Dayan rapidly scanned the little map, all scarred up in pencil with arrows and troop symbols, and passed it to Ben Gurion. “Good enough. The change is mainly in the timing, Prime Minister, as you see.” Dayan briskly gestured at the map. “The enemy’s main Sinai forces are in the north, so I was originally going to attack there first. Instead we’ll start on the central axis with a parachute drop in battalion force at the Mitla Pass, where Sam has put a star. That’s more than a hundred miles behind the Egyptian border, less than forty miles from the Canal. So it can surely be called the act of war the British want, but we can call it a major reprisal raid, and if the situation doesn’t develop favorably—for instance, if the British renege after all—we can easily pull the boys out. Certainly it’s a big tactical surprise. So far from our airfields, so close to theirs.”
“And supposing,” replied Ben Gurion, squinting shrewdly at Dayan, “Nasser also calls it an act of war, and sends his fifty Ilyushin bombers to set fire to Tel Aviv and Haifa? Hah? What then?”
“Sir, the French have promised to put three fighter squadrons on our airfields. If they don’t deliver by S-hour, we can stand down. But they want us to march, sir, and they’ll deliver.”
Consulting his yellow sheet, the Prime Minister shot questions at Dayan. Obviously he had grasped the plan, and had asked for the “simple” explanation to hear how Dayan would sum it up again for the British. Dayan fielded the Prime Minister’s searching questions with crisp facts and figures. He would not tell the British, he said, exactly where Israel would attack, except that it would be a drop so deep behind the Egyptian lines that it would menace the Canal in sufficient force to be taken as an act of war. For this they would have to accept Ben Gurion’s word.
“Well, they had better take my word, if they want me to help them throw out Nasser. It’s a good plan, Moshe. It’ll save lives. Now let’s see how the British respond. Zev, come with me”—he put away his question sheet and pushed himself out of the garden chair—“while I dress up for the meeting.”
His bedroom had furnishings almost of museum quality, for the villa belonged to an old family of great wealth and reliable discretion. The old bald paunchy Jew, with his desert-browned face and white tufts of side hair, made an odd figure in this setting, pottering around in his underwear as he laid out a dark suit, a white shirt, and a red tie, talking the while. “Now pay attention, Zev. A memorandum of agreement will have to be written today. Whenever and wherever that’s done, you must be there, monitoring the wording. The typing will be a job for aides,” he said, hauling on capacious trousers, “but it’s very important. One wrong word can be very dangerous. Assuming we come to an understanding, everything after that will go quickly. The Englishmen will be on fire to leave. It will be very hard to change the language once it’s on paper. See to it that our side doesn’t have to change a word! Understand? That’s your job.”
“I understand, Prime Minister.”
After hours of tough talk the British did take Ben Gurion’s word, and they accepted Dayan’s “act of war.” Ben Gurion in return accepted their grudging concession to move up their ultimatum, and their attack on Nasser’s airfields, by a few hours. In the small bedroom where the memorandum was being typed up, Barak paced and listened as the British, French, and Israeli aides dictated in English line by line, from notes taken at the meeting, to a British aide at a portable typewriter. Several times Barak called aside the Israeli aide to correct vital cloudy wording before it was written down, and each time his change went through.
At last the three French ministers, the two British diplomats, Ben Gurion, and Dayan sat down around a conference table for a reading of the text by the aide. Ben Gurion held up the process, often pausing to reflect, and repeating some sentences aloud, while the others exhibited marked impatience to be done and be gone. When the reading ended, the conferees looked at each other and nodded. Ben Gurion lifted the paper from the aide’s hand, signed it, and passed it to the French Defense Minister, who pursed his lips, raised his eyebrows, and signed it, too. Ben Gurion slid the paper across the table to the senior Englishman, a diplomat of lower rank than Selwyn Lloyd. Lloyd had not returned.
“There is nothing official about all this,” said the diplomat, making a very wry face. “Why signatures?”
His Russian accent thicker than usual, Ben Gurion said with a cold smile, “Surely ve need a record of vot ve agreed to. Odderwise vot heff ve accomplished here?”
