“Sir, I salute you.”
And that does it. All the fight is out of the bridge. It moves with tamed docility and no further balking to the brink of the Suez Canal, and soon engineers and tanks are easing it into the water a short distance north of Deversoir. The first rollers slide down the embankment, hit with a towering splash, and float. Heavy as the steel colossus is, the huge cylinders give it all the buoyancy it needs. Slowly it is pushed across to where paratroopers await with signal flares, and tanks start hauling it up on the embankment.
Kishote gets on the radiophone. “Ezra, Nitzan here. The bridge has arrived.”
“Beautiful. Hundred percent, sir.”
“What’s your situation at the Yard?”
“Further bombardment casualties, not too bad. Bridge traffic and ferries going strong, but supply problem truly getting out of hand.”
“It’ll improve now. Out.”
Lauterman approaches him, flipping the yo-yo up and down. “Ah, sir, we encounter a problem.”
“Problem? What problem? It’s across, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir, but as it turns out, the bridge is too long.”
“Too long? Too long?” Kishote cannot believe his ears. “Lauterman, how to all the devils can a bridge be too long? It can be too short. Is that what you mean? Too short?”
“No, sir. Too long. You see, sir, the Canal is only a hundred eighty meters wide, and the bridge is two hundred meters long. That’s creating a very steep slope on both sides. Tanks can manage it, but supply trucks won’t be able to.”
Don Kishote stares at the Jeptha colonel, and at the spinning yo-yo, and at the bridge floating gently on the Canal. There certainly is a very long tail draped over the rampart and out on the road.
“I see. Got any ideas?”
“Oh, yes, sir. It’s simply a matter of removing two rollers. We should have the bridge ready by dawn.”
“Just tell me this, Lauterman. Everybody — but everybody — knows the width of the Suez Canal. It’s a world statistic. How is it that Jepthah made a bridge seventy feet too long?”
“I would have to call it an oversight, sir.”
“I see. That explains it. Remove the two rollers, then. I’m going to check things at Deversoir, and I’ll be back before dawn.”
The bridge has yielded, Kishote muses as he drives south, it is spanning the Canal, but it has had the last laugh.
By the glare of starshells and the glow of guide flares, a very strange sight greets him at the pontoon bridge. Vehicles are rolling across as before — tanks, busses, APCs, self-propelled guns, fuel trucks — but near the middle, on one side, stands a stark naked stout man, fighting with soldiers. As Kishote hurries out on the bridge the naked man breaks free and dives. “What in God’s name is this?” Kishote shouts.
The soldiers bawl above the clanking of caterpillar tracks on the pontoons that a few minutes ago a shell hit a tank and made it veer off the bridge. It has gone down like a rock with all hatches shut and no hope that the crew can escape. The naked man, a relief driver on a fuel truck, knows his son is in that tank. He jumped off his truck, stripped, and dived. He has been diving ever since. He is exhausted and out of his mind, and they are afraid he is going to drown himself. As they yell all this the man surfaces, choking and sobbing.
“Get him out,” Kishote orders. Two soldiers grab him and pull him up, soaking themselves.
“Let me go! He’s down there. I was banging on the tank. I swear I heard them banging. Why doesn’t somebody help me? You’re all cowards,” he gasps, his gray hair streaming. When he tries to stand up to dive again, he slips and collapses on the greasy pontoon.
“Keep him here,” says Kishote, “and no matter what, restrain him.” He threads through the traffic to get off the bridge, and sends orderlies with a stretcher to sedate the man and put him with the injured.
To give Ezra a breather he takes over Yard and traffic control. The dark morning hours go by, the east grows pink, and most of the stars are gone. The bombardment is letting up, though to the north red arcs of artillery tracers still rise from Missouri. Time to make sure the roller bridge is in use, something Kishote can still hardly believe. He calls Lauterman on the radio telephone. The two rollers have been detached, Lauterman briskly reports. The bridge is firmly anchored on both banks, level and ready for traffic. A few shells have been landing in the area without doing damage, nothing like the fiery all-night spectacle at Deversoir.
“Now Lauterman, what I really have to know is, can I start rerouting traffic to that bridge?”
“Absolutely. Some trucks are crossing already, sir.”
