The Glory

  “You’re getting your meeting,” says Gur.

  “Not only with him, but with every top mamzer over there. What will come of it I don’t know, but it’ll be a real Litvak wedding. Motta, you’ll come with me. Zev, contact this Halliday, and see him right away.”

  “What about?”

  “Just tell him it’s urgent and secret.” The ambassador gets up, closes his office door, and drops his voice. “Here is what you must convey.”

  Halliday is reading the Washington Post on a lobby couch in the Army & Navy Club. He stands up, a long lithe figure in brown tweed and gray flannel. “Hi.”

  “Hi. I’m afraid I gave you very short notice.”

  “No problem, you said urgent. Come in here, it’s quiet.”

  Barak tries in vain to picture the tall blue-eyed Elsa, as he follows the aviator into a large writing room with nobody in it. Meeting him like this is disconcerting, so soon after the picnic disclosures. This is not a man one can imagine consumed by ardor. In a remote corner they sit down in black leather armchairs, near a loudly ticking old grandfather clock. Halliday looks to the Israeli to begin. No offer of a drink, and no smile.

  “General Halliday, you’re aware that my ambassador is meeting with your secretary, and that a diplomat can only give hints sometimes in formal meetings.”

  “Whereas you can talk plainly to me off the record. Well, fire away.” Halliday folds his long arms, stretches out his long legs, and fixes Barak with a steady eye.

  “Thank you. As things now stand, the United States is reneging on its commitments to Israel — some of long standing, some made when the Arabs attacked my country.” Halliday takes this stiff start with a slight widening of his eyes. Barak goes on, “Your government has yet even to admit publicly that the Arabs started the war. Israel is in grave danger because of apparent American bad faith.”

  “General Barak, Israel is in grave danger — if it is — because your people were caught flat-footed, due to overconfidence and unwise contempt for the enemy.”

  “As you were at Pearl Harbor.”

  “Just so.” Halliday’s eyes go opaque, then clear. “Proceed.”

  “I said ‘apparent’ bad faith, General. My government prefers to believe that, at a time of our greatest peril, your bureaucratic wheels are unfortunately stuck. You know about the alert of three Russian airborne divisions?”

  “We do. Routine Soviet practice in crises. Like replacing the tattletale merchant ships, which tail our carrier groups in the Med, with tattletale warships. One learns to live with these political signals. That’s all they are. Translation, ‘You stay out and we’ll stay out.’ ”

  “General, the Russians are not staying out. Their airlift is public and massive, and an immense sealift has left port —”

  Halliday holds up a hand. “Look here, Barak, you asked for a secret urgent meeting. My department knows all this.” He glances at his watch. “What exactly can I do for you?”

  “At noon tomorrow, General, Saturday the thirteenth — that’s a little less than nineteen hours from now — if the bureaucratic wheels have not come unstuck, Israel will go public to express dismay at your government’s deserting an ally in her hour of need. Golda Meir will probably do this herself on television.”

  Long, long silence. Clock ticking, ticking, then striking the half hour with a groan and a sonorous BONG.

  Halliday says, “Is that it? Your ambassador can get that across to the Secretary, surely.”

  “Wrapped in cotton, yes. That’s it straight.”

  “And what good will such dramatics do your country? It will cause the Arabs great joy, that’s for sure. What else can you hope for?”

  “We think the outcry in this country from the people, the media, and the Congress will either force swift action, or come close to bringing down a shaken administration.”

  Halliday utters an incredulous grunt of “Really!”

  “Really. That’s our judgment. Foreign policy is this President’s one remaining high card. Such a firestorm would destroy that card, and we believe he won’t let it happen. Heads will roll, and those wheels will turn.”

  Another silence. Halliday purses thin lips, and cracks interlaced knuckles. “You’re talking about cranking up the Jewish lobby, aren’t you? There are more broadly based American interests, General Barak, that take a very different view of all this.”

  “Saturday at noon, General Halliday.”

  “I hear you. General Barak, you’re an Israeli. I understand you, and your loyalty to the Jewish State. No problem. These people in the Jewish lobby — are they Jews or Americans? Where’s their ultimate loyalty? If they question the good faith of my superiors, is their good faith beyond question?”

