The Glory

  “That’s a fighter plane maneuver. Can they do it with big transports?”

  “You’ll have to find that out. Meantime France hasn’t said a flat no, so I may go to Paris. I still have connections there from the old days. If the Americans can land in France we’re all set — if we get the airlift.”

  They are sitting in a dark row of empty seats. “Sam, tell me, what has happened to Moshe Dayan? Nobody’s closer to him than you. What is it? Shock? Guilt about failed responsibility? This man is not Dayan.”

  “Isn’t he?” Pasternak’s big oval face, hardly visible in the shadows, settles in sad lines. “You tell me, was Dayan ever Dayan?”

  “I don’t understand that.”

  “The most famous Jew in the world after Einstein? The one-eyed military genius? The New Jew incarnate? On Yom Kippur afternoon that image was smashed. If he had died a year ago he’d be our Robert E. Lee, our Lincoln, our Roosevelt, but now he feels his place in Jewish history is gone and he’ll die despised. Maybe I exaggerate, but I believe he’d welcome a stray bullet that would kill him.”

  “I’ve seen him in good moods, Sam, since Yom Kippur.”

  “Of course. He goes way up or way down, depending on the despatches. He changes twice a day.”

  “This is the final boarding call for El Al flight number 001 for New York …”

  “Well, here I go,” says Barak.

  “Look up Chris Cunningham,” says Pasternak. “He’s still as smart and knowledgeable as they come, over there.”

  “Of course I’ll see him.”

  Pasternak adds, “And the Hallidays, naturally.” Barak picks up his hand luggage without a word. “Zev, General Halliday is crucial.”

  “Is he? Just where did Golda get that idea, Sam? From you? From the Mossad? Is that why I’m going? Bradford Halliday only obeys orders.”

  “He has plenty to say about the orders he gets.”

  The passengers are crowding toward the gate: late-departing tourists, black-clad Hassidim who come and go on El Al no matter what, youngsters summoned home by worried parents, businessmen, couriers, a lugubrious lot, not a smile among them and not much talk. Pasternak gives Barak a rough hug. “Have success, Zev.”

  An old pious response comes to Barak’s lips, only half-ironic. “If the Name wills.”

  23

  Kissinger

  Emily is not at the plane gate, and outside the terminal he does not at first recognize her, in a gray tailored suit with a skirt much longer than the fashion, and her hair pulled back in a flat plain style. But when she smiles, it is Emily, all right. He makes his way to her, and she grips his hand. “Oh my God, I can’t believe this. You’re here.” She kisses him and peers at him with shiny eyes in shadowed hollows, with some new lines at the corners. “Yes, it’s you. After three years. You’re the same, only you’re getting sort of white now, hey kiddo? Very premature, aren’t you still in your forties?”

  “Barely, Em.”

  “Oh, listen, it looks fine, with your young strong face. Wisdom plus everlasting youth, Israel to the life.”

  “Don’t pile it on, Emily, you don’t have to. Seeing you is joy enough.”

  She squeezes his hand hard. “Where do I take you? Can we sit down for a cup of coffee? Bud told me you’re coming, by the way. I tried my best to act surprised. He said, ‘No doubt you’ll see him.’ I replied, ‘My God, I hope so.’ He expects to meet with you today.”

  “He does? I’d better go straight to the embassy, Queenie.”

  “Come along, old Wolf Lightning.”

  “How’s your father?”

  “Chris is all right.” Her ebullience dims. “He’s very alarmed, though, about what the Russians are up to in this war.”

  “I have to see him.”

  “Great. Just tell me when.”

  She is anxious to know about Noah. Barak’s account of his victories amazes her. “Imagine! That’s all news to me.” She is driving one-handed, fingers linked in his, now and then touching his hand to her cheek. “The media coverage is sure fouled up this time. They’re all confused, they expected you’d beat the Arabs overnight. So did nearly everyone. Not Bud, I must say, and not my father. Chris thinks this war is Armageddon.”

  “Well, old Chris tends to take a messianic line about Israel.” Tired as Barak is, and with desperate deep war worries, he feels all the old sweetness in being with this one woman, of all the women in the world besides Nakhama. His body is warm with the delight of it. “But the Messiah didn’t bring the Jews back to the Promised Land, Emily, a few crazy irreligious socialists started it, and what with two world wars and Hitler, the thing came to pass. That’s the mundane view, anyway.”

