It was a rough flight through the February weather over the North Atlantic. Even Dayan, who could sleep through anything, was tossing and muttering in his recliner. They were alone in the upper cabin, and as the El Al captain tried to climb above the towering thunderheads, and the jumbo jet wallowed and plunged like a rowboat in surf, Barak’s eyes began to hurt after too much reading of the voluminous Camp David documents. He buzzed for the stewardess. “Is a scotch and soda possible?”
“Possible, why not?” She staggered down the spiral staircase.
He was sipping the scotch and hanging on to an armrest, his seat belt as tight as he could pull it, when he heard Dayan say, “So, can you make anything of all that bumf?” The Foreign Minister was sitting up and rubbing his face with both hands.
“Well, Minister, I can see the problem with Article Six. It’s deadly. How can the Americans possibly support the Egyptian position?”
“What are you drinking?”
“Scotch and soda.”
“Not the best thing for my ulcer.” He rang for the stewardess, who almost fell into his lap as he ordered sherry. “Zev, I dozed off thinking of the first time you and I flew to America together. Remember that?”
“I do indeed. Dutch charter plane for transporting racehorses, us sleeping on mattresses, and Mickey Marcus’s coffin chained to the deck in a reek of horse shit.”
“Thirty-one years,” said Dayan, lying back with an arm over his eyes.
Mickey Marcus!
I’m living through a light-year of history, Barak thought. When he had been Colonel Marcus’s aide back in 1948, peace with Egypt had seemed fully as unlikely as men walking on the moon. A bullet in his elbow during the fight for the Jerusalem road had put Zev out of combat, so Ben Gurion had assigned him to Marcus, the Jewish West Point graduate who knew no Hebrew, and for that matter not much war, either. Marcus was a civilian lawyer, his army experience limited to some reserve staff work in World War II, but B.G., enthralled by Marcus’s West Point credentials, had entrusted him with command of the Jerusalem front; and in the end, because he couldn’t speak a Hebrew password, he had got himself shot by a sentry. So it was that Dayan and Barak had accompanied his body to the United States for a hero’s interment at West Point, and Barak had glimpsed for the first time the New York skyscrapers, the mighty Hudson River, and a twelve-year-old brat named Emily Cunningham, now in her forties. Lately she had stopped sending pictures of herself in her letters. Why? Was she becoming fat or wrinkled or gray, or all three? Didn’t she realize how little that would matter to him?
Cut the wandering thoughts, here comes the stewardess with Dayan’s sherry. Back to the Camp David papers, and that impossible Article Six …
The stewardess wobbled to Dayan with a little wine in a highball glass. “I hope you don’t mind, Minister,” she said with a worshipful look. “Just to make sure it doesn’t spill.”
“Very sensible, thank you.” Dayan sipped. “B’seder, Zev. Let’s say I’m Cyrus Vance, the American Secretary of State. Go ahead, convince me not to support the Egyptians on Article Six.”
Barak glanced toward the stewardess. Without a word she slipped away down the staircase. “I’ll try. What’s the key phrase in these minutes, Minister?” He tapped the pile of papers in his lap. “ ‘Priority of obligation’?”
“Yes, priority of obligation.”
“All right.” Barak assumed a pseudo-Dayan crisp manner. “Secretary Vance, unless Article Six gives us priority of obligation, the deal breaks down, and Israel can’t sign.”
Amused, Dayan played along with Vance-like dignity. “Sorry, I truly don’t see that. Why not?”
“Very simple, sir. Egypt has treaties with the other Arab countries to enter any defensive war against Israel —”
“Well, what of that? That’s her legitimate right, isn’t it?”
“Mr. Vance, any war Arabs start can be called a defensive war. Why, even on Yom Kippur they claimed our navy attacked Egypt first and —”
“Good, Zev.” Dayan nodded and smiled. “My very words to Vance. I also reminded him that after their October sixth success they laughed that off as a ‘strategic deception.’ But go ahead, ‘Secretary Vance’ is listening with both ears.”
“And therefore, Mr. Secretary, it’s imperative that this treaty be a binding obligation on Egypt, taking precedence over all other treaties. Otherwise it’s an empty piece of paper.”
