Halfway through dinner, she became aware that Jacques had been watching her continually. Each time she would look down the table, his eyes would try to fix her gaze. But they were too far away from one another to engage in conversation.
After dinner, Youssef suggested that they all go to a discotheque to continue the party. By that time, she was high enough to think it was a wonderful idea. She loved to dance. It was not until they had been at Whisky for almost an hour that she looked up and saw Jacques standing in front of her.
He bowed almost formally. “May I have this dance?”
She listened to the music, responding to the hard driving beat of the Rolling Stones. She looked at Vincent. “Excuse me,” she said.
He nodded and turned to talk to Youssef, who was sitting on his other side. She was dancing even before she was on the floor.
Jacques turned to face her and began to dance. For a moment she looked at him critically. Rock really wasn’t a Frenchman’s style. He danced with the uptight stingy movements that to a Frenchman passed for cool. He would be better off if he stayed with ballroom numbers. But she soon forgot about him as she lost herself in her own dancing.
His voice rose over the sound of the music. “You said you would call me.”
She looked at him. “I did?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t remember,” she said. She honestly didn’t.
“You’re lying,” he said accusingly.
Without a word, she turned and started off the floor. His hand caught her arm, pulling her back.
“I apologize,” he said earnestly. “Please dance with me.”
She stared at him for a moment, then let him lead her back to the floor. The record changed from rock to ballad. He took her into his arms and held her tightly against him.
“For the past three days I have not been able to eat or sleep,” he said.
She was still cool. “I don’t need a gigolo.”
“I, better than anyone else should know that,” he said. “Someone as beautiful as you. I want you for myself.”
She looked up at him skeptically. His hardness pressed into her. “Feel how much I want you,” he said.
Her eyes closed and she rested her head against his shoulder. She allowed herself to enjoy the pressure. The high inside her head seemed to take on a rosy hue. Maybe he was telling the truth after all.
What she didn’t see was the smile that passed between him and Youssef.
***
The coarse cotton khaki of her shapeless shirt and trousers scratched at her skin as she followed the five other new women into the barracks of the commanding officer. The stiff leather boots clumped heavily on the wooden floor. The yellow light of the oil lamps cast an unsteady glow in the room.
The commanding officer sat at a table at the far end of the room, a uniformed soldier seated on each side. She was studying a paper on the table and did not look up until they came to a halt in front of her.
“Attention!” their sergeant barked.
“An-nasr. Victory,” they shouted as they had been trained to do on the very first night they arrived in camp a few days before.
Leila felt her brassiere pull tight against her breasts as she snapped her shoulders back. The brassiere too was made of coarse cotton. She looked straight ahead.
Slowly the commanding officer rose to her feet. Leila saw that she wore the equivalent of a colonel’s pips on the shoulders of her blouse. She stared at them silently for a moment, then abruptly in a surprisingly strong voice she shouted, “Idbah al-adul.”
“Slaughter the enemy!” they yelled back.
She nodded, a faint smile of approval coming to her lips. “At ease,” she said in a more normal voice.
There was a rustle of the coarse cloth as the women settled into a more relaxed position. The CO came around the front of the desk.
“In the name of the Brotherhood of Palestinian Freedom Fighters, I welcome you to our holy struggle. The struggle to free our peoples from the bondage of Israel and the enslavement of imperialism. I know that each of you has made many sacrifices to come here, estrangement from loved ones, perhaps ostracism from your own neighbors, but I can promise you one thing. At the end of our struggle lies a freedom greater than has ever been known.
“And because of this, your struggle is only beginning. You will be called upon to make many more sacrifices. Your honor, your body, even your life may have to be given to win the freedom we seek. For we will have victory.
“Here, you will be taught many things. Weaponry. Guns, rifles, knives. How to make bombs. Small and large. How to kill with your bare hands. How to fight. All so that we, together with our men, can drive the Zionist usurpers back into the sea and restore the land to its rightful owners, our people.
