Текст книги "Eagle in the Sky"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

Соавторы: Wilbur Smith
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in the New Testament, in Mohammedan law, and perhaps in that of Moses as

well.  He did not want to be excluded from this household, from these

people.  He didn't want to be alone again.  It was good here.

He smiled at the cousin and shook his head.  It's strange, yes, but not

as bad as you would think.  I understand Hebrew, though I don't speak it

very well.

You see, I am Jewish, also.

Beside him Debra gave a soft gasp of pleasure and exchanged quick

glances with Joe.

Jewish?  the Brig demanded.  You don't look it, and David explained, and

when he was through the Brig nodded.  It seemed that his manner had

thawed a little.

Not only that, but he is a flier also, Debra boasted, and the Brig's

mustache twitched like a living thing so that he had to soothe it with

his napkin while he reappraised David carefully.

What experience?  he demanded brusquely.

Twelve hundred hours, sir, almost a thousand on jets.  Jets?  Mirages.

Mirages!  The Brig's gold tooth gleamed secretly.

What squadron?  Cobra Squadron.

Rastus Naude's bunch?  The Brig stared at David as

he asked.

Do you know Rastus?  David was startled.

We flew in the first Spitfires from Czechoslovakia together, back in 48.

We used to call him Butch Ben Yak, Son of a Gentile, in those days.  How

is he, he must be getting on now?  He was no spring chicken even then.

He's as spry as ever, sir, David answered tactfully.

Well, if Rastus taught You to fly, you might be half good, the Brig

conceded.

As a general rule the Israeli Airforce would not use foreign pilots, but

here was a Jew with all the marks of a first-class fighter pilot.  The

Brig had noticed the marvelous man and thrust which that other

consummate judge of young men, Paul Morgan, had recognized also and

valued so highly.  Unless he had read the signs wrongly, something he

seldom did, then here was a rare one.  Once more he appraised the young

man in the candlelight and noticed that clear and steady gaze that

seemed to seek a distant horizon.  It was the eye of the gunfighter, and

all his pilots were gunfighters.

To train an interceptor pilot took many years and nearly a million

dollars.  Time and money were matters of survival in his country's time

of trial, and rules could be bent.

He picked up the wine bottle and carefully refilled David's goblet. I

will place a telephone call to Rastus Naude, he decided silently, and

find out a bit more about this youngster.

Debra watched her father as he began to question David searchingly on

his reasons, or lack of them, for coming to Israel, and on his future

plans.

She knew precisely how the Brig's mind was working, for she had

anticipated it.  Her reasons for inviting David to dinner and for

exposing him to the Brig were devious and calculated.

She switched her attention back to David, feeling the tense warm

sensation in the pit of her stomach and the electric prickle of the skin

upon her forearms as she looked at him.

Yes, you big cocky stallion, she thought comfortably, you aren't going

to find it so easy to escape again.  This time I'm playing for keeps,

and I've got the Brig on to you also.  She lifted her goblet to him,

smiling sweetly at him over the rim, You're going to get exactly what

you are after, but.  in trumps and with bells on, she threatened

silently, and aloud she said, Lechaim!  To life!  and David echoed the

toast.

This time I'm not going to be put off so easily, he promised himself

firmly as he watched the candlelight explode in tiny golden sparks in

her eyes.  I'm going to have you, my raven-haired beauty, no matter how

long it takes or what it Costs.

The telephone beside his bed woke David in the dawn, and the Brig's

voice was crisp and alert, as though he had already completed a day's

work.

If you have no urgent plans for today, I'm taking you to see something,

he said.

Of course, sir.  David was taken off balance.

I will fetch you from your hotel in forty-five minutes, that will give

you time for breakfast.  Please wait for me in the lobby.  The Brig

drove a small nondescript compact with civilian plates, and he drove it

fast and efficiently.  David was impressed with his reaction time and

coordination – after all the Brig must be well into his fifties, and

David allowed himself to contemplate such immense age with awe.

They took the main highway west towards Tel Aviv, and the Brig broke a

long silence.

I spoke with your old C.  O.  last night.  He was surprised to hear

where you were.  He tells me that you were offered promotion to staff

rank before you left -'It was a bribe, said David, and the Brig nodded

and began to talk.  David listened to him quietly while he watched with

pleasure the quickly changing landscape as they came down out of the

hills and turned southwards through the low rolling plains towards

Beersheba and the desert.

I am taking you to an airforce base, and I might add that I am flouting

all sorts of security regulations to do so.  Rastus assured me that you

can fly, and I want to see if he was telling me the truth David looked

at him quickly.

We are going to fly?  'and he felt a deep and pleasurable excitement

when the Brig nodded.

