by Herman Wouk
“I’m told you’re doing well in the Sayeret.”
“I’m in the junior group, Abba. Still learning. Since I came in there’s been no big challenge.”
37
The Challenge
The rumors Yossi had heard about Benny Luria were not wrong. Some weeks before the wedding the aviator had been diagnosed by an air force psychiatrist as close to a breakdown, what with insomnia, inability to concentrate, fitful disorientation, and an unshakable sense of worthlessness and of oncoming doom. Before accepting the recommendation that he take medical leave, Luria had gone to see the Ezrakh.
“General, what is troubling you?” the ancient asked, stroking his thin beard and fixing him with sunken but bright blue eyes, as they sat together in his book-crammed study.
“My son’s death.”
“But there are so many fathers like you in Israel. When the time to mourn has passed, they take heart and return to their work.”
“I’ve tried.”
“It’s a sin, General, to mourn beyond the appointed time. The Holy One says, as it were, ‘You don’t accept my decree? Cease the prolonged mourning, lest I give you something really to mourn about.’ ”
“Rabbi, I don’t know why Dov died.”
“You say that? You? An air force general? To guard the rebuilt Holy Land, and to sanctify the Name.”
“I know those words, Rabbi. I’ve spoken them, all too often, to pilots’ parents myself. They don’t stick to my son Dov. I can’t put it any other way. They aren’t an answer, not for me. What shall I do? I’m not well.”
“Can you make time to study? Three months?”
“I can get three months’ medical leave, yes.”
“Study the Talmud for three months, then we’ll talk again.”
“Talmud? I’m not capable, and what has that got to do with Dov?”
“The Hebrew you know. The head you’ve got. For the Aramaic I’ll assign you a haver. Do as I say, General.”
“All right, rabbi.”
The psychiatrist, strongly doubting that Talmud study was what Major General Luria needed, recommended a tour of the Orient with Irit, and then a month in Switzerland. Luria followed the Ezrakh’s advice instead, immersing himself in the Talmud day and night at the yeshiva. His haver (study companion) was a youngster of fourteen from a pious Lithuanian family, who read difficult Aramaic passages twenty centuries old as though they were frontpage news stories. Although it was all absolutely novel to him, Benny Luria quickly picked up a taste for the Talmud’s recondite logic and hard sense, and by whatever obscure workings of his psyche, he began to feel better. For one thing, he was treated by the other students as just one of them. The Ezrakh’s little yeshiva was a noisy untidy place where, past ninety but unchanged in frailty of body and vigor of mind, he presided over a student body decidedly heterogeneous; for he delighted to take in at any age Jews who wanted to learn, and to get them started. Though most were young, some were married and bearded, some bald as well as bearded, and even an air force general did not stand out as peculiar.
One evening shortly after Yossi’s wedding the monitor of the study hall, a rabbi in his forties with a bristly red beard, came to Luria as he and his haver were arguing an abstruse detail of divorce law. “General, an urgent call.”
At a wall telephone in the corridor he put a finger in one ear to shut out the loud beit medrash drone. “Luria here.”
A familiar gruff voice. “Luria, do you know about this Air France plane that was hijacked on leaving Athens? Or is your nose never out of the Talmud?”
“I resent that, sir.” He adopted the air force chief’s waggish tone. “I always listen to the news while I flog myself before breakfast. That plane’s in Uganda now, isn’t it? Or has the French government got it freed?”
“It’s still in Uganda. Now listen, Luria, I want you to come to the Kirya.” Air Chief Peled turned brisk. “We have a crisis here, and it’s life or death, or I wouldn’t disturb you.”
Luria took his Talmud volume and drove to Tel Aviv, where to his astonishment the Kirya buildings were all dark and the parking lot almost empty. If a real military crisis were on, cars should jam every space and all windows in the compound should be ablaze. He hurried to the air force building, where typewriters clattered, officers bent over maps and photographs or argued at charts, and female soldiers hurried in the corridors. Standing at a desk spread with blurry blown-up photos, Peled waved a magnifying glass. “Elohim, Luria, you look a lot better, beard and all.”