“You have already, each of you, taken the sacred oath of allegiance to our cause. And from this moment on your real names will be forgotten and never used in this camp. You will answer only to the name assigned to you and in this manner, in the case of unforeseen capture, you will never give away the names of your comrades. From this moment on your only loyalty is to your cause and your brethren in arms.”
The commanding officer paused for a moment. The women were silent in rapt attention. “The next three months will be the most difficult any of you have ever known. But at the end you will be able to go forth to take your place beside Fatmah Bernaoui, Miriam Shakhashir, Aida Issa and Leila Khaled, others of our sex who have proven themselves the equals of their brothers in the struggle.”
She walked back around the table and took up her position between the two men. “I wish you luck.”
“Attention!” the sergeant barked.
“An-nasr,” they yelled, straightening up.
“Idbah al-adu!” the CO cried.
“Idbah al-adu!” they shouted back.
The commanding officer saluted. “Dismissed.”
They broke ranks and followed the sergeant back out into the night. “Get to your barracks, girls,” the sergeant said dryly. “Your day begins at five tomorrow morning.”
He turned and went off to the men’s section of the camp as they started for their own small building. Leila fell into step with the tall young woman who occupied the bed next to hers.
“Wasn’t the CO wonderful?” Leila asked. “For the first time I feel my life has a meaning.”
The woman looked at her as if she were a creature from another planet. “I’m glad you feel that way,” she said in a common-sounding voice. “The only reason I came up here is to be near my boyfriend. But I haven’t even been able to get anywhere near him and I’m getting so horny that I wouldn’t be surprised to find myself in your bed eating your pussy tonight.”
***
Thirty-Five thousand feet over the Atlantic Ocean in a dark blue star-filled sky, Baydr slept as his plane raced time on its way to New York. Suddenly he awoke with a start. He sat up in the bed, his eyes wet with tears.
He brushed them away with his fingers and reached for a cigarette. It must have been a bad dream. But there was a presentiment of dread within him, a curious foreboding that lay heavily on his heart.
The girl beside him stirred. “Q’est-ce que c’est, chéri?” she asked in a sleepy voice.
“Rien,” he said. “Dors.”
She was silent and after a while the drone of the engines made him drowsy. He put out the cigarette and went back to sleep.
ANOTHER PLACE
JUNE 1973
The black Cadillac limousine bearing diplomatic plates rolled to a stop in front of the administration building and three men got out—two men dressed in civilian clothing and an American Army colonel. They started up the steps toward the building. The Israeli soldiers standing guard at the entrance presented arms. The colonel saluted and the three men went into the building.
The senior staff sergeant at the reception desk rose from his chair, saluting. The colonel returned the salute. The sergeant smiled. “You know where to go, colonel?” It was more a statement than a question.
The colonel returned his smile, nodding. “I’ve been here before, sergeant.” He turned to the other two men. “If you’ll follow me—”
He led them down a corridor to an elevator and pressed the call button. The doors opened silently and they boarded the car. He pressed a button on the panel and the elevator began its descent. Six levels underground it stopped and the doors opened again.
The colonel led them out into another reception area, where another senior staff sergeant sat. This time the sergeant did not get up. He looked at then, then sat down at the list on his desk. “Please identify yourself, gentlemen?”
The colonel spoke first. “Alfred R. Weygrin, Colonel, United States Army.”
The civilian in the three-button suit: “Robert L. Harris, United States Department of State.”
The man in the rumpled sports jacket: “Sam Smith, American Plumbing Supply Company.”
The sergeant didn’t crack a smile at the absurd cover name for the CIA agent. He ticked the names off the list and gave each of the men yellow plastic identification cards, which they affixed to their lapels. He pressed a signal button on his desk and a corporal appeared from a door on his right. “Please escort these gentlemen to Conference Room A.”
Conference Room A was at the end of a long narrow gray corridor, guarded by two soldiers and still another sergeant at a desk. The corporal halted in front of the desk while the sergeant checked their plastic ID cards, then pressed a signal button which opened the electronically controlled doors. The visitors went into the room and the doors shut automatically behind them.
There were approximately nine men already in the room, only two of whom were in the uniform of the Israeli Army, one a brigadier general, the other a colonel. The brigadier came forward, his hand outstretched. “Alfred, it’s good to see you again.”
