Mitla Pass - Leon Uris [11]
Well, at least the sunset was reliable. Gideon repaired to a tiny porch on a flat part of the cottage roof that afforded almost a full-circle panorama.
Between their cottage and the sea was a smattering of cottages and small villas, randomly scattered in the dunes and anchored by a pair of hotels, the Accadia and the Sharon, on the beach about a mile apart.
Before Val and the girls arrived, Gideon had lived at the Accadia.
Now they gave him a room to write in and the family was able to use the hotel switchboard for phone messages.
In the opposite direction lay the Plain of Sharon, now glistening from the sprays of overhead sprinklers. Jordan was only ten miles away. Gideon was certain there would have to be a major reprisal against the Jordanians. Something big, a real klop to sober up Hussein and stop him from joining up with Nasser and the Egyptians.
His thoughts were interrupted as Val brought up a second drink. If you survived the first one, the second one was almost palatable.
They were invaded by squadrons of fighter-plane gnats followed by squadrons of bomber mosquitoes.
“Where’s the bug spray, baby?” he asked.
“The store was out. The store was out of everything.”
“Except chickens with pinfeathers. I’ll get some bug spray in Tel Aviv tomorrow,” he said, dipping his finger into his drink and rubbing the brandy on his cheeks, ankles, and exposed arms. No self-respecting mosquito would touch the stuff.
“Tel Aviv is out of just about everything as well,” Val said. “I’ve got a long shopping list of things we’re out of.”
Val had that expression on her face that implied, “you know where you can get anything you want, if you really want to.”
Gideon had managed to circumvent a quagmire of rules and regulations. He had hustled a full-time assistant, Shlomo Bar Adon, from the Foreign Ministry, commandeered the last electric typewriter in the Defense Ministry, borrowed a jeep from the Army, slid around a variety of currency laws, import regulations, and taxations. Customs was still trying to figure out how one G. Zadok managed to get a Ford through Haifa port with phony diplomatic plates. Gideon was a bulldog when it came to clearing himself a path and getting at his research. He was chutzpah personified.
“You know, honey,” Val said, “if you really wanted to spare your family from all this privation, you could do it with an itty-bitty phone call to Rich Cromwell at the embassy. He’s offered us use of the diplomatic commissary a half-dozen times.”
Gideon’s non-reply was definitive.
“Just think about it. Scotch, non-scratchy toilet paper, bacon, prime rib.”
Richard Cromwell, a purchasing agent in the American Embassy, was also the CIA station chief. Cromwell knew, of course, that Gideon was well connected in the high Israeli echelons. Rich had cultivated Gideon’s friendship early on. From time to time Cromwell had dangled Polish hams, tobacco, booze, butter, and assorted other goodies before Gideon’s eyes, at wholesale prices. Gideon wasn’t buying.
Val couldn’t come to terms with her husband’s being so sanctimonious about using the commissary. After all, they were Americans, and what would be the damned sin in slipping a little information to Cromwell now and then? Not that he knew any Israeli state secrets, and it wasn’t as though Israel and America were enemies. Gideon was wearing his honorable jut-jawed boy scout expression. Honorable prick! She dropped the subject.
“How about a walk on the beach after we put the girls down?” she asked.
“We can’t, honey. It’s off limits after dark now. Being patrolled. Let’s get downstairs before these little bastards eat us up.”
AFTER THE GIRLS’ lessons and dinner, there was a family rough-house. Gideon noted that it was becoming more difficult to wrestle with Roxanne and get a decent grip on her these days. She was filling out beautifully. Kisses and more kisses good night. Maybe a ride up to Jerusalem in a few days.
Then came an awkward, uncomfortable moment. Gideon had new pages. “I’d better get these into the hotel safe,” he said. “I