By the Rivers of Babylon (41 page)

“The large aircraft, sir,” Adam reminded him. “And the aircraft overhead.”

“Large aircraft, my ass,” shot back the Prime Minister.
“Blurry, streaky nonsense.” He pushed his stack of photos away. He tapped his pencil awhile, shredded some paper, then sat back and sighed. “All right. Large aircraft. Big battle. Why not?” He turned to his communications man sitting in an alcove and called to him. “Do we have Baghdad yet?”

“Baghdad is on station, sir. Their President will be on station in one minute.”

There was a silence in the room as the seconds dragged out.

The communications man called out. “The President of Iraq. Line four.”

The Prime Minister looked around the room and picked up the receiver. He hit the number four button and spoke in passable Arabic. “Good morning, Mr. President. Yes, sir, it concerns the Concorde, of course. Babylon, Mr. President. Yes,
Babel
.”

Miriam Bernstein and Esther Aronson were kept, technically still under arrest, in the cabin of the Concorde. Hausner had stalled Burg’s plans for an immediate court-martial, but the man was insistent—insistent, Hausner knew, on using the incident to bring him down. Hausner suspected that Burg no longer had faith in his, Hausner’s, ability to lead. Burg believed that he was acting in the best interests of the group, and, thought Hausner, if that included shooting one or two women, while at the same time taking from him the last two things that were keeping him going—Miriam and his position as leader—then that was perfectly justifiable. Burg knew about him and Miriam, but that seemed not to change his attitude in the least, and Hausner could only respect him for that. Hausner was unhappy that he couldn’t develop a healthy hatred for Isaac Burg. It was Hausner’s misfortune that he liked the man. If he hadn’t, Burg would never have gotten as far as he had.

To add to the internal problems, the Foreign Minister was making his own belated power play, and he had a lot of followers, not only because of his position as legal head of the group, but because he had a compellingly attractive solution to their problems. It was Ariel Weizman’s theory that there were no longer any Arabs on the banks of the Euphrates. Therefore, the Israelis could escape down the west wall and flee across the Euphrates. The Concorde’s life jackets would be given to the wounded and the nonswimmers.

Hausner and Burg had agreed to a short conference to
discuss the Foreign Minister’s proposal. The meeting convened in the littered cabin of the Concorde. The Foreign Minister presided.

Hausner spoke. “I admit that the idea has a certain appeal, but I very much doubt that Ahmed Rish would neglect the most fundamental military tactic of cutting off the enemy’s line of withdrawal.” He tried to explain this to the most civilian-minded of the group, but there was increasing resistance to anything he said.

Hausner’s original power base was his six fanatically loyal men: Brin, Kaplan, Rubin, Jaffe, Marcus, and Alpern. Brin was dead, and Kaplan, Rubin, and Jaffe were wounded. And his men were no longer the only armed people on the hill. Now, even when he gave good advice, it generated negative responses.

Burg came to Hausner’s defense and pointed out that if they did manage to cross the river, they would not get far if Rish discovered their absence. “You would be run down on the open mud flats and massacred like rabbits caught in the open by a pack of jackals—or worse, you would be forced to surrender.”

Yet more than half the people wanted to flee Babylon. Hausner knew that he had to do everything in his power to keep the group together. It would be a pity—a tragedy—to see all their sacrifices and bravery wiped out in a precipitate flight.

The Foreign Minister insisted on discussing the question of Miriam Bernstein and Esther Aronson with Burg, but Burg refused. The women would remain under arrest until he, Burg, got around to selecting a court-martial board. Rabbi Levin called him an ass and walked off in disgust. The short conference was adjourned with no provision made for convening again.

Neither Hausner nor Burg nor a lot of others regretted the quick subversion of the democratic process. They knew, for example, that a vote taken just then would probably authorize the Foreign Minister to lead them out of Babylon and that this exodus would end in disaster. Ariel Weizman was not Moses and the waters were not going to open for him and swallow the army of Ahmed Rish. If Hausner and Burg agreed on anything, they agreed that the successful conduct of a war was too important to be left to politicians.

Ahmed Rish and Salem Hamadi led the remains of their army through the Ishtar Gate and up the Sacred Way until they reached the temple of the goddess Ninmakh, where they turned
west toward the Greek theatre. They walked in the bed of an old canal and passed through the inner city wall. A kilometer further west, they intersected the outer city wall and followed it north, toward the Northern Citadel.

