by Herman Wouk
A peculiar sound, half a growl and half a chuckle. “Oh, yes, Yaakov. Shalom. What can I do for you, Yaakov?”
In dirty fatigues and a dirtier floppy cap, her hands and face black-smeared, Daphna was hurrying to the gate of the Ramat David air force base a few days later. A note had been handed to her: Sergeant Luria — Unauthorized civilian at gate inquiring for you. Has no pass. Outside the guard hut, a cluster of guards and off-duty soldiers all but hid the blue Porsche. Astounded, she pushed through. “Dzecki! By my life, how did you get it out?”
He stood by the car, tipping his red driver’s cap. “Hi, Daphna, care for a spin?”
“You fool, I can’t leave the base.”
“Just joking. I’m on my way to the Golan Heights. I thought I’d let you know I’ve got my car, and thank you for your help at the Mekhess.”
“Me? I did nothing. Who liberated it, the American ambassador?”
“You’re not even close.”
The enlisted men who surrounded them were all grinning. The visit would be the talk of the base, she knew. She was a marked girl at Ramat David, for her father, Colonel Benny Luria, had led a squadron of Mirages in the surprise air strike on Egypt, which — at least in air force opinion — had won the Six-Day War in the first seven minutes. “Well, nice seeing you, but I can’t stay, I’m on duty.”
“Right.” He jumped into the Porsche and started it up with a rich purr.
“My God,” she couldn’t help saying, “how I’d love to drive that car.”
“Anytime, Daphna.” He tipped the cap and roared off.
He was soaking in a hot tub the following night, stiff and aching from ten hours of driving around the Negev, and from a bone-jolting ride on a camel at a Bedouin market outside Beersheba. R-r-r-ing went the phone by the tub. “Dzecki? It’s Daphna Luria. I’m calling from my base.”
“Daphna, hi. What’s up?”
“Have you been to Jericho or Hebron?”
“No. I’ve driven all over, but not in the occupied territories. I’m too new here.”
“Sensible. Well, listen. I’m free on Friday, and it turns out that poor Noah can’t meet me. His ship will have to relieve the Jaffa a day early, it’s got engine trouble, and we’re both furious. I asked him about showing you around the West Bank Friday and he said by all means to do it.”
“Great. What’s involved, Daphna? Any risk?”
“Nothing to it. The Arabs are behaving very well indeed, I assure you. They’re in shock. We’ll have no trouble at all. Be here at seven, and that’ll give us a nice long day.”
“You’re on.”
It was a cold windy cloudy morning, the sun a low dull red ball, when Daphna came out of the gate and waved. Dzecki this time saw not a sloppy mess in fatigues, but the fetching girl of the Dan lobby, with one difference. Swinging on a shoulder as before was her blue leather purse, but slung over the other was a submachine gun.
“Shalom, Dzecki. We talk Hebrew, yes? Good practice for you.” He jumped out and ran around to open the door for her. “Oo-ah, such a gentleman. How nice.” She gestured at the gate guards, who were goggling at the Porsche and at them. “Those boors can’t imagine what you’re doing, or why. Probably never saw it happen before.”
“Daphna, what’s with the Uzi?” He got behind the wheel and started the car.
“Elohim, Dzecki, what a sound that engine makes! Like a tiger waking up. I’m signed out for the Uzi, and I’d better bring it back, or it’s my head. Let’s just get going.”
“Okay. Where to?”
“Simple. Afula, Jenin, Nablus, Jericho. Straight run.”
“Fine. You direct me.”
“Now come on,” she said as they started off, “however did you get this car out of the claws of the Mekhess?”
“Well, it’s a story.” He described his meeting with Gulinkoff on the ferry, then had her giggling with an account of Avi Shammai’s visit, and his strange reaction to the man’s business card. “After you and I got nowhere, Daphna, I thought I’d just call the guy, a shot in the dark. He was real nice, this Guli. He said he was about to fly to Switzerland, but he’d be back soon and look into it. He sure did.”
“Oo-ah, such protectsia. Guli, you say? Noah must know him. A real manipulator. You were lucky.”
“Was I ever! He called me a couple of days later and said, ‘Go get your car, Yaakov.’ That was that.”
“Yaakov? Why Yaakov? Where did he get that name?”