We are at war here, so you will be flying a combat sortie, and breaking

just about every regulation in the book.  But you'll find we don't go by

the book very much.  He went on quietly, explaining his own particular

view of Israel, its struggle and its chances of success, and David

remembered odd phrases he used. – We are building a nation, and the

blood we have been forced to mix into the foundations has strengthened

them – – We don't want to make this merely a sanctuary for all the

beaten-up Jews of the world.  We want the strong bright Jews also -,

There are three million of us, and one hundred and fifty million

enemies, sworn to our total annihilation -'– if they lose a battle, they

lose a few miles of desert, if we lose one we cease to exist – – We'll

have to give them one more beating. They won't accept the others.  They

believe their ammunition was faulty in 1948, after Suez the lines were

restored so they lost nothing, and in 67 they think they were cheated.

We'll have to beat them one more time before they'll leave us alone, He

talked as to a friend or an ally and David was warmed by his trust, and

enlivened by the prospect of flying again.

A plantation of eucalyptus trees grew as a heavy screen alongside the

road, and the Brig slowed to a gate in the barbed wire fence and a sign

that proclaimed in both languages: Chaim Weissmann Agricultural

Experimental Centre.  They turned on to the side road through the

plantation, and there was a secondary fence and a guard post amongst the

trees.

A guard at the gate checked the Brig's papers briefly, they clearly knew

him well.  Then they drove on, emerging from the plantation into neatly

laid-out blocks of different cereal crops.  David recognized oats,

barley, wheat and maize, all of it flourishing in the warm spring

sunshine.  The roads between each field were surveyed long and straight

and paved with concrete that had been tinted to the colour of the

surrounding earth.

There was something unnatural in these smooth twomile long fairways

bisecting each other at right angles, and to David they were familiar.

The Brig saw his interest and nodded.  Yes, he said, runways.  We are

digging in, not to be taken by the same tactics we used in 67.  David

pondered it while they drove rapidly towards a giant concrete grain silo

that stood tall in the distance.

In the fields, scarlet tractors were at work, and overhead irrigation

equipment threw graceful glittering ostrich feathers of spray into the

air.

They reached the concrete silo and the Brig drove the compact through

the wide doors of the barn-like building that abutted it.  David was

startled to see the lines of buses and automobiles parked in neat lines

along the length of the barn.  There was transport here for many

hundreds of men, and yet he had noticed less than a score of

tractor-drivers.

There were guards here again, in paratrooper uniform, and when the Brig

led David to the rounded bulk of the silo, he realized suddenly that it

was a dummy.  A massive bomb-proof structure of solid concrete, housing

all the sophisticated communications and radar equipment of a modern

fighter base.  It was combined control tower and plot for four full

squadrons of Mirage fighters, the Brig explained briefly as they entered

an elevator and sank below the earth.

They emerged into a reception area where again the Brig's papers were

examined, and a paratrooper major was called to pass David through, a

duty he performed reluctantly and at the Brig's insistence.  Then the

Brig led David along a carpeted and air-conditioned underground tunnel

to the pilot's dressing-room.  It was tiled and spotless, with showers

and toilets and lockers like a country club changing-room.

The Brig had ordered clothing for David, guessing his size and doing so

accurately.  The orderly corporal had no trouble fitting him out in

overalls, boots, G-suit, gloves and helmet.

The Brig dressed from his own locker and both of them went through into

the ready room, moving stiffly in the constricting grip of the G-suits

and carrying their helmets under their arms.

The duty pilots looked up from chess games and magazines as they

entered, recognized the general and stood to greet him, but the

atmosphere was easy and informal.

The Brig made a small witticism and they all laughed and relaxed, while

he led David through into the briefing-room.

Swiftly, but without overlooking a detail, he outlined the patrol that

they would fly, and checked David out on radio procedure, aircraft

identification, and other parochial details.

All clear?  he asked at last, and when David nodded, he went on,

Remember what I told you, we are at war.

Anything we find that doesn't belong to us we hit it, hard!  All right?

Yes, sir.

It's been nice and quiet the last few weeks, but yesterday we had a

little trouble down near Em Yahav, a bit of nastiness with one of our

border patrols.  So things are a little sensitive at the moment.  He

picked up his helmet and map case then turned to face David, leaning

close to him and fixing him with those fierce brown and golden eyes.

It will be clear up there today, and when we get to forty thousand, you

will be able to see it all, every inch of it from Rosh Hanikra to Suez,

from Mount Herman to Eilat, and you will see how small it is and how

vulnerable to the enemies that surround us.  You said you were looking

for something worthwhile, I want you to decide whether guarding the fate

of three million people might not be a worthwhile job for a man.

They rode on a small electric personnel carrier down one of the long

underground passages, and they entered the concrete bunker dispersed at

one point of a great star whose centre was the concrete silo, and they

climbed down from the cart.