Rish came up beside Hamadi and spoke into his ear. “We will walk right into their midst before they even know we are there.”

“Yes.” Hamadi listened to the wind coming down out of the hills. They were walking on the lee side of the wall, but nowhere were the ruined defenses more than two meters high and the sand and dust were choking the hard-breathing men as they tried to keep up with Rish’s pace. “We must slow down, Ahmed.”

“No. The wind may die at any moment.”

Hamadi was no desert Arab, and the blowing sand was as alien to him as it was to the Israelis on the hill. He looked around at his men moving like specters through the swirling darkness. Many wore bandages and some were lame. It was obvious that they were no longer completely disciplined or reliable troops. If the fight did not go their way, Hamadi knew they might mutiny and kill their commanders. If the fight did go their way, they would massacre the Israelis and take no hostages. Without hostages, he and Rish would have no power to negotiate. Either way, Hamadi knew that it was over for him and Rish. But Rish seemed not to understand this and Hamadi would not tell him.

Rish increased his pace and the Ashbals did the same. They were almost running now, and Hamadi had the sense that they were all rushing headlong toward their fate, toward a collision with history, toward their personal destinies, and toward a clash that would affect the relationship between the Jews and the Arabs for the next decade or more. Hamadi had been listening closely to Radio Baghdad during the past twenty-four hours, and he knew that if they had accomplished nothing else, they had at least seriously jeopardized the Peace Conference. But the possibility of changing world history paled when compared to personal passions and motivations. He thought of Hausner during the body search—Hausner standing naked under the burning sun beside the Lion of Babylon. He remembered how his skin felt as he ran his hands over him. He was filled with an overwhelming desire to rape—to sodomize Jacob Hausner. To humiliate him and finally to torture and mutilate him.

Hausner walked away from the Foreign Minister’s conference alone, hunched into the
Sherji.
The sand blew in his face
and the wind billowed his tattered clothes. The incessant noise of the wind was driving him slightly mad and he wanted to shout against it.

He found Kaplan huddled in the spot that Brin had occupied for so long. The starlight scope had been adapted to an AK-47, but it was no more an aid in seeing into that wild night than the obscured moon was. Kaplan was shivering with fever from his wound, but he had insisted that he was the best qualified night-scope man on the hill.

Naomi Haber was looking over the parapet wall, trying to spot movement in the dust. She wore one of the newly fashioned windscreens on her face. The device was made of plexiglas from the Concorde’s portholes and had foam rubber, taken from the seats, around the edges to keep out the sand the way a diver’s mask keeps out the water. The device was secured to her head with a band of elastic.

Hausner drew Kaplan to the side. “They don’t have to wait for moonset with this dust storm, you know.”

“I know.” And Kaplan also knew Hausner. He knew his tones of voice and his mannerisms, and he knew something was coming, and he knew it was not going to be pleasant.

“There are no more OP/LP’s or early warning devices. We are blind.”

“I know,” He saw it taking shape now.

“My assistant commander—Burg—has absolutely forbidden anyone to leave the perimeter.”

“I know that, too.” Hausner had come to him out of the blackness and dust and touched him like the Angel of Death. And now he was going to die.

“But the best defense is a good offense, as they say. We can’t wait here like a herd of frightened deer hoping that our numbers will be sufficient to make the wolves think twice before they attack. And if they do attack, then all we can do is stand shoulder to shoulder like the deer and kick. We must carry the fight to them. Take the offensive. Like last night.”

“Yes.”

“If we don’t they will come out of that dust and be on this hill before we can do a thing. Take a look out there.”

Kaplan looked obediently out into the swirling dust. The defenses were covered with drifting sand, and visibility was not more than five meters beyond the perimeter. They could be out there now for all he knew—six meters out, and he wouldn’t
know. A sudden apprehension, almost panic, came over him and he tightened his grip on his rifle. He had an overwhelming impulse to run out into the night, to penetrate the blackness with his body and see what was on that slope.

“What’s out there, Moshe? What’s out there?”

“I don’t know.”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Kaplan didn’t answer.

