By the Rivers of Babylon (19 page)

The ten official delegates to the peace mission were there, including the two Arabs, Abdel Jabari and Ibrahim Arif. Miriam Bernstein stood near the cleft in the wall. She looked good by moonlight, reflected Hausner. He found himself staring at her.

The Arab prisoner sat in the corner, his wrists bound to his ankles. His face was caked with dried blood where Hausner had hit him. His fatigue shirt was stiff with blood from his shoulder wound. Someone had opened the shirt and put a dressing on his shoulder. He appeared to be half asleep, or drugged.

Hausner listened as everyone took a turn speaking. A regular Knesset meeting. Arguments and points of order and calls for votes. They couldn’t even decide what they were there for, why they had decided to fight, or what to do next. And all the while his five men, with a few other volunteers were manning an impossibly long defensive perimeter. It was a microcosm of Israel: democracy in action, or inaction. Churchill was right, he reflected. Democracy is the worst form of government—except for all the others.

Hausner could see that Dobkin was also becoming impatient, but his training had taught him to defer to the politicians. Hausner interrupted someone. “Has anyone questioned the prisoner?”

There was a silence. Why was this man speaking out of turn? What did the prisoner have to do with anything? A Knesset member, Chaim Tamir, looked down at the prisoner, who was apparently sleeping soundly now. “We tried. He’s reluctant to talk. Also, he is hurt badly.”

Hausner nodded. He walked casually over to the sleeping Arab and kicked him in the leg. There were a few surprised exclamations, including one from the Arab. Hausner turned
around. “You see, ladies and gentlemen, the most important speaker in this room is this young man. What he says about the military capacity of the other side will determine our fate. I risked my life to bring him to you, and you are speaking only to each other.”

Hausner could see that Burg and Dobkin looked relieved and anxious. No one spoke. Hausner continued. “And if this young man has very bad news for us, it should not become general knowledge. So, I suggest everyone except the Foreign Minister, the general, and Mr. Burg leave.”

The room exploded into shouts of indignation and outrage.

The Foreign Minister called for quiet. He turned to General Dobkin with a questioning look.

Dobkin nodded. “It really should have been the first priority. We must question him no matter what condition he is in. And we must do it without delay.”

The Foreign Minister looked surprised. “Then why didn’t you say so, General?”

“Well, the prisoner was hurt and the stewardess had given him pain killers, and then you called this meeting—”

Hausner turned to Burg. “Will you do it?”

Burg nodded. “It’s my specialty.” He lit his pipe.

The Arab prisoner knew that he was the subject of conversation, and he looked unhappy about it.

The Foreign Minister nodded. “We will continue this meeting elsewhere and leave you alone with the prisoner, Mr. Burg.”

Burg nodded.

The assembly began filing out after the Foreign Minister. They looked angry and almost rebellious.

Miriam Bernstein stopped in front of Jacob Hausner and looked up at him. He turned his back to her, but she surprised him and herself by grabbing his arm and half turning him back around. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

“You know very well who and what I am.”

She tried to bring her anger under control. “The ends, Mr. Hausner, do not justify the means.”

“Tonight they do.”

She spoke slowly and precisely. “Look, if we get out of here alive, I want us to have our humanity and self-respect intact. In a very short time, you have disbanded a democratic assembly and gotten permission to torture a wounded man.”

“I’m only surprised it took me so long.” He lit a cigarette. “Look, Miriam, round one goes to us bully boys. And probably every round from now on. So you people just get it through your heads that you’re superfluous except as soldiers. I’m going to save this fucked-up situation even if I have to turn this goddamned hill into a concentration camp.”

She slapped him hard across the face. His cigarette flew through the air.

The people remaining in the hut pretended not to see or hear the slap in the dark. The room was still.

Hausner cleared his throat. “Mr. Burg has work to do and you’re holding him up, Mrs. Bernstein. Please leave.”

She left.

Hausner turned to Dobkin. “We’ll inspect the perimeter and see how we stand.” He stepped across the room. “Isaac, as soon as you get something concrete, send a runner out to us.” He indicated his flight bag on the floor. “Here is an identikit and psychological profile on Rish. Take care of it.”

Burg stared at the flight bag, then looked up. “How, in the name of God—?”

