“You don’t have to. The original plan was, in fact, to destroy the radar. It was interfering with our airborne response to the cease-fire violations. As you say, the Green Island effect didn’t last. Nor did the armored raid shock. But the leader of the raiding force decided there was a chance to seize the equipment intact, and so they did.”
“By what means, if you can tell me?”
“I can. Two of your Sikorsky CH-53D helicopters picked up and brought back the installation. Seven tons of Soviet high-technology air defense, General, in two sections. Barely made it, I may say. Complicated operation, some near-disasters, and some casualties, but we have the thing.”
“By God, General Barak, you people are running a Wild West show out there.”
“En brera, we say. No choice.”
Halliday lit a cigar. “When did Israel acquire this radar?”
“Day before yesterday.”
Heavy eyebrows raised high. “We don’t rate our CH-53D with that lift capability.”
“Now you know. One machine lifted four tons. Almost crashed in the sea, but didn’t.”
Puffing at the cigar, Halliday looked him in the eye. “How long will you be in Paris?”
“Until I hear from you.”
“That will be soon.” The proprietress brought him the check, and he paid it, waving off Barak. “Emily has told me your son is in the navy. Is he on one of those boats?”
“He is.”
“God bring him safe to shore.”
“Amen, and thank you.”
They stood up. “Can I give you a lift, Barak? I have a car and driver.”
“I’d better make my own way.”
“Perhaps you’d better. Goodbye, then.” A stiff handshake with a chilly hand.
10
Spécialité de la Maison
As the boats approached Haifa on New Year’s Eve, with the whole world watching through circling airborne cameras, the embassy in Paris was a very busy place. But the Norway charade was over, so Barak was strolling the dazzlingly lit Champs Élysées, killing time before his appointment with Halliday, who had telephoned that he would meet him that night at the Hôtel Scribe. On impulse he turned off to the Hôtel George Cinq, where in the lobby and the bar numerous Americans were making an early start on their forlorn New Year’s Eve roistering. He went up to the deserted mezzanine, and sank into an armchair.
If year-end melancholy was in order then let it be real melancholy, to all the devils! Ah, that skittish Sorbonne nineteen-year-old Emily, in a plaid skirt and fuzzy sweater, her hair a careless mop, with a bizarre crush on him which she had confessed right here so long ago; Mrs. Bradford Halliday now, mother of twins in her mid-thirties! The chandeliers, the wallpaper, the furniture, the very ashtray stands were the same. And he was almost all gray, much heavier, and stalled in his career near the top. Already he was thinking of where to look in civilian life.
“Hi. All that’s missing is the woman feeding éclairs to her dog.”
“Good God.” He leaped up, looked around, and blurted the first thought that came to mind. “How the hell could you leave those twins? They aren’t a year old.”
She stood there in a red cloth coat with a gray fur collar, her hat stylishly tilted, grinning at his surprise. “Well, well, wouldn’t you know. There speaks the paterfamilias. My Belgian nanny scolded me too for leaving them. It’s only for overnight.” She came to him, caressed his face with a curved palm, and lightly kissed his mouth. “Always in character, aren’t you? Totally unromantic.”
“Emily, where’s your husband?”
“At the Scribe, of course.”
He looked at his watch. “He wasn’t getting there till seven, I thought.”
“Urgent sudden schedule change. I heard him phoning your embassy. There must be a message.”
“I’d better call.” He strode off and found a phone booth on the mezzanine. The message was, “Here early with Emily. How about dinner with us at the Scribe? Please meet me at six on our business.”
Barak returned to Emily, who sat in her coat on a sofa. “I’ll be damned. Your hubby’s invited me to dine with you.”
“Why damned? Bud’s a gent. Can we get a drink up here? That bar is a snake pit. More snakes than usual, writhing like mad. Maybe a few are mating. It wouldn’t be noticed.” Barak struck a bell on a serving table. “Bud has to fly to Rome tonight. No details. Maybe he’ll tell you. We had tickets for The Magic Flute, dammit, and he’s turning them in.”
A withered white-headed waiter was tottering at them with a tray. “Oui, monsieur? Madame?”
