Bloch smiled. “Hey, this was one hell of an operation, wasn’t it?”
Major Bartok watched the old man on the donkey as he made his way at his own speed across the mud flats. The C-130 was nearly loaded and its engines were turning, but that didn’t seem to impress the old man in the least. Bartok stood patiently on the huge tailgate and waited.
Shear-jashub seemed to have no fear of the monstrous machine, and neither did his donkey. The old man rode the beast up onto the ramp and stopped when he came abreast of the Major. He did not dismount but asked abruptly, “What has become of Aluf Dobkin?”
“He is in that aircraft, Rabbi.” He pointed overhead. “He is well.”
The old man nodded. “You will give him a message for me?”
“Of course.”
“It is also the answer to your question.” Shear-jashub straightened himself on the donkey. “We of Ummah thank you for your kind offer, but we cannot go to Israel with you.”
The major shook his head in frustration. “Why not? There is no future for you here.”
“We are not concerned with the future here,” said Shear-jashub, stressing the last word.
“Come home to Jerusalem, Rabbi. We have room. March everyone into this airplane right now. There is nothing to be frightened of. Go. Gather your people. Bring your goods and your animals, if you wish. Ummah will fit nicely in the belly of this big bird. Go and gather them up, Shear-jashub. The Captivity is over. Come away from Babylon.”
The old man peered into the cavernous craft. Strange lights and noises came out of it. He could see those other Jews in there—the Israelites—walking, sitting, weeping, laughing. He had not understand all that had happened, but he understood enough to know that they came from a powerful nation and that Ummah could join that nation and the sons and daughters of Ummah could grow up in this nation. “We have many friends and kin in Hillah and Baghdad. What will they think when they come to Ummah and find that we are gone? We cannot go like that.”
Bartok made a gesture of impatience. “I can’t believe you would want to stay here. This is a terrible place.”
“It is our place. Let me tell you that which I told the Aluf. There must always be a remnant left behind. In every nation there must always be we of the Diaspora. Nevermore can they lay hands on us all by taking Jerusalem. Do you understand that?”
Major Bartok looked out over the mud flats, then back at the old man. “Yes, I understand that. But this land is different. There is something evil about this place. You who are in this land came here as slaves, and you are still thought of as slaves.” He saw that he was getting nowhere and he sighed. The last of the wounded were taken aboard, and he knew he could not wait. His first obligation was to them. He forced a smile. “Rabbi, remember this—if this Brit Shalom that everyone is speaking of goes well, then all the Jews of this land will be able to come to Israel if they wish. Tell them in Hillah and in Baghdad that we are waiting for them. And we are waiting for Ummah . . . and for Shear-jashub.”
“I will remember.”
Major Bartok nodded. “I wish I had the words to convince you. Perhaps if the Aluf were here . . . Well, good-bye Shear-jashub. We must go . . . to Jerusalem.”
The old man smiled at the name of the city. “It is a strong and powerful city now.”
“Yes.”
“Good-bye.” He reined the donkey around and rode down the ramp.
Major Bartok watched him for a few seconds, then turned and signaled the crew chief. The gate began to rise and the major walked along it into the big cabin. He turned to the crew chief. “Tell the pilots, please, that we are ready to go home.”
In the cabin, he could hear a group reading from Jeremiah: . . . a great company shall return thither. They shall come with weeping. . . .
EPILOGUE
For thus saith the Lord; Sing with gladness for Jacob,
and shout among the chief of the nations:
publish ye, praise ye,
and say, O Lord, save thy people,
the remnant of Israel.
Behold, I will bring them from the north country,
and gather them from the coasts of the earth,
and with them the blind and the lame,
the woman with child and her that travaileth with child together:
a great company shall return thither.
They shall come with weeping,
and with supplications will I lead them:
I will cause them to walk by the rivers of waters
in a straight way, wherein they shall not stumble: . . . .
Hear the word of the Lord, O ye nations,
and declare it in the isles afar off, and say,
He that scattered Israel will gather him,
and keep him, as a shephered doth his flock.
