by Noah Beck
Esty’s face calmed down a bit, albeit in hesitant disbelief – she wasn’t sure it was safe yet to accept the gift.
“But Daddy, if you give me that then…Then how will everyone know that you’re the captain of the submarine?”
“Don’t worry about that, sweetie. They know I’m the captain. And I want you to have it.”
Esty seemed a bit intimidated by the responsibility of carrying such a significant token. Sivan clasped her hand on top of the insignia in her daughter’s hand and said, “Say thank you, Daddy.”
“Thank you, Daddy,” Esty said, releasing a big smile as Daniel kissed her on the cheek.
“You’re welcome, sweetie.”
“Daddy, does this mean I get to be the captain now?”
“Well, it’s not so easy to become a captain. That’s really just to protect you when Daddy is away.”
“But if I’m the captain then Mommy has to listen to me when I want more ice cream, right?”
“That’s not what it means to be captain, Esty.”
“But what if the captain wants more ice cream?”
“How about this? When I get back from this mission, I’ll bring you back a small boat that we can put in the bathtub, and then I’ll show you how to be captain of that boat.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“And then…And then, because I’m the captain of the small boat, does Mommy have to give me more ice cream when I want it?”
Daniel laughed and raised Esty onto his shoulders. “Come on, baby. Let’s go look for some ice cream right now.”
“How about a proper lunch first?” Sivan said, trying her hardest to sound parental and not burst into laughs at her daughter’s adorable tactics. They started to walk toward the picnic tables when Daniel stopped and turned toward Ambesah. “Did your family eat yet?”
“Yes, but – with food like that – there’s always room for more.” They exchanged a warm smile.
“Come. Join us.”
The two families walked toward the repast.
Chapter 7: The Seeds of Doubt
Yisrael and Netta also decided to get a bite, after Netta suggested that they follow Daniel and Ambesah’s families to the food area. During Esty’s short-lived drama that had interrupted the conversation between Yisrael and Netta, the deputy captain decided that he should heed his wife’s advice. She was right: there was no point in delving into painful details, hours before he was boarding the submarine that would keep them apart for weeks. Besides, even before he had asked about his test results, Yisrael had apprehended the likely news from Netta’s generally muted demeanor, and her persistent evasions only confirmed his intuition.
But a little later, something happened in the picnic area that would make Yisrael uneasy for the rest of the reunion and would stick in his stomach long after he re-boarded the submarine. The images flashed by in a flicker and from an unhelpful vantage point, from which the view of his wife briefly talking to Daniel was obscured by other people moving around the nearby table. He himself had been in the middle of a conversation with Ambesah and a Vietnamese-Israeli officer named Bao, when he thought he saw an intense, if not intimate, moment of eye contact between Netta and Daniel. Moments later, he thought he saw her arm moving towards him. It seemed as if she was handing him some kind of letter, because – between the moving limbs and torsos of the people standing between him and the scene he was watching – he thought he saw Netta slip a white piece of paper or envelope to Daniel. There was even a chance that Bao or Ambesah might have seen the eye contact or the letter, but he wasn’t entirely sure that he himself saw those things, so he felt a bit awkward about asking either of his fellow officers for any confirmation. After all, if there was nothing for them to have seen, then he might look oddly paranoid or jealous to them.
And yet, his instincts told him that something unusual had just happened during the conversation in which he and his fellow officers had drifted into submarine-talk that would understandably bore anyone who wasn’t a member of the crew. His mind went into overdrive. What if the disturbing things that he thought he had seen were actually nothing at all – just a blurry flick of a misinterpreted movement or look? Maybe the white object he saw was just a napkin and not an envelope. Or what if he was somehow projecting his own unacknowledged, adulterous thoughts, even if he had never acted on them? Maybe he was just upset about all of the bad news and subconsciously looking for a way to lash out at the messenger. Perhaps this was a brave or masochistic attempt to uncover all possible additional bad news, so that it could be faced and absorbed all in one painful blow. Should he confront her about it? Yisrael was drowning in dilemmas, suspicions, and analyses. He had to collect himself after Ambesah noticed that Yisrael had totally withdrawn from the conversation.
“Are you OK, Yisrael?”
“Yes, just a bit tired from so much food. Post-lunch coma.”
“Can’t blame you for trying to stock up. I feel like a camel gulping water before a desert march.”
Bao agreed: “This food is paradise.”
Chapter 8: More Bad Signs
“Sir, I need your signature,” said a naval supply agent holding a clipboard.
Daniel put his plate of food down to look at the form he was supposed to sign. It was an acknowledgment that his submarine had received certain materials. There were blanks that he had to fill in to indicate the quantity received, and this meant that Daniel had to go back to the submarine to confirm the actual amounts. Duty calls, even on break. The captain briefly excused himself from his wife and daughter.
He walked with the supply agent past the fence surrounding the lawn area and over to the restricted walkway leading to the submarine. The two climbed the accommodation ladder up the sail of the Dolphin and then descended another ladder to the main deck below.