“What were we drinking, old Wolf, that time aeons ago, in that sleazy bar near Union Station, when I was christened Queenie?”
“Who remembers?”
“Well, cognac then, to warm up. And Wolf, for Pete’s sake, don’t stare at me like that! I know I’m hideous.”
“You’re different, not hideous. Don’t fish.” She laughed out loud, a remembered lovely laugh. “God, Emily, my hair stood on end when I heard your voice.”
“My love, like you I came looking for ghosts. And here we both are. Too too solid flesh.”
“Your husband says the twins are very pretty. That you’re just being a Chinese parent, running them down.”
“Bud knows me pretty well.” A deep sigh, an affectionate glance. “You’re eating too many pistachio nuts, Wolf.”
“Too many birthday cakes.”
“Oh, hell, to me you look marvellous. It’s so good, just setting eyes on you! It’s true, my babies arc beautiful.” She rapped her knuckles on the table. “Absit omen. And I’m not hideous, hey? Tell me more about that.” Barak glanced at his watch again. “None of that, I’ll murder you, Wolf.”
“Well, all right.” He took a long look at her. Emily’s hair was styled in current fashion, a careful coiffing with some feather touches in front. The once-prominent cheekbones were softened. It was a round face now. The big eyes, once so glittery and wild, were calmer, deeper, and a touch withdrawn. In short, crazy Emily had become a mother and a Washington wife. It wasn’t in her letters, but in her looks. How tell her that?
The waiter brought the cognac. She seized a glass and drank. “Christ on a bicycle, toots, stop taking inventory. Just talk.”
“Well, you were always too skinny, Em —”
“And now I’m a house,” she flashed.
“Don’t be absurd.”
“I’ll show you.” She jumped up. “I am, I am.”
“Don’t take off your coat, we have to get out of here.”
“If you do, I don’t. I have plenty of time. I’m just shopping for stockings, if I can find an open store. I tore mine on the train. There!” She dropped the coat and whirled around. In a tailored black suit, she was now visibly endowed with bosom and hips. “Two-ton Tessie, queen of the freak show. What do I care? Bud likes them pleasingly plump. So he says. It happened when the twins came.”
“All right, Emmy. Want me to say it? You’re beautiful.”
“Old gray fibber. Competition for Nakhama, you mean, in the curves department. Thank you, anyway. How is she?”
“All right. Look, I must check back at the embassy before I meet him. I’ve got to leave, Queenie —”
“Wait, wait. Drink your drink. There’s so much to talk about! Why on earth did you stop writing all summer? You never explained. Three whole months, no letter. And me in Belgium going nuts with my two screamers!”
“Well, Nasser started his War of Attrition. You’ve heard about that?”
“Just vaguely.”
“Tremendous resupply problems. My main job in Washington. Also, getting the Phantoms released was tough. The time slipped by.” He took a gulp of cognac and set it down. “Look, when you had the babies I didn’t hear from you for months. I’m off. See you for dinner, peculiar as it seems.”
“Okay, okay. Go.” She leaned to kiss him. Their mouths briefly clung. Her voice went husky. “Great balls of fire, this is an eerie encounter. For Bud,
it didn’t happen, you understand.”
“Emily, did you will it with your occult powers?”
A wistful laugh. “Ha, my occult powers. So you remember! No, they failed so often that I quit. Go along to the embassy, let me enjoy a lone New Year’s Eve wallow in memories. And not only of you, love, I spent lots of time in Paris, you know.” She dinged the bell. “I do believe I’ll have another cognac.”
At six to the dot Barak was at the Scribe. Halliday opened the door of his suite in full uniform, with a rainbow bank of campaign ribbons. “Hello, there. Sorry about the switched times.”
“Thanks for the dinner invitation. Accepted with pleasure.”
“Fine, Emily will be pleased. I’ve got a hurry-up meeting in Rome late tonight. NATO flap, southern theater.”
“Not about our boats, surely.”
“Hardly. What’ll you drink? I’ve got a cold bottle of Sancerre.”
