The Glory (17 page)

“Sam, the French have embargoed those boats. We can’t get them out.”

Noah shouted down a speaking tube, “Preparing to fire, General.”

“Minister, be a mentsch. This is why you’re out here.”

“I’m coming, I’m coming, Sam.”

On the forecastle of the other Saar, about half a mile away, one gray pod now gaped open like a crocodile mouth. The Treasury
Minister said in a dim voice, “Sam, wasn’t it you who came with me to London when we bought the
Jaffa
?”

“Yes, it was.”

“Then you know we paid spot cash for that destroyer. Spot cash! A check on the Barclay Bank in Tel Aviv! Now, only ten years
later, I have to watch us try to sink her. Could anything be crazier?”

Over the wireless transmitter, the harsh voice of the captain of the other Saar:
“Cub One from Cub Two. Missile ready to launch.”

Admiral Erell, up in gun control with a microphone:
“This is Lion. ESH! [FIRE!]”

Out of the gray pod a long dark projectile, with four large tail fins and a peculiarly bristly nose, whooshed skyward in a
throbbing roar, trailing flame and black smoke. It flew in a long arc high, high into the blue, then suddenly nosed over and
went diving toward the sea. All over the boat a general moan rose which changed to a cheer when the missile straightened out
and went skimming over the surface toward the
Jaffa
. From his chair Michael was tracking the missile with binoculars, as it rose and fell just above the water, following the
contours of the high long swells. “How to all the devils does it conform to the surface like that?” Pasternak asked him. “It’s
eerie!”

“Depth-finder principle, General, adapted to electronics,” said Michael with growing excitement. “Flight path governed by
constant rapid measuring of the distance to the surface. Inspired idea, though the mathematics were very complicated —”

“But look, isn’t it off course, Professor? I’d say it’ll miss by half a mile.”

“Wait.”

In a few moments the missile veered sharply, sailed upward, and then dived straight at the destroyer. Smoke, flame, and white
water spurted up from the hull amidships, and a reverberating blast came rolling over the sea. Applause and loud cheers broke
out from sailors and visitors alike. “By my life, sir,” Noah blurted to his captain, as the splash subsided and the smoke
drifted clear of the Jaffa, “she’s listing already.”

“ESH!”

The second missile sped over the sea, again wide of the mark, again turning toward it. Michael enthused to Pasternak, “How
about that control, General? Did you see all that stuff on the nose? Special radar, a Jewish tchotchke. There was nothing
that we could buy off the shelf, in Europe or America, to do the job.”

The second missile “did the job” for fair, thunderously tearing another enormous black hole in the Jaffa, quite visible to
the naked eye. A third Saar boat had been lying to, well clear of the test area, with the skeleton crew of the
Jaffa
’s last voyage aboard. As the three patrol boats slowly converged on the listing destroyer, a melancholy silence settled over
the onlookers. Slowly, slowly, the dying
Jaffa
rolled over on its side, wallowed awash for long minutes, then lifted its Hebrew-lettered bow to the sky and slid down into
the sea, leaving a boil of spume and a whirling slick on the blue water.

“Cubs One, Two, and Three from Lion,”
called Erell,
“last salute.”
In column, the three patrol boats sailed round and round the bubbly slick in a tight circle, their sirens mournfully wailing.
Then the column headed back toward Haifa under a sunset sky.

Admiral Erell approached Noah and handed him a small brown book. “When you get a chance, Lieutenant Commander, have a look
at this.”

“Sir, my rank is lieutenant.”

“Not for long.” The retired admiral dropped down the ladder. The book was Baedeker’s
Guide to Cherbourg.

“Yossi? It’s Shayna.”

Kishote sat up, wide awake at once. The window of his chilly bedroom in the ski lodge looked out on a vista of twilit Alps,
where high snowy peaks were reddening in the dawn. “Is Aryeh all right?” he blurted.

“Aryeh’s fine. Mazel tov, Yael just called, she had a nine-pound girl early this morning —”

“Oo-wah, nine pounds! A big, big girl!
Barukh ata
…” He rattled off the ancient blessing on good news.

“Amen,” said Shayna, “and they’re both doing well, she told me. Here, Aryeh wants to talk to you.”

“
Abba!
I’ve got a baby sister! Aunt Shayna’s taking me to the hospital today to see her!” The boy’s voice was breaking with excitement.
“I just talked to Imma, and she said it’s all right, I could come. Isn’t that great?”