As Dzecki explained she was smiling indulgently. “Don’t be in such a hurry to change your name. Dzecki is nice. So! And the Mekhess simply let you drive it away?”
“Right. Four days’ storage fee, and a twenty-shekel fine for violating regulations. And when I think what the Shammai Brothers wanted of me —”
“Good for you, Dzecki. Most Americans would have gone along with the Shammai Brothers.”
They were entering Afula, a dusty quiet town where children watched with open mouths as the Porsche went by. The one light at the center of town was green, and they turned right into a stream of vehicles, mainly trucks of crated fruit and vegetables, and army lorries carrying bored or sleeping soldiers. Beyond Afula, on a two-lane asphalt road through green-brown farmland, the traffic gradually thinned. He explained as they drove how his grandmother Lydia, a lifelong Hadassah lady, had gone into ecstasies over his making aliya, and had presented him with his choice of cars.
“L’Azazel, I wish I had such a grandmother. How fast can this car go, Dzecki?”
“On the autostradas I’ve done a hundred miles an hour. But here —”
“Oo-ah, a hundred sixty kilometers! Shiga’on! [Crazy, marvellous!]”
“Daphna, I’m playing it safe here. Ninety is the limit, so I crawl at ninety.”
“Oh, go a hundred ten, Dzecki. It’s all right.”
The car darted ahead and she leaned back, crossing her arms and sighing with contentment. “Ah-h-h! Both my grandmothers live on a moshav. Nahalal, actually Moshe Dayan’s moshav. Never left. That’s where both my parents were born, grew up, and got married. Moshavniks can’t give away Porsches. By the way, Dzecki, we’re just crossing over the Green Line.”
“We are?” He glanced around in bewilderment. “Here? You mean we’re entering the West Bank? It all looks the same.”
Daphna uttered a hearty charming laugh, showing fine white teeth. “By my life, this is an experience, riding with you. Of course it’s the same, what did you think? That it would be a different color, like on a map? It’s all just Palestine.”
“But no fence, no sign, nothing?”
“What for? The Green Line wasn’t real. Nothing but a mark on a map. When Jordan attacked us in the Six-Day War, poof, end of Green Line. Gone.” She laid a hand on his arm. “Say, when do I get to drive? You promised.”
“Nothing doing. I’ve read the law. They’ll confiscate my car if you’re caught driving it.”
“Read the law again. If you’re in the car with me, no problem.”
“You’re sure? Say, it gets prettier and prettier out here, doesn’t it?” He was glancing at a little Arab village snugged up on a rocky slope. “Real Bible scenery.”
“Oh, the West Bank’s lovely. We call it Judah and Samaria, the Bible names. Listen, Dzecki, the first big town we get to is Nablus. From there let me drive to Jericho, all right?”
“We’ll see.”
Nablus was a hilly town, wholly Arab in architecture and in populace. In the noisy central plaza amid food stalls and small open shops, half a dozen empty busses were lined up, and groups of sightseers were strolling about, shepherded by guides. Some Arab children stared silently at the Porsche, but the white-robed men in kaffiyehs and the bigger boys on foot or on braying little donkeys utterly ignored it, as they ignored the thronging tourists.
“Lock the car, of course,” she said to Dzecki, as he parked in the plaza and they got out. Dzecki could hear the Israeli guides mostly talking English, with here and there some patter in French or German.
“Say, about that gun, Daphna.”
“Yes, what about it?”
“Couldn’t one of these Arabs grab it and make trouble?”
“You think so? Try to take it from me, Dzecki.” He smiled skeptically. “Go ahead, I mean it, just try.”
He made a quick sudden move at her, and even more quickly she unslung the Uzi and the muzzle was against his stomach. “See? Don’t worry, we’re trained. Anyway, look there.” In a patrol jeep nearby, five soldiers in black berets sat surveying the scene through dark glasses, guns at the ready. “The Arabs have learned their lesson, believe me, for good and all. These tourists are as safe as they would be in London. Let’s look around a bit, and drive on. Jericho’s nicer.”
He sniffed the air. “Exciting smells! Strange spices, strange foods, and —”
“And donkey dung, not so strange.”
He laughed. “Popular sightseeing spot, for sure.”
