The Siege of Tel Aviv

by Hesh Kestin

  THE SIEGE

  OF TEL AVIV

  OTHER FICTION BY HESH KESTIN

  Based on a True Story

  The Iron Will of Shoeshine Cats

  The Lie

  THE SIEGE

  OF TEL AVIV

  A NOVEL

  HESH KESTIN

  5220 Dexter Ann Arbor Rd.

  Ann Arbor, MI 48103

  www.dzancbooks.org

  THE SIEGE OF TEL AVIV. Copyright © 2019, text by Hesh Kestin. All rights reserved, except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher: Dzanc Books, 5220 Dexter Ann Arbor Rd., Ann Arbor, MI 48103.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Kestin, Hesh, author.

  Title: The siege of Tel Aviv : a novel / by Hesh Kestin.

  Description: Ann Arbor, MI : Dzanc Books, 2018.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018051981 | ISBN 9781945814839

  Subjects: | GSAFD: War stories | Fantasy fiction

  Classification: LCC PS3611.E87 S53 2018 | DDC 813.6--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018051981

  First US edition: April 2019

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  for

  STEPHEN KING

  America’s storyteller,

  undaunted friend,

  mensch

  AUTHOR’S PREFACE

  IN OCTOBER OF 1973, I flew to New York from my home in Israel to tell my parents their younger child, my twenty-six-year-old kid brother Lawrence, was dead. This was not something I could do by phone. Freshly married, Larry was an architect working for an Israeli government agency responsible for planning new Jewish settlements in what some called liberated Judea and Samaria and others called the Arab West Bank. Whatever you called it, on a dirt track near Jericho the car he was traveling in flew off the road and tumbled into a dry river bed. An Arab shepherd nearby heard the stuck horn and managed to flag down two Arabs in a pickup truck, who drove them to the nearest Arab hospital, in Ramallah, bypassing Jerusalem. Bad luck. The Arab doctors in Ramallah then sent my brother and his driver back to Jerusalem. Thus what was probably an act of Arab terrorism was balanced by the humane reaction of other Arabs to try to save their lives.

  Following surgery at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, Larry’s driver remained comatose for months, then came to. Larry died on the operating table, possibly the first casualty of the Yom Kippur War, which would break out in a matter of days. Any investigation into this mysterious single-car accident would be put off and then filed away. Israel had more urgent matters to attend to.

  I was with my father in synagogue when I heard two men behind us whispering that war had broken out. We left immediately. I had to get home: my wife and then infant daughter Margalit were alone within rifle range of three Arab villages. But all commercial flights to Israel had been canceled.

  I called the Israel consulate. Unimaginably on Yom Kippur, someone picked up the phone.

  “Consulate of Israel, how may I help you?”

  “I need to get to Israel immediately.”

  “I regret we are providing transportation only for Israeli citizens.”

  “I’m an Israeli citizen!”

  “Then why are you speaking English?” she asked with that wonderful bureaucratic impatience that Israeli government functionaries have honed to an art form.

  I switched to Hebrew. “Because, you—” Here I inserted a long list of biblical and more contemporary curses, some of them physiologically improbable— “you were speaking English! Now can you get me on a fucking plane?!”

  “Be at Kennedy Airport at three,” she said, and rung off.

  The El Al flight was full of silent IDF reservists, but no one needed military expertise to know how bad it was. In the north, Syrian tanks were threatening Haifa; in the south, masses of Egyptian mechanized infantry were within artillery range of Tel Aviv. It was inconceivable that the few hundred of us on the plane could make a difference. The mood was somber until, over the Mediterranean, about a half hour’s flying time from Ben-Gurion Airport, we picked up an escort of two Israeli Super-Mystère fighters. The entire cabin broke out in song. If the Israel Air Force could spare two of its twenty-four Mystères, perhaps things weren’t so bad.

  Alas, they were. Flushed with confidence from Israel’s victory over the same enemies in the 1967 Six Day War, Israeli military intelligence had failed the nation. The IDF did not believe the Arabs were up to mounting a successful multi-front invasion.