“Beautiful, but go after school, hamood.”

“B’seder, Abba. Oh, I’m so happy!”

“So am I. Kiss your little sister and Imma for me. Now let me talk to Aunt Shayna. … Look, Shayna, tell Yael I’ll be back
tonight or tomorrow, depending on the flights —”

“Yossi, she insisted you’re not to break off your vacation, there’s no need —”

“Doesn’t she think I want to see my daughter?”

“I suppose she knows you pretty well.”

The faintly tart, deeply sad tone scraped Don Kishote’s nerves. A pause.

“How has Aryeh behaved?”

“His father’s son.”

“That bad?”

“Charged up with energy, that’s all. Lovable anyway. I’m going back to Haifa after we see your daughter. May you raise her
to Torah, marriage, and good deeds.”

“Amen. Thanks, Shayna.”

“For what? Goodbye, Kishote.”

He was scheduled to go down a racing trail for expert skiers that morning. The instructor had warned him that pluck and skill
were different things, that the trail was beyond him, and that he would be in a fair way to break a leg or his neck. He knew
that if he went soon to the small local airport, he could make a connection to reach Tel Aviv that afternoon. He mulled it
over, and got dressed for skiing, thinking that Shayna was right, Yael knew him pretty well.

Next day Kishote’s driver met him at the bustling Lod terminal and brought him straight to the army hospital at Tel Hashomer,
legs and neck intact. He had made it down the trail with only one spill in soft snow on a bad curve, and at the bottom the
shaken French instructor had remarked that if all Israelis were that lucky, no wonder they won wars. He found Yael in a frilly
pink bedjacket nursing the infant, who looked up blindly at her father with unblinking sky-blue eyes. “Isn’t she cute?” said
Yael, looking reasonably cute herself, her face made up, blond hair brushed out over her shoulders, eyes shining with tender
pride.

“Not to be believed,” said Don Kishote. They exchanged glances of rueful good will; no love here, but an undeniable new bond.
“You have great babies, Yael.”

“I’ve had help. See?” She caressed the baby’s hair, dark like Yossi’s. “Aryeh was crazy about her, but Aunt Shayna upset him
by bursting into tears. We had to explain that ladies sometimes cry for joy.”

“Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Motek, I’ve arranged for a nurse, I go home Friday, and next week I’m back in the shop, which I bet is falling apart.” The
baby was making loud sucking noises. “Oof! Aren’t you the hungry one? Yossi, I’d like to call her Chava [Eve], my grandma’s
name.”

“Chava it is, then. She’s a Chava, all right, Yael, fresh from the Garden of Eden.”

“And in English, Eva,” said Yael. “ ‘Eve’ sounds sort of goyish. But what’s the ceremony for naming a girl, Yossi? There’s
nothing to do, is there?” Yael made a wry face. “Nothing to cut off, you know.”

“Ha! No, nothing. I just announce it at a Torah reading. I’ll do that before I leave for the Sinai.”

“Now listen, you take care of yourself. My brother Benny came in yesterday. He’s been doing overflight photography at the
Canal, and he says it’s hell down there.”

Yossi bent and kissed his daughter’s forehead. “Goodbye, Chava. Elohim, those eyes. The first thing I ever noticed about you,
Yael, so help me, was your eyes.” She was removing her round pink breast from the sated baby’s mouth. “Well, the second thing.”

“Never mind,” said Yael with a sour grin. “Ancient history.”

B
enny Luria had not exaggerated. Things were a lot hotter along the Suez Canal, Don Kishote soon found, than any Israeli who
wasn’t there could imagine.

In Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem, the flush times of victory were going on and on. Jocund admiring tourists were flooding
the big cities and the sightseeing spots, and new luxury hotels were springing up to accommodate them. Among the Israelis
themselves, by and large, all was cheery confidence and mounting prosperity. They loved Golda, they trusted Moshe Dayan, and
to them Nasser’s one-sided War of Attrition was no more than a distant muttering futile nuisance. But at the front it was
something quite different: indeed, as the aviator had reported, an intermittent inferno for the few unlucky reserve soldiers
manning the
maozim,
the strongpoints on the Bar-Lev Line.

