously at nine enemy airfields. I led my squadron in a dive on the Inchas air base, through heavy AA fire.” He looked around at the array of serious young faces filling the big bleak hall. “And let me tell you, it was scary, but I was less scared than I am right this minute.” The cadets were surprised into hearty laughter, glancing at each other. Great start, thought Barak. Benny was b’seder, as usual. Danny’s eyes shone. “Don’t laugh, gentlemen, I mean every word of it. When I was a student pilot, I never dreamed that I would one day address the United States Air Force cadet corps. My dreams were as modest as our air force was then. Fourteen planes in all, gentlemen, twelve of them operational.”
He paused to let that sink in.
“Well, times have changed. There have been strange stories and rumors to account for our recent victory — electronic wizardry, secret weapons, even the ultimate secret weapon, American pilots.” (Side-glances and chuckles in the audience.) “But in fact there was no mystery or miracle in it. Three unchanging requirements of successful warmaking were crucial to the way we won: planning, rehearsal, intelligence.”
For the next half hour, sometimes using slides and a pointer at the screen, Benny Luria talked with calm candor about Operation MOKADE as a preemptive strike worked up for years. It was not much like Abba Eban’s version of the attack at the UN, but Barak was unconcerned. This was a place for reality; the UN was a place for smoke screens. He could sense the absorption of the cadets around and behind him. Some of what Luria said was new to him; not so much the colorful business of waking pilots in the night to recite time of departure, distance to target, bomb loads, and so on — all that he had heard before — but rather the dry hour-by-hour, and sometimes minute-by-minute, narrative of Benny’s own first day of combat. He had flown four sorties, the last late in the afternoon, to the most distant airfield in Egypt, where his four Mirages with fagged-out pilots had been jumped by MiGs on fresh full alert. In his picture of the dogfight that ensued there was no Homeric vaunting. Now he was Colonel
Luria, an instructor among student pilots, dropping into a professional clipped monotone. Good for Benny, he knew what to say to UJA banquets, to children at a dinner table, and to the United States Air Force Academy.
“Those MiG pilots were proficient,” Benny was saying. “Anybody who puts down Arab aviators, or Arab fighting men altogether, makes a mistake. They are brave able warriors. Their political leadership is something else, and not part of this discussion. The superiority of our pilots is due to factors of motivation — and therefore of training — that are unique to Israel’s air force. Maybe we do have one secret weapon at that, gentlemen, called in Hebrew en brera. Which means ‘no choice.’ ”
A map of Israel flashed on the screen, with colored arrows and numbers. Slapping the pointer here and there, Benny said, “As you see, gentlemen, a MiG can cross my country west to east in about ninety seconds. So an Israeli pilot lives and breathes one mission, Clear skies over Israel. That’s his reason for flying and for living. In combat he’ll take risks, plunge into dangers, pierce the envelope of safe performance, because he knows that Israel’s survival rides on his wings.
“Yes, we’re proud — maybe a little too proud — of being Israel’s eagles. I assure you we all hope for the day when our neighbors will make peace with us, and these wonderful machines we fly will be grounded as toys we’ve outgrown. Air war is wasteful and perilous. I’ve seen too many horrible crashes and lost too many dear, dear friends to believe otherwise.”
All at once Benny Luria’s voice weakened and went hoarse. He stopped speaking, and it took him a long moment of oppressive silence to recover. Danny gripped Barak’s hand. When his father spoke again, the voice was quiet and firm. “So I confess to you almost in a whisper that nevertheless I’ve loved it, loved every minute of my service. I hope my jet-lagged son here in the fourth row, who has heroically stayed awake during this dull talk, will one day be a pilot, a tayass in the Israel Air Force, as his brother is now training to become one. And in a lower whisper I confess that I’m damned glad we’re getting those forty-eight Skyhawks.”
The cadets jumped to their feet. The applause this time was the real thing. Barak put his arm around Danny, who was applauding a bit too much. Emily leaned past him to touch the boy’s arm. “How proud you must be of your father.”
“My English not too good yet,” said Danny with difficulty. “I understood most.”
Speaking over the prolonged applause, Halliday asked Barak, “Where did Luria get his English? It’s excellent.”
“War college in England. Also, our generation grew up under the British Mandate.”
“I see.” An arid smile. “He managed to get in a little politics, at that.”
“Target of opportunity,” said Barak.
“Yes, indeed.”
“Am I disturbing you?” Emily’s voice again, low and charged. “It’s late as hell, I know.” Barak was bedded down in a VIP suite of the base guesthouse, and she was calling from the superintendent’s luxurious quarters across the lawn.
“No problem. I’m in my pajamas reading. Reading Plutarch, as a matter of fact.”
“Oh, sure.” They had corresponded at length, off and on, about Plutarch.
“On my life. I found a beat-up Modern Library copy in this room.” So he had, amid a shelf of faded best-sellers.
“Let’s go for a walk.”
He glanced at his travel clock. “At one in the morning?”
“Look, Wolf, I thought we’d talk over breakfast, but I’m not sure I can get away from Sparky and his wife. Anyway, I can’t sleep. There’s a mantel clock in this room driving me bats, every fifteen minutes going bing bang bong —”
“What about Halliday?”
“Bud? He must have gone to sleep hours ago. He has to run his five miles at dawn.”
“Where do we meet?”
“At that eagle statue.”
“You’re on. Ten minutes.”
There she was by the pedestal, a dark huddled shape in bright moonlight. The deep snow crunched under his tankist’s boots as he hurried to her. “Hi, it’s damn cold,” she greeted him. “Are you warm enough in that sweater?”
