By the Rivers of Babylon (48 page)

Dobkin tried to bring his voice under control, to sound as natural as possible. “Is there anyone there who can recognize my voice, sir?”

“You better hope there is.” The Prime Minister looked around the table. A few heads nodded tentatively. A general who had been a colonel under Dobkin added, “Or a very good impersonation.”

“Go ahead, General,” said the Prime Minister, still not fully convinced, but very excited. “Where are you calling from?”

Teddy Laskov held the forged photgraphs tightly in his hands. Slowly, he began moving them back toward his attaché case.

“Babylon,” said the voice over the speaker.

The room exploded with exclamations and most heads turned toward Laskov and Talman. The Prime Minister hit the table for silence, but he could not quiet the room. He spoke loudly into the microphone. “Where are you calling from, General? The telephone, I mean? Are you at
liberty?
”

“Yes, I’m at liberty. I’m calling from the guest house here, sir. Near the museum.” Dobkin tried to control his voice, but it wavered slightly.

The Prime Minister tried, also, to sound composed, but his voice was becoming tremulous. “Yes. All right. Can you give us a situation report, General? What the hell is going on?”

Dobkin knew that the entire Cabinet, and most of the important men in the military were listening. He collected his thoughts and gave a clear, concise recapitulation of everything that had happened since they were lost over the Mediterranean.

A half-dozen aides ran in and out of the conference room with army ordnance maps of the area, facts and figures about flight times to Babylon, ground elevations, weather, time of first light and sunrise, and a hundred other items of input that had been assembled ever since Laskov had made his statement about Babylon. It would all have to be considered before any final operational decisions could be made.

As Dobkin spoke, he could hear men and women passing through the lobby outside his door. The walking wounded going somewhere. A door opened and shut off the lobby. A radio went on in the room where the card game had ended. A woman’s
husky voice came out of the radio singing one of those interminable Arab songs. A few of the Ashbals joined in. The noise masked his voice, but it also kept him from hearing if anyone was near the door.

“What do you suggest, General?”

Dobkin recognized the voice of General Gur. “Suggest? I suggest, General Gur, that you come and get us the hell out of here.”

“How are those mud flats on the west bank?” asked Air Force General Katzir.

“Still wet,” said Dobkin truthfully. “But it looks drier farther from the river.”

“The road you landed on,” said Katzir, “do you think it would support a C-130?”

“I can’t say, General. I think we ripped it up when we put down.”

“We may have to use helicopters,” said an unidentified voice.

“No,” said Dobkin. “No time for that. They’re being attacked right
now
.”

Another voice said something about sending a squadron of fighter craft in first. Dobkin could hear several voices being picked up by the microphone now. He heard Teddy Laskov’s name mentioned. He’d thought that the man would be in retirement by now, but apparently he was at the meeting. Dobkin answered a few more questions as he listened to the debate heat up. Suddenly, he interrupted in a loud voice, “Mr. Prime Minister. I’m afraid I have to go. There are three gentlemen here with AK-47’s, and when they comprehend what is happening, they will surely want me to get off the telephone.”

In Jerusalem they heard what sounded like a scuffle, then a sharp crack like a gunshot, or perhaps something breaking. Then the telephone went dead.

Miriam Bernstein sat in the copilot’s seat next to David Becker. “You don’t think
anyone
heard your SOS, then?”

“No.” He turned the radio down but left it on so that he could monitor. “The Lear is still up there, but I suspect he’s in trouble.”

“Why?”

“Why?” The fact that Hausner had sent a messenger to get a report from him and not come himself was an indication of how little faith everyone had in his end of this operation. Miriam Bernstein was, however, the Deputy Minister of Transportation
and, therefore, both Hausner’s and Becker’s boss. But that didn’t seem to matter anymore. “Why? Because he can’t land in this dust, that’s why. He will have to land and refuel somewhere where the dust is not so thick. Then
maybe
I can get a call through.” He glanced sideways at her. “Do you want to go and make your report? That’s all I have.”