“I am, sir.”
“What’s doing it? The Talmud?” Benny Peled gestured at the tome Luria carried. “Maybe I should try it. Today I was called a mental case or a charlatan to my face, by nobody other than the Ramatkhal.”
“Oh? Why?”
“This Entebbe business. What else? These are old intelligence pictures of the terminal.” He threw the glass down in disgust. “Luria, the government’s decided to negotiate with the hijackers! Its public stand is just noise. And to cover its collective ass, it has asked Motta Gur officially whether a military option exists. And to cover his ass, Motta called a staff conference for opinions. I crossed Motta up, I said it was feasible to rescue those hostages.”
“You said what?”
“I said we could transport twelve hundred troops to Entebbe, if we had to, and keep them supplied for two weeks. In fact” — Peled grinned, spreading the RAF pencil mustache — “I said if the government wanted to take all of Uganda, the air force could handle its part. That may have irked Motta.”
“No wonder he called you a mental case.”
“All right, Luria, but if I had just said we couldn’t do it, that would have been that. The army would have been off the hook, and the government could have proceeded to cave in publicly to the hijackers. No military option!” The short slender air force chief paced, shaking a fist in the air. “But I tell you, Luria, if they do that I’m going to take off this uniform. I swear it. There’s no point in being an Israeli airman, because it’ll mean we haven’t got an Israel, or won’t have in a few years.” He paused and barked, “You have nothing to say?”
“Isn’t the French government responsible for all the lives on that aircraft?”
“The French have been ding-donging with that subnormal dictator, Idi Amin, since the plane landed. No progress. He may well be in cahoots with the hijackers.”
“But why twelve hundred troops, sir? This isn’t a war. Uganda’s not our enemy. It’s a question of getting to Entebbe, killing the terrorists, and taking out our people. If you’re serious, and if it’s possible to get there, it’s a task for Sayeret Matkhal, a replay of the Sabena airplane rescue.”
“I’m serious, don’t fool yourself, but that was here in Lod airport. Entebbe is two thousand miles away, and it’ll take troops to secure a foreign airfield. Look, first things first, Luria. Our Hercules transports don’t even have the range to make it there and back. Give me your thoughts on that.”
The two generals sat down, facing each other across the desk. Peled ripped open a pack of Players and smoked. Drumming his fingers on the Talmud volume, Luria said, after a pause, “If Idi Amin isn’t in with the hijackers he can refuel our planes himself, right there in Entebbe, and become a world hero for frustrating terrorism.”
“Don’t depend on that.”
“No. Otherwise, three possibilities. One, after the rescue we can land the hostages in some African country friendly to France, and let the French come and get them; then later, sort out the return of our aircraft. Two, assume Idi Amin is hostile, and plan to help ourselves to fuel in Entebbe at gunpoint. Three, money talks in all languages. Refuel secretly wherever we can, and pay.”
The air force chief nodded, squinting through smoke. “A Talmudic analysis. I’m assembling sheaves of intelligence on Entebbe. Stay here until this balagan is over. It can’t go on long, and this building is a madhouse. I need one detached good mind to talk to.”
“Sir, I’m at your orders, bu
t the rest of the Kirya’s asleep, the army’s not moving. How can you expect to make this happen?”
“Convince Motta Gur. There’s no other way. He doesn’t believe it’s possible, so the army’s clanking along in its old nine-to-five grooves. Convince the Ramatkhal, and this place will blaze up like Dizengoff Street on Friday night.”
“B’seder, sir, I can study the Talmud anywhere. I’ll miss my haver, though.”
Shayna Nitzan stood at the french doors to a flower-lined balcony in a peach negligee Yossi had bought her; more diaphanous than anything she had ever worn or would have chosen, but if it pleased him, why argue? Looking out over the lake at snowy Alps lit by the morning sun, she felt at once radiant joy and dark fear. Until the moment she was in his arms under the Ezrakh’s canopy with the ring on her finger, Shayna had never fully believed that Yossi Nitzan would at last be hers. All her imaginings of lovemaking with him, those rosy fantasies haunting her from girlhood onward, were vaporous nonsense from books, compared to the rough sweet burning reality of their nights in this bedroom in Lucerne. The fear stemmed from her lifelong experience that any joy coming her way was balanced too soon by something unexpected, evil, and shocking. An ominous telephone call at dawn had gotten him out of bed, interrupting a sleepy moment of morning rapture.