“Just a very lucky guess. Nothing more.” He knelt beside Kaplan. He was almost asleep now, probably drugged. He was not likely to be awakened by the sounds of an interrogation. “Will you be all right, Moshe? Do you want to be moved?”

Kaplan shook his head. “I’ve seen it before,” he said weakly. “Get out to the perimeter. Come up with a good defense.”

“What other kind of defense is there for us, Moshe?”

“No other kind.”

As Hausner and Dobkin walked, a scream from the hut pierced the still night air. If Brin’s first shot committed them to the fight, thought Hausner, then torturing the Arab committed them to a policy of no surrender. They could not ask for better treatment than they gave. There was no turning back now.

They walked along the river side of the hill. Every fifty meters or so men and women stood or sat in pairs or singly, looking down at the Euphrates.

They were mostly the junior aides, Hausner noticed. The secretaries and interpreters. The young men and women of any major diplomatic mission. They had looked forward to New York. Some of them might make it.

Hausner mentioned to Dobkin that they’d have to see to it
that the ten delegates pulled guard duty along with everyone else. “That will cut down on their time for meetings,” Hausner said. Dobkin smiled.

They found McClure and Richardson sitting on a sand rise in the ground. Hausner approached them. “Bad luck for you two.”

McClure looked up slowly. “Could’ve been worse. Could’ve spent my home leave with my wife and in-laws.”

Richardson stood. “What’s the situation?”

“Grim,” replied Hausner. He briefed them, then asked, “Do you two want to leave under a white flag? You’re in an American Air Force uniform, Colonel. And you, Mr. McClure, I’m sure have proper identification as an American State Department employee. I’m fairly certain they wouldn’t harm either of you. The Palestinians are trying not to antagonize your government these days.”

McClure shook his head. “Funny coincidence. I had a great-uncle who was killed at the Alamo. Used to wonder how it felt being under siege. You know? Rejecting offers of surrender. Seeing the Mexos pouring over the walls. That must’ve been one hell of a fight.”

Dobkin understood enough of the English to be confused. “Is that supposed to be an answer?”

Hausner laughed. “You are a strange man, Mr. McClure. But you’re welcome to stay. You, by the way, have the only gun on this side of the hill.”

“Kind of figured I did.”

“Right,” said Hausner. “So if someone on this side yells, get over there and pop off some rounds until I can send a few automatic weapons men over from the east slope.”

“Will do.”

Hausner felt confident with McClure. “Actually, I don’t think they will try this side.”

“Probably not.” McClure looked at the sky, then at Hausner. “You better get some organization in this defense before the moon sets.”

“I know,” said Hausner. “Thanks, Mr. McClure.” He turned to Richardson. “You too, Colonel.”

“Call me Tom,” said Richardson. He switched to Hebrew which surprised Hausner and Dobkin. “Listen, I’m with you, but I think you should try to negotiate.”

Dobkin stepped closer to Richardson and answered him in Hebrew. “Negotiate for what? We were on a mission of peace
and half of us are dead now. What are we supposed to negotiate?”

Richardson didn’t answer.

Hausner spoke. “We’ll take it under advisement, Colonel. Thank you.”

McClure seemed unconcerned that everyone was speaking a language he couldn’t understand. Hausner felt the tension between the two Americans. There was something wrong here.

Hausner and Dobkin continued to walk the perimeter. It was almost a perfect oval, or as Dobkin had described it, the size and shape of a race track, which led Hausner to agree with Dobkin that it was probably not a natural formation. The top of the mound or hill was fairly level, further evidence of a man-made structure underneath. The flat top was broken only by blown dunes and water-eroded gullies or wadis. There were places where a round knoll stuck up from the flat surface. Dobkin explained that these were most likely watchtowers that had risen above the walls of the citadel. Dobkin placed men and women on each one of them.

They counted thirty men and women who had somehow gotten themselves into position. Most of them had just placed themselves instinctively. Dobkin had placed only a few right after the crash.

Hausner stood by as Dobkin considered the problems of cover, concealment, and fields of fire. Dobkin shifted and adjusted the line to take better advantage of the terrain. He
issued orders to start piling bricks and dirt for breastworks and to dig foxholes wherever it was possible to dig in the dusty soil. Hausner wondered if it weren’t really a useless exercise, since there was virtually no firepower among the defenders.