“Well, as a matter of record only,” said the Englishman, and he signed. Ben Gurion folded the paper and put it in his breast pocket. Within minutes, everyone had left the villa but the Israelis.
Ben Gurion looked around at the others, his mobile face as grave, Zev Barak thought, as it had been when he had read the Declaration of the State eight years ago. “So, gentlemen, ve go to var,” he said.
***
Now the country that wasn’t there broke out of its nonexistence, and the children of Israel went marching once more into the Sinai desert as in olden days, only this time going the other way.
Colonel Nasser’s land did not much resemble Pharaoh’s Egypt, except in geographical location and ancient magnificent monuments; not in language, not in religion, not in customs, not in culture, and not in its Arab populace. But after three millennia the Jews were exactly the same quarrelsome Israelites of the Exodus, with the same God, the same language, and the same national character, including the same ineradicable tendency to veer forever between the sublime and the balagan. Of such was the Battle of Mitla Pass; half sublime, half balagan, a heroic fiasco, an inside-out Thermopylae fought to no purpose whatever.
The paratrooper battalion was duly dropped at the Mitla Pass as the detonator for an international bombshell, the French and British landings in Suez. That was its sole mission. It had no other. But the brigade commander, Ariel Sharon, was not told of this secret larger strategy. He therefore thought his force was leapfrogging a hundred miles behind the enemy lines to fight, an understandable misapprehension.
***
Five days after David Ben Gurion folded the agreement into his pocket, sixteen transport planes, twenty-five paratroopers to an aircraft, soared forth toward the sinking sun over Sinai. This was the battalion scheduled to jump into Mitla Pass and sit there until Ben Gurion could weigh the Egyptian response and the British good faith. Of the French he had no doubt. Their three fighter squadrons, as promised, were poised on his airfields.
Skimming the flat sands to avoid radar detection, the sixteen Dakotas gave paratroopers like Don Kishote who glanced down through the narrow windows a sense of rocketing toward battle, but in fact these machines were old lumbering workhorse DC-3s, making about two hundred miles an hour. They had less than two hundred miles to go, and thirty minutes after takeoff they were already climbing to jump altitude.
That was a long half hour for Don Kishote, a buzzing tense whiz into the unknown. No well-defined line of retreat as in the night raids, kept open by blocking units and covering fire, not this time; the battalion would be dropping far out in mountainous desert into a hornet’s nest of enemy armor, so far as they knew utterly dependent on parachuted supplies of food, fuel, water, and weapons until the main body of Arik Sharon’s brigade could fight its way to them, past enemy strongholds and through rugged desert terrain. Cumbersomely weighted with his gear, which he had checked and checked to boredom, uncomfortable and nervy, Yossi passed the worrisome grinding minutes thinking over his touchy meeting yesterday with Shayna, and trying to sort out his feelings after the bizarre doings in Gay Paree.
***
Shayna had come on the telephone with a tremendous sneeze, and then a surprisingly cheery, “Well, so you’re back! How was Paris, and where are you?”
“Paris was okay. I’m calling from the Falafel King outside my base. You have a cold?”
“The worst! But I’m getting over it. I caught it the night of that party, in all that rain. Just as well I didn’t go with you, I’d have stayed in bed with feve
r there, same as here. Come and tell me all about Paris.” It seemed to Yossi from her tone that she was taking in stride their quarrel and his going off with Yael, and was her affectionate self.
“I can’t.” He was talking on a public phone outside the gate of the air force base, where aviators and paratroopers sat with wives or sweethearts, murmuring tentative goodbyes over falafels and beer, for the impending action was in the air. He dropped his voice. “High alert.”
“I’ll come there, then.”
“Not if you’re sick.”
“Foolishness. What’s a good time?”
“I’ve given my company an after [time off] at seven.”
“I’ll be there.”
Still her reticent self, she hung up without endearments. Shayna had her obscure depths! He did want to see her, to be with her before he went off to battle. He also dreaded it. That crazy business in Paris with Yael had been nothing like his casual fooleries in the flat on Karl Netter Street. How could he talk to Shayna about Paris and leave that out? That was what had happened in Paris.