  Barak has heard this jab often enough as a military attaché, and has often riposted. “You’re quite right, there are more powerful interests at work here, General, the oil interest for one. Its power is truly awesome. As for the so-called Jewish lobby, it can accomplish nothing in this town, unless the American people are already for a given policy. In this case, your people have clearly decided that Israel should get aid at once to match the Soviet aid to the Arabs. You’ve seen the polls? ABC, Time, and this morning’s Washington Post?”

  Halliday takes a while to answer. He stands up, with a brisk oddly light, “Okay, got you,” and another glance at his watch. They leave the club and part on the breezy sidewalk with no more words.

  In the cubicle between the double security doors of the embassy, the guard speaks from behind glass on a microphone. “Sir, General Gur wants to see you the moment you return.”

  “B’seder.”

  The attaché is working at a piled-up desk under a handsome photograph of Dayan in coat and tie. He hands Barak a pencilled decode form. “What do you make of this?”

  TOP SECRET URGENT PRIME MINISTER TO DINITZ GUR HARD INTELLIGENCE TWO ARMORED DIVISIONS WILL CROSS CANAL INTO SINAI SATURDAY THIRTEENTH TELL KISSINGER.

  Barak takes a moment to answer. “Could be good or bad.” “How, good?”

  “If Sadat’s gotten cocky and decided to attack and finish us off, it would be a bloody business, but our position could improve.”

  “Or he could be hardening up his lodgments in Sinai,” says Gur, “to prevent our crossing before a cease-fire. That would do it, too.”

  “Is Dinitz back from the Pentagon?”

  “No, he went from there to the White House. Nixon’s about to announce his new Vice President. Big secret still. How did the meeting with Halliday go?”

  “Frank and open.” At this diplomatic jargon for a nasty encounter, the attaché sourly laughs.

  When Dinitz returns to his office, yanking off his topcoat, Barak is there, waiting. The ambassador is very pale, and his brow is deeply creased. “Looks like another long night, Zev. I have to talk to Golda right away.”

  “Three in the morning there, Simcha.”

  “I doubt she’s asleep.” Dinitz drops exhausted in his chair, buzzes the coding officer and orders the call put through on the scrambler. “But I tell you, I nearly fell asleep on my feet at the White House. The new man is Congressman Gerald Ford, not bad for us. What a weird business! TV cameras and lights, a big crowd, applause, Nixon all smiles, not a care in the world, you’d think.” He lights his pipe and vigorously puffs. “Kissinger was off in a corner talking with Ambassador Dobrynin. Afterward he told me what it was about. Very, very bad. He’ll receive a cable from Moscow tonight, accusing Israel of all sorts of crimes and atrocities, and saying, ‘The Soviet Union cannot remain indifferent to such barbaric conduct.’ Words to that effect. The message is that either Israel accepts a cease-fire at once, or those airborne divisions will go.”

  Quelling his own pulse of alarm, Barak says calmly, “But the Arabs haven’t yet accepted.”

  “I’m telling you what Dobrynin’s threat is.”

  Desk voice box: “Mr. Ambassador, your call’s going through.”

  At almost the same moment the telephone ring
s. “Yes? … By all means, put him on. … Zev, it’s Reston of the Times. Take that scrambler call and tell Golda about Dobrynin. I’ll be along.”

  Golda sounds wide awake and reasonably cheerful. “Oh, it’s you, Zev. Nu? Something good for the Jews?”

  “Simcha will be right with you, Madame Prime Minister. He’s talking to the New York Times.”

  “Fine. That’s more important. Me he can talk to anytime.”