For the Lord hath redeemed Jacob,
and ransomed him from the hand of him that was stronger than he.
Jeremiah 31:17–11
The two C-130’s flew west, in formation, over the Iraqi desert.
Isaac Burg sat on a canvas chair and spoke quietly with Major Bartok, who was filling out his after-action report. Burg’s arms and bare torso were splotched with iodine, and he had a white pressure bandage on his neck, which he kept touching questioningly.
Bartok kept shaking his head in disbelief at Burg’s answers to his questions. Bartok, the soldier, was trying very hard to understand how the peace mission had decimated a full rifle company of trained soldiers. Out of professional inquisitiveness and personal curiosity, he was trying to discover the element or elements that had made that military miracle possible. “Perhaps we could use a few battalions of peace delegates in the army,” he said.
Burg smiled. “It was just that they believed so much in peace, I think, that when someone tried to spoil that peace, they were so angry that they reacted like a lioness defending her cubs. It is a paradox, I know, but it is the best I can offer you.”
“Sounds good,” said Major Bartok. “But I’ll just write that it was a combination of good leadership, good defensible terrain, and innovative defenders.”
“Sounds good,” said Burg.
Burg accepted another cup of coffee from a flight steward and settled back. It was a short flight, but it was the longest flight of his life.
The major began reading back what he euphemistically called his Line Ones, Line Twos, and Line Threes. Killed in Action. Wounded in Action. Missing in Action.
Burg looked around the big cabin. There were so many absent. So many who deserved to be there instead of in green body bags on the other aircraft.
“Your security people took a hell of a beating,” said Bartok.
Burg nodded. An incredible five out of the six security men were dead. Brin, Kaplan, Rubin, Alpern, and Marcus. Only Jaffe remained, and he was wounded. Hausner’s palace guard. His instrument to effect his coup d’état. They were loyal to him and he was loyal to them. What more could men ask of one another? They were professionals, and professionals always suffered disproportionate casualties, but that was the way it should be.
And the El Al crew. They were professionals as well, and they had suffered disproportionately, too. It was their aircraft, and whether it was in Lod or in Babylon, they had felt a responsibility for the passengers. Daniel Jacoby and Rachel Baum were both wounded very badly, but Burg could see that they were still on the operating tables, and that was better than being under the green tarpaulin that was lying on the tailgate. Peter Kahn was serious, also, but stable. He was off the table now. The surgeon had shown Burg the bloody map that Burg had stuffed in Kahn’s wound. “It saved his life,” said the surgeon. “He owes you one when he gets out of the hospital.” He crumpled it up and threw it into his surgical waste pail.
There were the dead among the secretaries, interpreters, and aides. There were the four slaughtered men and women of the outpost, and there were those who would die before the plane touched down in Jerusalem. But Burg did not know them all, and he was glad that t
he did not because there was no more room in his heart for sorrow just then.
And then there were the missing. That was the cruelest statistic of all. Did you mourn for their death or hope they were lying somewhere, suffering but alive? Did you pray that they were interned in some Arab hellhole? Miriam Bernstein could answer that better than anyone. Now she had two to wonder about.
Naomi Haber was missing. Burg thought he had accounted for everyone, but apparently he had not. No one had any idea what had become of her. Someone had suggested that she might have slipped off downslope and actually gotten close enough to put a bullet into Moshe Kaplan. Everyone had heard that bullet fired and it made no sense that Kaplan’s tormentors had suddenly shown mercy and shot him. But where was she? The commandos had not found her.
And then there was John McClure. The shadowy man had disappeared. Burg understood McClure’s world because it was his own. Anything was possible in their world, but disappearing from one’s rescuers was a little odd even by their standards. Did he kill Richardson? Burg suspected that he had, and he knew why. The doctors on the other C-130 had reported that the bullet that killed Richardson was not recovered. It had been fired at close range and had gone through him.