  Apparently, neither did the Arabs. Unaccustomed to victory, there were no plans to finish the job. Fearful of going forward with out orders, the Arab armies stood in place. But the enemy’s major blunder was timing: they chose the one day on the Jewish calendar where most of the IDF, especially the reservists who made up two-thirds of its manpower, were either at home or in synagogue. The roadways were deserted and thus wide open for soldiers to speed to their units’ staging areas.

  I found my way home to another kind of threat. My wife Leigh answered my knock at the door with a loaded shotgun pointed at my head. Later she told me she’d considered cutting the intruder down through the door; she couldn’t imagine that I had managed to return home.

  As for what ensued, at the price of 3500 Israeli fatalities, the IDF regrouped, counter-attacked, and repelled both Egyptian and Syrian invasions. But there was another price. Never again would Israelis take for granted that their country would be safe from Moslem conquest. Rarely discussed, this nightmare lives within the heart of the entire nation.

  Could it happen? You’ve come to the right book.

  —HK

  THE SIEGE

  OF TEL AVIV

  1

  ALEX LOVES SILK. IF she lived in a colder country she would love furs as well, to say nothing of black leather. She delights in high heels—hers this evening are knock-offs of an Italian pair she saw in Vogue, size twelve, made by a talented pair of Christian Arab brothers whose workshop is a hole in the wall in Jaffa, not a virtual hole in the wall but a real hole in a real wall—just as she loves nylons, and jewelry, and perfume, and her collection of wigs that scream woman. Were it not for Alex’s profession, she wouldn’t mind growing her hair out, but the Israel Air Force frowns on its fighter pilots wearing theirs long enough to catch in the complex wiring of an F-16 helmet or, worse, tangling in the hundreds of miles of cable exposed when a pilot blasts out of the cockpit in an emergency ejection. This is why female pilots in the IAF wear their hair cropped short. But Alex does not quite fall into that category.

  As it happens, Alex is the IAF’S leading ace, a pilot so skilled, her reflexes so honed that, simply in terms of physical abilities, the specific athletic attributes of a fighter pilot, he is the most perfect specimen the Israel Air Force has ever strapped into the seat of an F-16. Alex is as known for his leadership qualities as she is for her capacity to survive a 4-G power dive for three minutes without blacking out, and as admired for her guts as he is for her unique ability to choreograph and control a multiple jet fighter attack as though one brain were at the instruments of many aircraft.

  She, he? His, hers? If this is confusing consider the effect two years earlier on General Motta Ben-Sheikh, commander of the IAF Fighter Academy, who happens one evening to be sitting with his wife in the lobby of the Tel Aviv Hilton entertaining relatives visiting from France, a yearly ritual that is never anything beyond familial obligation. General Ben-Sheikh’s people, originally from Morocco, chose different places of refuge when it became clear after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 that the Jewish community of Fez had no
future in a Muslim country: most fled to Israel, many finding careers in the armed forces and police. The wealthier, however, emigrated to France, where seemingly without exception they prospered in the manufacture of women’s undergarments.

  Whenever his Parisian cousins visit Israel Gen Al-Sheikh makes it a point to entertain them at the Hilton, a not so subtle indication that he in his way has done as well as they in theirs. And moreover that while the Al-Sheikhs of Paris, despite their wealth, will forever be outsiders in their adopted country, filthy Moroccans, second-class citizens in la belle France, the Al-Sheikhs of Tel Aviv are not second-class anything.

  This particular evening, General Al-Sheikh finds himself looking past his garishly dressed nouveaux-riches relations to a woman seated at the bar with a group of equally young and stylish Israelis. From a distance he can just about make out their easy banter in colloquial Hebrew, and he tries to hear what this especially striking young woman is saying when he feels his wife kick him under the table. Hard.

