Mitla Pass - Leon Uris [146]
Father would have survived if I had not sent the message! But hadn’t we said all along that only one Solomon would survive?
Oh, Father, I did love you, really.
I hated you!
I loved you.
And you ... and you ... and you. Ah, you look just like Father. ... Come in, come in.
I love you till the strength is oozed from your stupid body. Till you can no longer move, function. Oh, Natasha has gotten you so tired you can hardly stand up. Well, get the hell out of here! You’re dead! Oh, I’m so sorry. I hate to see you beg and whimper. Get on your knees like a dog!
Natasha, you naughty girl, you’ve got to stop doing this.
... I would stop, but the dream keeps returning. He is in the fog luring me. So I will go to another party and another and another until I see him again ... the fog ... the smoke ... the smoke from the ovens of Auschwitz!
The costume party in Jerusalem? Wonderful!
There he is! The American. He swaggers toward me. I want him! “Hello, cowboy.”
The son of a bitch is a clever one. I will do it more slowly to him. The bastard. Doesn’t he ever get weary? He tells me things that make Natasha cry. His fingers always play over my tattoo number. It brings him pain, but he refuses to weaken like the others. Bastard!
I hate him.
I love him.
I hate him.
I love him.
What do you know about refugee camps and swamping blockade runners and barbed wire and guard dogs and the crematorium? I sent my father there! You understand what that means! The fog! The fog!
... bloody fog again ... even in Jerusalem ... what do you know, cowboy ... everything is hunky-dory in America ... oh, the wife and daughters are coming to Israel, how lovely ... but you will not leave Natasha. No one leaves Natasha until she is ready... .
A week later Gideon returned from a routine Negev patrol with a company from the Lion’s Battalion to his base at the Accadia Hotel. He was so grungy, one could almost smell him across the lobby.
He glanced at his mail, then stared at the telephone. He stared and stared and stared ... picked it up, set it down. An hour passed and he still stared. It rang, startling him.
“Hello,” he said.
“All right, you son of a bitch, I called first. Are you now satisfied?” Natasha said and slammed her receiver down.
“Oh Jesus,” Gideon moaned.
The phone rang again. Gideon lifted the receiver, a bit gun shy. “It is Natasha,” she said in a sudden soft voice. “I’m sorry. I knew you would be back today and I hoped you might want to see me.”
Gideon closed his eyes and clenched his teeth ... then broke. “Yes, I want to see you, God damn you. You haven’t left my mind all week. Where are you?”
“In the lobby. I’ll be right up.”
MITLA PASS
October 31, 1956
0400 HOURS, D DAY PLUS TWO
GIDEON ROLLED OVER in his sleep and lay on his bruised hip long enough for it to irritate him into wakefulness. He blinked his eyes open and saw Shlomo sitting with his back against the boulder, one eye open, one eye shut, like a coyote.
“What time is it, Shlomo?”
“Four in the morning. They made a good air drop, right on target. We’ve got a radio working. A message was sent to you from the P.M.’s office. The American evacuees were taken to Athens and will be flown to Rome tomorrow. I’m sure Val will wait for you in Rome.”
Gideon sat up, heaved a sigh of relief, and massaged his leg. “What’s happening?” he asked.
“Para 202 broke through at Thamad. They were approaching the Egyptian fortifications at Nakhl. It isn’t clear if they made a night attack or will try it in the morning. If Zechariah clears Nakhl, we’ll probably see him late tomorrow. If he gets stopped, Southern Command is going to try to evacuate us.”
“Jesus. How are we getting out of here?”
“Don’t worry, they’ll take Nakhl. You don’t know Zechariah. He is a bulldozer.”
“Hey,” Gideon said, “wow, look at those stars. How many do you think there are?”
“A billion billion? A trillion trillion? You will never see it again like out here in the desert.”
“You’re a desert rat. Once, a long time ago when I was a kid in Norfolk, I saw it like