By the Rivers of Babylon (47 page)

The odds appeared to be even for this round, but Hausner, Burg, and for that matter just about everyone else knew that the
Sherji
was going to be the Israelis’ downfall. Also, the defenses were weakened, the ruses were used up, and the ammunition was running out. Hunger and the intermediate stages of dehydration
completed the job of reducing Israeli fighting effectiveness. There also seemed to be a crisis in leadership, and it was infectious down to the last man and woman.

In addition, many believed, along with Ariel Weizman, that the back door was open, that the west slope and the Euphrates were unguarded. But, in fact, Hamadi had sent a party from the east slope to the river bank within minutes of losing radio communication with Sayid Talib. Those Ashbals at the base of the west wall had been anxiously waiting for an attempted retreat down the steep slope and were still waiting.

The Ashbals used ammunition as though it were sand, spraying it into the Israeli lines. They fired long bursts as they angled horizontally over the side of the slope, advancing a few meters upward each time they made a sideward run.

Hausner stood on his command mound with Burg. He had calmed down considerably, and Burg thought he looked all right. But to Burg’s annoyance and discomfort, he had asked Miriam Bernstein to act as his special messenger and aide. Technically, she and Esther Aronson were still under arrest, but no one objected when Hausner removed any restrictions on their movements. Miriam did not mention Kaplan or the scene with the PA microphone.

Hausner spoke above the noise. “When the ammunition is almost gone, some of our people will make a run for the west slope.”

Burg nodded. “And I’m certain there are Ashbals there waiting for that very thing. We have to reiterate our orders to stand fast and fight hand to hand.”

“They’re not soldiers,” Hausner reminded him. “They will do whatever their instincts tell them to do, in the end.” He lowered his voice so that it was barely audible. “Some of them have formed a suicide pact. . . . After what happened to Kaplan, suicide looks inviting . . . I can’t blame them. . . .”

There was a long silence on the small mound. The makeshift banner stood out straight in the steady wind, but brown dust had muted the colors of Tel Aviv’s waterfront, and the aluminum staff tilted farther and farther downward.

Miriam began to say something, then stopped.

“What is it?” asked Hausner.

She began again. “Well . . . while we still have the ammunition and while the Ashbals are still some distance down the east
slope, perhaps we should . . . withdraw quickly, cross the hilltop, and drop down the west slope—in force and organized—not a disorderly retreat. We should be able to break through whatever small force they have placed at the river bank. We can take to the river and float away in the darkness.”

Hausner and Burg looked at each other, then at her for a few seconds. Hausner spoke. “Aren’t you forgetting the wounded?”

“They will be just as lost in an orderly retreat as in a disorderly flight. We have a responsibility to the majority.”

Burg spoke. “You’ve come a long way. But which way?”

“Why does it sound so awful coming from me?” she asked rhetorically. “Yet it does, doesn’t it?” She paused. “Anyway, I would stay behind with other volunteers to look after the wounded, of course. I am practically under sentence of death anyway. Aren’t I?”

Hausner shook his head. “Even when you make hard decisions, you somehow make them sound soft. The hard fact is that if we retreat—orderly or disorderly—or if we are being overrun and are fighting hand to hand—the first thing we do is shoot the wounded.” He put his hand up to quiet her. “Don’t be a fool, Miriam. You heard what they did to Kaplan. God knows what they did to Deborah Gideon.”

“But . . . they want hostages.”

“Maybe,” interjected Burg. “But maybe not anymore. Maybe all they want now is revenge. Anyway, if Rish and Hamadi—if either of them is still alive—could stop them from massacring everyone, then the best we can hope for is to be subjected to a slow, more refined torture until we give up whatever state secrets we possess. No, we are not leaving wounded or nurses behind, and we are not going to try to move in the dark. The best trained and most disciplined armies are wary of night maneuvers. If
we
try it I’m convinced it will be a disaster.”

“Then what
are
our options?” asked Bernstein. “You refuse to order a retreat or a surrender, and you are not encouraging mass suicide. What is going to become of us then?”