When he came in at seven to the Falafel King stand, there she was huddled in a coat. “What’s the matter?” were her first words, followed by a sneeze.
“God bless! Nothing.” He fell in the chair beside her. A grim briefing in the chilly bleak base assembly hall, with tall maps of Sinai and heavily arrowed transparent overlays, had just given the Mitla force its picture of the mission. Hairy! It was a relief to push aside war thoughts for love thoughts. He did love this girl; one look at her and he knew it. Paris didn’t matter. Even the reddened nose was endearing because he felt sorry for her. When she smiled her cheeks curved in a way peculiar to her, a beautiful shape, and her eyes shone for him, as Yael’s had never done in Paris. But as Yael had said, she wasn’t in love with him.
“Everybody is saying it’s war. They’re starting to hoard again in Jerusalem,” Shayna said. “Mama’s as bad as anybody, our cupboards are all piled up. The stores are emptying. But I’m not asking questions.” Her sharp look searched his face.
“Good. Don’t.”
“So?” She clasped his hand in hers. “Tell me about Paris. Was it fun?”
A perfectly innocent question; or was it? Her face showed the usual transparent joy at being with him. And yet, wasn’t she being a little too free and easy? She squeezed his hand and went on. “All right, that was a terrible fight we had. I’ll talk first. I’m sorry, Yossi. Didn’t you tell me about paratroopers who freeze and won’t jump? That was it. Paris was a jump, and I froze. I could have fought it out with my father, I guess. But I didn’t, and it’s past and gone. As it happens I got sick, so it was for the best. I’d have just been a nuisance. And my parents were so relieved that I didn’t go!”
“Paris is overrated,” said Yossi.
“Come on, now. In what way?”
“Well, maybe I was out of the mood. I missed you.” There was a needed little touch of truth.
Her cheeks curved enchantingly. “Oh, did you? How nice. Start at the beginning. Tell me everything you and Yael did.”
(To all the devils!)
“Well, the first night Lee treated us to the Folies-Bergère.”
“Oo-ah. Folies-Bergère. Do the actresses really dance around with nothing on?”
“Yes, or else with the most gorgeous costumes you ever saw. I liked them better dressed.”
With a side-glance of old-lady wisdom she said, “No doubt. And then?”
He made her laugh with his description of the headwaiter at La Tour d’Argent, and then of the fleabag hotel. She was envious of the Eiffel Tower climb—“That sounds like the most fun”—and listened with wide eager eyes to his account of the four-star sights and the performance of Tartuffe. “That was about it,” he said. “When we got back to that miserable hotel, there were the cables ordering us home on the first plane.”
“What about the George Cinq Hotel?” she said.
“What about it?” He was very startled. “Do you want a falafel?”
“That swanky suite your brother had. What happened there?”
“I think I’ll have a falafel.”
“Well, I will too, then.”
He glanced at her covertly as he waited for the counterman to throw together the falafels. She sat there with a composed countenance, showing no trace of jealousy, anger, or suspicion. What did she know? Could she have talked to Yael? But Yael had come with him straight to the Ramle base, where Sam Pasternak had set up Moshe Dayan’s general headquarters, and she had been working day and night ever since. He had met her once in a corridor, looking pale and dishevelled, and she had barely said a friendly hello in passing. Anyway, Yael would never breathe a word. Or would she? Yael was a hard lady with sharp claws. What was behind the sweet face of this nineteen-year-old sphinx?
“Didn’t you go to his hotel?” she asked as he brought the falafels. “Your brother told me about the suite at the party. He said he would let you use it. It sounded fantastic.”
“Oh, Lee likes to show off. Yes, we went up there for a drink. It had a nice view, but to me it looked like a movie set. Phony.”
“I’ll bet Yael enjoyed it.” He looked dumbly at her. “She’s got a taste for luxury, I’m sure.”
“Well, by that time we were both pretty tired. She took a nap.”
“There? In the suite? How peculiar. Why not in your hotel?”
“She claimed it had bedbugs.”
“Bedbugs! Ugh!”
“Just a short nap, then we went on to the Comédie Française.”
“What did you do while she napped?”
“Lee had some dirty French magazines there. I read them.”