  “If you can take your eyes off that cheap bitch for a moment, I wouldn’t be the only one having to carry on this stupid conversation with your vapid relatives,” he hears her say in Hebrew, using a tone meant to suggest something on the order of Darling, do you think we should order dinner now or have another round of drinks? Which is precisely how she explains the veiled reprimand to her husband’s non-Hebrew-speaking relations.

  For answer, General Al-Sheikh excuses himself, walks over to the bar, and without so much as a pardon-me asks of the young lady, “Miss, do I know you? You seem awfully familiar.”

  In reply the young lady rises from her barstool, stands straight and elegant in her four-inch heels—and salutes.

  “Captain Alex Shabbati, sir!” she barks. “You taught me everything I know about aerial combat, sir!”

  The good general, who through three wars and countless hours in the sky thought he had seen it all, shakes his head with an uncommon briskness, as though shaking off a mosquito. “Clearly, captain, not everything.”

  Within forty-eight hours, the problem is bucked up to the head of Fighter Command, then to the commanding general of the IAF, then to the IDF chief of staff, then to the minister of defense, before it lands with an unwelcome thud on the desk of the prime minister herself, who runs her eyes over the single paragraph labeled Issue attached to Major Shabbati’s military biography and security summary.

  “Must I read the whole thing or can you spit it out?” she says with her usual impatience. Shula Amit can be charming, but rarely wastes this talent on subordinates.

  The defense minister clears his throat. “Simply put, when not in uniform our ranking ace dresses as a woman.”

  The prime minister examines the photos in the file. “Quite fashionably too.”

  “Madam Prime Minister, the defense establishment does not find this to be a laughing matter.”

  “Who’s laughing? This suit is classic Dior—probably a knockoff, but still...”

  “Nor do I find it—”

  “Though the purse is way too big. A delicate outfit like this...”

  “Madam—”

  “Then again, doubtless he carries his service pistol in it. Dior never had that problem.” She offers a lethal smile that vanishes immediately. “Why is this on my desk? Can’t you people deal with something so small? No, tiny. Miniscule. You are the defense minister, are you not?”

  “There may be political ramifications, madam. Sacking the man would put us in a bad light. If he went to the press we’d never hear the end of it—”

  “Gays are not barred from serving in the military. As you well know, one of our leading generals is as pink as a Mediterranean sunset.”

  “Major Shabbati isn’t gay.”

  The PM lifts one of the photos. “With such a tuchus?”

  “He’s as straight as I am.”

  “I’ll take that for what it’s worth. Look, Duvvid, is there some reason he shouldn’t serve? Has he suddenly forgotten how to—what was it the newspapers said about him?—knock an apple out of the sky at four hundred miles an hour? The man isn’t thirty and he’s a legend. If he is still—”

  “The best, yes. No question.”

  “So?”

  “He goes to bars this way, restaurants. Dances with foreigners. They could be spies.”

  “I dance with foreigners. Every one of us does. The head of the Navy sleeps with a Bulgarian with tits he is apparently ready to die for, though we both know she works for us. Incidentally, they’re fake. What then is the problem?”

  “The Air Force believes such behavior may be detrimental to morale.”

  “Whose?”

  “The men under his command. Presumably.”

  “Presumably?” the prime minister asks. “You’ve taken a poll? Look, we’re at the edge of an historic moment. In a matter of weeks, perhaps days, we may finally have a breakthrough with the cousins.” As is common in Israel, she uses the Hebrew term for the entire Arab race, who as sons of Abraham are genetically related to the Jews. “Is it so important that one of our flyboys, even the best of them, dresses, shall we say, more elegantly than expected? He does his job. Why don’t you and your subordinates in uniform simply do yours?”

  “The brass wish to sack him. I think they’re right.”

  “And I think that if we go around sacking people who in their non-working hours do odd things, then we might as well be Saudi Arabia. Put another way, you sack Major Shabbati and I will sack the entire Air Force command, and you with them. Now was there something else, or can I return to leading this country into a new era of continuing prosperity and, hopefully, peace?”

  “I shall make your decision known to the Chief of Staff.”