“Sounds fine.” Barak did not know what Sancerre was. Halliday poured white wine which tasted to him like a mild cough medicine. The suite had very high dusty ceilings, tall windows, peeling wallpaper, and threadbare furniture. A black-and-white television flickered in a corner.
“That’s about your boats.” Halliday gestured with a thumb. “They’re getting blanket media coverage. Sit down, General. Our NATO stations picked them up off Sicily. We’ve tracked them ever since. We’ve reported this to nobody outside NATO, but of course that includes France.”
“That’s okay. Pompidou told his cabinet today, ‘We’ve been made to look ridiculous by the incompetence or conniving of our own officials. The less tumult we make, the better.’ That was the tenor, anyhow.”
“And how do you know that?”
Barak shrugged. Halliday nodded. They both understood about talky French officials, and there was nothing more to say. “Seedy place,” remarked Halliday, pointing to a dangling strip of wallpaper. “Hemingway would have been saddened. But the restaurant’s held up well.”
Emily bustled in with packages. “Hi, Zev, how nice to see you! Some shops are closed, Bud, but you’d be surprised how many are open for business.”
“I’m never surprised, my dear, by French interest in l’argent. General Barak’s joining us for dinner.”
“Lovely.”
“Now, can you make it a quarter to seven?”
“I’ll be ready.”
She closed the bedroom door. Halliday lit a cigar. “Barak, the Secretary of Defense thanks the Israeli government for the word on the P-12 radar. The State Department has been informed. My government’s interested, but questions arise.”
“Shoot.” It was an American locution Barak liked.
“What are the conditions of the invitation?”
“No conditions beyond secrecy, General, that I’m aware of.”
“Carte blanche for inspecting the equipment with a team of technicians?”
“Carte blanche.”
“No quid pro quo?”
“None. Friendship.”
“Will our inspection be disclosed to the media?”
“It’s not in my country’s interest to disclose it. Obviously.”
“You have several parties in your unity government. Leaks are not unknown.”
“Neither are they in Washington.”
“Granted.”
“The Israel Defense Force will be handling this, start to finish. It will be secure at our end. The Washington end is your problem.”
“The State Department is anxious, you see, not to exacerbate Arab feelings. Especially after this affair of the boats.”
“General Halliday, if your State Department can veto your inspection of top-secret Russian antiaircraft technology, out of concern for Arab feelings, that’s that.”
“Oh, don’t misunderstand me. The offer is accepted, with appreciation.”
“Well, good.”
“Providing it remains, as you say, an army matter. No diplomatic exchanges, no formalities, no documents. A wholly informal visit of technicians, such as we frequently make to Arab countries.”
“No paper trail,” said Barak.
This struck a smile from Halliday like spark from flint. “You’re picking up the lingo.”
“I’ve been in Washington awhile.”
“I’ll head the team. Air defense electronics is more or less my bailiwick. One of them.”
“That’s why I was instructed to contact you.”
“We’ll come next month, at a date suitable to you.” A roar on the television drew their attention. Halliday walked to the set, saying, “Are the boats arriving?”
“They can’t be. They’ll come in well after dark, so as not to exacerbate French feelings.”
Halliday took the jibe with a side-glance. The TV showed Moshe Dayan addressing a crowd outside the Ministry of Defense in Jerusalem. The announcer said, “Le Ministre Dayan dit que la France et la Norvège sont des bons amis d’Israël.”
“Ooser,” said Barak.
“Ooser? What does that mean, Barak?”
“Untranslatable Yiddish, General.”
“Something like ‘in a pig’s eye’?”
“That’s not bad at all.”
“Have some more Sancerre.”
“Why not?”
“Look here,” Halliday said as he poured. “I suppose you’re all booked for tonight, it being New Year’s Eve?”
“Not at all. In Israel we call it Sylvester. It’s some Christian saint’s day, and we don’t do anything about it.”
“Well, if you’re an opera-goer, would you consider escorting Emily to The Magic Flute? We have reserved tickets, and she’s very disappointed that we’re not going.”
Out of fashion for years, the Hôtel Scribe was quiet, the restaurant only half full. “Wouldn’t know it was New Year’s Eve,” said Halliday. “Well, we’ll have champagne at least.”
