doctor, Noah, and the captain, as to who should go in the remaining
boats, who on rafts, who in life jackets; quick cold-blooded decisions about the seriousness of injuries and the chances of
men living through the night. At the order
Abandon ship
the boats full of the worst wounded were lowered, the crew threw everything floatable overboard, and then began sliding down
ropes or leaping into the sea. The officers went last.
Noah’s naked legs were plunging into cool water when he heard yells in the dark around him,
“Teel, teel.”
Over the ship’s bow, now black and steep against the stars, another yellow glare showed. He remembered to turn on his back.
The explosion threw up a black fountain of water that foamed white in the moonlight. The
crack!
all along Noah’s spine was like being hit by a speeding car. Then he thought he must be delirious, because it seemed he heard
singing. Pulling himself up with searing pain on a floating jerrican, he saw shadowy sailors nearby clustered on a raft, raising
discordant defiant voices:
Jerusalem of gold,
Of bronze and of light …
S even time zones to the west, General Zev Barak at this moment was reviewing the navy requisitions for missile countermeasures,
which had arrived at the Israeli Embassy in Washington by diplomatic pouch that morning. The military attaché was a prematurely
gray officer in his early forties, an older heavier Noah, with lighter skin and bushier eyebrows. Noah had been beseeching
his father by telephone for help. Now that the papers were in hand Zev Barak felt he could act. Procurement of such secret
electronic gear would be tough at best, but he thought he might argue that countermeasures, being purely defensive gadgets,
should not be embargoed as weaponry. The Pentagon was being damned obdurate on major replenishment long overdue. This might
be a bone it would throw to Israel.
He pulled a greenish pad from a drawer and began a rapid scrawl in Hebrew of a draft memorandum. Unlike so much of the humdrum
paperwork in this assignment, here at least was a labor of love, a way to be of use to his son out on the firing line. Barak
was not happy in this job. He had never been. During his brief visit to Jerusalem after the great victory, the Minister of
Defense had told him,
“What you accomplished in Washington, Zev, was worth two brigades in the field.”
Coming from Moshe Dayan that was something, but words were easy. Barak’s army contemporaries who had fought the war had leaped
ahead on the
maslul
, the career track toward General Staff posts, sector commands, and the grand prize of Ramatkhal, Chief of Staff. Nothing
Dayan said could change that. In earlier missions to Washington, Barak had earned a reputation of deftness at handling Americans,
which now was proving a trap.
Writing up the memorandum absorbed him until his intercom buzzed. “General, your lunch with the Assistant Secretary is at
twelve-thirty.”
“L’Azazel, thanks, Esther.” Finishing the draft would have to wait. He slipped on his army topcoat and drove to the Pentagon
through the gorgeous autumn foliage along the Potomac.
Henry Pearson, one of several Assistant Secretaries of Defense, was a gaunt bureaucrat with a chronic cigarette cough, who
fancied military history and liked to chat with Barak about Thucydides, Napoleon, and Garibaldi. Not today, though. Air force
colonel Bradford Halliday was unexpectedly there in the office, and he rose to shake hands with the Israeli.
“I believe you gentlemen know each other,” said Pearson.
“We’re acquainted,” said Halliday, cool and unsmiling.
“Nice to see you again,” said Barak. In their awkward previous encounter, Halliday had been in civilian clothes. He looked
taller, leaner, and more formidable in a blue uniform with combat decorations. It would have taken a sharper observer than
Henry Pearson to discern that these two men were in love with the same woman, and had run
Back in the Saddle (v5.0)