“Well, Nablus is really Shechem, you know. Very important in Bible history. Right there,” she indicated a mountain looming over the town, “is Har Gerizim, where the Samaritans still worship.”
As they walked down a main street a tall Arab boy in a shirt and slacks, with a broad tray of fragrant fresh flat breads on his head, passed by them and went into a gloomy alley of tumbledown stone houses. “My God, those smell marvelous,” Dzecki said. “I’m starved. I’m going to buy one. For you, too?”
“No thanks, but listen, Dzecki —”
He started after the boy into the alley, which was full of Arab men and boys sitting around on stone steps. Behind him he heard harsh shouting, and over his shoulder he saw a lean gun-toting soldier running toward Daphna, berating her in rapid-fire Hebrew. She was answering back angrily. “Dzecki, get out of there,” she called, and went on arguing with the soldier. Dzecki hastily backed out of the alley, and the soldier walked off muttering.
“That place is off limits for tourists,” Daphna explained. “Not that anything would happen, but still — oh, come on, let’s run down to Jericho. There’s lots of good places to eat. Please, please let me drive. Look, I’ve brought my license. See?”
The appeal in the big eyes was not to be resisted, not by Dzecki. “Well, sure.”
When she got behind the wheel of the Porsche, her face lit up like a child’s. “Yes, yes, I understand, I see, I see,” she kept saying as he explained the controls. “No problem, no problem. I’m ready to go, let’s move.”
“All yours,” he said. “On to Jericho.”
She started off smoothly. As the car passed the soldier who had made the fuss, he shook a reproving finger at them. “The road’s better from here on,” she said, “and the scenery’s truly lovely.” She drove carefully through the town, and spoke again when they were on asphalt highway, bowling along at a hundred twenty. “My God, what a glorious sensation. You’ll have to let Noah drive this car one day.”
“Glad to. Are you and he getting married?”
“Elohim, no. I’ve got more than a year of sadir to do, and God knows whether I want to marry a naval officer, anyway. I’ve had the military, up to here.” She put a flat hand to her throat, and threw back her head in a wild laugh. “I just like him.” Traffic was light, but there were trucks and horse-drawn wagons to pass. Daphna did so with nervy skill, concentrating on her driving. The play of her shapely thighs under the tight army skirt, as she worked brake and accelerator, caught Dzecki’s attention and held it.
“I look forward to meeting Noah.”
“Oh, you will.” She gave him a quick glance. “You resemble each other, you know? Same round face. Same hairline and thick hair, same brown eyes. The Berkowitz face, I guess. General Barak also has it. He’s the best-looking man I’ve ever met, though he’s going gray.”
“Like to meet him, too,” mumbled Dzecki a bit thickly, watching Daphna’s legs thrusting and rolling this way and that. Daphna was oblivious to this hot scrutiny of her limbs, or seemed to be, and he enjoyed the frustrating pleasure all the way to Jericho.
Unlike Nablus, where he had felt obscurely uncomfortable, Jericho charmed him. As the Porsche descended the winding mountain road toward the little city of palms, he felt a touch of awe. Jericho … Shechem … Hebron … Jordan … the Dead Sea … Far from religion though he was, Dzecki had breathed in with the American air veneration for these Holy Land sights. The pileup of busses, the tourists led about in clusters by guides, did not bother him here. The Jericho Arabs seemed friendlier, or at least not sullen and withdrawn as in Nablus. In fact the hucksters in the market stalls, chaffering with camera-laden Americans, were all smiles and gracious gestures.
“Tell you what,” said Daphna, “we’ll feed you first, then have a look around. You like humus and tehina?”
“Love it.”
“You’ll really love Abdul’s. Best in Jericho.”
She deftly turned and twisted through streets that even the small Porsche could barely scrape through. “Here we are.” Beside a moss-encrusted low stone building, she pulled into a grassy plot. Shouldering gun and purse, she led him into a dark small eating place. “Too late for breakfast, too early for lunch,” she said. “Nice, no other customers. I’ll order for you.”
“You’re not going to eat?”
“Not me. Had a big breakfast.” She rattled in Arabic at a fat aproned man behind the counter, and almost at once he smilingly served the humus with a basket of warm pitas and a bowl of olives. “Hearty appetite,” she said. “I’ll go and get the tank filled. It’s a long way to Hebron.”