“I can’t say I agree.” Formal Vance voice. “In effect, you’re questioning the good faith of Egypt. You’re requiring her to sign a guarantee that she won’t act in bad faith. That’s insulting.”
“Secretary Vance, I admire your great political and diplomatic achievements, but you’re new to the Middle East.”
Dayan crookedly laughed. “Well done. I can hint that, but I can’t say it.”
Almost as though taking off, the plane passed from groaning and bouncing to a smooth climb. Glancing out the window, Barak said, “Well, well, stars and a moon. The storm’s still swirling below down there.”
Dayan lay back on the recliner, hands clasped behind his head. “All right, you’ve got that picture. That’s the worst of it, but there are a hundred other disputed items, some of them dangerous snags. This trip had better settle everything, because Sadat’s advisers would really rather sabotage the treaty, and they’ll succeed if we don’t get it signed soon.”
Driving from Camp David to Washington in a sunny afternoon, Emily detoured toward Middleburg and turned off into a winding side road to the Foxdale School. The car began to slip and slide on frozen puddles. “This may not be such a great idea,” said Barak, clutching the door handle.
“Relax, puss, I’ve driven over ice on these roads a thousand times.” She twisted the wheel violently. The car took a curve broadside, scraping a snowcapped mailbox with a screech of metal. “I swear, these damn mailboxes,” exclaimed Emily, fighting the wheel. “Always right in the middle of the damn road.”
She had not changed all that much recently, he was thinking. Same nervy lovely Queenie. More gray in her hair, face rounder, figure a bit more curvaceous. No reason to stop sending pictures, but he understood, she was Quccnie.
“Em, did you telephone ahead to Foxdale?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Look, love, when I picked you up at Camp David it just occurred to me that the school’s on our way back. The headmistress used to run the English department. She’s a fluttery type, and if I called her she’d fly apart at the seams.” They were driving through sunlit rolling woods and farmland blanketed with fresh snow. “Isn’t this lovely? I do miss Virginia in the winter. Paris is so glum. Rain, rain, rain.”
“Camp David’s like this.” He was wearing the blue wind-breaker with the presidential seal. “Sort of snowed in, hard to get around, but beautiful.”
“Is that meeting going well?”
“No. Very badly. Bargaining with Arabs through Americans is a weird business.”
“Can you tell me about it?”
“Too complicated and technical.”
“I see. As Bud used to say, ‘Don’t bother your pretty little head.’ Well, we’re almost there. Two more turns and over the bridge. We’ll have a look-in at the Growlery for auld lang syne, and then on to McLean. Bud’s bringing the real estate agent at five. There’s plenty of time.”
As they went across the narrow bridge spanning the creek, Emily exclaimed, “My God, it’s gone.”
“What, the Growlery? You’re crazy, it’s up there beyond those pine trees.”
“Don’t I know where it was? You could see it through the trees. I tell you it’s gone, Zev, gone.” She stopped near the gate at the top of the hill. Where the Growlery had been there was a white expanse of fenced-in tennis courts, smooth with untrodden snow. “Oh God, what a letdown! Why did you let me come here? Why didn’t you argue? It’s always a lousy idea to chase the past.”
“Not when Queenie’s in the past,” said Barak.
/> That made her laugh tearfully and kiss his cheek. “Well, they can’t level the Growlery in our memories,” she murmured, “and put in tennis courts, can they?”
“It’ll always be there, Queenie, fireplace, wagon wheel, and all. Just as it was, till we die.”
“Lamartine’s ‘Le Lac.’ ” Her voice was husky. “Ils ont aimés.”
“Just so, darling. Ils ont aimés.”
She slammed the gearshift into reverse. “Let’s get the hell out of here.” They were back on the highway before she spoke again. “I have something for you at the house. It was in an old file in Chris’s desk.”
“What is it?”
“A memo to Admiral Redman at the CIA. The cover page says Subject: The Sacred Region. The date’s 1956, and the paper’s gone all yellow. On his deathbed he remembered that you once asked for it, and told me to send it to you. So help me, he was clearheaded to the end.”