Hausner turned away from her. “I don’t know,” he said. “The best ending I can envision, outside of rescue, is that each and every man and woman dies in battle. That won’t happen, of course. There will be surrenders and captures. There will be suicides, and there will be murders. Maybe some of us will be overlooked in the dark and escape. It will be very much like every other siege when the besiegers break through.”

No one spoke. The sound of battle settled into an orderly pattern. Both sides were tired and both sides sensed that this was the last fight. Everyone moved mechanically as though it were a formalized dance—a ritual whose end would come at a fixed time regardless of what they did to hasten it.

The Ashbals kept a respectable three hundred- to four hundred-meter distance and maneuvered mostly laterally, trying to keep the Israelis off balance and at the same time seeking out their weakest sectors.

There was still over three hours left until dawn, but actual daylight would come somewhat later unless the wind dropped and the dust settled.

This was to be a battle of attrition and logistics, and the Ashbals still had a small advantage in manpower and guns and an overwhelming superiority in ammunition, food, medical supplies, and water. They had only to remain deployed and draw fire until they were certain that the Israelis were at the end of their ammunition. They gambled on the principle that even with strict fire discipline the Israelis’ ammunition could not hold out until dawn.

Burg tried to formulate several plans in his mind. Flee now? Counterattack? Wait until the end and fight hand to hand? Kill the wounded? Kill Hausner? Would they be rescued at the eleventh hour? Not likely. “What happened to Dobkin?”

Hausner turned and looked southwest, out to where the village of Ummah was supposed to be. He stared as though he were trying to make contact with Dobkin. He turned again, due south, toward the Ishtar Gate. “I have a feeling he is all right.”

Miriam was holding onto his arm, openly showing Berg how matters stood. “I wonder if he’s made contact with anyone?”

“Well,” said Burg. “I can tell you this—even if by some miracle he is speaking to some kind of authority right now, I don’t believe help would arrive in time.” He looked at Hausner as if for confirmation, but what he was really inviting now was one of Hausner’s contradictions.

Hausner turned his back to the wind and looked west. He pointed toward the invisible horizon. “I can’t help but think that Teddy Laskov will be as good as his word—that he is out there now with his squadron of fighters, looking for us, getting closer . . .”

Burg looked at Hausner, pointing into the sky. “That’s a
rather optimistic statement for you, Jacob,” he said carefully. “I hope you’re right.”

Hausner folded his arms across his chest. “You know, Burg, I can’t seem to accept the idea that all those very clever fellows in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem could still be sitting around with their fingers up their asses. I expected more from them. Is that patriotism? I suppose. Well, perhaps I’m expecting too much. After all, I was one of those clever fellows, too, and look how I fouled things up, Isaac. They’re entitled to a few days off, too.”

Burg couldn’t help but laugh. “Not today.” Whenever he started doubting Hausner’s reasoning, the man showed a flash of insight.

A runner approached, and Burg walked to meet her.

Miriam had been standing off a few meters listening silently to Hausner and Burg. She came up beside Hausner now and took his arm again and squeezed it tightly. She thought of Teddy Laskov. She had been thinking of him less and less lately. After they crashed, she pictured him doing just what Hausner had said—swooping down in that big steel charger and rescuing her . . . everyone. But in reality she knew that he was probably in disgrace, and she knew that she was partly responsible for that. At first she refused to make the connection between her influence on him and his actions in the air, but the connection was there for anyone who knew them both, and she had finally faced up to it at about the same time she had faced up to a lot of other realities.

Hausner made realities real for her as no other man ever would or could. Other men in her life went along with her conception of the world in order to flatter her or be polite. That was the type of man she attracted. Thin men with glasses who sat next to her at seminars and committee meetings. Men who spoke in party jargon and repeated clichés and bromides as if they had made them up that morning.