But where was McClure now? Probably at the American Embassy in Baghdad by now, or perhaps at the home of a CIA contact in Hillah. He’d turn up someday posing as an archivist in the United States Information Service Library in Beirut. They always turned up like that.
Major Bartok wanted to know if Burg knew Jacob Hausner well. “Was he the actual leader?”
“Very much so.” Hausner. Where was Jacob Hausner? Dead, probably. Would they ever know?
The man was so complex that his death—or disappearance—left one with complex feelings. His staying wasn’t simply a matter of his wanting personal revenge against Ahmed Rish, although that was certainly part of it. It was more involved than that. He had wanted to die, but he had also wanted to live. You couldn’t lose on a deal like that. And Hausner was a winner up to and including the end. Returning to Jerusalem would have exposed him to questions that any excessively proud man would not care to answer. So he had stayed.
Miriam Bernstein sat on the deck with her back against a bulkhead. Her legs were drawn up and her cheek rested on her knees. The quiet drone of the engines lulled her numb body. The Foreign Minister sat next to her on a canvas bench pulled down from the wall. The euphoria had passed. Around her some people were drifting off to sleep. A few were still manic and talked incessantly to people who were barely conscious. Even the soldiers seemed not to want to listen or to speak and had moved off and segregated themselves toward the tail. The whole cabin smelled of bodies, anesthetic, and medicine.
She looked at David Becker sitting on the deck a short distance from her with his back against the hull. He was awake, but he seemed far away. There were many heros, thought Miriam, but if there was any single hero, it was surely David Becker. He had accepted the professional praise of Captain Geis and Lieutenant Stern with self-effacement and almost boyish charm. He was a good-looking aviator. The perfect hero material. They would treat him royally in Jerusalem. The American background would help. She found herself staring at him. He seemed alone.
Becker’s mind came back to the present as he found he was staring at Miriam Bernstein. He tried a smile, but he knew it came out wrong. He cleared his throat and spoke softly. “We lost our logbook.”
She smiled. “And my chronicle was probably blown up by a bomb.”
“We are not very good scribes.”
“It was the thought.”
“Yes.” He smiled and closed his eyes.
Miriam saw that he was sleeping and felt like doing the same. She closed her eyes.
The Foreign Minister leaned over and tapped her on the shoulder. “We will have to prepare a single statement for when we land. Above all, we must separate what happened here from the Peace Conference. We must rebuild and recapture the spirit that existed before this . . .” he waved his hand, “. . . before this happened.”
Miriam Burnstein looked up at him. “I won’t be going to New York with you.”
The Foreign Minister looked startled. “Why not?”
“I don’t believe in it.”
“Nonsense.”
She shrugged. What would Jacob Hausner have advised? He had always been cynical of the peace mission, but maybe he’d advise her to go and make them know that she was going to be one hell of a tough negotiator. If the Arabs had counted on her as the weakest link in the Israeli mission, then they had better think again.
“You’ll feel differently in a day or two, Miriam.”
“Perhaps I will.” She didn’t feel like arguing. She heard the voice of Esther Aronson coming from somewhere in the mid-section of the cavernous compartment. She was reading from Jeremiah: . . . for, lo, I will save thee from afar, and thy seed from the land of their captivity; and Jacob shall return. . . . Seed? His seed? His seed out of Babylon? Maybe. Unconsciously, her hand moved to her abdomen.
The Foreign Minister reached over and tapped her again. “I said, that was a truly selfless and altruistic act . . . for him, I mean . . . staying behind and keeping the Ashbals at bay.”
Miriam forced a smile. “Altruistic? Jacob Hausner didn’t know the meaning of the word. No, it was purely selfish, I can assure you. He didn’t want to face an inquiry—not only concerning the bombs, but also concerning his leadership—his usurpation of leadership and all those killed while he was in command. He’d rather die, I think, than stand in a dock.” She tried to smile again, but tears rolled down her cheeks.
Ariel Weizman was uncomfortable. He patted her arm. “Well now, maybe he’s not dead.”