“You would.” She looked at him in silence, by now with more than a trace of skepticism.
“Another falafel, Shayna?”
“I can’t finish this one.”
To Yossi it seemed plain that she had caught on or already knew somehow. Why had he been so clumsy in his lying? Why Yael’s nap, l’Azazel? Why the dirty magazines?
“I’ll tell you, Yossi, I’m getting suspicious.”
“What? How so?”
“I think you had a marvellous time, and you just don’t want me to feel bad. But don’t be a fool, we’ll go to Paris together one day. How much time have you got? Can you walk me to the bus station? It’s due in fifteen minutes.”
“Let’s go.”
He wanted to kiss her in the darkness. “Don’t. You’ll catch my cold.”
“Never mind.”
“No, I mean it. Don’t.”
He knew when she meant it. With Shayna’s blue jeans went a certain limited willingness for endearments, but clearly not tonight. They walked in silence for a while, then she said, “Listen, Yossi, my cousin Faiga’s getting married soon. Any chance that you could come with me to the wedding?”
With the maps of the Mitla drop fresh in his mind, Yossi said, “If I can, I will.”
“It scares me how my friends are getting married right and left.” Shayna laughed merrily in the gloom. “I’ll be the old maid of the bunch in a year. Not that I care. Do you know, while you were in Paris I got a proposal? Think what I’d have missed by going!”
This stung Kishote. “Who now?”
“What do you mean, who now? Do I get that many? Bertram Packer, his name is. He came around to see me when I was laid up. Actually he asked me two years ago, and now bang, he went and asked me again.”
“And is this one of those yeshiva friends of yours, exempt from the army?”
“Oh, no, Bert’s very religious, but he’s B’nai Akiva. Did his three years and he’s a reserve artilleryman. Don’t worry, I didn’t accept.” She took Yossi’s hand. “So don’t snarl like that. You went off to Paris with that beautiful Yael Luria, and do you hear me snarling?”
***
“Final check!” Harsh call of the jump master over the twin-engine roar. Rattle of buckles, creak of bucket seats, clank of Uzis, tense joking among the younger paratroopers,
set businesslike faces of the veteran jumpers as they tested their straps, back chute, safety chute, overhead cords, leg-sack fastenings. No more puzzling over Shayna, at least for a while!
“Dvukah Aleph!” (“First hookup!”)
Yossi and the five men linked with him stood up and sidled forward, overhead cords hooked to the cable, left leg forward, right leg back. Side door sliding open, wild rush and howl of icy air, red sunset light striking through the gloomy Dakota, crimsoning young faces. No joking now.
“Kfotze!” (“Jump!”)
Yossi had placed himself third in the hookup, to see the jump get off to a normal start. First jumper, a good boy. Out, gone! Second jumper, hint of a freeze, hanging there too long.
“Kfotze!” An ungentle shove in the small of the back by the NCO. Gone!
Yossi’s turn. Into the opening, the wind, the roar! Red sun half-sunk behind black mountains. Different from the Negev, really high mountains. Maybe Mount Sinai out there, who could be sure? Moses, Ten Commandments…
“Kfotze!”
With a laugh Don Kishote threw himself out, turning over and over in rushing cold air. Brief straight fall, expected queer feeling in the balls—jolt of the straps! Slow swing, slow swing, parachute flapping and swelling beautifully overhead. Peaceful silence, bare whiffle of parachute. Parachutes floating here and there in the dark blue sky. Release the leg sack, release the chest chute, let them dangle well clear…
There it was far below and to the west, the lone pillar of the Parker Memorial just visible in the dusk, the marker of the entrance to the Mitla Pass. He and the other troops dotting the sky were all falling short, two or three miles to the east. So much Yossi observed, then the gray-brown sand strewn with rock rubble was coming up at him. Not much ground wind. Good. He hit hard and well, feet clamped together, easy tumble over, best jump yet! Now for the Egyptians! All around him paratroopers were landing, some clumsily, some deftly, one nearby groaning with pain and writhing, his leg twisted awry on the sand, youngster from another company. Yossi freed himself from his chute and gear and ran to help him.