The Glory (12 page)

“I respect him. A friend of Israel he’s not.”

The CIA man pursed his lips over his coffee cup. “Bud knows only the national interest. And his own career, to be sure. He
has a lot to learn about the Middle East.”

“Well, you’re the man to educate him.”

Cunningham hesitated, then blurted awkwardly, avoiding his eyes, “Zev, let me say this. I long ago despaired of having a grandson,
you know. Emily’s a strange one, we all realize that. Now prospects open up. I’m happy and thankful. And I’m glad your navy
lad’s okay. The road ahead for Israel is long. You’ll need your sons.”

The telephone rang. Cunningham picked it up, and after a moment nodded emphatically at Barak. “Yes, yes, right, go on. … Really?
Amazing. How definite is this? … Okay, many thanks. … Well, I appreciate that. I’ll reciprocate one day.” He hung up, and
fixed Barak with an indecipherable expression.

“News, Chris?”

“I believe so. Call your Mr. Rafael and tell him that both words are out.”

“
Out?
” Barak stared. “
ALL
and
THE
?
Both?”

“Out. Both. Usually it’s the Arabs who make a boo-boo and get you off the hook, but this time it was the Russians. More coffee?”

“Chris, for God’s sake, what’s happened?”

“Well, that was a hasty report, but it seems Kosygin may have overreached himself. His letter questioned Johnson’s good faith,
the clumsy Slav! To the effect, ‘
If you’re sincerely interested in peace, Mr. President, you won’t quibble over two little words like
all
and
the.’ It infuriated Johnson. He shot back a letter referring Kosygin to his speech about ‘Five Principles of Middle East
Peace,’ telling the Russian to take them or go to hell. I paraphrase, but that’s what I’m informed, by a pretty good source.”

Barak darted a hand at the desk telephone. “Can I talk freely over this line, Chris?”

“Why not? It’s a free country.”

Rafael was rapturous at the report. “
Gott in Himmel!
If that’s so, Zev, we’ve made the breakthrough we missed in 1956, no withdrawal without peace —”

“I’m getting this at third or fourth hand, Gideon, remember.”

“I realize that. All the same I’m calling Eban right now.”

Cunningham took his coffee to a leather armchair, and sat down. “Is your Mr. Rafael pleased?”

“God, yes.”

“Pure Hopalong Cassidy all this, what?” The CIA man sipped coffee. “Assuming that report’s accurate, the question is, Zev,
did LBJ really blow his top at Kosygin’s language? Or had he already figured he needed the Jewish vote in ’68, and just jumped
on the letter as his excuse?”

“Either way, Chris, Israel’s out of a corner.”

“Right, and Nasser’s painted himself into one. My analysis is on file here, Zev. I estimated that he sank the
Eilat
to prod the superpowers into a joint resolution on withdrawal. He got it, all right.” The CIA man’s sunken eyes gleamed at
Barak. “But he ended up without the two little words.”

“The Prime Minister is dead, Sam.” Shaky tearful voice of Eshkol’s chief secretary on the telephone. “He died at eight-fifteen
this morning.”

“No!”

“Another heart attack. And he was so well and busy yesterday! The family is asking for you, so please come to the residence.”

“I’m on my way.” Having just arrived at his office, Pasternak still wore his old army overcoat, for the weather blowing into
Tel Aviv from the sea was gusty and rainy. His desk calendar, he saw, read

FEBRUARY
26, 1969

9
A.M
.
Coffee with Yael at Hilton.

He buzzed his duty officer. “Call Mrs. Nitzan, tell her I can’t meet her. It’s an emergency, and I’ll phone her soon.”

“Yes, General.”

He glanced through a few urgent papers and was walking out the door when the intercom buzzed. “General, Mrs. Nitzan’s phone
doesn’t answer. Shall I call the Hilton, sir, and have her paged?”

“L’Azazel, I’ll drive by there. It’s simpler.”

The morning traffic was thickest near the Hilton, and his driver had trouble getting through. Pasternak sat beside him, his
mind running through the implications of Eshkol’s death. Black, black day for Israel, another giant of the old days fallen.
Ben Gurion, scrawling his memoirs in retirement, had outlived his successor, after all. The obscure Levi Eshkol, never a media
figure, had been Pasternak’s hero since their underground days. More than anyone, he had patiently built the infrastructure
of the State and the army, always in B.G.’s shadow. Gone! The struggle for the succession would start at once, and it would
be a dangerously divisive business.

