Mitla Pass (42 page)

“No, get them out now.”

“It’s impossible by daylight. They would be sitting ducks for the Egyptian Air Force.”

“Now!”

The Old Man’s eyes fluttered closed and his breathing became pained.

“Get the doctor, Jackie,” Paula cried.

The doctor was there in an instant and took B.G.’s blood pressure. It was going through the roof. He quickly fixed a syringe and applied it, and after a few moments the patient stabilized.

“Get the Lions out of Mitla Pass,” B.G. rasped.

“I refuse. If we pull them out, the Egyptians will come out of the Pass in brigade strength, maybe more. They’ll destroy our entire campaign.”

“Now ... now ...”

“I’ll have to give you my resignation,” Dayan said unflinching.

B.G.’s two eyes stared at Dayan’s one eye for a short eternity. “All right ... don’t talk resignation ... but we will review it as soon as we have darkness.”

Dayan nodded in agreement.

Natasha entered the room, looking stricken. Dayan snatched the message from her hand. The Old Man watched the juices run out of his Chief of Staff.

“It’s from De Gaulle,” Dayan said harshly. “He has come under unbearable pressure from the Soviet Union. The Russians threaten a missile attack against Paris if the French enter the Canal Zone. The message goes on to say that he and the British have decided to delay their air strike until at least tomorrow.”

GIDEON

MITLA PASS

October 30, 1956

EVENING, D DAY PLUS ONE

“D
EAD,”
the radio operator said.

Major Ben Asher grunted. He grunted the same way whether it was for pleasure or displeasure. Our main radio was FUBAR during the parachute drop—Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition. The backup set just caught a piece of stray mortar shrapnel. The Lion’s Battalion was completely isolated. The severity of our situation sank in painfully. If we didn’t get a major attack from the Egyptians, we could hold out through the night. Certainly our Southern Command would drop supplies as soon as it turned dark.

This wasn’t the loneliness of a writer’s office, small and confined. It was a vast loneliness. The desert had a hundred variations of stillness, a thousand haunted themes, God knows how many secrets. The sun wore itself out hissing all day at the rocky paths which lay agonized in the wadi beds.

Evening light brought on pastels. Blaring reds of the days toned down to muted purples. A sudden lizard flitted by, fearing discovery, and disappeared in a minute crevice. On the horizon, a gazelle leaped from nowhere to nowhere. The stagnant stifling air of the day began to drift about, stirred by tongues of coolness.

Silence had become contagious. Our brains had been dulled from the heat. Speech was unwelcome and movement floaty. This was going to be one long goddam night.

Canisters of flares were being set in beside the very guns, to keep lighting the entrance to the Pass throughout the night against a sneak Egyptian attack.

Look at these bloody paras. Real desert rats, most of them. They like it out here. Some probably prefer this destitution to having a woman. What insanity to succumb to a mistress like the Sinai.

What’s that!

Hey, you’re clear jumpy, Gideon. Get ahold of yourself. It was only some loose rock that has been peeling away from the mother boulder, perhaps for centuries. I watched it skid down a little draw.

Major Ben Asher huddled with his officers. He didn’t seem to show an iota of anxiety. The officers synchronized their watches. I liked it when watches were synchronized. It reminded me of a movie script I wrote. There’s always a stirring scene when the commander says, “This is it, men, big casino. Ready. Synchronize watches.”

As darkness crept in, a pair of machine-gun squads moved up close to the Pass so its mouth could be covered by a cross fire, if needed. We knew the Egyptians had reinforced the Pass, but we didn’t know how many of them there were.

Maybe the Egyptians had recovered from the initial blast of the invasion and had regrouped for a counterattack. Lord, if they broke through us here, they could cut Israel’s forces in half. That’s why we’re here, boys, to prevent a breakout.

Shlomo returned from the officers’ meeting. “Twenty-eight minutes to sunset,” he announced. See, Shlomo’s watch was synchronized. “I’m going to round up some gear,” he said.

I stood and shook the old leg. It was fairly stable. At least it hadn’t grown worse. I checked our lodgings for the night. We were quite well entrenched behind a boulder. I watched Shlomo draping bandoleers of ammo over his shoulders. The son of a bitch was itching for the Egyptians to come out.

