I followed him into the restaurant. The entrance was very fancy, all glass and black woodwork. On my own I wouldn’t imagine entering such an expensive place. The waiter bowed before the military uniform with the wings but turned his nose up at my unpolished boots and sweaty flight suit. Among the empty tables a man in civilian clothes got up and waved his hands at us.
Suddenly I was terrified, and I caught Khetz’s sleeve to stop him. There was something weird here. In those times, air force pilots did not meet with foreign citizens. I suspected that what was going on here might be unlawful. What can a squadron commander in wartime discuss with a foreigner in a restaurant immediately after a super-secret briefing? This was not an affair here; it seemed much worse. It got all mixed together with that awful briefing. Suddenly I was flooded with rage. I felt like a total idiot, was suspicious of Khetz, and amazed at myself. How could I be dragged into this business here? I couldn’t believe what he had gotten me into. Why didn’t he tell me beforehand so I could come and go on my own? Why had I agreed in the first place to go with him to Tel Aviv?
“Listen, Khetz, I am going back to the car to wait for you there.”
“Iftach, what’s the matter?”
The rage freed a cocked spring in me. Suddenly I said in anger, “Sam, what are you doing? You are wrong, you are wrong, wrong!” Gasping, I added, surprising myself, “Why did you agree to that operation?”
We stood in the entrance, whispering hoarsely. The man returned politely to his seat.
“Look, Sam, I don’t like what you are doing now. I hate this operazia you are about to fly. And I don’t understand you. What the hell are you doing in this fancy restaurant? Who is paying for dinner? Who is this guy?”
“Wait a moment, Iftach. Are you crazy? What’s the matter with you?”
But I was unstoppable.
“This is not the first time we’ve attacked SAM batteries. We all did it even before you got back with your damn Phantoms and these stupid ideas!”
“Quiet… we’ll talk about it later.”
“And we learned something from experience! So what are you doing now, throwing away everything we’ve learned? Who is this spy you’re meeting at night? Why do you go out against missile arrays with no defense?”
“Will you please calm down? Don’t shout, for heaven’s sake. This man is on our side, Iftach. He is an expert in fighting against SAMs from the Vietnam War.”
“You’ll probably tell me EW, now, right? What is EW, huh, Khetz?” I was really steamed.
“Come on, take it easy.” Khetz grinned, as if calming down a small child. “Come sit with us; relax. He won’t eat you, and you’ll have something good to eat. We’re going to discuss something.” The steam went out of me. I was hungry and thirsty, and I dragged in after him.
OUR MAN ROSE TO MEET US again. He was of medium height, tending to heaviness, his skin tanned, and the hair on his balding head black and curly. Two black, agile eyes scanned me swiftly. I observed that he had just now made his dress less formal. He didn’t wear a tie, and the upper button of his shirt was opened, as is usual in Israel, but his black shoes shone like mirrors, and his shirtsleeves were fastened with fancy gold cuff links, something never seen here. On one of his fingers he sported a coarse gold ring with a big green stone. I had never met an American before, and he seemed to me disguised, as if hidden behind some kind of camouflage, or perhaps trying to look like an Israeli. A suspicion rose in me. I thought, “This guy probably knows Hebrew. He might have listened to our conversation in the entrance.” I vowed that I would not say a single word, no matter what.
Khetz and the stranger shook hands very warmly, and it was clear that they knew each other before, perhaps from America. Khetz introduced me as a friend. We shook hands.
The guest looked at us, asked for pardon, and went to the rest room. I realized that he was extremely sensitive. We sat and waited. Again I whispered, “I think I get what you’re going to rely on. It is an electronic barrage, isn’t it?”
Khetz waved his hand at me as if waving a fly away.
“That’s what you dubbed EW, eh?”
He didn’t answer. Perhaps the code name was too secret to mention. But I continued in the same line. “It’s black magic you’re relying on,” I said contemptuously. “They’ve sold you a bill of goods.”
Suddenly two red flares appeared on the thin, pale cheeks before me.
“Listen, Major Spector, stop talking nonsense. What do you know about it? There were tests, there’s proof —”
“Proof, eh? What proof, Khetz?”
“Vietnam.”
This didn’t silence me. In 1970 there were many articles about that war around, and I could read English.
“Vietnam, eh? SAM missile suppression, eh?” I was adamant. “Do you, Lt. Col. Sam Khetz, know these proofs personally, or just somebody told you about them? Did you see in your own eyes something about electronic warfare that convinced you to rely on them? Something I don’t know about? Did you?”
I waited for an answer for some seconds. There was none. I knew I hit the nail on the head. “From Vietnam,” I told him, “I haven’t heard of great success against SAMs.”
And when he didn’t say anything, I added in a rage, “If I were you, Sam, I wouldn’t keep quiet. I would get up and oppose going out on this operation Saturday. But no one can do it instead of you. They all depend on this American knowledge that only you, and perhaps Avihu, can estimate the worth of.”
Khetz sat silently.
Only then did I grasp what was so weird in that briefing. It was this: the briefing for the attack on the most massive Soviet missiles array, the strongest antiaircraft system in the world, was not a briefing at all. The commanders didn’t command. In fact, they didn’t know what to say. In fact, it was an apology.
“I pray you, Sam, don’t go out on this mission. Tell them!” Khetz shrugged, and I blew my top again. “You keep it in because your mouth was shut in the briefing? Huh? This is a really bad reason. But never mind, Khetz,” I said, “we still have time till Saturday.” He was looking away from me.
“Well?” Again, no answer came.
“What are you ashamed of? So what the hell if you’re ashamed! Be a man, call Agassi. Call your friend Moti. What are friends for? Demand to cancel the operation. At least postpone it.”
Khetz answered quietly, “Now I think it was better to leave you to wait for me in the car… but it’s over. Here, he’s coming back.”
Our guest was making his way to our table. We rose to receive him. Khetz added quietly,
“Sit with us, listen, and don’t interrupt.” His voice was low, but clear and hard.
As soon as possible I went to the rest room, and took as much time there as I could. When I got back candles were already lit on all the tables, and the room was half dark and full of diners. My strange couple was bent head to head, immersed in a quiet conversation that seemed like the continuation of other conversations in the past. I sat down and tried to concentrate on my dinner and not pay attention to them. This was easy, since it was noisy, and my basic English didn’t allow me to grasp much of the foreign terms that rolled between these two, in American acronyms. Were these parts of equipment? Or perhaps electronic warfare technology? Maybe methods of flying? I didn’t know. The words sounded to me like Chinese. I would learn them in time. Only the face of the stranger was cut deep into my memory, a strong, dark, heavy face that reminded me of the actor Telly Savalas. And I still can hear his voice whispering over that table with Khetz, who suddenly seemed to me thin and weak and very, very tired.
Thirty years after this evening I would meet this man again. It would be in the year 2000, and we would meet almost accidentally, in an Irish bar in the suburb of Rosslyn, in northern Virginia. By then David Brogg’s head would be as bald as an egg, but his face was as strong as ever. Over a pitcher of dark beer we would both recall that bizarre dinner in Jaffa, on July 16, 1970, when Brogg sat and preached the faith to us, his eyes moving from Khetz to me—a somber stranger keeping a gloomy silence, poking at his fish and not tasting it.
THE CITROEN WAS RATTLING on again. We were on the Yavneh road, going from Jaffa to Hatzor, and I was rattling again, too, in agony. “Tell me just one thing, Khetz. Is this what we have learned, to rely on magic?” And when he didn’t answer me, I said, “Khetz, missile batteries are dangerous! You can’t march in there—into the heart