“Our army sweaters are pretty good.”
“Everything about your army is pretty good.” She stripped a glove off her hand, and took his in a hard clasp. The chilly fingers interwove in his and tugged.
“Where are we going, Em?”
“To the chapel, first. That’s where Bud and I will get married.”
“What! When?” The news was hardly unexpected, yet the shock was real and physical, a tingle down his arms and back.
“Oh, pretty soon. You’ll get an invitation, natch. I hope you can make it. You and Nakhama.”
Creak, creak, creak of fresh snow underfoot, brisk wind sweeping dry flakes in the air. “Emily, that’s beautiful news. Congratulations.”
Her fingers tightened. “Bud’s idea, doing it here. I’m just as glad to skip the Washington nuptial hoo-ha. My God, what a marvellous place to have a military school. Look at those mountains, will you?” The snowy range loomed high against the stars, bluish and jagged. “One of them is Pike’s Peak, isn’t it? And say, isn’t the architecture of that chapel sublime?”
The beauty of the strange soaring structure, suggestive of airplane wings, was much enhanced by the chiaroscuro of glittery moonlight and black shadow. He said, “I’ve seen pictures of it, but they don’t give the idea at all. It’s wonderful.”
“Zev, you don’t suppose it’s closed? Churches stay open for meditators, don’t they?”
“Let’s try the door.”
It was open. The high interior was lit by a single golden lamp, and tall stained-glass windows showed faint moonlit colors in the gloom. They sat down in a rear pew. “Wow, what an edifice,” she said, her voice echoing hollowly. “And I doubt we’ll have fifty wedding guests. But Bud wants this. I told him about us, you know, old Wolf. No X-rated stuff, you understand, but everything. I had to.”
Barak was fighting off an impulse to take her in his arms, for one last time. It was painfully sweet to be with her again this way. Queenie! The fey electric unforgettable Queenie, here beside him, her bespectacled face dim and lovely over a snow-flecked fur collar. That he had gotten in too deep with this alien oddball was a fact of his life. The rest was handling it. The marriage disclosure was an unquestionable relief. Why then was he taking it as a stab? He cleared his throat. “What was his reaction?”
“Sphinx-like. He just sat there listening, with stone eyes on my blushing face. We were in the Red Fox, actually. He’d driven out to the school the day after he popped the question, and we were having dinner, and I just came out with it. He did nod once. No, twice. I guess sphinxes don’t nod, so let’s say he was like the Commandant’s statue in Don Giovanni. Then he talked about other things, as though I hadn’t said a word. I doubt he was all that surprised. Surely he wasn’t expecting me at my age to be a virgin — though I damn near was, you evil deflowerer, you. Maybe he was relieved that there was no more to tell. He’s a deep one, Bud.”
“Well, you’re in love, and all set. That’s the main thing, Emily. It’s just great.”
“You can still call me Queenie, chum.”
“That seems outdated.”
Four long years ago, during his first mission to Washington, the bartender in the cheap hotel where he was staying had taken Emily for a hooker, and had called her Queenie by way of being sociable. She had been tickled to death by this, and as a joke between them the sobriquet had stuck.
“It isn’t. It won’t ever be, not for me. Is it for you?” In the enormous gloomy empty chapel, his long silence was like a shout. “Come on, Wolf Lightning.” Her voice trembled, her eyes glistened through her glasses. “Speak up, or forever hold your peace. Wasn’t it on for years and years with not even a kiss? Just scrawls on paper crossing the ocean? And wasn’t it okay?”
“It was okay, Queenie.”
“Ah! That’s more like it. The one point I m
ade to Bud was that we’d probably go on corresponding. That elicited a nod.”
“And the other nod?”
“When I said I wanted all the kids this rickety frame could still produce. That even brought a faint granite grin and —”
“Hello!” The voice reverberated off the walls and the vaulted ceiling. Benny Luria came striding down the aisle. “Hi there, Emily,” he said, as though nothing could be more natural than finding these two together in the academy chapel, long after midnight. Israeli military men seldom showed surprise at pairings, however offbeat. “What a fantastic church! That architect had imagination, whoever he was.”
Barak said, “So you couldn’t sleep either?”
“I’ll be unwinding for days.” He dropped into the pew. “I’d rather fly five combat sorties than face such an audience again.”
“One would never know,” said Emily. “Your lecture was a wow. My fiancé wants to talk to you about it.”
“I have a seminar with the faculty at ten. Be glad to see him before or after. Zev, how about this academy? All these wide low plain buildings, like wartime temporaries, and at the heart of it all this stunning church. Makes me think.”
“What about?”
“Well, I’d been at Tel Nof base two years before I even found out we had a synagogue. When my mother died I went looking for it to say Kaddish. It was in a trailer behind the base kitchen. We’re supposed to be the people of the Bible, aren’t we? These Americans seem to be more biblically inclined.”
“I’d call it pretty biblical,” said Emily, “to return to Zion after thousands of years, and learn to fly jet fighter-bombers so you can stay there.”
Luria turned to peer at her. “That’s not bad. I’ll remember it.”
“Our air tickets are confirmed,” said Barak. “You fly to Los Angeles at two P.M., and I’ll return to D.C.”
They left Luria sitting in the chapel. Outside the wind had sharpened, and fine snow stung their faces. “Well, this is no fun,” she said. “Tell you what, let’s pop by your digs. I’ll pick up that Plutarch, I need it more than you. I’ll smother that clock with a pillow and maybe I’ll read myself to sleep.”