“What for?”
“For not getting kicked out before graduation.”
“Why would you kick me out?”
“For all your bad jokes.”
They laughed.
Lemmy registered the glow of a cigarette in the dark corner of the tent. A small figure stepped forward. When the light reached the face, Sanani made a funny little noise. The face was gaunt and sickly, and burn scars covered the left cheek and neck, down into his collar. And the strangest eyes-tiny and black-were separated by an aquiline nose. He wore a wool cap, pulled down to his ears, which stuck out.
Zigelnick said, “This is Agent Weiss from the Special Operations Department in Jerusalem.”
They saluted him, but he extended his hand instead. It was small and clammy. He immediately retreated back into the shadows.
“SOD needs two volunteers,” Zigelnick said, “for a secret mission. It’s your choice whether or not to volunteer. You can take your time and let me know tomorrow.”
“I’m in,” Lemmy said.
“Same here,” Sanani said.
“Very well.” Zigelnick shook their hands for the first time, and probably the last. “Get your gear and follow Agent Weiss. Good luck!”
T anya met the rest of the Mossad team at Lod Airport. The head of the Europe Desk briefed them on the whereabouts of the weapons Israel had purchased from France, the identities of sympathetic government officials, industrialists, and army officers. While De Gaulle and his advisors at the Quai d’Orsay were intent on neutrality, the French military brass was still smarting from a series of defeats in Algiers and therefore eager to see Israel deny the Arabs a certain victory.
Most pressing was the IDF’s severe shortage in artillery pieces, half-tracks, light guns, and ammunition supplies, in addition to replacement parts for jets and other French-made weapons Israel had purchased over the past decade. Tanya’s team would use every possible mean to gain access to various military and factory warehouses where the goods were kept, take possession, and transport everything to the Mediterranean coast. A fleet of fast cargo ships was already on its way from Haifa to Marseilles.
Especially daring was the plan to take possession of the twenty-three new Mirage jets, which the French refused to deliver even though Israel had already paid for them. Mossad had learned that the jets were stored in a military air field south of Paris. A group of IDF pilots was on high alert, ready to board a cargo plane for a flight across the Mediterranean as soon as Mossad had secured access to the jets.
Tanya’s contact was the chief procurement official at the French Defense Ministry, a charming man of distant Jewish descent, whose repeated marriage proposals Tanya had rebuffed over the years while obtaining priceless concessions for Israel. She would coordinate the whole operation from a Paris apartment, making sure that the different teams played their roles in a synchronized manner.
She knew some of the Mossad agents in the room from past operations. Others were new faces. All thirty-six men and women were fluent in French and versed in the social subtleties required to blend in without being noticed.
The briefing was conducted strictly in French to acclimate everyone to the field, and the questions went down to the smallest details.
Before going out to the tarmac, where a plane was waiting to fly them to Paris, a table was rolled in, loaded with food. Everyone descended on the trays of chopped salad, humus, fries, and roast lamb. Tanya grabbed a piece of pita bread and went to the departures terminal. It was crowded, people trying to catch flights out of the country, angry exchanges in many languages, and frustrated airline attendants with no seats to offer.
She crossed over to the arrivals terminal and went to the IDF counter, which had been set up to process returning Israelis. The lines there were even longer, Israeli men rushing home from abroad to join their reservist units.
Flashing her credentials, Tanya found the supervising officer and gave him an envelope addressed to Bira, which contained pocket money and a loving note. A second envelope had Lemmy’s name on it. It held a longer letter she had written intermittently over the past few days, confessing that, even though she had initially seen him purely as Abraham’s son and a means to remain connected to a lost lover, she had come to love him for who he was, for his quick mind and sense of humor, for his kindness and easy laugh. He had every right to be angry, she added, but anger should give way to understanding and forgiveness. She would be away for a while, so during his vacations he should stay with Bira in Tel Aviv. “ And when I return, we’ll talk about what happened and discuss the future. Keep safe. All my love, Tanya. ”
The officer promised to forward the note to Paratrooper Command, where they would make sure it reached Jerusalem Gerster.
Back with her team, Tanya stood at the door of the plane and exchanged a few words with each one as they boarded. These men and women were professionals, having participated in multiple overseas operations. But this wasn’t just another operation. They were leaving behind families and friends whose survival, and the survival of Israel, depended on what would happen in France over the next couple of days.
The plane rose into the dark night. Tanya watched through a porthole. From above, Tel Aviv appeared like a carpet of glistening lights, which ended in a straight line at the Mediterranean coast. She had not prayed in a long time, not since Dachau. But craning her neck to catch a last glimpse of Israel, Tanya mumbled a short prayer for Lemmy and Bira, and for herself as well-that she would see both of them alive again. Then she rested her head back, shut her eyes, and thought of Abraham Gerster-not the bearded rabbi from Neturay Karta, but the blond youth who had sung to her
during the snowy nights of 1945.
Chapter 40
Lemmy and Sanani stayed in a vacant stone house that had been deserted by its Arab owners back in 1948. Plaster was peeling off the walls and laying a crunchy carpet on the floor. The empty rooms stunk of urine, and the smell of cooking fires drifted from across the nearby border. An IDF-issued outhouse and a rusty water tank occupied most of the enclosed rear patio.
Two agents in civilian clothes, Yosh and Dor, brought in food and newspapers every morning. The food was homemade and delicious, but the newspapers were depressing. On May 19, the papers reported that Foreign Minister Abba Eban had protested the Egyptian ousting of UN observers from the southern border and declared that Israel would view a blockade of the straits as an act of war. The next day, Prime Minister Eshkol sent him back to Washington to beg again for reaffirmation of President Eisenhower’s 1956 guarantee that Red Sea shipping lanes would remain open. But the entanglement in Vietnam and pressure from American oil companies caused the Johnson White House to insist that the Eisenhower commitment was invalid because it lacked ratification as a treaty by Congress. Johnson issued a vague statement: In the interest of peace, we hope Egypt does not interfere with free maritime travel in the Gulf of Aqaba.
As the days passed, Sanani had perfected his imitation of the wails of the muezzins, who summoned the believers to prayers five times a day. Lemmy practiced dismantling and assembling his Mauser until he could do it with his eyes closed. They also played countless rounds of backgammon.
Agent Weiss had told them nothing about the mission, but people without names came by to teach the two young soldiers skills that seemed totally irrelevant to the coming war: A middleaged Jewish couple, originally from India, taught Sanani to speak English with their funny accent, which he used to throw Lemmy into fits of laughter. An elderly nun with a wooden cross on a ropelike necklace, insisted on addressing Lemmy as Herr Horch and tutored him in English, which she spoke with a German accent not much different than Yiddish. A police pensioner, who had once commanded a bomb-defusing unit in the Galilee, brought in a suitcase full of wires, timers, and fake dynamite sticks. He taught them how to construct explosive devices from different components and told stories from his long service about Arab terrorists and their affinity for booby-trapping playgrounds and bus stations.