When Dror finally mentioned the Golan, Tajar stopped shuffling papers. He looked up and nodded. The two men were alone in Dror's office.
What we're talking about now, said Tajar, is a very great quantity of information. First the Runner would have to get his hands on it, then he would have to ship it to us. The task would take several years, with the Runner concentrating on one section of the front after another, or however he could manage it, and all the while the flow of physical material would be enormous. He'd have to map out the entire complex because the Golan's a mosaic, integrated, and even a number of pieces wouldn't provide what's needed.
Could he get the information? asked Dror.
I think he could, replied Tajar. Both the commander of the Syrian paratroop brigade and the Syrian minister of information are personal friends. The nephew of the Syrian chief of staff, a junior officer who spends a lot of time on the Golan is a close personal friend. And there are others. The Runner has the right military connections and the repair work he does increases his access. But he'd need a back-up team to move the material for him, so he could devote himself to acquiring it. He can't do both. No one working alone, in a place as hostile as Damascus, could move that much material. And anyway, communicating via Europe the way we've been doing was never meant to accommodate an assignment such as this.
What kind of a team? asked Dror.
Professionals with experience in Arab countries, replied Tajar. Mostly working out of Beirut but with several of them resident in Damascus. They won't know who the Runner is and he won't know who they are, and they'll never meet. It's the only secure way to move so much material.
Dror nodded, smiling. Do you have some people in mind? he asked.
By chance I do, replied Tajar. Several other operations will have to be readjusted because some of the men are already on assignment abroad, but that can be worked out. As soon as the men are back here I'll begin training them for exactly what's required. They should be Runner specialists from now on and the Runner operation should take priority for them.
Do you have a timetable? asked Dror.
And a tentative cost sheet, replied Tajar, pulling out papers and putting them on the table. We should begin by bringing the future members of the team in from the field immediately. Later this month I'll see the Runner in Belgium and he and I, together, will work out the functioning of the team. In less than six months you can expect to see results. The Runner's fast, General, as you'll discover. In fact he works miracles. . . .
Dror was known for his daring as well as his careful planning. Tajar was given his hand-picked team. As before, only Tajar and the director of the Mossad knew the true identity of the Runner. The members of the back-up team were led to believe the Runner was an Arab but not a Syrian national, perhaps a military attaché or a diplomat on assignment in Damascus, in any case a man in an extremely sensitive position.
Security would be complete, with Tajar himself overseeing every detail.
***
When Tajar told Yossi the news in Belgium, they both took pride in the moment. Yossi knew the significance of the Golan Heights and was deeply pleased their work was taking this specific course. Mapping the Golan would be an immense undertaking, of enormous value to Israel and precisely the kind of task for which they had waited so long.
This is it, isn't it, said Yossi with enthusiasm. Now at last — this is it. Everything we've always prepared for.
Yes, this is it, replied Tajar. And with a team behind you to take care of all the logistics, now at last you can raise your eyes to the horizon and truly fly like the wind.
Yossi nodded. And remember every detail where I pass, he said, just as I did when I was a boy running across the desert.
Just so. The Runner even then, mused Tajar. But I suspect life is often like that, secretly. Finding our true way is perhaps no more than being what we have always been . . . but with eyes that see. And in that you're fortunate, Yossi, because you go much farther than most people ever can. Few people see as much of where they pass in life as you do. I know, because I once lived that way myself. Often it can seem isolating, and it is, but the isolation is no greater than anyone else's, really. It's just that other people aren't so aware of it, the way they're not aware of so many things. But intensity, eyes that see . . . well, it's exhilarating beyond all else and once you taste the drug you can never give it up because it's the ultimate addiction in life. . . .
Living. Now. Knowing it.
You miss it so much, don't you, said Yossi.
I do, replied Tajar. But I also have you and that's a great gift. It's true these two legs of mine are ugly and stiff and awkward, twisted pieces of smashed flesh and bone that barely carry me from one place to another, but in my mind I can run with you and see what you see and feel what you feel and that's a very grand thing. So do it all, Yossi. Do it for yourself and that will also be doing it for me, and more. Every bird that flies is a joy for God to behold. . . .
***
He's confident, Tajar told Dror upon his return from Belgium. He doesn't see any insurmountable difficulties.
The next step is for me to work with the team, then move them into place as soon as we're ready.
In the beginning Tajar often brought back the members of the team from Beirut, and once or twice from Damascus, in order to question them at length in person. He wanted to know exactly what they saw and felt and suspected, and what he learned encouraged him. The Runner was protected, safe as never before. The operation was proceeding smoothly on its new course.
As for Dror, he was discovering that the Runner could indeed work miracles.
TWELVE
In 1966 there was another army coup in Syria and a more extremist military government took power. In the spring of 1967 Syria began pushing Egypt toward a new war with Israel. The Egyptian leader Nasser, the hero of the Arab world, asked the United Nations to withdraw its troops from the Sinai and the United Nations did so. Swept along by his own and other Arab propaganda, Nasser lost control of events and massed a thousand tanks in the Sinai near the Egyptian border with Israel, then blockaded the Gulf of Aqaba, closing Israel's outlet to the Red Sea and the east. Syria and Jordan and Iraq were on a war footing and military units arrived from Algeria and Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
Israel faced an Arab force of two thousand tanks, seven hundred frontline aircraft, and two hundred and fifty thousand troops. The leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization made his famous statement that the Arabs would throw Israel into the sea.
On the morning of June 5, 1967, Israeli planes destroyed most of the Egyptian air force on the ground and the Six-Day War began.
***
On the morning of June 5, Assaf's paratroop battalion was waiting in an orange grove near an airfield in the south. The rumor was that they would be dropped that night on el Arish, the Egyptian town not far from the border on the Mediterranean, to gain a bridgehead and await Israeli tanks striking across the border into the Sinai. But by early afternoon their orders had changed. The breakthrough toward el Arish was going so swiftly there was no need of a paratroop drop behind enemy lines. Instead they left their parachute gear and got on buses to go to the Jerusalem front, where the Jordanians, already on the attack, had taken United Nations headquarters and were shelling the coastal plain in the center of the country.