“No more surprises or oversights?”
“Inconceivable. That’s all over. Thanks to you, sir, we’ve done it at last.”
“Thanks to you, Lauterman. You’re not a normal soldier exactly, but you were the man for that bridge.”
“Thank you, General.”
“I mean it. Kol ha’kavod, and if I have anything to say, you’ll get decorated for this.”
“Send on your traffic, sir.”
Kishote issues instructions on the traffic-control network, splitting the flow of vehicles down the Sinai roads between Deversoir and the roller bridge. He orders a rearguard artillery battalion to keep bombarding Missouri, and he stirs up Ezra to resume command of the Yard. Then he takes a jeep and drives north on the sand alongside a lateral road, where dense traffic is now wheeling slowly but freely. The jeep comes over a rise, and there ahead is the bridge, with a solid train of shadowy shapes moving across it westward into Africa. Seen through the ground mist the whole picture is vague and dreamy, almost like a mirage. It is happening! Despite all, the bridge is across the Canal, with the lifeblood of victory flowing over it. He can hear the distant drumming of heavy traffic on the sturdy steel roadbed as the jeep draws closer.
Attack, and the logistics follow, Yossi, because they must!
At the rampart by the head of the bridge, to his astonishment, all is shouting and calamity: medical orderlies running with stretchers or kneeling by groaning men, others helping bandaged soldiers into a hospital bus, and here and there on the sand, green greatcoats covering a few bodies. A corpsman tells him that a random salvo fell on the bridge personnel only minutes ago.
“Where’s Lieutenant Colonel Lauterman?”
The corpsman points to a greatcoat and hurries away. Beside the coat lies a yo-yo and a crumpled string. Lifting the coat, Kishote sees that Lauterman’s head has a catastrophic hole in the back, oozing blood into a broad pool. The string is still attached to his finger. His hand is warm as Kishote detaches the string, rolls up the yo-yo, and puts it in his pocket. “Blessed be the True Judge,” he murmurs, closing the engineer’s staring eyes, and he covers him with the coat.
A soldier in a parka approaches him, carrying a long black case. “Sir, this is Colonel Lauterman’s clarinet. I’m putting together his stuff to send back, but I’m afraid it’s the kind of thing that can get lost.”
“I’ll take it.” Kishote peers at the soldier. He is short, roly-poly, very young and very unshaven. “Who are you?”
“I was his runner, sir. Mostly I worked for his aide, Sergeant Barkowe.”
“And where is he?” The soldier does not answer, but his sad face grows sadder. “What, is Dzecki dead, too?”
“He’s not dead, sir.” The sergeant points at a parked yellow hospital bus. “They’re taking him to the dressing station, where the helicopters come.”
Kishote boards the bus. The wounded lie in two tiers, some moaning or crying, several with needles and tubes stuck in them. The smell of blood, antiseptic, and rank bodies is strong. He comes on Dzecki in a lower tier, where a corpsman is holding a plasma jar over him. His uniform is blood-soaked, and Kishote’s stomach turns at seeing most of his right arm gone. The stump is heavily bandaged and very bloody.
Dzecki is conscious, and even manages a smile. “Hi, General,” he says in English. “I was lucky, I’m left-handed. They say C
olonel Lauterman’s dead.”
“I know, Dzecki. This is his clarinet. Your runner brought it to me.”
“Good. He’s a nice boy.” Dzecki sounds weak but peculiarly cheery. Kishote has observed this before, in soldiers in shock from terrible wounds. “Yo-yo actually played the clarinet one night at Yukon, you know. Played Benny Goodman and then Mozart. Not bad, in fact. He said his son played better than he did. You should give it to his son.”
“I’ll be sure to.”
The corpsman says, “General, I think the bus will be starting.”
“It’s my mother I’m worried about,” says Dzecki. “She’ll be mad as hell, and the trouble is she’ll blame the Israelis, not the Egyptians.”
“She’ll be great. Don’t worry.”
“Sir, will you give me a kiss?”
Kishote kneels and puts his lips to the bristly face bathed in cool perspiration. “God bless you, Dzecki, and send you a quick healing.”
“Thanks. The guys are always saying I was crazy to come here from America” — Dzecki’s voice is fading, and his eyelids droop — “but I helped get the bridge to the Suez Canal, didn’t I?”