  “If you say so, honey. Just don’t argue with my father about it.”

  Pulling up the car at the embassy she asks, “Now then, how do we work this? Don’t burden yourself with me, but my God, any moment we can have together —”

  “I’ll call you. Thanks for the lift.”

  “Anytime, Whitey.”

  And so he trudges into the embassy, and back into the war. There are doubled security guards at the entrance, and more bustle than usual in the halls. Where Eshkol’s picture hung in the lobby, there is a solemn Golda portrait. But the main change is in the faces of the hurrying embassy people, many of whom he knows. The very air of the building is thick with foreboding and shock.

  “So you’re here, Zev.” The ambassador greets him with a wave of his pipe at a citron and palm branch on his desk. “Hag samayakh. [Joyous holiday.] A thoughtful rabbi just brought these.” So Barak is reminded that today is indeed the eve of Sukkot, the harvest festival. For a week, war or no war, many Israelis will be eating in palm-roofed booths, even agnostic kibbutzniks, even soldiers in the field. But neither the ambassador nor the military attaché, General Gur, looks festive.

  “I sent Mendel with the limousine to get you,” says Motta Gur, his round face impassive, “but he saw you go off with some lady.”

  “Yes, an old friend gave me a lift. What’s happening?”

  Gur gestures at a clipboard of despatches. “On the Golan, Raful’s counterattacking, that’s the best news, and we’re more or less back on the Purple Line. Did you hear how Ben Hanan flew in from Nepal and showed up with a pickup force of tanks to reen-force Yanosh?”

  Nodding as he leafs through the despatches, Barak exclaims, “What’s this? Dado’s put Bar-Lev over Gorodish?”

  “Well, with Gorodish,” says Gur, “and Sharon’s in a big rage because he can’t get either of them to approve a crossing.”

  The ambassador answers his telephone. “Dinitz. … Yes, General, he just arrived. One moment … Zev, it’s General Bradford Halliday. He got word from the American Embassy in Tel Aviv about your trip.”

  Barak takes the phone. Halliday’s office voice, dry and formal. “Ah, General Barak. How was your flight? … Good. If you’re not too jet-lagged, how about dropping over here now?”

  “I will, General. Thank you.” Hanging up, Barak says, “Can Mendel take me to the Pentagon?”

  “No problem,” says Gur. “That Halliday is a tough nut, to all the devils.”

  “Where do we stand with the airlift, Motta?”

  “At the moment, simple. No airlift.”

  “What? None?”

  The ambassador puts in, “Not in American transport planes, Zev,” and he quickly sketches the situation; a meager offer to replenish combat losses, all matériel to be picked up at obscure airfields, either by El Al planes with the markings painted out, or by planes under Israeli charter. “The idea, you see,” says Dinitz, “is not to upset the Arabs.”

  The tough nut’s office is on the outermost ring, on a high floor overlooking a river lined with trees in autumn flame. On the broad desk are pictures of Emily, the twin daughters, and the problem son; on the walls, portraits of Nixon and Agnew. Halliday is slender and black-haired as ever, though his face is becoming a bit seamed.

  “We’re still wrestling with the ins
urance problem,” he says. “Seems to be an impasse.”

  “I can understand,” Barak says, “that El Al planes, or local planes chartered by Israel, are a very poor risk. Why do you require us to use such means?”

  “Coffee?”

  “Please.”

  Halliday presses a buzzer and leans back in his blue leather swivel chair, dancing ten lean fingers together. “We’re old acquaintances. Can we talk with our hair down?”

  “That’s why I’m here, General.”

  Halliday swivels to face the trees and the river. Fingers together, not looking at Barak at all, he says, “Why charters? Because an airlift by our transport command to a country at war would be an act of military intervention against the other side. Charters by us would be a mere transparent subterfuge.”

  “The Soviets are intervening.”

