The Glory (16 page)

“Sure, anything. Listen, I’ve been promoted. Full colonel, almost the youngest in the army.” He pointed to the third leaf
on his shoulder bars.

“Congratulations, let’s drink some wine to your promotion.”

“By all means. Shayna, my new assignment is command of an armored brigade on the Canal.”

She stopped pouring the wine. “The Canal! There’s been a lot of trouble there.”

“Motek, it couldn’t be a better assignment. Me, I’m drinking to your return. It’s wonderful. Now, what to all the devils happened
in Canada?” Yossi took a gulp of wine and dropped beside her on the couch.

“I don’t want to discuss it.”

“Come on! In two words, Shayna, why are you back?”

“In two words? Well, all right. In two words,
HIS MOTHER
.”

“What about his mother?”

“That takes a lot more than two words.” But Shayna ran on, of course. “Paul’s family, it turned out, owns office buildings
and shopping centers all over Ontario. His father’s just a nice nebbish. Mama’s the big boss. His older brother’s a doctor,
his sister’s husband teaches at McGill, so that leaves Paul to take over, eventually. Therefore he can’t settle in Israel.
He can buy an apartment in Jerusalem, and come here for Passover and the High Holy Days, period. That didn’t emerge until
we began planning the wedding, then Paul had to choose between the real estate and Shayna.”

“Well, you had to choose, too.”

“I did. Actually Mama was very nice to me. Bought me a fur coat and dresses —
‘You’re going to be a Rubinstein, get used to dressing like one’
— mind you, Canada’s beautiful, Toronto’s a big exciting city, and Paul is a good fellow, but —”

“But you love Israel,” said Don Kishote, “and me.”

She struck his arm with a fist. “Has Yael had her baby yet?”

“Any day now.”

“How could you let her travel in that condition?”

“What have I got to say about it?” He pulled a key from a breast pocket. “Look, Aryeh will be alone when she goes into the
hospital. I told him you’d come and stay with him. Here’s the key to the flat.”

Almost too choked up to speak, Shayna pushed away his hand. “I still have my key, unless you’ve changed the locks.”

“I haven’t.”

“You’ve got your nerve, Yossi, taking me for granted like this.”

Kishote looked around. “You’re not planning to live here with these Americans, are you?”

“No, I’ve rented a flat near the Technion, starting next month, when I go back to work.”

“Shayna, why didn’t you come right home? You were there almost two years.”

“I was stranded. I wouldn’t accept their money, once Paul and I broke up. Not even for fare to Israel. I gave back the fur
and the clothes, and I taught in a Hebrew school. To tell the truth, I also kept working on Paul. Maybe he was working on
his mother too, I don’t know. When he got engaged to a girl whose family had even more real estate, I bought my El Al ticket.”

“Mrs. Rubinstein is my favorite Canadian,” said Yossi, “and that Paul is a dish of noodles. I always knew it. I’m going.”
They both stood up. “About this baby, Shayna, I think Yael will take it to California and never come back.”

“What do I care what she does?”

“You’re beautiful, Shayna. A week at home and you’re a mentsch. At the airport you looked awful.”

“If you’re going,
go
already.”

“When Aryeh saw you he all but danced. Me, too.”

He embraced and tried to kiss her, but she struggled free. “For God’s sake, no crazy heroics at the Canal, now. You’re a senior
officer. Act responsibly.”

“There are telephones at headquarters, Shayna. I’ll call you at the flat when I can. I love you.” He managed a swift kiss
on her mouth, and he was gone.

I
n a heavy sweater and wool cap, for the weather at sea was predicted to be very cold and windy, Noah Barak was waiting for
Daphna Luria at the bus stop near the base, when to his great disgust, far down the curving waterfront, the blue car came
in sight. L’Azazel! It was bad enough that he had to call off their planned evening in Tel Aviv; dinner at Shaul’s, the Joffrey
Ballet, and then a whole night in the two-room flat on old Nakhmani Street, which she shared with another rebellious military
daughter. Once she had acquired a place of her own Daphna had given Noah her all, and since then there had been many an exhausting
roar of tempestuous marvellous sex in her narrow bed. Not, however, in the past three weeks of naval maneuvers, and Noah was
on fire for more of that wild carrying-on. But now she would drive off with that pest Dzecki in his cursed Porsche, to do
God knows what.