Yael had trouble getting herself up out of the lobby settee, when she spied Pasternak and waved. That she was pregnant, let
alone so far along, was news to him. But the dark gray leather suit was reasonably becoming, considering that she looked about
ready to calve. He lent a hand to pull her to her feet.

“Thanks, dear, I’m monstrous, I realize. It’s kind of you to come.”

“Yael, Eshkol just died this morning.”

“Oh God, how awful.”

“So I’m in a rush to get to Jerusalem.”

“Of course, of course, go ahead.”

“After the funeral I’ll call you. Probably late tomorrow.”

“I won’t be here. I’m flying to Los Angeles tonight.”

“What? In your shape?” He looked her up and down. “A wild animal, that’s what you are. Always have been.”

“Sweet of you to be concerned.” She caressed his cheek. “Just a short trip, and I’ll phone when I get back.”

“What’s this all about, Yael?”

“Oh, Sheva Leavis business.”

She had to say no more. Sheva Leavis was an Israeli from Iraq, now living abroad, who dealt mainly in Oriental imports, and
covertly in munitions. He had once set Yael up in a Beverly Hills shop where she had made a pile, and now she looked after
some of his interests in Israel. As to how far the connection went, Pasternak could only guess.

“Pardon, motek,” he said with a gesture at her swollen girth, “but I thought you and Kishote were more or less separated.”

“More or less, is right.” A satiric smile, a pat on her stomach. “We still share the apartment, so …” With a look half-reproachful,
half-amused, she said, “It happened to you and Ruth, didn’t it? Twice, or so you claimed.”

Even her pregnancy was an occasion to needle him, he thought, and disfigured as she was, she knew she could bewitch him if
she chose. It was there in her eyes. This relationship was never over, only dormant. “Well, take care of yourself, for God’s
sake. Can my driver deliver you somewhere?”

“Thanks, I’m driving my own car.”

“You are? And where do you put the steering wheel?”

“Between my teeth, where else?”

He reluctantly laughed. They walked out together, and she parted from him with a kiss on his rainy cheek. “I’m truly sorry
about Eshkol, Sam. You were close, I know.”

“We were. It really hurts, Yael. Have a safe trip.”

T
he Prime Minister lay in the bed in which he had died, with tall candles burning at the head and foot. His distraught wife
brought Pasternak in and left him alone with the body. There was a smell of medicine in the room, and a faint odor of death.
From below in the crowded living room came the murmur of contending voices. Eshkol’s broad face was greenish and still worried
and weary, though the eyelids were shut in the last sleep.

“Goodbye, Layish [Lion].” Pasternak spoke the underground code name softly, after contemplating the blanketed body in silence.
“You were a quiet man and a real fighter. You led us to win the war, but others got all the credit. Now you’re in
Olam Ha’emet
, the world of truth, and there you’ll be welcomed by the other great Jewish fighters, by Judah, by Joshua, by Gideon. Go
to peace. I loved you.”

In the subdued milling downstairs of cabinet ministers, generals, chief rabbis, bureau heads, family, and close friends, Pasternak
found that all was confusion over funeral arrangements, beginning with where Eshkol was to be buried. As to who would succeed
him, not a word was being spoken, though it had to be on nearly everyone’s mind. The two foremost contenders were there, Moshe
Dayan and Yigal Allon, great army generals turned politicians. Allon was Deputy Prime Minister, but Dayan wielded the lion’s
share of the national budget as Minister of Defense. The groups clustering around the two were about the same size, Pasternak
noted. Subtle currents of Israeli politics were swirling here. Allon had been a staunch Labor man always, whereas Dayan had
once defected to Rafi, Ben Gurion’s failed splinter party.

The former head of the Labor Party came in unnoticed at first, but as she plodded heavily into the room, holding her big purse
and looking around, heads and eyes began to turn and the talking to subside. “Is there a problem?” Golda Meir inquired.

A pause of sudden quiet, then several people began to speak at once. She raised a hand to cut them off. “Who is handling the
funeral?”

Wiping her reddened eyes, the widow said, “Golda, I’ve asked Sam Pasternak to take charge.”