“Later.” She stared out the shattered windshield. “Are you afraid to die?” she asked suddenly.

He turned his head and looked at her in the glow of the instrument panels. He hardly expected such a question from this very reserved woman. “No. I don’t think so. I . . . I’m afraid to fly again . . . but not to die. Funny . . .” He had no idea why he let himself be drawn into such intimacy. “And you?”

“Almost everyone I’ve been close to is dead.” She changed the subject. “What do you think of Jacob Hausner?”

He looked up from the book that he had begun to write in. He suspected that Hausner and Bernstein had become very close. But that didn’t change his public or private opinion of Jacob Hausner. “A Nazi.”

“He likes you.”

Becker didn’t understand where the conversation was going or why. Apparently she was overwrought and just wanted to talk. People did funny things when they were staring death in the face. He had just admitted that he was afraid to fly, and he wouldn’t have admitted that to his psychiatrist. “Don’t get me wrong, Mrs. Bernstein. I’m glad we had him along for the ride. Things would probably have been all over for us by now without him.” He kept looking at her. She didn’t
look
overwrought. She appeared to be . . . happy, excited. He looked down and began writing again.

“I’m in love with him.”

Becker broke the point on his pencil. “Oh.” The gunfire seemed to grow louder, and Becker looked up. The night looked more frightening, more hideous and ominous through the glass of the flight deck than it did when he was outside in it. Every frightening thing he had seen he had seen through a piece of plexiglas, and he was increasingly associating horror with plexiglas, danger with plexiglas. Death with plexiglas. When he looked through a car windshield or even a house window, his stomach would churn, and he had never been consciously aware of the reason until now. That was an interesting discovery, but it was a little late. “Oh. That’s . . . I’m . . .”

“What are you writing . . . David . . . may I call . . . ?”

“Yes. Of course.” He closed the book. “The log. The ship’s log.”

She leaned toward him. “A log? You mean you’ve been keeping a record of all that’s happened?”

“Well, only in a very dry, officialese way.”

“May I see it?” She held out her hand and he passed it to her. She sat back, opened it, and flipped through the pages. She read a random entry.
1602 hrs: Switch to alt. tac. freq. Gen. Laskov
broadcast last message: E-2D will keep us on radar. Laskov
leaves decision to use Phoenix to us. Squadron turns back.
She flipped a few more pages.
18:31 hrs: Flt. off. Hess dead from
skull fracture caused by brick through windshield during
rollout. Pilot should have had supersonic visor raised sooner in
prep. for crash land. Might have averted death.
She stared at that entry for a few seconds, then closed the book and looked up. She forced a smile. “We are called the People of the Book, and we are also a bookish people. The written word has kept us together since the Diaspora. It’s odd that no one else thought to keep a chronicle of what we did here.”

“Well . . .” Becker found a cigarette stub and lit it. “It’s hardly a chronicle, Mrs. Bernstein—”

“Miriam.”

He hesitated. “Miriam, It’s just my job to—”

“But that’s the point, David. It’s always someone’s job. A scribe. A keeper of the books. A scholar. A ship’s captain. Throughout history someone has always had the job of keeping the written records, and sometimes those records have been powerful and illuminating documents. Ezra was a scribe, and he has left us the only account of the repatriation of the exiles from Babylon. In modern circumstances, it can be an airline captain who performs this function.” She smiled at him.

“I suppose.”

She leaned toward him. “I can’t convince you of your own importance, but can I convince you to hide this book in some way?”

“I suppose that’s a good idea.”

She started to pass the book back to him, but hesitated. “Would you mind if I sat awhile and wrote my own account of what has happened here? I’ll try not to take up much space.”

Becker forced a laugh. “Take as much space as you like. I made what I believe was the final entry just now.”

“Thank you. Do you have carbon paper? I’d like to make a second copy of what I write. We can bury the book and leave the copy of my writing on the craft.”

Becker found a piece of carbon paper in his flight kit. “The book itself has to remain on board. We can bury your copy.”

“All right.” She took the carbon paper. “Thank you.”