Major Ben Asher was standing alone now, surveying his kingdom. He looked very comforting, like my colonel in the Marine Corps. He checked the wounded. Dr. Schwartz had them stabilized and doped up. If they survived the night, they should be evacuated in the morning.

I was honored. The major supped with me. We partook of the foul ration. The major pointed to my leg and grunted.

“It will be okay if I don’t have to stand on my head again.”

This drew his lame excuse for a smile.

“So, what do you think, writer?” he asked.

“I’d be a lot happier if I saw Zechariah and Para 202 crossing toward us. Anyhow, you asked the wrong guy. I went into the Corps as a lowly buck-assed private, and three years later I was discharged as a private first class.”

“I must have read that goddam chapter of yours on the invasion of Tarawa twenty times,” he grunted and plunged into the rations as though they were manna from heaven. “Are we in a better position than you were on the first night at Tarawa or not?”

“When you’re up shit creek without a paddle, you’re up shit creek without a paddle,” I answered.

“I say it would take three Egyptian brigades to overrun our defenses.”

“If you don’t run out of ammunition and if the air drop tonight doesn’t touch down thirty miles away.”

“Well, we have the advantage of no choice. We do not have the luxury of a defeat. One thing for certain we have over the Marines. Our rations.”

“You’ve got a taste for shit.”

Ben Asher’s mood became contemplative. “I never told you, writer, but I knew your uncle, Matti Zadok, intimately.”

“No, you never mentioned him.”

“I was only sixteen when I went into his Recon unit in the Palmach. I still carry his toe print on my ass. I wish he was here now. If we had to evacuate, he’d be the only man I know who could find his way out of here.”

“My father hardly ever spoke about his brother,” I said.

“Matti Zadok was always cloaked in mystery. I can tell you he was a great soldier. His major love was the desert. He’s a breed of Jew who was half coyote. He could look out over this same scene and see things that would have escaped our eyes. He read the landscape as though it were his woman’s body, sensing when there was water beneath the ground, ascertaining if a camel print was warm or two weeks old. No Bedouin could track him. Matti discovered dozens of minor antiquity sites, the kind that escape normal detection.”

The major stood, a chunk to be respected, like Uncle Matti. He surveyed all that his eyes could reach, as night fell. Perhaps he was hoping beyond hope that Zechariah’s column would suddenly appear on the horizon.

“Have you found what you were looking for here?” he asked me strangely.

“I’m not sure I know what I’m looking for.”

The major left and Shlomo sauntered in, buckling under the ammo he was toting. “Look,” he said, handing me a new carbine with an infrared night scope. “I got it from one of the wounded boys awaiting evacuation.”

“Neat piece.”

“The password for tonight is Yad Shimshon.”

I repeated it three times as Shlomo sighted in with his new toy.

Down went the sun! Deathly silence and coolness enveloped us instantly. I gulped down a pain pill. I was going to miss the morphine, but we were running low. There were two brave men in my family, Uncle Matti and Uncle Lazar. My father wasn’t of their ilk. That’s why he never mentioned Matti, because Matti had succeeded where he had failed in Palestine.

Why would my father remain silent about his brother, when he spent so much time bragging about me? Hell, I’ve never been anything to him but an alter ego. When I became a published author, he’d hold court on me, anytime, anyplace. He’d stand up at the cash register in the neighborhood deli and give an impromptu lecture about me to the lunch crowd. He’d walk around Rittenhouse Square with a pocket full of clippings and reviews and sit down beside total strangers on park benches and tell them the story of my life. He’d even go to the seminary and lecture about me to little sisters of the poor.

So, why the fuck doesn’t he love me? Why hasn’t he told me, just once, I was something very special as a writer? Why did he always pound a literary critique up my ass? Oh, Dad, you’re a weirdo, a real weirdo.

I wrapped up in a blanket and used my helmet for a pillow, just like in the old days. Shlomo sat over me, staring at a sky that was beginning to twinkle. How lucky I had been to have him assigned to me. Luckiest break I ever got as a writer.

“Good night, buddy,” I said.

“Good night, Gideon,” he answered.

SHLOMO

I
WATCHED GIDEON
sleep fitfully as the desert entered night. It was my favorite time in my favorite place because the skies were almost always clear and the entire universe put itself on display for me, alone.