To begin with, these fortified outposts were several miles apart; and though Kishote had known about this from maps, the reality
of immense empty unprotected miles of sand, stretching as far as the eye could see along his sector of the front, came to
him as a daunting shock. Tank units from his and other brigades were patrolling the huge gaps in the hundred-mile line; but
the enemy, after laying down heavy artillery barrages, could send raider squads to cross the Canal almost at will, to ambush
the patrols and mine the long military roads leading back to Israel. True, the tankists kept trapping and killing the raiders,
but they kept coming, for Egypt’s manpower and weaponry, compared to Israel’s, were limitless. Kishote observed that the soldiers
in the strongholds, fifteen or twenty to a post, could do little but crouch in their bunkers night and day, when the earsplitting
deluges of shells came, and bear them as they might, for they were at a lopsided disadvantage in artillery.

Israeli combat doctrine of
“fire and movement”
assumed short conflicts, and turned on the air superiority and rapid massed tank thrusts which had won the Suez and Six-Day
Wars, so artillery had been a poor third in planning and procurement. But now Egypt was forcing static warfare, in which artillery
was the main arm, on Zahal, the Israel Defense Force. In plain sight on the other bank were heavy batteries of Soviet-made
cannon, and aerial photography showed wheel-to-wheel mortars and howitzers positioned all along the hundred miles of ramparts
from Port Said to the Gulf of Suez. For this formidable array of firepower, Israel’s meager artillery was no match whatever,
and making up such a dearth in a major branch of weaponry would take years and vast expense. Top-secret intelligence put the
enemy artillery advantage at ten to one.

So perforce a new doctrine had been improvised, worded as
“flying artillery.”
Mirages and Skyhawks had been pressed into use to pound the enemy batteries, and the tactic had in fact slowed the attacks.
The air force was advocating an all-out campaign using the Phantoms, due to arrive in September, to strike back and once for
all stamp out this War of Attrition. These were the most powerful combat aircraft in the world, and with the long reach and
heavy punch of Phantoms — so the argument went — Israel could terrorize and if need be strangle Egypt; Phantoms over the Nile,
sonic booms over Cairo, would teach the dictator an overpowering lesson, or perhaps even topple him. But Moshe Dayan was prudently
dubious about the limits of the flying artillery concept, fearing on the one hand Russian intervention, on the other hand
American delay or cancellation of Phantom deliveries if the air attacks were pressed too far.

How much longer, however, could Israel endure Nasser’s one-sided voiding of the UN cease-fire resolution by exploiting his
advantage in artillery? The UN itself of course was utterly indifferent, so long as Egypt was doing well. Casualties in the
Bar-Lev Line were mounting. Either Israel had to leave the Canal, a policy unthinkable to Golda Meir and her worshipful public,
or a decisive counterblow had to be struck to restore the cease-fire. So it was that in June, when Don Kishote had been in
his new command two months, he received a terse secret order from the Minister of Defense:
Prepare and submit a plan to me for a raid into Egypt in force, using Soviet armor, as per your proposal in October 1967 after
the
Eilat
sinking
.

A
bout a month later Dayan’s helicopter came thrashing down near Kishote’s field headquarters, and they talked outside in the
cold night while eager soldiers carried off the sacks of personal mail for the brigade which the helicopter had brought. Off
to the west artillery thumped, flashes lit the sky, and drifting smoke half veiled the moon and the multitudinous desert stars.

“Is it like this every night, Yossi?”

“Much worse, before the raiders come over.”

Dayan flung a hand toward the moon. “And can you believe — can you even begin to grasp — that this very minute two American
guys are walking around up there on the moon? You know they’ve landed, of course?”

“Yes, we’ve been following that on the radio, Minister.”

“Well, we’ve been seeing pictures on TV. Stunning! The greatest event in history since, I don’t know, the discovery of America.”

“Not the greatest, sir.”

Dayan peered at him. “And the greatest?”

“That the Jews have come home.”

With a somber nod, Dayan turned his face up to the moon. “You know about Green Island?”

“Yes, sir. My brigade’s been giving them some logistical support. I’m still getting reports, but I gather it’s a fantastic
success.”

“Fantastic, yes. Successful, yes.” The Minister of Defense gestured at the moon. “No less than that feat, and those boys of
ours would have flown to the moon, too, given the wherewithal and the orders. Nevertheless” — Dayan laid a hand on Kishote’s
arm, and looked him hard in the face, in the winking lights of the helicopter — “Israel’s not America. We can’t go to the
moon, and we can’t afford many more Green Islands. Let’s have a look at your plan, Yossi.”