In the plowed-out driveway of the McLean house two tracks of deep footprints led from a small car to the house. “Rats, they’re early,” said Emily. “Good thing Bud’s got a key. I’m showing the house to a hot prospect. Agent for an Iranian businessman, who got out just before Khomeini came in.”
Halliday was in the living room with a rotund little bespectacled man wearing big galoshes. It was freezing in the house, and they still had on their coats.
“Hello, there, Mr. Thompson, the place is mighty dusty and dreary,” Emily said to the agent, gesturing around at the covered furniture, the sheeted piano, the drawn curtains. “I’ve just been camping out in one room upstairs. My father didn’t really live in the house in the last years, he haunted it.”
“Oh, it’s spacious and elegant,” said the real estate agent, with a polite cringe. “One sees that right away. Gracious living. They don’t build them like this anymore.”
“Well, guys, while I give him the tour,” said Emily, “you’ll find some Jack Daniel’s in that sideboard.” She led the agent upstairs.
“Good to see you, Barak,” said Halliday. “You know that we’re releasing the first F-16s to Israel?”
“What? We’re not due to get them for three years yet.”
“You weren’t, but this Khomeini fellow cancelled the Shah’s order for more than a hundred of them, so you move up on the delivery schedule. Decision made today.”
“My God, that’s wonderful news.”
“Yep. Your boys will be coming over soon to train in them, and they’ll love the F-16. The Phantom’s a big Mack truck, a great machine, but you have to fly it hands-on a hundred percent of the time. The F-16’s a light racing car, great range, a honey.” He was at the sideboard, pouring. “Bourbon, Barak?”
“I’d better not.”
“Well, cheers. Say, let me ask you something about the Yom Kippur War. It’s been on my mind for years. Weren’t you caught by surprise because you figured the Arabs would never attack, since you had atom bombs?”
Barak’s response was swift and chill. “There’s been no confirmation whatever at any time that my country has unconventional weapons.”
“Look, even the Egyptians talked to us about it. Your ‘basement bomb,’ they called it.”
“General Halliday, any Israeli leader who’d rely on such weapons — if we had them — to keep us out of war would be an imbecile. A first use of a nuclear weapon since Hiroshima would be the end of Israel.”
“Mm.” Halliday nodded and drank. “I’ve been hooted down at the Pentagon, but I say Sadat started the war counting on your not using them, for the exact reason you just gave. He felt his time was running out, he figured the whole region would go nuclear sooner or later, and mutual deterrence would freeze the status quo. He attacked to get back the Sinai at any cost, even defeat. And this treaty, whatever it costs him with the other Arabs, will do it. He broke their front, and he got beat, and still his attack is paying off.”
Not unimpressed, Barak said, “Maybe. Much as I’ve thought about the war, that angle hadn’t occurred to me. It’s interesting.”
“I’m pleased that you think so.”
On the staircase they heard the flopping of galoshes. Flappityflap, the agent strode in followed by Emily. “Splendidly proportioned rooms, excellent possibilities. May we have a look at the grounds now?”
“Sure thing, and I’ll just have a snort of this Jack,” said Emily, pouring, “if I’m to go traipsing up to my hips in snow. Down the hatch, men!” Emily tossed off the whiskey, winked, and went out.
Halliday took more bourbon. His attitude was strange today, Barak thought. He looked much older, dried-up and grizzled, and he seemed to be reaching out for contact. “You know, you Israelis have a better promotion system than ours. You retire young,” he said. “You can start a new life from scratch, almost. By the time we get out, with what inflation does to retirement pay, we generals can find ourselves selling pencils. Generals like me, anyway, who have sold good real estate and bought bad stocks. I’ve been offered a base command at Yokota, a great chance to make business contacts, but I may have to turn it down on account of my son Chris. I don’t want him spending years in Japan at his age. Not in Paris, either. His friends and his school are here. It’s a dilemma.”
“Why don’t you ask Emily to come back here while you’re over in Japan, General, and make a home for Chris?”
Halliday blinked and pondered. “She wouldn’t consider it. She likes Paris. So do the girls.”
“Are you sure? My wife and I have seen her in Paris. She misses Chris terribly, that I can tell you.”
