Mitla Pass (16 page)

We sat for a long time hanging onto the last images. “Val, I once took a girl up to a hilltop a long time ago. A place called Twin Peaks in San Francisco. We were kids. I told her I was going to be a great writer someday and I read her the first chapter of a book I was going to write, someday.”

“What happened to her?”

“We got married but we didn’t live happily ever after. Along the way I got messed up. Then, I found an island called St. Barths and it taught me to go back and do what I was supposed to do in this world. I’d rather come back here and live like a fisherman and write what I want to write. You know what I mean?”

“I’m starting to understand what you’re about, Gideon. I’d like to believe I can keep you but I don’t know. I haven’t got a hell of a lot of confidence anymore. You’re a tough number to handle, buddy. You’ve got a trillion volts running through you. I swear I don’t know if there’s a woman in the world who can ever really bring you peace.”

“Val, I’m sorry for what I did to you.”

“I know that, Gideon. You don’t have to say it.”

“I do have to say it. I’ve got to hear myself saying it.”

“I made you do a lot of things that drove you away. I’m not all that clean,” she said. “We’ve both done numbers on each other. Can we make it? I wish I were more certain.”

“I brought you up here because we started once on a hilltop. I know where I’m heading. I’ll find out why, when I’m there. I thought this would be the right place to tell you.”

“Well, here we are,” she said shakily, afraid of what wild, crazy scheme I was going to come up with.

“I’ve never talked much about my childhood,” I began.

“I know. Sometimes I wondered if you ever had a childhood. It’s been like a wall around you.”

“You know how it is. You spend the second half of your life getting over the first half,” I said. “There are doors I’m opening a crack, one by one. I opened a door marked, ‘Danger, Tarawa and Guadalcanal, enter at your own risk.’”

“I think I understand,” she said.

“There’s a big, fucking iron vault door inside me. It’s marked ‘Jew.’ I have to open it and go inside. I don’t know what the hell I’m going to find in there. You remember me talking about my Uncle Matti?”

“Just a little. He’s the one who went to Palestine. Hero. Killed in the Arab riots of 1939. That’s about all I know,” she said.

“That’s about all I know, too. But I sense something dynamic happening. I sensed it the moment I opened the vault a crack. I—I want to go to Israel and find out. I’m not totally sure why but it’s magnetic, pulling me. It’s like the Old Man upstairs,” I said pointing to the sky. “He’s telling me to go. It’s an instinct I have to follow. I denied I was a Jew several times in my life. It’s been around my neck like an albatross all my life. I’ve got to free myself and I believe there may be a great book just waiting for a writer.”

She shook her head and laughed a little. “You take the cake, old buddy.”

“We can make it if we lease the house and you move down with your mom. The way I figure it, it’s going to take about six months to research. If I think it’s going to go longer, or if I decide to write the book there, I’d want you and the girls to come to Israel. It’s going to be tight, but if we count our pennies we can hack it.”

Val stared at me for ever so long. She was on the brink of tears. She had no illusions but that we were in for a long, terrible struggle. “You won’t settle for less, will you? You’ve got to win.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“You son of a bitch,” she whispered.

“Val, if you can’t or don’t want to handle it, let’s say goodbye now, like buddies.”

“And after Israel? Timbuktu?”

“Maybe.”

“Gideon, I’ll keep up with you as long as I can. You go with my love. I’ll wait for you to send for us.”

HERZLIA, ISRAEL

October 11, 1956

I
T BEGAN AS A
low rumble. Flashes on the horizon looked like heat lightning. Valerie blinked her eyes open. She recalled that when she was a little girl and the family was stationed on Guam, earthquakes and lightning storms were a common occurrence. It was the same kind of sounds and flashes as she heard now. She instinctively braced herself for the ground to start shaking but it didn’t. Only the rumbles and flashes continued. Then she could hear faint popping sounds.

Val flung off the sheet and fumbled for the lamp. It was nine o’clock at night. Wait, let me think. It all came back. Gideon had left early in the morning to go out on a raid with the Israelis. The day had dragged by torturously. Dr. Hartmann had come by to check on her again and given her a shot to settle her down. She had fallen into a deep sleep.

“Mommy, come up to the roof,” Roxanne cried, running into the room.

By the time they got up, Grover had joined a choir of dogs howling from one end of the Sharon Plain to the other. From their elevation they could make out a horizon being lit by cannon fire some seven or eight miles away. From here the sounds and sights seemed like a playland.