“You’re a lion, Dzecki.” Don Kishote kisses him again, presses his sweaty hand, and leaves the bus. A glittery edge of sun is just creeping up over a distant Sinai ridge, glorious and blinding. It warms his tearstained face, and strikes the steady stream of thunderous traffic on the roller bridge with a blaze of light.
31
Golda and Kissinger
On this day, Friday, October 19, thirteen days after Yom Kippur, with the Israeli army starting a three-pronged rampage into Egypt and the American airlift coming to flood, Anwar Sadat yields to Russian insistence and accepts the proposal of a cease-fire in place. At once Brezhnev cables President Nixon, urging that he send Kissinger to Moscow to negotiate the cease-fire terms, and Air Force One leaves Washington at 2 A.M. with the Secretary and his entourage.
Now unfolds a rapid-fire international comedy-drama such as the world has never seen, nor indeed is likely to see again. For it takes place in the shuddery Cold War era of Mutually Assured Deterrence, or MAD, the quite serious acronym of the time for the nuclear stalemate, when people are living with the half-buried awareness that if one superpower leader makes an imbecilic mis-judgment, or a supposed fail-safe military control mechanism malfunctions, much of the world can be cremated or fatally irradiated in a few hours. It is in this frame of reality that Dr. Kissinger, who has just received the Nobel Peace Prize for his Vietnam War negotiations, wings off to Moscow.
Once he gets there, cables, telephone calls, letters, despatches, threats, pleas, cajoleries, snarls and counter-snarls spark at all hours of the day and night among five points on the globe: Washington, Moscow, Cairo, Jerusalem, and New York, where the Security Council keeps convening at very short notice and very odd times. Meanwhile in “Africa” the Israeli attack rolls on: General Adan’s division, with Natke Nir in the van, driving southward toward Suez City to entrap the Third Army lodged on the Sinai side of the Canal; Sharon pushing north to Ismailia to cut off the Second Army; and a third division battling westward on the main road to Cairo.
At the height of the frenzied diplomatic signalling, Golda Meir sends for the Ramatkhal and puts a blunt question. “Dado, how much time do you need?”
“For a decisive result, Prime Minister, three more days.”
“All right, I’ll do what I can. But with Kissinger in Moscow,” she raises her hands and her eyes to heaven, “who knows? Who knows?”
Monday, October 22. To the cease-fire negotiated in Moscow, Israel has agreed; Egypt, not yet. In bright sunshine the unmistakable Air Force One, with its immense Stars and Stripes and THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA painted on the gleaming white fuselage, taxis to a stop in Lod airport, and out steps the Secretary of State in a very creased gray suit. He appears nonplussed, not to say startled, at his reception by the Israelis: sightseers at the terminal, cargo handlers swarming at the big airlift transports, and soldiers guarding those planes are all cheering. Descending the ramp, he holds out his hand to Zev Barak, who awaits him in dress uniform. “Ah, the vite eminence again. General Barak, is it?”
With a polite smile at the pleasantry, Barak says, “Correct, sir. Welcome to Israel. The Prime Minister is eager to see you.”
“Is she? I hope so.” The visitor uncertainly waves at the Israelis applauding him, as he walks from Air Force One to a waiting limousine.
“Congratulations, Mr. Secretary,” Barak says, opening the car door, “on your Nobel Peace Prize.”
“Aren’t you nice. Thank you.” He settles into the back seat and makes an inquiring gesture toward the driver.
Barak mutters, “English is all right, sir.”
“Vat is Golda’s mood?”
“She’s furious.”
“Oh? Tell me vy.”
“We’ll be in Herzliyya shortly, sir. She’ll do that better than I can.”
An owlish look through thick glasses. “No doubt. So, vat’s the schedule?”
“She’ll meet with you alone first, sir, for forty-five minutes, before lunch with ministers and army leaders.”
“Very good. And after that? I must take off again at five o’clock.”
“After that, sir, General Elazar will brief you on the military picture.”