Hausner waited, then went on with his evaluation of the situation. “The most effective military strategem at this point would be to send an ambush patrol downslope. I would place such an ambush by the outer wall. The Ashbals would have to follow that wall from the Ishtar Gate to get here. Not only would an ambush decimate their attacking force, but it would alert us well in advance.” He sighed. “But Burg refuses to risk any more people or to split our forces. It’s a subjective decision, and I have to go along with it.” He paused. “On the other hand . . . on the other hand, if one person with an automatic weapon and a few hundred rounds of ammunition were to he lying out there as the Ashbals walked along that wall, he could take out about a dozen of them before they even fired back.” He paused again. “You know?” Hausner lit a cigarette in his cupped hands and passed it to Kaplan, a gesture more intimate than Kaplan could ever remember seeing or hearing of from Jacob Hausner.

Kaplan took a long pull on the cigarette and did not pass it back. “I . . . I suppose that’s right—if they are not already halfway up the slope.”

“Yes,” agreed Hausner. “There’s that. And there are undoubtedly sentries still posted at the base of the slope. But a single man should have no difficulty slipping by them in this darkness.”

Kaplan had no doubt that Hausner would go himself if necessary. If Hausner had decided not to do it himself, it was only because he felt he had a more important mission to complete on the hill. But Kaplan, after risking his life once for Hausner, had developed an overwhelming desire to live to a ripe old age. Hausner was trying to undermine that desire. “A man who went down there would have damned little chance of getting back.”

“Damned little.”

“Especially if he had a wound that limited his mobility.”

Hausner nodded. “You know, Moshe, there were only a few
real soldiers on this hill. Your six men, Dobkin . . . a few other veterans . . . Burg. The number is dwindling. Professional soldiers know that someday they will be called on to do something that the conscripts would not be asked to do. You understand?”

“Of course.” Kaplan wondered why Hausner had not gone to Marcus or Alpern. They were not wounded. He supposed it was the classical “this is an honor” type of thing. There were other reasons, he was sure, but Kaplan could not fathom the motives of Jacob Hausner.

“Well . . . thanks for listening to my ramblings, Moshe.”

“Don’t mention it.” He hesitated. When he saw that Hausner made no move to leave, he said, “Actually, a person could get some good ideas of his own by just listening to other people’s ideas.”

“That’s right.”

Kaplan hesitated again, then turned and took a step. He felt Hausner’s hand on his shoulder and heard Hausner’s voice saying something appropriate, but the exact words did not register. The hell of it was that he couldn’t even say any good-byes to the people who had come to mean so much to him over the past twenty-four hours. He felt very much alone walking out into the night.

The Prime Minister sat upright as he held the telepnone to his ear. His eyes darted around the room toward the other men and women who were monitoring on earphones. The call to Baghdad was not going well. The Iraqi President had run the gamut of emotions from surprise at the call, to incredulity at the information, and finally to a lack of commitment on the Israeli Prime Minister’s suggestions. The Prime Minister spoke evenly and firmly. “Mr. President, I
cannot
divulge to you the source of my information, but it is a
usually
reliable source.” He looked across the room as if to confirm the reliable source.

Teddy Laskov and Itzhak Talman stood near the door. The Prime Minister’s gaze seemed to be reevaluating them.

The Iraqi President sighed, which the Prime Minister knew in Arabic meant, “It’s a great pity, but we’re not getting any closer to a deal,” or words to that effect. The Iraqi spoke. “In any case, a low-level reconnaissance is out of the question. The
Sherji
is blowing. However, I am sure your American friends have made an illegal overflight with one of their high-altitude craft. That should be sufficient.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

The Iraqi President ignored the denial and began recounting his objections to adopting any hasty measures.

The Prime Minister listened to the wind rattle the shutters as he half-listened to the Iraqi. He knew that between the floods, the sandstorm, and the darkness, any land transportation, as well as air flights, were out of the question. The more he prodded the Iraqi, the more he knew that the inadequacies of Iraq’s transportation and communication network would be revealed, not to mention the inadequacy of their armed forces in navigating through their own country. To have to admit to those problems only made the President more irascible. But Hillah was so close and it was a fair-sized town, thought the Prime Minister. He said, “Isn’t there a garrison in Hillah?” His intelligence had told him there was.