I have a theory that Moses and the tribes came through Mitla Pass during the exodus from Egypt. I wrote my master’s thesis on the realities behind the biblical fantasies. Let me say, it didn’t become a bestseller, but on the other hand, more than one biblical scholar broke his head trying to disclaim my paper.

Gideon grunted. His hip was bothering him. Poor fellow. He almost got away clean with the parachute jump. What I liked about him was that he was scared out of his mind, but he jumped anyhow. Has it only been nine months since this little
paskudnyak
Zadok arrived? It seems like three eternities. It was becoming hard to remember what life was like without him.

I
WAS WORKING
in the Foreign Office. The country itself was only seven years old, and things were upside down and inside out. We had a lot of brilliant men, ambassadors, and ranking officials, but crafting a Foreign Office according to the letter of international protocol was an impossibility during those times. Israel had too many other priorities—bringing in the remnants of European Jewry, building a defense force and a national air and shipping line, finding money to operate, bringing in the Jews from Arab countries, contending with enemies on every border. There was a lot of hit and miss, trial and error in the Foreign Office.

L
OOK AT THE SHOW
out there! First, the stars came out one by one, now hundreds every second ... here I am, Shlomo! Look at me twinkle! Muffled voices can be heard from the command post. An order is given over the field phone and a flare bursts near the opening of the Pass. ...

A
T ANY RATE
, I never knew my rank or title in the Foreign Office if, indeed, I even had one. It was “Shlomo do this, Shlomo do that.” Shlomo Bar Adon became, as they say, a jack of all trades.

Monday morning I was taking a delegation of American senators around. It was quite important for us to gain credibility and sympathy from the American Congress.

Tuesday morning they left with a good impression and Tuesday night I was called to the office of Nimrod Newman, the chief of the American Section.

“Shlomo, you did a fantastic job with the Americans.”

My mind immediately went to a promotion, a salary raise, a permanent position, accolades. My visions of glory were short-lived.

“Something interesting has come up,” Nimrod said. “A request came in from the States a few months ago. We’ve been kicking it around. To make a long story short, I had a meeting yesterday at the P.M.’s office. Jackie Herzog was there with Teddy Kollek, Moshe Pearlman, and Beham. Dayan was also present.”

Ah, here comes my promotion. Nothing less than ambassador to France would be suitable. “So what did you decide,” I asked, “to parachute me into Damascus?”

Nimrod smiled. He smiled when he was happy, sad, hurt, unsure, in love, out of love. He smiled. What did Nimrod’s smile mean?

“There’s an American writer. You probably have heard of him—Gideon Zadok.”

“Zadok? Yes, I’ve heard of him. Great first novel, then some kind of oblivion in films.”

“Zadok wants to come to Israel to research a novel. He asks complete cooperation, short of top-secret material. We have agreed, among us, that such a book could do the country a lot of good at this time in our history, if he succeeds. We want you to make certain he succeeds, arrange his travel, get him appointments, set up his interviews, and we’ll open the archives, up to a certain point.”

“Nursemaid to a writer?”

“This would be the first American novel about Israel. It could be valuable in gaining favorable world opinion.”

“I have a choice?”

“No,” Nimrod answered with a smile. This particular smile I understood.

“How long do I have?” I asked.

Nimrod shrugged. “Probably several months.”

“What is his security situation?”

“He looks like an excellent risk. We’ll keep a close watch. You won’t be involved unless he probes too much in sensitive areas.”

“So, when does he arrive?”

“Next week. And one more thing. His uncle was Matthias Zadok. That alone demands some respect.”

A
N
E
GYPTIAN FLARE
burst over our lines. So, we know you are in there and you know we are out here. I love to contemplate in the desert. The bastards are going to ruin my night. I felt my carbine for the hundredth time. It comforted me, especially the night scope.

Z
ADOK
? It was, how do you say it, a love-hate affair from the beginning. Love? I loved the little
shmendrick’s
mind. He didn’t come to Israel to fart around. He wanted to know everything. He chewed up the country in great bites. His mind could retain a biblical battle, spear by spear, or the more recent battles, mortar by mortar. Gideon’s days were dawn to midnight. He almost killed me with his schedule. On some interviews I translated for fourteen straight hours. He wanted to see everyone, go every place, even though the borders were extremely dangerous. He almost got us killed a couple of times near the Gaza Strip.