“Ah. Now that will be damned helpful. I kept begging Dinitz from Moscow for a battlefield update. Nothing! I had to negotiate in the dark. Under the circumstances, I’ve truly done my best for you.” Kissinger looks at him earnestly and touches his arm. “As you see, at Golda’s insistence, I even changed my return route in order to stop here. It meant clearing a new flight plan over the Soviet Union, and arranging an escort by our carrier fighters through the war zone. It wasn’t easy.”
“Sir, I know the Prime Minister appreciates that.”
“She does? Good. Anyway, here I am.”
At a bleak villa on a knoll surrounded by barbed wire, Barak escorts him through a side entrance to a glass-enclosed porch where Golda waits alone. Stubbing out a cigarette, she rises to greet Kissinger, and they sit down side by side on a threadbare red couch. Her subtle eye-signal tells Barak to remain. After chitchat about the flight from Moscow she abruptly turns harsh. “Mr. Secretary, why on earth did you rocket off to Moscow at two in the morning on Saturday? What was the big rush? Why not take at least a day or two to prepare for such a momentous meeting? Wouldn’t that have been more reasonable? And much more helpful?”
“I couldn’t. It was a forced move, believe me. Sadat was in great distress.” Kissinger adopts a placating tone. “At any moment, Madame Prime Minister, the Soviet Union might have put a resolution to the Security Council, ordering you to withdraw to the pre-1967 lines under threat of sanctions. Except for us, it probably would have had unanimous support.” Kissinger lifts his thick eyebrows and peers at Golda Meir. “Do you understand? Where would that have left you? And for my government it would have posed a grave dilemma. If we’d vetoed it we’d be kaput with the Arabs. If we abstained or supported it we’d be betraying you. I forestalled all that, you see, by hurrying to Moscow.”
“What you forestalled was our victory.” She brandishes a paper at him. “This despatch you sent me from Moscow is not a communication between allies. It’s an ultimatum.”
“An ultimatum!” He looks pained. “Nothing of the kind, Madame Prime Minister, I assure you.”
“What else can I call it? It arrives at eleven last night, just before the Security Council goes into session to take up the deal you made in Moscow. And simultaneously I receive a cable letter from your President, warning us to accept your terms for a ceasefire immediately or face an end to the airlift, and no U.S. support in the Security Council vote. Not an ultimatum?”
“Forgive me, Madame Prime Minister, but you must have misconstrued the President’s letter.”
Barak has read it and thinks it is probably Kissinger in style, but it is not his place to put in a word. br />
“I did not, it was in plain English. Too plain. Our cabinet had to stay up all night figuring out exactly what your terms cabled from Moscow implied, while the Security Council debate was already going on. You’ll meet some frazzled people at lunch.”
“I’m very sorry. You’d have received the terms at seven o’clock, not eleven, but there was a communications disaster. For four hours we couldn’t get messages out.” Kissinger’s German accent seems to thicken with fatigue. “Maybe the Soviets jammed us. The result may have been a discourtesy, vich I deeply regret, but it was certainly not an ultimatum.”
“And the President’s letter?”
“He wasn’t threatening you. If the phrasing was unfortunate —”
She interrupts, “Mr. Secretary, why did you agree to an urgent night session of the Security Council, altogether? Why a midnight vote on a cease-fire resolution? Why couldn’t they have met today? Wasn’t that soon enough?”
With a sharp satiric look from under drooping lids, Kissinger says, “Yes, while your army kept advancing and advancing, eh? Brezhnev was in such a sweat to put the deal through that we wrapped it up in four hours. His hurry proved greatly to Israel’s benefit, as you’re bound to agree when I give you the details.”
He glances at Barak, and she gestures at her military secretary to leave. In a big room cloudy with cigarette smoke, various cabinet members and generals sitting around on motel-style furniture begin to fire questions at him as soon as he appears. Moshe Day an holds up a hand. “Let him talk. What happened at the airport, Zev?”
“Minister, they cheered him.”
“Cheered Kissinger?”
“Yes. He seemed surprised.”
“He should be,” says a bitter voice out of the smoke, “after selling us out.”
Another bitter voice. “The people are tired of the war, and they don’t know the cease-fire terms.”
“What’s his demeanor?” Dayan asks. “What did he say?”
After a moment, Barak replies, “He says it’s the best deal he could get for us. And that he detoured here with much difficulty.”