The supply agent took Daniel around the various parts of the vessel so that he could see and then certify the quantity of each item that required a signature confirmation: fuel, drinking water, and food. The unusually large amounts of these provisions that had just been supplied could mean only one thing: they were about to embark on a very long mission. The extended period away from home that awaited him troubled him almost as much as what it actually meant did. What did headquarters have in mind for him and his crew? Why would they need to be at sea for so long?
He climbed down the Dolphin’s accommodation ladder to the pier walkway. Before turning left to walk towards the family reunion beyond the fence, his instincts and curiosity told him to look right, to see if he could see anything of interest in the yard behind the naval command building. That area could be seen only from the viewpoint of the submarine, so everyone at the gathering remained blissfully ignorant of the men there running around in hazmat suits, conducting drills that simulated a chemical or nuclear attack. Thus, with a mere turn of his head to the right, Daniel had inadvertently received another piece of the disturbing puzzle. Was this going to be the mission in which the Dolphin would fulfill her raison d’être and launch a retaliatory second-strike on a country that had delivered a nuclear or chemical attack on Israel?
As Daniel turned left to head back to his family, he debated whether to suggest to Sivan that she take little Esty and their other two children on a trip abroad. It was his first impulse because it was the most natural and human thing to do: protect your loved ones. It was also completely contrary to the selfless ethic of placing the nation first. After all, if every citizen fled the State of Israel at the first sign of danger, who would be left to live in it or defend it? If even the captain of Israel’s most powerful warship encouraged his family to flee upon sensing a doomsday scenario, then the state’s enemies could win without firing a single shot; they would need only to announce the date of their devastating military onslaught, and they could count on a country of cowards to evacuate before then.
In struggling with the dilemma of whether to say something to his wife, Daniel also concluded that there was something fundamental
ly unethical about using highly classified information for his personal benefit. Why should he be any more entitled to see his family survive than the millions of other fathers in Israel who didn’t know what he knew thanks to his military position?
While Daniel’s moral convictions knew exactly what he should do, the temptation to save his family was nearly insurmountable. Doing the right thing almost felt like signing his family’s death certificate.
“Sir, I forgot to ask you to sign on page three of the form as well,” the supply agent said, running up to the captain from behind with his clipboard and a pen. Daniel stopped to give him the needed signature, before turning left to return to his family.
Chapter 9: Bao
Bao saw that his only expected visitor, Yoni, had just arrived and made it over to the picnic area. It wasn’t easy for Bao’s large family to visit on such short notice because they had settled in Ofakim, a small town in the south of the country, so Yoni’s visit meant that much more to him. Bao, whose name means “protection” in Vietnamese, was born in Israel in 1981. He was drawn to serving in Israel’s navy in part because of the circumstances that brought his parents to the country.
In June of 1977, hoping to escape Communist persecution and torture by the North Vietnamese, Bao’s parents threw their fate to the waters in a frail fishing boat crammed with over 60 South Vietnamese refugees. They drifted in the South China Sea for almost a week, by which time they were all but doomed: lost at sea in a leaking vessel without food or water, wearing clothes that had been shredded by the elements. Ships from Europe, Asia, and the Americas one by one ignored the SOS signals emanating from the desperate fishing boat, contravening the most basic code of the sea. When an Israeli freighter en route to Taiwan sighted the destitute fugitives, the captain telegraphed Haifa for permission to take them aboard, even though his ship carried only enough life rafts and jackets for his 30-member crew. And so the passengers who bravely sought freedom and a new life – doctors, professors, bankers, nurses, fishermen, and over a dozen children under age ten – were saved from their precarious boat 400 kilometers south of Saigon. They hadn't had anything to eat or drink for days but the captain found no port willing to accept them. He made an unscheduled stop in Hong Kong to get the asylum seekers desperately needed medical attention but the British colony refused to allow them ashore. The refugees received the same inhospitable reception from Taiwan and Japan.
The incident poignantly reminded Israelis of how ships carrying Jewish refugees from the Nazi Holocaust were rebuffed by port after port in the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, and the Caribbean. Some Holocaust refugee ships were abandoned without food, water, or fuel. One such ship, the SS Struma, was then torpedoed by a Soviet submarine, killing almost 800 men, women, and children. With such haunting memories urging a moral high ground, Menachem Begin’s first act as Israel’s new prime minister was to offer asylum and resettlement to the 66 Vietnamese. Only then did Taiwan allow the group to disembark, where they were whisked to Sung Shan Airport for a flight to Israel, which would go on to welcome over 300 Vietnamese refugees over the next two years.
Bao grew up Israeli in every respect and viewed his service in the IDF as the least he could do to thank the state for saving his family. Beyond fulfilling what he considered to be a basic personal and moral duty, serving in the Israeli submarine force also gave Bao the feeling that his family had truly bested fate: from desperate refugees on the brink of death at sea, to operating one of the most powerful vessels to plumb the waters of the world.
Bao’s family history was known to all of his fellow crewmembers, but none of them had ever heard of or met his bespectacled visitor. Yoni sported a long ponytail that made him look a bit younger than his 42 years, and his lanky, six-foot tall frame stood a few inches taller than everyone nearby. Bao’s face lit up and he greeted Yoni with a warm hug. Standing next to each other, the physical differences between them were naturally accentuated: Bao was just 5’9 inches tall, wore no glasses, and had a wider mouth with a mole just below the right side of his nose.