  “A trickle. Anyway, the Soviets don’t care a hoot about world opinion. The United States must.” Halliday turns to Barak with a squeak of the chair. “Look, Barak, here it is straight. Until yesterday the word from all your people here was that the attack was being contained. All was well. The tide would turn in a day or two. It would all be over by Friday or Saturday. The President promised to replenish what you’d expend in the war, and there was great mutual satisfaction. Overnight comes this anguished cry for an immediate airlift of a mountain of weapons, plus a cloud of Phantoms. That’s asking for an instant radical shift in American foreign policy. How come?”

  “The war situation shifted, General.”

  “Isn’t that Israel’s problem? This President’s a beleaguered man. His ace in the hole is his success in foreign policy, especially détente. To ask him to change it at a snap of Mrs. Meir’s fingers is preposterous.”

  “What’s friendship for, if not for a time of need?”

  Halliday takes a paper from his desk, scans it with head aslant, and hands it to Barak. “Okay. The Secretary asked me and a few other senior officers for an urgent estimate ‘on one sheet of paper’ of the airlift problem. Go ahead, read mine.”

  Barak rapidly scans the carbon copy on onionskin paper.

  10 October 1973

  From: Brig. General Bradford S. Halliday, USAF

  To: The Secretary of Defense

  Subject: Airlift to Israel: Military Estimate

  The Israelis have already lost the war. Egypt and Syria have dispelled the illusion of their invincibility. Their fine air force is stymied by walls of Soviet missiles effective to almost ten miles altitude. They are badly deficient in artillery and mechanized infantry, and their prowess in tank warfare has been neutralized by huge losses. The Arabs are in a position to accept a UN cease-fire anytime as victors. The war will soon end, probably through a UN cease-fire backed by both superpowers.

  So why an airlift? Organizing a significant effort, assembling the aircraft, filling the domestic pipeline, setting up refueling sites, loading and despatching the planes, might take as much as a week while the war winds down. We can assume that the Soviet Union is geared up for a major airlift, though the Arabs are winning without that, no doubt to the Kremlin’s great glee. But the start of an open U.S.A. airlift could provoke an equivalent Soviet response, which would only prolong the war; and Israel would suffer immensely more than the Arabs from such attrition.

  Moreover an oil embargo might well ensue, a grave development for the security of the United States and for NATO. In short the best option for the Israelis and for everybody is an immediate cease-fire in place. A clear defeat, but being surprised in war is costly, and an airlift cannot now save them from the consequences.

  Bradford S. Halliday

  “Cream or sugar?” speaks a charming voice.

  Barak looks up from the document. As in Israel, the air force has the prettiest girls. The black sergeant who brings the coffee tray looks like a model in Nakhama’s favorite Paris Match.

  “Sugar, please.”

  Halliday moves spread fingers at the memo. “Any comment?”

  Barak waits until the sergeant goes out. “Hair down, General Halliday?”

  “Shoot.”

  “That’s a political estimate, start to finish. There’s no hard military information in it. It reads like a State Department paper, of which I saw enough as an attaché. Same preconceptions and bias.”

  After a long silent moment, Halliday laughs. “Hair down to your shoulders, eh?”

  “Your rule, sir. I wonder at your going out on a limb, predicting — in writing — the length and outcome of the war. Suppose you’re wrong?”

  “Barak, I’m a hero around here because when the war broke out I said in writing that you wouldn’t win in three days, and would never push the Egyptians back across the Canal. I was a lonely voice in this building five days ago.” He gets up to pour more coffee for Barak. “Political estimate? Yes, crystal-gazing is what SecDef really wants. Still—”

  The black sergeant knocks and enters. “General, pardon me. There is a call for General Barak from his embassy.”

  Halliday gestures at his desk telephone. Barak takes it and Motta Gur comes on. “Listen carefully, Zev. Some intelligence just in can change the whole tenor of your meeting. A Soviet airlift has begun for real. Twenty-five Antonov transports are heading for Syria via Hungary and Yugoslavia. The CIA’s bound to confirm it, and those monsters are comparable to the C-5A Galaxy. First flight of eleven, second flight of fourteen. Don’t tell him the rest, but the war cabinet has already approved bombing the Syrian runways.”

  “Understood, Motta.” He is talking Hebrew. “Can I tell this tough nut that we’re back at the Purple Line on the Golan?”