  “Thank you,” the prime minister says. “And if you can find out who is his dressmaker, I really would like to know.”

  2

  AT THIRTY, DAMIAN SMITH has just negotiated a new and lucrative contract with CNN in Atlanta, where he can claim a fairly active though not exciting sex life—according to Smith, what the hell else does anyone do in Atlanta?—and has just had his teeth recapped for high-definition television, the aesthetic standards of which demand nothing less than glaring perfection. On this particular Wednesday, Smith finds himself scheduled for a remote with Connie Blunt, the one person at the network he cannot abide: vain, overpaid, thinskinned, shallow, under-educated, and pretty enough to get away with all of the above. Smith detests people like this, though it rarely takes more than two drinks for him to admit that he himself is people like this. If not worse.

  On the screen behind him is a still of winds battering the Caribbean; the still will become video as soon as he goes live. In his earpiece, the segment director’s voice counts steadily down to the end of the commercial break. “Three, two, one.”

  “And welcome back to Breaking News on CNN, as gale force winds batter coastal areas of the Dominican Republic,” Smith reads from the teleprompter. “With hundreds of fatalities and property damage already estimated at three hundred million dollars, the US Weather Service is now issuing hurricane warnings for Florida and up the Eastern seaboard as far north as Maryland. Still officially designated a tropical storm, Lucille is expected to make landfall by tomorrow morning. The National Weather Center warns the storm may well grow into a hurricane as it mixes with cooler air moving east. Officials in both Florida and neighboring Georgia have called for coastal residents to evacuate, and the Red Cross has gone on high alert. More on Lucille as we receive updates. Meanwhile, in a surprisingly more peaceful situation...”

  Behind him, the screen goes to a simplified map of the Middle East, zeroing in on Kuwait, then to a grand Arab-style building, then to the building’s ornate Hall of Unity, where diplomats from member states of the Arab League raise their hands to vote.

  “...In the Middle Eastern nation of Kuwait, member states of the Arab League voted unanimously today to pursue peace with Israel with no preconditions, an historical first. From Jerusalem, Connie Blunt. Conn
ie, how is this news being received in Israel?”

  Framed by Orthodox Jews dancing at the Western Wall, Blunt, thirty-five, a lot blonder and clearly female but otherwise a smudged carbon copy of the anchor in Atlanta, breaks into what passes for incisive reportage in American television news.

  “Damian, news of the Arab League’s sudden turnabout in its refusal to negotiate with Israel, which only two of its member nations recognize, hit the Jewish State with all the force of what one Israeli I spoke to called ‘a big wet kiss.’ Newspapers, television and radio here have been calling this, quote, ‘the beginning of true peace in the Middle East.’ Never has the Arab League agreed to sit down with Israel without the intervention of middlemen such as the US or the European Community, with—and this is the important part—no preconditions, no demands that Israel close down its settlements on the West Bank. Damian, this looks so much like the real thing...”

  While Blunt continues in a voiceover, the screen goes to the floor of the Knesset, where Israeli parliamentarians applaud a just concluded statement by Shula Amit in her trademark pearls and Chanel suit. The prime minister, who leads a broad coalition that only a week before was on the verge of collapse, simply beams.

  “...that the normally fractious Israeli parliament has become one big ear-to-ear grin, the prime minister roundly lauded as, and I quote, ‘the prime minister of peace’, a far cry from how the rightwing politician is usually portrayed and portrays herself. Observers here point out that it was far right Prime Minister Menahem Begin who in 1979 signed a peace treaty with Egypt. Regarding any new peace treaty, however, officially the government here is playing it close to the vest. A foreign ministry spokesman limited his remarks to saying, ‘The State of Israel looks with favor upon recent developments in Kuwait.’ But I’ve talked to cab drivers, schoolteachers, restaurant workers, and even soldiers, and all are clearly excited that the current united Arab initiative may finally bring peace to a Middle East battered by a hundred years of senseless bloodshed. Connie Blunt, Jerusalem, Israel.”