From behind, strong arms around her, a kiss on her neck. “Blighted honeymoon, motck. Sorry.”
“No,” no. Beautiful, glorious, no matter what. Tell me.”
“Okay.” He was dressed except for sandals on bare feet. “I’ve been down talking to the concierge. He’s arranging a taxi and our air tickets. No problem, we have several hours to pack.”
“Is it the hijacking?”
“Yes. That was Motta Gur himself who called.” He came beside her and hugged her close. “Shayna, Shayna, will you ever forget this balcony, these flowers, those mountains, this room?”
“I’ll remember everything. Even the wallpaper, Yossi, I’ll remember these blue and yellow parrots with the spreading wings —”
“Well, here it is. The French are getting nowhere with Idi Amin, and the hijackers’ deadline is day after tomorrow. Unless Israel delivers some forty convicted terrorists to Entebbe, they’ll start killing Jewish passengers, and they’ll keep killing them until our government gives in. They’ve got more than a hundred of them, mostly Israelis.”
“But what can the army do? Uganda’s thousands of miles away, and —”
“The air force proposes to fly there and rescue the hostages.”
She pulled away from him, staring with big round eyes.
“Yes, Motta thinks the scheme is crackbrained, too. The air force and the army are like different planets, you know. I’m to be liaison with the aviators. Do nothing else, just check and check air force plans with a microscope for flaws as things develop. Motta’s under terrific pressure from the government to give a yes or a no in a day or two.”
“But who would do the rescuing? Paratroopers?”
“It would have to be Sayeret Matkhal.”
She was holding his hand to her breast, and her grip tightened as by a spasm. “Aryeh, then.”
“Possibly. He’s in the junior group, so he might not go. If he does go, it’ll be what he’s trained for and yearned for. Let’s eat something from room service, then pack. Look, is there nothing but dry cereal you’ll order for breakfast? What’s wrong with soft-boiled eggs, for instance?”
“Let me alone. Next you’ll be urging me to have snorkers.”
He laughed out loud, seized her, and they embraced and kissed with passion.
Don Kishote returned on Wednesday to an awakening Kirya, where ongoing meetings in all the armed services were debating rescue scenarios. An elaborate plan for a mass parachute jump near Entebbe airport was being analyzed away as too chancy. The navy was about to try out, in the waters off Haifa, a scheme to drop sea commandos into Lake Victoria, so as to take the terminal by surprise from the water side. On the Ramatkhal’s orders, Yossi went along in the helicopter to observe the exercise. It was a discouraging fiasco. The commandos never got down into the sea, for their rubber boats, on hitting the water, exploded like melons dropped on a stone floor. In this way one impractical scheme after another was being eliminated, and a landing by Sayeret Matkhal in Hercules transports was emerging as the only conceivable option. But it too required the latest intelligence on Entebbe airport, apparently impossible to ascertain in the time left. Above all, the refueling problem remained unsolved.
Amos Pasternak was in Africa, Kishote found out, on a hush-hush quest for a fuel stop; and he recalled with irony how Amos, now high in military intelligence, had once said that Air France was no target for hijackers, the French being so cozy with the Arabs. By now it was clear that Idi Amin was playing the terrorists’ game. The French could do nothing with him or them, and the burden of the crisis was falling on Israel, where public clamor for action was rising. The families of the passengers were staging anguished demonstrations, even bursting in on the Prime Minister to demand that he negotiate with the hijackers.
And then, with the deadline for the killing on Thursday only hours away, the terrorists took dramatic action. In an eerie process recalling Auschwitz, they separated the nearly three hundred passengers into Jews and non-Jews, and sent off the non-Jews to Paris on Air France rescue planes. This made their death threats against those who remained, immured in the old unused terminal building, frighteningly more credible. Prime Minister Rabin asked his cabinet for a unanimous vote to deal with the kidnappers, obtained it, and went public with the decision.