  “Just a second.” Murmured talk. “Simcha says, ‘Why not? If it won’t depress him too much.’ ”

  “B’seder.” Barak hangs up. First he reports the Russian airlift, at which Halliday soberly nods. “Now, about your paper, you may want to modify it. As of now the Syrians are pushed back to the armistice line, and our offensive will continue.”

  “For that disclosure I’m grateful. What about the Egyptians?”

  “Just wait.”

  Halliday stares at him with a glint of wary appreciation. “Like to hear some other opinions floating around this building, about a hurry-up airlift? The Israelis are doing fine, but they’re just singing the blues so as to alarm Congress and the American Jews, and acquire all the aircraft and tanks they can, to hoard for the next war. Also, you want to throw the onus of your early reverses on us, for warning you not to preempt, and it’s just a maneuver to lock America in on your side.”

  “Hostile nonsense,” says Barak, “not worthy of discussion.”

  Halliday gets up. “The Secretary should be told at once about those Antonovs.” He holds out his hand. “Stay in touch.”

  “I’m here for that.”

  “Perhaps you’ll have time for a drink with us, out at the house. Emily would like that, I know. You’d see our son.”

  “Well, thank you. My instructions are, ‘Get an airlift.’ It seems I’ll be here a little while.”

  For the second time, Halliday laughs. “That’s a political decision. I’m just an airplane jockey who obeys orders.”

  Dinitz and Gur are impressed by Barak’s inside glimpse of negative Pentagon thinking, and highly curious about the frosty general’s candor with Barak, so he describes the business of the captured Soviet P-12 radar, and their contacts since the Six-Day War. That they have been in love with the same woman for years, which conduces to some informality, he does not mention. They are all for his going for a drink at the Halliday home. “Just stay in touch,” says Dinitz. “The situation keeps changing.”

  “And the more you drink, the better,” says Gur. “The only trouble is, they know how to drink and we don’t.”

  “You learn here, Motta,” says Barak.

  He betakes himself to a second-rate hotel near the embassy to rest. Utterly disoriented by the wake-up call a couple of hours later, he has to pull together the threads of his existence. He is lying on a be
d in a small shabby hotel room. He is in civilian clothes. He is in America. There is a war on at home, and Israel is losing. It is Wednesday, October 10, 1973, Sukkot eve. He is due at Emily Halliday’s home shortly. Weird.

  A cold shower restores an everyday mood. On the long taxi ride, Zev Barak’s musings stray to comparing himself to Napoleon. This peculiar train of thought begins with a trace of guilt over his happiness at the prospect of an hour or so with Emily before Halliday gets home. How come? What about the war? What about his grim mission? Does the gorgeous Virginia foliage of October, and the bright vision of Emily Halliday, blot out the fierce reality of Israel’s peril? Well, didn’t Napoleon write many a billet-doux to his inamorata from the bloody battlefield, with the dead still strewn outside his candle-lit tent? And come to think of it, didn’t Wellington after winning at Waterloo sit right down and dash off a famous letter to a lady in Brussels? Pretty good company in a human weakness, Napoleon and Wellington both. War puts an aureate edge on love for women, and there you are. Enjoy it. Barak fully intends to clasp Emily Halliday in his arms, if only at the moment she opens the door. Some golden moments weigh against gray years.

  It does not quite work that way. Emily greets him at the door with a brilliant bewitching smile. He holds out his arms, and she sways toward him. But a small shape brushes past them and goes down the porch steps, and her smile vanishes in a yell. “Oh, Christ, there he goes again! Zev, stop him!” He turns and sees a very little boy toddling rapidly down a lawn sloping to bracken. “And oh God, there goes Merlin!” A huge black Labrador comes bounding through the door after the boy. “Zev, there’s a goddamn skunk and four baby skunks down there. Oh, Christ.” They both run in pursuit. He catches the boy and Emily seizes the dog’s collar.

  “Would this be the famous Chris?” inquires Barak, trying to pinion the boy’s arms as he wriggles and kicks, protesting in shrill gibberish.

  “That’s Chris. My father wanted a grandson and he’s goddamn got one. Haul him inside, don’t let him get away. He’s mad for the skunk, and so’s that damn dog.” Barak catches a whiff of the pungent odor as he drags Chris Halliday, struggling like a captured alligator, up the slope and into the house, followed by Emily with the dog.