  Barak is baldly describing the Dobrynin threat and the way it was conveyed at the White House, when Dinitz comes in and takes the scrambler phone. “Sorry, Madame Prime Minister — What? Yes, Kissinger thinks it’s serious. Deadly serious.” Long pause. “No, the Pentagon meeting was terrible. Flat denial of broken promises or slowdown. They’ll speed up Phantom delivery to two planes every three days.” Another pause. Dinitz rolls his eyes at Barak. “Golda, I told them we need forty at once. Impossible. Out of the question. Meantime I’m meeting Kissinger in an hour and I must have instructions. … Yes … Yes … Yes, I understand.” He turns to Barak. “Write this down, Zev, word for word. ‘If the Secretary thinks it wise to proceed with negotiations — for a cease-fire cosponsored by the Soviet Union and the United States — Israel will interpose no objection.’ ”

  From the scrap of paper on which Barak has scrawled, Dinitz slowly reads the words back to her. “Very well, Madame Prime Minister. … Yes, I understand. … Of course, no matter what time, I’ll call you.” He hangs up and regards Barak with heavy sad eyes. “By my life, that’s a rotten message for me to bring to the American Secretary of State.”

  “Why? Listen, Simcha, it’s a smart shifty message,” Barak says forcibly. “Now Kissinger can parley and stall, and she knows he wants to stall until the battlefield picture changes. As long as there’s talk of a cease-fire, those airborne divisions won’t go, will they?”

  “Probably not.” The ambassador brightens. “As usual, she may be two steps ahead of all of us. Henry Kissinger included.”

  It is in fact a long night. Barak’s head has hardly hit the pillow in his hotel room, so it seems, when the telephone rings. The sun is blazing through a dirty window. What now? Has the stall worked? Or are those Soviet troops landing? He grabs the telephone.

  “Morning, Bradford Halliday here. Are you a jogger?”

  “What? Ah, why?”

  “I run a few miles before work. Maybe you could join me, and we could talk. Things are happening.”

  Barak blinks at his watch. Half past eight. “General, I’ll walk as far as you like. Running, no.”

  “Good enough. At the corner of M and Thirty-third there’s a parking lot. Meet me there at nine.”

  Merlin comes bounding out of the car ahead of the general, and makes friendly leaps and licks at Barak’s face. Halliday, in a fuzzy purple running suit, says, “Merlin, stop.” The dog desists, and trots at his heel down to the towpath, where fallen leaves carpet the packed black earth with random color, and float all over the muddy canal. Broad and blue, the Potomac glitters through the barren trees of the embankment.

  “Good place to run, except for the traffic fumes,” says Halliday, striding off at a fast pace. “You people have won your little game, you know.”

  “Eh? How’s that?”

  “You haven’t heard? You will, soon enough.” His long steps are hard to keep up with. He looks straight ahead as he speaks. “I don’t know how much will be made public, just yet. What I tell you now is secret, for your ambassador only. You Israelis have gotten a very distorted picture of this entire airlift business.”

  “I’m all ears, General.”

  “Very well. Early this morning Dr. Kissinger told the President that Defense has located three C-5As which could fly at once on an airlift, if that is his desire. Those are our giant transports, you know, matching the Antonovs. The President told him, and this is a pretty direct quote, ‘Hell, the Arabs will hate us as much for three planes as for three hundred. Put everything in the air that can fly.’ ” Halliday glances at Barak. “ ‘Everything in the air that can fly.’ How about that from President Nixon, whom the Jews have never supported?”

  “To be honest, I’m stunned.”

  “Okay. Now let me speak frankly about Dr. Kissinger, meaning no slur on a co-religionist of yours. The President has been up to his chin in hot water trying to survive, and your war has been low on his agenda. He’s been leaving that policy to Dr. Kissinger, probably figuring you’d smash the Arabs in a few days. I guess Dr. Kissinger thought so, too. Our department’s directive from Kissinger was crystal-clear.” Halliday’s voice slows to a deliberate quoting pace. “ ‘No need to rush materiel to Israel and anger the Arabs. This war is our opportunity to break the political stalemate. Our aim is to play honest broker. Decisions about filling the Israelis’ supply demands are left to the Defense Department’s judgment of their actual needs.’ Then on Tuesday, four days into the war, Mrs. Meir hits the panic button, wanting to fly here and talk to the President. Mind you, the night before we were assured by your attaché, General Gur, that Israel would be ending the whole thing any day.”

  “We had a disastrous couple of days, October seventh and eighth.”

  “No doubt. My point is that Defense has been carrying out State policy all along — go slow, don’t irritate the Arabs, preserve our neutral-broker status, avoid an oil embargo. That was behind the whole charter idea, which is now up the flume. The air force will start today on an all-out airlift, refueling in the Azores.” Halliday throws him a look of glittery pride. “And now that we have our orders, Barak, I assure you military transport command will out-deliver the Russians two to one, though it’s five times the distance, and none of our European allies and friends except Portugal will let us land.”