Laskov had been different from most of the men she had known, and so had her husband. They were somewhat alike, and in her mind she characterized them both as noble savages. Jacob Hausner was another variation of the type but more extreme. She might have gone through this whole experience in Babylon without having changed her perceptions of the world very drastically. Hausner had
forced
her eyes open. She didn’t like what she saw, but now she could objectively weigh the pros and cons of a proposal to shoot the wounded without going into fits
of moral outrage. Was that good or bad? It was neither. It just
was.

“Do you know Teddy Laskov well?” she asked Hausner.

“Not well. Our paths cross now and then.”

She nodded. After a few seconds she said, hesitantly. “Do you like him?”

“Who?” He let the silence drag out. “Oh. Laskov, I suppose. He’s easier to deal with than you political types.”

She smiled in the dark. After a while she said, “He reminds me of you.”

“Who? Laskov? Is that so?”

She squeezed his arm tighter. Friends her age who remembered the camps were bitter and disillusioned with mankind. Many had psychological problems. She was determined not to be scarred, and she had overcompensated. She was well adjusted and optimistic to the point where a psychiatrist friend had jokingly called it a neurosis. Yet she was scarred, of course. People said they saw it in her eyes, and she saw it herself in the mirror. “I’m certain he thinks this is all his fault.”

“Well, then, we do have something in common.”

“You’re both egocentric, and you think that all the good and all the bad that happens around you is a result of your actions.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Teddy Laskov and I were lovers,” she said suddenly.

Burg overheard her as he walked back toward the mound. He was still annoyed at her presence. Now this. It was really too much. He turned his back on them and walked away.

“And you will be again,” said Hausner.

“I don’t think so.”

“The question is irrelevant right now, Miriam.” He sounded impatient.

“You’re not—?”

“Not at all. Listen. You go on to the Concorde and see how Becker is doing with his radios. If there’s nothing to report—and there won’t be—stay there.”

“Why?”

“Just stay there, damn it! I don’t have to explain my orders to anyone else, and I don’t have to explain them to you.”

She took a step, then turned. “I won’t see you again, will I?”

“You will. I promise.”

She looked up at him. “I won’t see you again.”

He didn’t know what to say.

She reached up and took his head and pulled it down to her and kissed him.

He took her hands and disengaged himself. “Don’t leave the aircraft,” he said softly. “No matter what happens, promise?”

“Will I see you again?”

“Yes.”

They stood looking at each other for some time. She reached up slowly, touched his face, then turned quickly and ran off into the dark.

Hausner watched her until he could not see her any longer.

He coughed some dust up out of his throat and wiped his running eyes. If there was any divine meaning or message in this senseless ordeal, if there was any secular lesson to be learned here, he couldn’t think of what it could be. It was the same old human circus of bravery and cowardice, selfishness and selflessness, cleverness and stupidity, mercy and heartlessness. Only the clowns were different. How many times did the show have to be performed for whoever was up there watching? And why didn’t it all end quickly? Why did God give them the cleverness and strength to prolong their own suffering when the end was preordained? Hausner had that uneasy feeling again—that it was a great cosmic joke directed at him. He turned toward Burg and shouted. “This is God’s way of punishing me for not giving up smoking as I promised my father I would.” He laughed into the wind.

Burg put his hand in his pocket and fingered the small .22 pistol there.

“Are you
there
, Jerusalem?”

“Still here . . . General. Stand by,” said the duty operator.

The Prime Minister tapped his pencil on the table for several seconds and looked down at the note again, then looked up. “I assume many of you could recognize General Dobkin’s voice if you heard it.” He tried to control the edge of excitement in his voice.

There was a loud outburst of questions and exclamations, and people rose to their feet. The Prime Minister slapped the table for silence. “Be quiet and listen carefully.” He signaled to the communications man in the alcove, and a loud rushing sound came over several speakers in the room. The Prime Minister pressed a button on the console in front of him and spoke into a microphone mounted on the console. “Who is this?”

Dobkin recognized the slightly mocking voice at once. His senses reeled for a second, then he steadied himself and swallowed. “This is General Benjamin Dobkin, Mr. Prime
Minister.” He paused. “Do you recognize my voice?”

“No.” But it was obvious to the Prime Minister that there were people in the room who thought they did.