“I’ve got to be with you in the car, no?”
“Pah! We’re not on the highway. There are no cops in these back alleys.” Dzecki shrugged, and she left. He scooped up all the humus and tehina with the pitas, washed it down with a beer, and was beginning to feel very good and relaxed when Daphna showed up, a man in a blue police uniform following her into the shop.
“You own the Porsche this lady was driving, Adoni?” the policeman asked him.
“Yes, any problem?” Dzecki tried for a light tone.
“It will be impounded. Please follow me,” said the policeman, producing a notebook and going out.
Dzecki and Daphna looked at each other for a long moment, and she said softly in English, “Sorry, Dzecki. Sorry, sorry, sorry.”
A sad laugh broke from him. “What you mean is, ‘Ani mitzta’er.’ ”
She looked puzzled, then her face brightened, and she ruefully laughed too. “Just so. Only feminine, Ani mitzta’eret. Me and the Mekhess, hah? Noah will kill me for this.”
“No problem,” he said, “let’s just hope Guli isn’t in Switzerland.”
2
The Telephone Call
“Green rocket to starboard,” called the lookout on the flying bridge of the Eilat.
Pale in the setting sun, the rocket was arcing straight up into the sky over Port Said, beyond the horizon some thirteen miles away. The captain was dozing in his wheelhouse chair. Noah was navigating, checking bearings so as to stay well in international waters. The destroyer was slowly steaming the dogleg course in sight of the high Sinai dunes, which it had been patrolling turn by turn with the Jaffa for months. Shabbat routine, and the off-duty crew were sleeping, reading, or taking showers.
Noah’s eye was at the alidade but his mind was on Daphna Luria, as it had been since they left port. What a rotten break, their cancelled Friday date! She had demurely told him, in one of their long telephone calls, that a girlfriend in Afula was going skiing in Austria, and had given her the key to her flat, where there were marvellous rock-and-roll records. That was all, but from the heated husky note in her voice, and from picturing the rest, Noah had been in a joyous fever for days. At last, at last … of all times for the damned Jaffa to lose an engine …
“What’s this? Rocket to starboard?” The captain jumped from his chair, went out on the wing, and trained binoculars at a yellow light blossoming high in the sky. After a long moment he said, “Noah, what do you think?�
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Noah was reluctant to believe his eyes, yet there it was, floating like a starshell but growing bigger. “By my life, they really may have fired one, Captain.”
“It’s possible. Battle stations, Noah.”
Darting into the wheelhouse, the exec seized the microphone. “Emdot krav, emdot krav.” (“Battle stations, battle stations.”) The siren wailed, and sailors came swarming and yelling out of hatches and passageways and up ladders, some half-dressed, some naked but for shorts, pulling on life jackets as they ran. “Azakah, azakah.” (“Alarm, alarm.”) This was the emergency order to fire at will. The AA guns opened up at the swelling light with a deafening RAT-TAT-TAT and streams of red tracers.
“Left full rudder. All engines ahead flank.” The captain’s voice went strident. He took the microphone from Noah. “Now all hands, this is the captain. TEEL. [MISSILE.] I say again, TEEL, TEEL, TEEL to starboard.”
Through Noah’s binoculars a small black shape became discernible in the yellow glow. One count against that son of a whore, Colonel Fischer, the Egyptians could fire a missile, all right. Now, was it really bound to malfunction because it was Russian? Intelligence said that this Soviet weapon, dubbed the Styx, was subsonic and radar-directed. That was all. Nobody in Israel, or indeed in the West, had yet seen a Styx fired. This was a first, a historic revelation.
“Look, Noah, isn’t it altering course?”
“I believe so, sir.”
The ship was heeling hard over, scoring a white curve on the crimson sunset sea, and the yellow light appeared to be turning with it. Its guidance radar was working, then. It was clear to see now in binoculars, a long delta-winged tube shooting reddish-yellow fire from its tail and trailing black smoke. The ship’s guns rattled and boomed, crimson tracers combed the missile, but on it came. The evasive turn was futile, Noah realized, merely swinging the ship broadside to present a wider target. He plunged to grab his life jacket as the missile started its dive, and had it half on when a shocking CRASH! catapulted him across the deck of the wheel-house. His head struck a projection, he saw broken lights, and all went black …