This nuisance had been dragging on and on while Dzecki took courses in Israeli law, then decided to serve his army sadir.
Now and then when Noah was at sea or on duty at the base, Daphna had been dating his fool-headed American cousin, averring
that it didn’t mean a thing, that Dzecki was just fun and his car a convenience. That she would not consider marriage now
—
“Look, I’ve just gotten my freedom, let me enjoy it a bit”
— was something else Noah had to put up with. Meantime what could he do about Dzecki? How could he show jealousy of a dizzy
draftee, with the green passport that was his escape hatch from Israel anytime he wanted out; a garagenik with a knack for
tinkering, for there was no other way to keep a Porsche running in Israel; a deliberate
rosh katan
(small head), choosing to remain a private, when with his education he should have applied for an officers’ course?

“I do my three years and I’m out,” Daphna had quoted Dzecki to Noah. “Rosh katan for me. Contracting is the thing here. These
kablanim
make fortunes. Look at Guli! A lowbrow, a boor, and a millionaire. The field’s wide open, and once I make a bundle I’m getting
into politics. This country is being run by old doctrinaire dumbbells, and it can’t go on.” Daphna had recounted this chatter
with giggles, but Noah had not been amused. It was just like that American airhead to think he could run Israel better than
the Israelis, even if the politicians were a sorry lot.

“No! I don’t
believe
this,” exclaimed Daphna, when she got out of the car and Noah told her their date was off. He saw his Uncle Michael sitting
in the back of the Porsche, dressed much too lightly for the sea. What a mess, altogether! She was calling into the Porsche,
“Dzecki, don’t go yet … How come, Noah? Did you make a mistake? Aren’t you off duty? Why didn’t you
CALL
me?”

“
Hamoodah
[Darling], I’m sorry, I can’t talk about it.”

“Oh, you can’t! Well, what about tonight?”

“I just don’t know yet, Daphna.” He led her aside by an elbow. “Look here. I got sudden orders, not two hours ago. Top secret,
and I may be back tonight, I may not. It’s one of those unpredictable things. I know it’s rotten, but this could be important.
Forgive me.”

“Oh, to all the devils, I’m sure it’s important. This country can drive you mad.” She kissed him tenderly on the lips. “You’re
forgiven.”

“What will you do, Daphna? Where will you be tonight, in case I do get back?”

“Forget about me, motek. I’ll be fine.” Daphna was cheering up a shade too quickly to suit Noah. “Let’s talk on the phone
whenever you return. Call me at the flat. If I’m not there, Donna will be. Leave a message.” Her roommate Donna was usually
at home, doggedly writing unproduced screenplays. Off rolled the Porsche to deposit the professor at the base entrance, leaving
Noah to trot after it, grinding his teeth. He helped his uncle get out of the car, and walked slowly with the limping scientist
through the gate into the navy yard.

“Poor Noah!” Daphna settled back in the blue leather seat as they drove away. “And we were going to have such a big time in
Tel Aviv. There’s this ballet I’m dying to see, I’ve got the tickets and everything —”

“So? I’ll take you there. No problem.”

“Are you serious, Dzecki? You told me you intended to sleep for twenty-four hours.”

“What else is there to do at home? I’ll just grab a quick shower, put on some clothes, and we’re off to the ballet.”

“Dzecki, you’ll fall asleep at the wheel and we’ll both get killed.”

“So you’ll drive and I’ll sleep. Just don’t speed. If the Mekhess ever gets this car again, bye-bye.”

“I won’t speed, but are you sure the ballet won’t bore you, motek?”

I
n a bleak corrugated iron hut, on the pier where the Cherbourg boats were berthed, Sam Pasternak, clad in a green waterproof
parka and baggy pants, was drinking tea. A cold wind off the harbor whistled at the fogged window, and an electric heater
by the tea urn gave off a red glow and not much else.

“Ah, there you are, Professor,” Pasternak said, as Noah came in with his uncle. “Now all we need is the Treasury Minister.
Everyone else is aboard the boat already. Get the professor some warm clothes, Lieutenant, or he’ll freeze out there. For
the Minister, too. He’s very short and very fat. Professor, is the damn thing going to work?”

Michael Berkowitz limped to the urn, and as tea trickled from the spigot he said, “Can’t say. My responsibility has been running
checks on the computations. The aircraft people down in Lod built it, and I’ve contributed an idea or two. Live warheads are
not my thing.”

“You’ve seen the preliminary tests?”