“No one is going to see either of them, you know.”

She looked up at him. “The Ravensbrück Prayer was written on a scrap of paper, David.”

“That prayer has a lot of meaning for you.”

“It did.” She looked out the windshield for some time. “It was unsigned, you know, but the camp was mostly for women, and so perhaps that can give us a clue to the author.” She passed a hand over her face. “They told me that . . . that my mother died at Ravensbrück. And so I like to think that perhaps she wrote it.” She lowered her voice, and it was barely audible above the noise outside. “The words once had greater meaning for me, but what still does have meaning is that the human being who wrote it had faith. Faith that it would be found, but more importantly, faith that there would be free people left in the world after that terrible time who would find something of value in those words. And so it survived on a scrap of paper, although the author probably did not survive. It has been reproduced a million times, and it will survive the next holocaust.” She smiled again at Becker. “Genesis was originally written with lampblack on papyrus, David. If that first scribe had listened to someone like you, we would never have known how the world began.”

He forced a smile. “I’m convinced.”

“Good.” She took a pen from him and bent over the logbook. She wrote in quick, flowing Hebrew characters.

Suddenly she looked up, and there were tears in her eyes. “That prayer
had
meaning for me, but it has very little now because it was a prayer of forgiveness—a call to turn the other cheek. The person who wrote it was tested in the extreme for those qualities and was not found wanting. I have been tested here—not very hard, mind you, not the way the testing was done at Ravensbrück—and I am no longer forgiving. The fact is, I’m happy the way it has turned out. I look forward to shooting the first enemy soldier who puts his head in here. If I make widows and orphans and childless parents and grieving friends before I die, I’ll be sorry for those unfortunate people, but it’s nothing personal. Do you understand that? Does it sound so terrible?”

He shook his head. “An eye for an eye.”

“Yes. And a tooth for a tooth.” She turned a page in the logbook and continued writing.

Hausner sensed, without looking at his watch, that it was close to dawn. The battle was nearly finished, and only a few Israeli rounds were being fired downslope.

The Ashbals were advancing cautiously yet casually, laughing and shouting to each other through the blowing sand. They were not unaware that this apparent exhaustion of Israeli ammunition might be yet another ruse, but if it were, then the Israelis were playing it very close. In fact, an advance party of sappers had actually breached the perimeter at the south end near the promontory and had found the trenches deserted.

They moved slowly through the windblown darkness. They could sense the kill now and they were savoring it. They came through the fallen abatis and over the crest. They paused curiously at the trenches, then moved over them. They experienced that strange, subdued exultation that comes with violating the long-forbidden lair of the enemy.

Occasionally, a round or two of Israeli fire sent them scattering and slowed down their movements, but for the most part, except for the steady wind, which no one consciously heard any longer, there was an eerie silence on the hilltop.

In military terms, resistance was light and scattered. The Ashbals were having everything their own way, but patience and caution were still called for. After coming so far, none of the survivors wanted to meet his end within minutes of the final victory. They all wanted to share in the fruits of that victory.

The Ashbals refrained from answering the scattered Israeli fire for fear of drawing return fire on themselves. They signaled quietly to one another in the dark and tried to join up and form a single search line to sweep across the flat terrain. They did not want anyone slipping through their advance. The Ashbals in the center of the evolving line could begin to distinguish the outline of the Concorde whenever there was a break in the dust clouds.

The Israelis moved back slowly and quietly, firing only enough to keep the Ashbals at a distance and slow down their advance. There was no final plan, no last orders from the command post, but the retreat was orderly. About half the Israelis had decided to try to escape down the western slope and half had decided to stay and meet their fate where they stood.

The wounded were moved out of the shepherds’ hut and into the Concorde where it was felt they might have a better chance to survive a massacre if they were temporarily out of the way during the worst of it. There were, however, persistent rumors that the wounded were to be killed before the Ashbals could get to them. There seemed to be some confusion on that point.

The Israelis on the west slope fired down toward the Euphrates to try to determine if there were any Ashbals there.