Burg had given Dobkin his Colt .45 automatic and Dobkin in turn had given it to one of the stewards, Abel Geller, whom he placed in a strategic position. Hausner handed his Smith & Wesson .22 to a young stenographer named Ruth Mandel. “Do you know how to use this?”

She looked at it in her small hand. “I spent my time in the Army.”

Hausner counted three handguns of small caliber plus his men’s six Smith & Wesson .22’s. His own made ten. Then there was Joshua Rubin with the Uzi, Brin with the M-14, and his other three security men, Jaffe, Marcus, and Alpern, with the three AK-47’s. The AK’s were placed to cover the entire east slope of the hill with intersecting fire. There was an average of one person every thirty meters. It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t hopeless, either.

Dobkin found a steward, Daniel Jacoby, and asked him to figure out a way of making coffee to take out to the perimeter.

Hausner and Dobkin stopped at Brin’s position. A young girl in a bright blue jumpsuit was asleep sitting up with her back to a mound of earth near Brin. Hausner spoke. “Who’s she?”

Brin looked up from the scope. “Naomi Haber, a stenographer. She volunteered to be my runner. I’ll need someone to pass the word if I see anything.”

Hausner nodded. “Have you seen anything?”

“No.”

“After the moon sets you will.”

“I know.”

Hausner and Dobkin stood a distance from Brin and the sleeping girl. They both stared silently down into Babylon.

Hausner lit a cigarette. “Well?”

Dobkin shook his head. “I don’t know. It depends on how determined the assault is. A regular infantry unit of platoon size could take this hill if they were good. On the other hand, a five-hundred-man battalion couldn’t take it if they were bad. To assault a defensive postion, no matter how lightly defended, takes a special kind of nerve.

“Do you think that bunch has it?”

“Who knows? How charismatic a leader is Rish? Will men die for him? For their cause? We don’t even know how many there are. Let’s wait for Burg’s report.”

“Right.” Hausner looked eastward down the slope. He could make out ribbons of water shining in the moonlight and large stretches of glistening marsh. Yet the area was basically dead. Sand and clay. It was hard to believe that Mesopotamia had supported millions of people in ancient times. He could see a low wall almost a kilometer away and beyond that the road they had started to land on. “Do you really know this place, Ben?”

“I can probably draw a map of it from memory. In fact, in the morning, when I get my landmarks oriented, I will draw us a nice military map.”

“How did these Palestinians get here, I wonder.”

“How do guerrillas get anywhere?”

“They had a few trucks.”

“I noticed.”

“Heavy weapons? Mortars?”

“I hope to God not,” said Dobkin.

“They wanted to keep us hostage—captive—in Babylon. That’s almost funny.”

“It wouldn’t have been if we’d landed on that road,” said Dobkin. “I wonder if we made the right move?”

“We might never know,” said Hausner. He lit a cigarette and put his cold hands in his pockets. “Maybe Asher Avidar made the right move.”

“Maybe.”

Hausner looked to the north. About three-quarters of a kilometer away was a tall hill that rose dramatically from the flat plain. Hausner recognized it as a tell. “What’s that?”

Dobkin followed his stare. “That’s the hill of Babil. Some archeologists identify it as the location of the Tower of Babel.”

Hausner stared. “Do you believe it?”

“Who knows?”

He looked around. “Can we see the Hanging Gardens from here?”

Dobkin laughed. “I don’t give tours on the Sabbath.” He put his big hand on Hausner’s shoulder. “I’m curious to see what I can identify from here when the sun comes up. The main ruin is to the south. There.”

“Does anyone live around here?”

“The Arabs don’t like it. They think it’s haunted. Do you know the verses from Isaiah?”

“You mean . . . ‘neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. . . . But wild beasts . . . shall lie there. . . . And dragons in their pleasant palaces. . . .’ That one?”

“That’s the one.”

“Yet, there’s a shepherds’ hut here.”

Dobkin nodded. “And there is a small village located among the ruins, in spite of the Biblical injunction against this place.”

Hausner put out his cigarette and saved the stub. “Can that village be any help to us?”