Golda kissed her, then glanced at Pasternak. He explained in a few words the burial dispute. Some said that Eshkol had wished
to be interred beside his previous wife, the mother of his two daughters, at Deganya Bet, the kibbutz he had helped to found,
and that the request might even be in his will. But others thought that his proper resting place as the head of state was
on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, in the space reserved for Prime Ministers, especially since crowds of mourners in the Jordan
valley kibbutz might be exposed to terrorist assault with mortars and Katyushas.

“I see. Well, we will bury him in Jerusalem, of course,” said Golda. “It is the right place, and we certainly don’t want to
risk any attack on the mourners, since there will be a multitude.” The words were calm, not in the least argumentative. All
around her people looked at each other and heads nodded. “But first of all, I must pay my respects to him. Where is he, upstairs?”

“Yes, Golda,” said the widow, wiping her eyes. “Let me take you to him.”

“Please. And after that, Sam,” she said to Pasternak, “I want to talk to you.”

As she trudged up the staircase the animated talk in the room turned to matters of detail — when to inform the public, how
to handle the crowds, which heads of state to invite, and the like — and Dayan and Allon both took part, neither one trying
to dominate. Here was history in the making, thought Pasternak. Out of the government for years, Golda had been a hard-handed
political boss of Labor, but now she was presumably just a private citizen. Yet she had passed through this room like a queen,
and nobody had been up to challenging her word. By all odds there would be no struggle over the succession, and the next Prime
Minister would not be a military hero, but a seventy-year-old grandmother.

“I
made one mistake. One
bad
mistake.”

Thus Zev Barak to himself, replaying his mental tape of the Pentagon meeting just over, as he strode off on the five-mile
walk back to his office, as usual criticizing his own performance. For better or worse, self-scrutiny was his habit of mind,
perhaps a hobble to his ambitions. He did not envy his rivals who bulled ahead down the years with unshakable confidence in
themselves. A man had to take himself as he was.

It was a breezy March day, the daffodils made splashes of dancing gold along the glittery Potomac, the exercise aerated his
brain and blood, and all was almost right with the world, except for that one damned mistake. He had been summoned to meet
the new Secretary of Defense, a good sign right there, for the incoming President Nixon owed the American Jews absolutely
nothing. They had voted en masse for his opponent, Hubert Humphrey, and there was fear in Jerusalem that Israel might be in
for a long Washington freeze. But Secretary Laird, a tall bald man with a hearty politician’s manner, had said straight off
that while he couldn’t speak for the President, his strong sense was that Richard Nixon would honor Johnson’s pledge to sell
F-4 Phantoms to Israel. Barak had even managed to elicit possible delivery dates from him, a real step forward. The dour General
Rabin, who had replaced Abe Harman more than a year ago as ambassador, might even be pleased enough to smile at that.

“Now, General, I’m interested in the military aspect of Mrs. Meir as Prime Minister, since that’s my job,” said the Secretary,
having cheered Barak with his first words. “I’m informed that you’re an astute officer who can talk straight. General Rabin’s
a diplomat now, and has to guard his tongue. Suppose you tell me, then, about a woman as your Prime Minister. Does that mean
Moshe Dayan will be calling the shots?”

In reply Barak sketched Golda for Melvin Laird as frankly as he could: a formidable personality, he put it, capable of soft
womanly charm but also of ruthless decision; less likely to compromise than Eshkol had been, because she knew so much less
about arms and strategy; inclined to listen to Dayan and others, but in the end allowing nobody to call the shots but Golda
Meir. Laird kept nodding, and seemed faintly amused by the picture.

Next he questioned the attaché hard about Colonel Nasser’s newly proclaimed “War of Attrition.” Barak pointed out that this
was mere redundant posturing for his people, since the Egyptians had never yet ended the state of war against Israel declared
back in 1948; agreeing to cease-fires only when routed in battle, and then persistently violating those until harsh retaliation
made them desist for a while. Laird waved a dismissive hand. “You’re talking legalities, General. This is something new. The
man’s words are clear and serious:
‘What has been taken by force will be recovered by force.’
Our Cairo embassy says he means business. He’s given the Russians a powerful naval base in Alexandria, a major problem for
our Sixth Fleet, and in return they’re rearming him heavily. How do you counter that?”