The American smiled as he shook his hand. “Good to see you, Lev. I’d like you to meet Bob Harris of State and Sam Smith. Gentlemen, General Eshnev.”
They exchanged handshakes. The general introduced them to the others and then gestured to a large round table set at the far end of the large conference room. “Supposing we find our seats, gentlemen.”
Printed nameplates indicated their places, and when they had all been seated there was only one vacant chair remaining at the table. It was positioned just to the left of the Israeli general, and inasmuch as he was the highest-ranking officer it meant that the vacant place belonged to his superior. The Americans glanced at the nameplate curiously but without comment.
General Eshnev caught the glance. “I’m sorry for the delay, gentlemen, but I am informed that General Ben Ezra is on his way. He has been tied up in traffic and should be here at any moment.”
“Ben Ezra?” Harris whispered to the colonel. “I never heard of him.”
The soldier smiled. “I’m afraid he was a little before your time, Bob. The Lion of the Desert is almost a legendary figure. Honestly, I thought he was long since gone.”
General Eshnev caught the tail end of the remark. “Was it your MacArthur who said, ‘Old soldiers never die, they just fade away’? Ben Ezra proves how wrong that statement is. He refuses to die or to fade away.”
“He must be in his seventies by now,” the CIA man said. “The last we heard he’d gone back to his kibbutz after the sixty-seven war.”
“He’s seventy-four,” the Israeli said. “And as far as the kibbutz is concerned, there’s no way we have of knowing just how much time he actually spends there. He’s got the whole kibbutz under his spell. Not even the children will tell us about him. We never know whether he is in or out.”
“It would seem to me if you wanted to know what he’s up to you’d keep him in Tel Aviv,” Harris said.
“It could become embarrassing,” Eshnev said, smiling. “The Lion of the Desert was never known for his tact. It seems your President still remembers his comments when Eisenhower stopped the British and French takeover of the Suez Canal in fifty-six. You know he planned that operation for the British.”
“I didn’t know that,” Harris said. “But why should the President be angry? He wasn’t President then.”
“He was Vice-President and Ben Ezra was very outspoken on the subject of his support of certain Arab elements which he held responsible for Eisenhower’s decision. Ben Ezra even went so far as to advise the British to tell Eisenhower to mind his own affairs, and I’m afraid his language was not very diplomatic. After that embarrassment, Ben Gurion had no choice but to accept his retirement. That’s when he went to the Sinai to live in a kibbutz.”
“You mentioned that he came out in sixty-seven?” Harris asked.
“Yes. But not officially. And that proved to be another embarrassment. He didn’t want us to stop until we reached Cairo and got a total surrender. He said his own intelligence could prove that if we didn’t we would have to do it all over again within seven years.”
“What makes him feel that his sources are superior to our own?” the CIA man asked.
“His mother was Arab, and there are still some who maintain he’s more Arab than Jew. At any rate, he lives out there among thousands of them and in a strange manner they seem to trust him and come to him for justice. The Arabs call him ‘Imam’—holy man, reader, a man who lives by the honored principles. He crosses borders with impunity and alone.”
“Was he married?” Harris asked.
“Twice,” General Eshnev replied. “Once when he was a young man. His first wife died in the desert giving birth to a child, who also died while they were trying to slip through the British lines into Palestine. The second time was after he had retired. He married an Arab girl and as far as I know she is still alive and living with him in the kibbutz. They have no children.”
“Does his coming here mean that you expect trouble then?” Colonel Weygrin asked.
The Israeli shrugged. “We Jews always expect trouble. Especially when there are things happening we don’t understand.”
“Such as?” Harris asked.
“That’s why we’re meeting,” Eshnev said. “Let’s wait for Ben Ezra. He just appeared after two months of dead silence and called for a meeting.”
Harris’ voice was slightly disdainful. “And the old man gets it, just like that?”
“Not quite like that. First he had to convince Dayan that he had something. Dayan then went to the Prime Minister. It was she who gave approval for the meeting.”