Michael shook his head. “Just the designs. They’re original and startling. These navy fellows are brilliant, but audacious.
It’s a whole new concept —”

“I know the concept, a sort of Tom Thumb battleship, no? A shallow-draft boat a hundred fifty feet long, with the punch of
a heavy cruiser —”

“That’s it, more or less.”

“Michael, I’ll ask a dumb army man’s question. How can you throw such a punch from an eggshell boat hull?”

“Well, with a missile there’s no recoil, of course. As for the deck guns —”

A telephone rang by the urn. Michael picked it up. “Yes … All right … The Minister’s car just arrived, General.”

“Then let’s go.”

At the gangway of his Saar (Storm) boat Noah helped the portly little Treasury Minister into foul-weather gear, while Pasternak
assisted Michael. “Minister, do you get seasick?” Pasternak asked the cabinet member, an old friend. “I do.”

“Just don’t talk about it.” The nervous politico wrestled a zipper over his bulging paunch, his white hair flying in the wind.
“Just don’t think about it. It’ll all be over in a few hours. I sailed from Rumania in 1910, in a boat like a bathtub, and
here I am.”

Army and government observers crowded the deck and bridge of Noah’s craft, but there were none on a similar vessel tied outboard,
with two strange large gray housings on its deserted forecastle. “That’s the Gabriel,” said Pasternak to the Minister.

“Those two trash cans? Well, this test had better come off, that’s all,” said the Minister peevishly. “There’s been much larceny
going on in the defense budget, and Moshe Dayan will stand for no more of it.”

The two boats left the harbor in a bright afternoon. Beyond the breakwater the swells from the west were smoothed out by an
offshore wind, and Noah’s craft moved steadily over a calm sea, but not steadily enough for the Treasury Minister, who within
minutes was looking very green. The boat’s captain brought him below to his cabin. “Just lie down, Minister, and you’ll be
all right. We’ll call you topside for the test.”

Collapsing on the dark bunk, the Treasury Minister groaned, “I was younger when I sailed from Rumania.”

Michael Berkowitz was wedged in the captain’s bridge chair, talking mathematical and ballistics jargon with the father of
the missile boat project, Admiral Shlomo Erell, a wiry little man in a thick sweater and wool cap. Now retired, this former
navy chief had been relieved early of his command, disgraced by the sinking of the
Eilat,
and the vanishing of the submarine
Dakar
on its maiden voyage. But nothing had stopped his indomitable pursuit of the “thumbnail battleship,” and of all the people
crowding the vessel, he seemed the calmest at this make-or-break point of his seven-year quest.

“Your nephew’s a good officer,” Erell remarked to Michael, as Noah executed a maneuvering order called down by the captain
from gun control. “He should have been decorated for his action in the
Eilat
disaster, and he’s going places.”

“Can I tell my brother Zev you said that?”

“Why not? I just did.”

“Target, Captain, one point on the starboard bow,” Noah shouted up to gun control. “Range seven miles.”

Visitors all over the small boat began saying, “What? Where? Who sees it?”

Noah passed Pasternak the binoculars. “Straight ahead, General, a little to the right.”

“That hair on the horizon? That’s the
Jaffa
?”

“That’s her mast.”

Noah gunned the motors, the boat leaped ahead, and the
Eilat’s
sister ship hove in plain view. With a pang, Noah remembered how glad he had been to espy it coming in sight over the horizon
to relieve the
Eilat
on patrol. Now here was the moment of truth. After today Israel would either have a two-front navy in the Med and the Red
Sea, of a strength that would astonish the world, or an insignificant coast guard, once for all.

Pasternak went below on a short steep ladder, and found the Treasury Minister supine on a bunk in a darkened cabin. “Are you
all right, Minister?”

“As long as I lie flat,” he moaned, snapping on a small bunk light and rolling over to face Pasternak. “Tell me again, Sam,”
he said hollowly, “why we have to sink the
Jaffa
.”

“Nothing else to do with it. Its day is done. We’ll have no more warships three hundred feet long, with two hundred sailors
aboard.”

“They could test the missile on a towed target.”

“That’s been done. The question is whether it can sink a vessel with a live warhead on the open sea.”

“If it does, then what?”

“Then — and this is straight from Golda — the navy’s got its twenty-five million dollars to finish and fit out those five
Saar boats still stuck in Cherbourg. Otherwise that money will buy a lot of tanks, as you know.”