She thought of her husband. That’s what they kept telling her about him. And there were still Jews in Europe pinning pathetic notes on public bulletin boards, looking for their husbands and wives and sons and daughters after all these years. She looked at Ariel Weizman and her face became harder than he ever remembered seeing it. She spoke through clenched teeth. “He’s dead, damn it. Dead. And damn him for throwing away his life.” She buried her face in her arms and wept.
They were both dead, and there was no place where she could go to visit their graves any more than she could visit the graves of her parents, her sister, or her stepfather. There was nothing palpable about her past, nothing she could reach out and touch. It was as if these people had never existed. And so many of the places associated with them were outside her world. Europe. Babylon. She was engulfed by a sense of loss, a sense of overpowering sadness. Jacob said scream and shout and carry on and let the world know how you suffer, but she couldn’t and wouldn’t do that. And even if she did, it would not stop the pain. If only he hadn’t told her that he loved her. Then it would have been so much easier for her to pass it off as passion or insecurity or something other than what it was.
Someone tapped her on the shoulder and she looked up. A young crewman was staring down at her, smiling. He handed her a scrap of folded paper. “Radio message.”
She stared at it for a few seconds, then opened it and read the scribbled pencil lines to herself. I love you. Teddy.
“Any answer?”
She wiped her eyes with both hands. She hesitated, then shook her head. “No. Thank you.”
The surprised crewman turned and walked off.
Miriam looked down at the note again, then slipped it into her pocket. Her fingers touched the silver star Jacob had given her. She drew her hand out of her pocket. She’d have to see about Jacob’s seed before she knew about Teddy Laskov.
Teddy Laskov made a final pass over Babylon. Nothing seemed to move on the ground except the wind and the sand and a solitary man riding a donkey westward across the mud flats, looking up into the sky. The big blue and white Concorde lay submerged at the quay of Ummah. It should have looked more out of place than it did, reflected Laskov. The village and the aircraft were the culmination of twenty-five hundred years of separate development, yet
there was a common thread there.
Laskov banked sharply and streaked west, away from the Cradle of Civilization, away from the land of Captivity, out over the Shamiyah Desert, west toward Jerusalem. The swing-wings on his jet, which had been spread out for combat, now folded back like a cape as he soared upward.
In a few minutes he came abreast of the two C-130’s.
Miriam had not responded to his public announcement of his love, and he felt a bit of a fool—still he knew that he should show the colors to the people on board. It was good for morale. He shot between the two aircraft and tilted his wings. He banked around, pulled off speed, and extended the wings so that he could fly more slowly. He passed by again and waved from his cockpit bubble.
From every porthole on the C-130’s people waved back as he circled the big craft.
Miriam Bernstein rose hesitantly and stood along with the others who were looking out of the portholes. She gave a belated half wave to the fighter as it passed by again, then turned away from the porthole, sunk to the floor, and fell asleep before she was completely stretched out. David Becker laid a blanket over her.
Laskov had had enough of the acrobatics and did not bank around again, but climbed west out of sight of the transports. He put the aircraft on a heading toward Jerusalem and passed through the sound barrier. He would be on the ground to meet them—showered and back in civilian clothes—when they arrived with the dust of Babylon still clinging to them. Situations changed with incredible speed in the modern world. There seemed to be no fixed point, like Polaris, that you could navigate by. He wondered if Miriam had changed much in Babylon. No. Not Miriam. She was steady, almost indifferent. There would be that initial strangeness and coolness that sometimes comes when two lovers meet after a separation, but it would pass.
Laskov soared up into the stratosphere for no reason other than that he wanted to see the curve of the earth below and the perpetual stars in their black heavens above. One’s perspective changed up here. Babylon. Jerusalem. God. Miriam Bernstein. Teddy Laskov. They all began to sort themselves out in this cold, airless void. He would figure it all out before he saw the domes and spires of Jerusalem.
By the Rivers of Babylon Page 46
