was parked. He let himself into the house on Malik Street, and saw
instantly that someone had been there before him.
He walked slowly into the living-room; the books were gone from the
olive-wood table, the Kadesh painting no longer hung above the leather
couch. In the bathroom he opened the wall cabinet and all her toilet
articles had been removed, the rows of exotic bottles, the tubes and
pots, even the slot for her toothbrush beside his was empty.
Her cupboard was bare, the dresses gone, the shelves blank, every trace
of her swept away, except for the lingering scent of her perfume on the
air, and the ivory lace cover upon the bed.
He went to the bed and sat upon it, stroking the fine lace-work,
remembering how it had been.
There was the hard outline of something thin and square upon the pillow,
beneath the cover. He turned back the lace and picked up the thin green
book.
This year, in Jerusalem. It had been left there as a parting gift The
title swam and went misty before his eyes. It was all he had left of
her.
it seemed as though the slaughter at Em Karem was the signal for a fresh
upsurge of hostility and violence throughout the Middle East. A planned
escalation of international tensions, as the Arab nations rattled their
impressive, oil-purchased, array of weaponry and swore once more to
leave not a single Jew in the land they still called Palestine.
There were savage and merciless attacks on soft targets, ill-protected
embassies and consulates around the world, letter bombs, and night
ambushes on school buses in isolated areas.
Then the provocations grew bolder, more directly aimed at the heart of
Israel. Border infringements, commando-style raids, violations of air
space, shellings, and a threatening gathering and massing of armed might
along the long vulnerable frontiers of the wedge-shaped territories of
the tiny land.
The Israelis waited, praying for peace, but girl for war.
Day after day, month after month, David and Joe flew to maintain that
degree of expertise, where instinct and instantaneous reaction
superseded conscious thought and reasoned action.
At those searing speeds beyond sound, it was only this training that
swung the advantage from one combat team to another. Even the superior
reaction times of these carefully hand-picked young men were unequal to
the tasks of bringing their mighty machines into effective action, where
latitudes of error were measured in hundredths of a second, until they
had attained this extra-sensory perfection.
To seek out, to recognize, to close, to destroy, and to disengage, it
was a total preoccupation that blessedly left little time for brooding
and sorrow.
Yet the sorrow and anger, that David and Joe shared, seemed doubly to
arm them. Their vengeance was allconsuming.
Soon they joined that select half-dozen strike teams that Desert Flower
called to undertake the most delicate of sorties. Again and again they
were ordered into combat, and each time the confidence that Command had
in them was strengthened.