  “It’s terrific news, General.”

  “Not to me. The cease-fire will be voted in the UN anyway in a day or so, but this futile airlift gesture will finish us with the Arabs. An oil embargo’s inevitable, and for the next twenty years the Soviet Union will be calling the shots in the Middle East. That’s not good for us or for you.”

  “Well, I don’t quite share your pessimism.” Barak is warming up and recovering stride, taking deep breaths of the sweet autumn-smelling Washington air, tainted by the blue haze of the morning traffic on the Key Bridge. “I think I’d better hurry on to my embassy.”

  “Right. I’ll walk back a ways with you and then have my run. Come on, Merlin.”

  As they pass through a stream of chattering teenage girls on bicycles, Halliday says, “Dr. Kissinger’s a historian, and one hell of a shrewd article. The way he wants it to come out, the Pentagon’s been the foot-dragger, he’s been your advocate, and now he’s won. The truth as I see it is otherwise.”

  “What’s the truth, General Halliday?”

  “The truth is, the President’s waked up to the war, however late, and he’s ordering the airlift. Maybe to rescue an ally. Maybe to stand up to the Russians for prestige reasons. Maybe Congress and the media have gotten to him. Maybe even to hold off Mrs. Meir going on TV! His reasons are none of our business. He’s the commander-in-chief, and you’ve got your airlift, but not because Dr. Kissinger has ridden to your rescue, and not over my secretary’s dead body. Okay?”

  “Okay,” says Barak. The silence between them grows long as they stride back toward Key Bridge. Barak’s mind is already on his return home, and on the possible effect on the war of Nixon’s belated move. Everything that can fly! Astounding, historic, but can it still make a difference? A squirrel runs across the path. With a yearning backward look at it, Merlin trots straight on. “I have to compliment you on that dog, General.”

  “He does heel, but that’s about it.” Halliday points ahead. “You can take that crosswalk over the canal. At the top of the hill there’ll be cabs, no problem.”

  As they shake hands, Halliday appears to relax, though not to smile. “Israel is very highly respected at the Pentagon. That hasn’t changed.”

  “Good to know, sir.”
>
  “A lot of people here forgot, I think, that Superman is a comic strip. Some of yours, too, maybe.”

  “Maybe. On a personal note, if you’ll allow me, my son Noah didn’t talk till he was three, and was a total wild devil. He’s an outstanding naval officer.”

  “Well, the trouble is, by contrast my girls seem to have been born talking a blue streak.”

  Barak can’t resist saying, “Mother’s genes.”

  “Obviously.” Halliday still does not smile. “You knew her long before I did, and she values your friendship and your correspondence.” Barak thinks that the eyes faintly warm in the general’s long sober face, and that he is going to say more. “Come on, Merlin, boathouse and back, five miles. Goodbye, Barak.”

  Amid much scurrying about of excited aides in a din of Hebrew, Motta Gur is on the phone, shouting army acronyms. “B’seder, check again, I’ll stay on the line …” Covering the mouthpiece, he snaps to Barak, “When you get home tell Nehemiah to find his head and screw it back on.” He is referring to the army’s quartermaster general.

  “What’s Nehemiah’s problem?”

  “The Pentagon’s suddenly offering us ten C-130 transports for immediate airlift as well as three C-5As, and wants to know what we need most. Nehemiah is all excited, and right away he says shells, shells. Zev, I know we’ve got enough shells to fight till Hanukkah. We manufacture them ourselves! They’re piled up in depots or loaded on trains, or coming to the front in trucks, but they’re somewhere. Helicopters, tanks, howitzers, air-to-air missiles, antitank missiles, those we need … Yes, Nehemiah? … So? What did I tell you? And it’s the same story with armor-piercing, you’ll see —”

  Barak retrieves his document case and waves a farewell to Gur, who returns a harried gesture. Dinitz’s secretary meets him in the corridor. “There you are, General. The ambassador’s waiting for you. I’m still working on getting you out today.”