The bombardment went on incessantly. Nearly an hour passed before any of them moved or spoke.

“Is Daddy there?” Penny asked.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“He’s looking for something,” Val answered.

Roxanne began to cry. Her mother held her tightly. “Daddy always makes it home,” Val said.

W
HAT
G
IDEON HAD
not anticipated was the speed with which the raid was executed. There was no dusting off a stack of old contingency plans, nor was there a surplus of battle-ready troops standing by. A dangerous target had been selected, one that would make all the necessary military and political points to the Jordanians. The Jordanian police fort was just across the border, only twelve miles from downtown Tel Aviv, on the outskirts of Kalkilia, a city of twenty-five thousand inhabitants.

During the day, elements of the Israeli Paratroop Brigade assembled from all parts of the country. Some had interrupted hard training and arrived at the staging area extremely tired. Yet they were the best available troops.

The raid went well in the opening stages. There were no natural barriers to cross at the border and the forward units moved over easily.

The Kalkilia police fort was illuminated by Israeli searchlights from two miles’ distance and support artillery fire opened up from a tank detachment.

In the normal flow of battle something always went awry. The plan sprang leaks and all hell broke loose. The sky stayed lit with cannon bursts until 0300 but small arms fire could be heard until daybreak.

Val and the girls had slept in fits and snatches. It was six in the morning when Val spotted Mr. Zimmerman, an assistant manager from the hotel, wheel his bicycle up the path toward the cottage. She was too terrified to move.

Mr. Zimmerman was a friendly old codger. He delighted in running messages to the Zadok cottage in exchange for a few words of gossip. Val had seen a concentration camp number tattooed on his arm—one of the first times she had seen such a thing. She cried softly for several nights and understood so much about Israel in that single incident.

“I just got a telephone call from Mr. Zadok,” he said. “He said to tell you he is all right and he would be home in a few hours.”

Val screamed and collapsed against him.

“Mr. Zadok was on the raid last night?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“
Oy, mein got.
Sit down, Mrs. Zadok, please sit. I make you a glass tea. Oh, it was a very bad one. We had almost a hundred boys casualties.
Nu,
what can we do? Thanks
got
Mr. Zadok wasn’t hurt.”

The terrible wait was done. Val brought herself under control with the help of a wallop of that awful brandy. As color returned to her cheeks she managed a smile.

“Bad news, I’m afraid,” Mr. Zimmerman said. “We’re closing the hotel down. If Mr. Zadok will come to my house this evening, I give him a key to the side entrance and show him the fuse box for his room. We want he should keep his office.”

When Mr. Zimmerman left Val rushed around the kitchen trying to find something to bake, something to clean, something to defrost. Strangely, as if they knew, the neighbors began to gather.

T
HE GIRLS
ran toward the jeep and flung their arms about him.

“Better not touch me,” Gideon said, “I’m all stinky.”

He was, in fact, putrid. His eyes seemed far away, still reflecting a recent horror. He plopped down at the kitchen table. Val served him some cake and juice and shooed the neighbors out. He was too exhausted to chew. Gideon pulled himself up and swayed down the hall to the bedroom, made it to the edge of the bed, doubled over and held his face in his hands.

“Dad’s okay. He needs some rest,” Val said and closed the door. She wanted to go to him, but somehow couldn’t or didn’t. He was a naughty boy who had run out into the street and was pulled to the sidewalk by a mother who first kissed him, then slapped him. He didn’t have to put them through this.

Val was unable to temper her anger. “Well, I suppose you finally got to feel it,” she said. She really hadn’t wanted to say that. It just came out. “Well, I felt it too,” she went on acidly.

“Okay, I deserve to be kicked in the ass,” he mumbled.

“They’ve closed down the hotel,” she continued, wanting to hit him with bad news.

“Can’t it wait!” he snapped.

“Sure, it can wait.”

“I better take a shower and try to get some sleep.” He fumbled for the buttons of his combat jacket but his fingers would not function.

There was a period of quiet, long enough for the venom to pass from her. She came to him and sat on the floor before him and rested her head on his lap.

“Simon was killed. So was Ben Dror. Zev lost both of his legs.”

“Oh Christ,” Val sobbed.

“It was a real fuck-up.”

“Oh, honey, honey,” she cried. “Poor Shalimit. She’s going to have a baby ... oh, honey. I’d better go see her.”

“I saw her along with the battalion commander, this morning.”