“By God,” said Halliday, drinking, “if only she would.”
“But could you give up your son for years? Wouldn’t you miss him?”
“Like all hell. But I have to see him through college, don’t I? And the girls, too. I have to think about money.”
A cold gust blew in through the front door, and they heard stamping. “It’s a superior property,” said Mr. Thompson, as he flapped in, cringing and trailing snow. “River views nowadays are diamonds. I will recommend it to my client, Mrs. Halliday, and I’ll telephone you. General Halliday, did you promise me a ride back to town?”
“Right. Barak, so long,” said Halliday. “I’ve never forgotten that helo tour and those battlefields.”
“Come again,” said Barak, as the airman was leaving. “See us at peace.”
Emily said as the door closed, “Looks like a sale, but one never knows. Come out on the terrace. No fireflies, but it’s beautiful.”
As they trudged down the snow-piled stairs, the setting sun through bare trees was painting the snow pink. Barak recounted his talk with Halliday, and his suggestion about Chris. Emily halted in her tracks and glared at him. “Just like that, I’m to move to Washington, hey? Always quick with bright ideas that keep us farther apart, aren’t you?”
“Come on! You cried on my shoulder for hours in Paris about how you missed your boy. This way you can have him again for years.”
“Oh, yes? And then give him back to Bud and that blue-eyed stick insect, Elsa? Break my heart all over again? Fat chance.”
“Queenie, in four years he’ll be a roaring teenager, and you’ll be relieved to hand him over to his father.”
She did not answer, staring out at the reddening river. Taking his cold hand, she brushed it with warm lips. “Well, it’s a nutty notion. Would our once-a-year deal still be on if I came back here?”
“Yes.”
“Though it’s four times as far as Paris?”
“I’d do it.”
“How about Nakhama?”
“I said I’d do it, Queenie.”
Heaving a big sigh, she looked at her watch. “Chilly out here, at that. When does the car leave town for Camp David?”
“Half-past six.”
“Let me give you that document.”
In the library, which was all draped with dust covers, he flipped the yellowed pages. “Strange that he kept this so long.”
“Chris never threw anything away. I’ll be
digging out for another month. Look, Wolf, you said you’re here only three more days. Will we see each other again?”
“I’m at Dayan’s disposal. Keep in touch, I’ll try.”
“Great. Anyplace but this house.”
A note from Dayan lay under the door of Barak’s cabin: See me when you get back. He went straight to the large cottage, treading carefully the icy narrow moonlit path through the snow. Dayan sat on a couch in his Camp David windbreaker, a tray of sandwiches on the table before him. He was not wearing his eye patch.
Never before had Zev Barak seen Dayan in this startling aspect. That small black patch, he perceived with shock, was nothing less than Moshe Dayan’s persona. The dead socket was frightening, the countenance strange, the man himself transformed from the famous flamboyant hero, whatever his failures and blemishes, to a pale worn pitiable old handicapped person. And yet Barak also sensed that Dayan was, perhaps without intent, paying him a rare compliment. He knew that Sam Pasternak had often seen him so. Dayan was at last accepting Barak as someone with whom he could be himself.
Dayan caught Barak’s glance at the patch lying on a side table. “For what there is to see in this lousy world, Zev, one eye is enough. Have a sandwich. The team’s in the dining hall, but I’m not up to table talk.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“L’Azazel, Vance was playing dumb today. Perhaps he was ordered to. On Article Six, for hours and hours he backed Khalil to the hilt.” This was the Egyptian Foreign Minister. “Nothing went right. They were even fudging on the oil arrangement. We’ve slipped back six months, Zev. I see only one thing to do. Call Begin and tell him to summon me home.” He looked to Barak. This stare of one live bloodshot eye and one dead socket was terribly distracting and dismaying.
Barak forced a level tone. “How is the rest of the team doing?”
“Oh, drafting settled points, hundred percent. We have geniuses for fine-tuning legal concepts and language. But the impasses go to the top. Khalil says that’s him, he has plenary authority. Vance speaks for Carter. I’m just a negotiator. It isn’t working. Especially since I think Khalil really wants to torpedo the treaty.”