“Yisrael, Ambesah, everyone – please meet my dear friend, Yoni.” Each person nearby acknowledged Yoni, who in turn said hello to or shook hands with that person.
With suspicions of his wife’s infidelity on his mind, Yisrael was not in the mood to socialize – especially with complete strangers. But when he saw Yoni’s vaguely familiar face, the deputy captain cringed. Yisrael had to summon all of his wits and emotional intelligence to manage the situation, as the career risk of which Netta had tried to warn him suddenly became all too real. Yisrael had definitely seen Yoni at a political demonstration, although the two men had never formally met or spoken to each other. Now Yisrael’s limited measures to hide his identity at political protests would be put to the test. If Yoni had noticed him at the last demonstration a few months ago, would he now remember seeing the same bald-headed Yisrael and recognize his face without the dark sunglasses?
For a moment, Yisrael sought an immediate way out of the conversation but he quickly realized that his sudden exit could actually backfire and draw more attention to him by making the others think that he was snubbing Yoni for some reason. And based on Yoni’s initial reaction after the introduction to Yisrael, the deputy captain was hopeful that Yoni hadn’t actually noticed him at the political protest or at least didn’t recall him now without the sunglasses. More importantly, if Yoni did suddenly say that he vaguely recalls having seen Yisrael at the political protest, Yisrael wanted the opportunity to issue a convincing denial in front of everyone: “I realize that we bald guys tend to look the same, but you’re definitely confusing me with someone else. I’m not a political activist, I’ve never attended any rallies, and I’m actually in favor of building more settlements.”
As Yisrael quietly prepared the best possible damage control strategy, Bao continued with his introduction. “Now Yoni is a really modest guy, especially when you consider his achievements, so I’ll have to tell you about them myself – even though he’s gonna protest.”
“Please, Bao. That’s very kind of you but –”
“See that?” Yoni smiled in resignation as Bao continued. “Basically, Yoni is a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science and he’s going to cure cancer soon.”
“I don’t know about cure, but I’m trying to –”
“This stuff is way over my head, but he’s been using some computer model to figure out the genetic basis for cancer.”
“It’s a model that simulates the molecular dynamics involved in certain types of cancer. Bao overstated the scope of the research a little. It’s really only about 65% of the cancers out there,” Yoni clarified.
“Only 65%? What a slacker you are!” Bao stopped for a moment as everyone laughed. “And get this – he’s already developed some experimental drug therapies that look very promising.”
“They worked well on rats and I’ve been approved to try them on terminally ill cancer patients who have volunteered for my study.”
“Guys, don’t listen to all his hedging – you’re talking to a future Nobel Laureate. And if the patented drugs that he’s developing get approved, you’re probably also talking to the future richest person on the planet.”
Everyone looked very impressed. “Are you giving out autographs yet?” Ambesah joked.
“Don’t be silly. Guys like you keep this country safe so that guys like me can focus on things like cancer research. If anything, I should be getting your autographs.”
“Yes, but the submarine force is kept so secret that very few people will ever even know who we are or what we do,” Yisrael noted, trying to participate in the conversation as if he had nothing to fear from it. “So our autographs are worthless…But you’re going to be a celebrity soon.”
“Celebrity? I had to cancel my lecture series in the UK because some of the universities there decided to boycott all Israeli academics. How’s that for celebrity?”
“What?!” Ambesah exclaimed.
“Actually, I’m not surprised,” Yisrael said, seizing the conversational opportunity. “It makes sense that this could happen in the UK, given the well documented anti-Israel bias at the BBC.” The deputy captain reasoned that vocalizing his views would help him to deny, if necessary, that he is a protesting left-winger. Ironically and conveniently enough, his subterfuge overlapped with his true beliefs: Yisrael genuinely believed that the BBC, once his preferred news channel, had terribly unfair and inaccurate coverage of Israel.
“What do you mean? How was the BBC’s bias documented?” Ambesah asked.
“Thoroughly,” Yisrael replied. “Even the BBC Governors Report concluded that their coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict had been misleading and unbalanced. A media watchdog called CAMERA compiled a huge list of incidents. And I myself saw the BBC’s bias so much that I stopped watching them.”
“Really?”
“Yes. After a while, it gets infuriating to see your country constantly smeared by one of the most influential news organizations. I mean, there are plenty of policy mistakes, scandals, and legitimate problems in Israel that can be covered in a balanced and accurate way without having to falsify information. And if they’re going to give me biased or false information about an issue that I know so well, why should I trust their reporting on anything else?”
“So what made you realize this about the BBC?”
“Remember in 2008 when a Palestinian gunman walked into a Jerusalem Yeshiva and killed eight students?”
“Yeah, that was awful.”
“Well, the BBC tried to turn the terrorist into the victim by showing footage of a bulldozer destroying a burning home and claiming that Israeli bulldozers destroyed the terrorist’s family home. But it turned out that their home was still standing at the time, next to a public mourning tent that his family had set up as a shrine dedicated to their son’s ‘martyrdom,’ as they called it.”