“God dammit,” Val cried. ...“Oh, honey ...oh, damn.” She got to her feet and stood over him and tousled his hair. It was sticky. “You’re a real mess, buddy,” she wept.

“I’ll clean up.”

Alpha Company of the Lion’s Battalion was sent out to bypass the fort. They set up an ambush on a hillock overlooking the road into Kalkilia in the event the Jordanians tried to reinforce the fort.

It took longer to capture and blow up the fort than expected. With the timetable fucked, the battle plan went out the window. It was just like at Tarawa when the first wave of Marines failed to reach their objective. Officers and men in little groups had to improvise.

The Jordanians sent a unit of the Arab Legion toward Kalkilia but did not play sucker or fall for the ambush. They went off the road, encircled Alpha Company, and had them trapped.

Only after the balance of the Lion’s Battalion retreated for the border did they realize that Alpha Company was surrounded by the Legion and being chopped to pieces. The rest of the night turned into a frantic effort to break the encirclement.

It turned into a bloody mess. Infantry, artillery, tanks and, later, planes had to try to open a hole. The Arab Legion hung tough when they realized they could annihilate an entire Israeli company. If they succeeded, they could claim victory. Translated into Arabic, this would make Jordan and King Hussein a more dangerous and adventurous foe.

About dawn some Israeli tanks and halftracks broke through to Alpha Company. The dead and wounded were loaded on. Some of the dead were tied to the tanks. Alpha Company did make it back but twenty-eight boys had been killed and thirty-five wounded.

The Israeli raid succeeded but it was a terrible toll for a small country where everyone knew everyone.

Val pushed Gideon’s chest gently and made him lie down on the bed, then unlaced his boots and tugged them off and unbuttoned his clothing.

“Golly, I haven’t undressed you like this for years. Remember when you were writing your first book? The girls wouldn’t fall asleep until they heard your typewriter. You’d come home from work and go up to the attic and write till two or three in the morning. I’d come up after you, but you’d be so tired you couldn’t make it down the stairs by yourself, and I’d have to undress you.”

She tugged him out of his clothing.

“Help me to the shower, baby.”

“Just lie back,” Val said, “just lie back.”

Valerie pulled her blouse over her head slowly and unsnapped her bra and wiggled out of her jeans and stood over him.

“What a time to be looking at tits,” he said. “I’m a goddam animal.”

Valerie lay on top of him, covering him.

“It’s so crazy. They’re dead. But I want you.”

She wrapped herself around him as best she could, blotting up his sweat with her body, kissing and licking the grit and dirt from his eyes and cheeks, rubbing her hair into the circles of sweat staining his neck, gripping him with her legs.

“Fly away, buddy” she said, “fly away.”

I
T HAD BEEN
a sticky wicket from the beginning. When Gideon first arrived in Israel, he promised the Israelis that he would not seek out intelligence from the Americans or carry it back to them. In exchange the Israelis agreed to give him the help he needed to research his book.

Rich Cromwell, the American CIA station chief, badgered Gideon for information from time to time, without success. Gideon knew that without earning the deep trust of the Israelis, he would never get the information he needed to write the novel he wanted.

The call for a luncheon date at Cromwell’s Ramat Aviv villa carried an unmistakable sound of urgency. Gideon never failed to marvel at the lack of discomfort American Embassy personnel “survived” in. Now, take the huge silver bowl in Cromwell’s foyer. It brimmed over with petite calling cards, in the language of the caller and in French.

Israel was a tiny country insofar as the number of embassies, legations, and consulates was concerned. Yet, when one figured that each country had an ambassador, first secretary, second secretaries, chargé d’affaires, military attachés, cultural attachés, economic attachés, special missions such as the Point Four program, trade missions, purchasing missions, an endless stream of visiting scholars in endless conferences to produce endless wisdom, and Jewish philanthropists, investors, orchestras, dance troupes, and everyone received a welcoming and departing cocktail party, that was a lot of caviar and crackers. Then there was the Fourth of July, Bastille Day, and the Queen’s birthday, and every country had a national holiday, particularly the newly liberated African nations (the Africans really threw bashes), and because every legation bought everything duty-free, livers collapsed like sand castles at high tide. Everyone had a big silver or cut glass bowl or native basketweave in their foyer, and everyone coming for a visit left a petite calling card, in two languages. One could reasonably count on a minimum of twelve hundred and sixty-one cocktail parties a year.