The news was blazoned and broadcast around the world: “ISRAEL SURRENDERS!” Arab countries were jubilant. The Israeli public was in shock. The French went on futilely pleading with Idi Amin and the hijackers to moderate their demands, and the other Europeans and the Americans expressed sympathy with Israel, mingled with regret at such yielding to terrorism. In order to arrange the trade of the criminals in Israeli prisons for the hostages, the hijackers agreed to postpone their deadline to Sunday, while issuing dire warnings against any rescue attempt. Field Marshal Doctor Idi Amin Dada, in a genial telephone talk with an Israeli colonel he knew, confided that the hijackers had packed the old terminal inside and out with dynamite; and that if they so much as heard an airplane pass overhead that was not cleared by the control tower, they would instantly blow the building and everybody in it sky-high.
That night the Kirya parking lot was chock-a-block. Every window in the compound was alight. The intelligence picture was beginning to improve, for in Paris the freed non-Jewish hostages were talking. A squad of Ugandan soldiers, they disclosed, were posted in the old terminal building to foil any rescue; and an officer on Kishote’s staff who had trained Ugandan troops swore that, rather than stay in a building wired up with dynamite, those soldiers would desert or mutiny. So that threat was evidently a bluff. Israeli contractors who had helped build the Entebbe airport years ago were also filling in much information. At a midnight conference with the key military men, Defense Minister Shimon Peres at last authorized the start of preparations for the attempt with the words “Roll it” preparations only, since the Ramatkhal alone could give the green light, and Motta Gur remained unconvinced. The landing in an unfamiliar airport in total darkness was too wild a gamble, he maintained, especially since no reliable refueling expedient was yet forthcoming.
Still, by Friday morning Don Kishote discerned that all aspects of the operation were starting to cohere. A sense was spreading in the Kirya that something real was happening; something arising out of the embattled soul of Israel, and the peculiar improvisatory nature of its armed forces. Gaps were filling in. Ideas were surfacing and getting put into action. The thousand elements that had to go into the rescue — arms, ammunition, aircraft maintenance, medical preparations, vehicles, signal equipment, almost endless lists of urgent requirements — were streaming in from all over the little country. There was not much talk about what all this was for. The knowing knew.
The rest did as they were told, and by tribal instinct shut up about it to a surprising extent, especially for Jews.
By nightfall Friday the electricity in the air of the Kirya had the acrid feel of an oncoming thunderstorm. Focussed down to an attack with four Hercules transports on Saturday night, the operation had even acquired a code name, THUNDERBALL, borrowed from a James Bond thriller. In the first plane would ride the Sayeret Matkhal fighters (therefore maybe Aryeh!) who would kill the terrorists and bring the hostages to the rescue aircraft. In the next two aircraft would go a covering force of paratroopers and elite infantry with vehicles, trucks, jeeps, and armored personnel carriers for sealing off the airport, and neutralizing Ugandan forces while the rescue was accomplished. The fourth aircraft would bring massive fuel pumps with fueling personnel. A great last-minute to-do was going on about commandeering these huge pumps, so as to refuel if necessary at Entebbe. So far Amos Pasternak was reporting from Africa only that “fuel might not be an insoluble problem,” implying that he had found a government not unsympathetic to Israel, or at least not uninterested in hard currency. But he could not as yet confirm it, so the pumps were going to Entebbe.
Toward evening Air Force Chief Peled came back to his office and found Benny Luria in the outer conference room where he had ensconced him, sitting with a shabby teenager at the big open Talmud volume. “Who’s this, Benny?”
“My teacher.”
The youngster regarded the handsome uniformed air chief with very bright dark brown eyes, awed but unafraid.
“Surely you’re joking.”
“Well, supposedly we’re studying together, but whenever I hit an Aramaic stretch I can’t move hand or foot without him. So I sent for him. His name’s Eli.”