A bald paunchy waiter in a black suit gone green at the elbows wheeled a four-tier hors d’oeuvre wagon to their table featuring, besides the usual tidbits, an array of multilegged or hairy little horrors quite new to Barak, in oil or sauce. “This is about what I’ll eat,” said Halliday, as the waiter served him what he selected, mainly horrors. “Spécialité de la maison. A French military plane leaves at nine and I have to be on it.” Barak and Emily ordered Loire salmon. Halliday raised his glass. “Here’s to your son’s boats, General Barak, the talk of the world.”
“Thank you. Only because of the embargo. If the French had delivered what we paid for, there’d be nothing to talk about.”
“Here’s to the landing on the moon,” said Emily. “The one thing that redeems this wretched year we’ve lived through. That, and my babies.”
They talked about the moon walks, the Mylai massacre, the Chappaquiddick scandal, and of course the Cherbourg boats. “Well, now,” Halliday said, downing the last horror with relish, “I hope you enjoy The Magic Flute, Barak. My wife’s a Mozart lover.”
“So am I.”
“Good. To me all Mozart sounds alike, just tinkly effete fiddle-faddle. She says I’ve got a tin ear. I do like Wagner.”
“Naturally. Wagner wrote for tin ears,” said Emily. “Will you call me from Rome?”
“First thing in the morning,” said Halliday, getting up, and leaning over to kiss her. “Happy New Year, darling. And to you, General Barak,” he added, as Barak rose to shake hands.
Barak and Emily looked after him as he left, and then into each other’s eyes. At the same instant they burst out laughing. “You said our meeting in the mezzanine didn’t happen, Queenie. I don’t believe this is happening.”
“But it is. Abélard and Héloïse actually get to see each other, instead of scribble, scribble, scribble.”
“Emily, why did he bring you, once the opera was off?”
“Why? You don’t know Bud Halliday. He said, ‘Never mind. Wouldn’t you enjoy dinner with your friend Barak anyway? Come along.’ ”
“I see,” said Barak, although he didn’t. “Very nice.” br />
“Nice! Wolf, he’s given us a whole evening together, a whole night! Bud’s a prince … Wolf, you’re making a funny face.”
“Me? I am not.”
“Oh, yes you are. When I said ‘a whole night,’ your mouth went twitch, twitch.” She illustrated.
“I didn’t twitch a single muscle.”
“Now look, Zev dear. I’m a fat old mother. All that was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead. It’s just not on, old thing. You understand that.”
“Queenie.”
“What?”
“Wait till you’re asked.”
Emily threw back her head and laughed. “Touché and double touché! How could I forget what you told me, the night we met at the Lincoln Memorial? You’re impotent, right, Abélard? Good-o.” She had been importuning him at that rendezvous, in a clumsy inexperienced way, to have an affair with her, and he had put her off with this thin pretense. “Hello, here’s our salmon. I’m ravenous.” She tossed off her wine, and dug into the fish.
“Em, when’s the curtain at the opera?”
“I don’t know. At the moment I don’t much care. I know that overture by heart. I can whistle it. Shall I?”
“Have more champagne.”
“Indeed I will. Are you really that eager for Mozart? Confound you, Zev Barak, don’t you look at your watch again tonight, not if we stay up till dawn.”
“Emily, the boats are entering Haifa. I’d like to glance at the TV before we go on to the opera. Okay?”
“Oh! By all means.” She touched his hand. “Eat your salmon, Wolf, it’s excellent.”
The TV set in the suite ran streaks and flashes for half a minute, then a picture slowly faded in: all twelve Saar boats, tied up under floodlights in two rows of six. The scene switched to a large hall where, facing a horde of reporters in the glare of TV lights, Moshe Dayan stood at a microphone in a jacket and tie, with several unshaven men in rough work clothes. “Those are the navy’s senior officers, Emily, who brought in the boats. And there, by my life, is my Noah.” Behind the seniors stood younger men in a large ragged cluster, showing teeth in weary grins. His finger touched a small figure in a wool hat. “That’s him. He looks so tired! They all do.”