The Mirages stood in a row, six of them, sleek and needle-nosed,

crouching like leashed and impatient animals, so well remembered in

outline, but vaguely unfamiliar in their desert brown and drab green

camouflage with the blue Star of David insignia on the fuselage.

The Brig signed for two machines, grinning as he wrote Butch Ben Yak

under David's numeral.

As good a name as any to fly under, he grunted.  This is the land of the

pseudonym and alias.  David settled into the tiny cockpit with a sense

of homecoming.  In here it was all completely familiar and his hands

moved over the massed array of switches, instruments and controls like

those of a lover as he began his pre-flight check.

In the confined space of the bunkers the jet thunder assaulted the

eardrums, their din only made bearable by the perforated steel baffles

set into the rear of the structure.

The Brig looked across at David, his head enclosed in the garishly

painted helmet, and gave him the high sign.

David returned -it and reached up to pull the Perspex canopy closed.

Ahead of them, the steel blast doors rolled swiftly upwards, and the

ready lamps above them switched from red to green.

There was no taxiing to take-off areas; no needless ground exposure.

Wing-tip to wing-tip they came up the ramp out of the bunker into the

sunlight.  Ahead of them stretched one of the long brown runways, and

David pushed open his throttle to the gate, and then ignited his

afterburners, feeling the thrust of the mighty jet through the

cushioning of his seat.  Down between the fields of green corn they

tore, and then up, with the swooping sensation in the guts and the

rapier nose of the Mirage pointed at the sapphire of the sky that arched

unbroken and unsullied above them, and once again David experienced the

euphoria of jet-powered flight.

They levelled out at a little under forty thousand feet avoiding even

altitudes or orderly flight patterns, and David placed his machine under

the Brig's tail and eased back on the throttles to cruising power, his

hands delighting in the familiar rituals of flight while his helmeted

head revolved restlessly in the search routine, sweeping every quarter

of the sky about him, weaving the Mirage to clear the blind spot behind

his own tail.

The air had an unreal quality of purity, a crystalline clarity that made

even the most distant mountain ranges stand out in crisp silhouette,

hardly shaded with the blue of distance.  In the north the Mediterranean

blazed like a pool of molten silver in the sunlight, while the sea of

Galilee was soft cool green, and farther south the Dead Sea was darker,

forbidding in its sunken bed of tortured desert.

They flew north over the ridge of Carmel and the flecked white buildings

of Haifa with its orange gold beaches on which the sea broke in soft

ripples of creamy lacework.  Then they turned together easing back on

the power and sinking slowly to patrol altitude at twenty thousand feet

as they passed the peak of Mount Herman where the last snows still

lingered in the gullies and upon the high places, streaking the great

rounded mountain like an old man's pate.

The softly dreaming greens and pastels delighted David who was

accustomed to the sepia monochromes of Africa.  The villages clung to

the hill-tops, their white walls shining like diadems above the terraced

slopes and the darker areas of cultivated land.

They turned south again, booming down the valley of the Jordan, over the

Sea of Galilee with its tranquil green waters enclosed by the thickets

of date palm and the neatly tended fields of the Kibbutzim, losing

altitude as the land forsook its gentle aspect and the hills were riven

and tortured, rent by the wadis as though by the claws of a dreadful

predator.

On the left hand rose the mountains of Edam, hostile and implacable, and

beneath them Jericho was a green oasis in the wilderness.  Ahead lay the

shimmering surface of the Dead Sea.  The Brig dropped down, and they

thundered so low across the salt-thickened water that the jet blast

ruffled the surface behind them.

The Brig's voice chuckled in David's earphones.  That's the lowest you

are ever going to fly, twelve hundred feet below sea level.  They were

climbing again as they crossed the mineral works at the southern end of

the sea, and faced the blasted and mountainous deserts of the south.

Hello, Cactus One, this is Desert Flower, again the radio silence was

broken, but this time David recognized the call sign of command net.

They were being called directly from the Operations Centre of Airforce

Command, situated in some secret underground bunker at a location that

David would never learn.  On the command plot their position was being

accurately relayed by the radar repeaters.

Hello, Desert Flower, the Brig acked, and immediately the exchange

became as informal as two old friends chatting, which was precisely what

it was.

Brig this is Motti.  We've just had a ground support request in your

area, he gave the coordinates quickly, a motorized patrol of border

police is under sneak lowlevel attack by an unidentified aircraft.  See

to it, will youz, Beseder, Motti, okay.  The Brig switched to flight

frequency.  Cactus Two, I'm going to interception power, conform to me,

he told David, and they turned together on to the new heading.

No point in trying a radar scan, the Brig grumbled aloud.  He'll be down

in the ground clutter.  We'll not pick the swine off amongst those

mountains.  just keep your eyes open.  'Beseder.  David had already

picked up the word.  The favourite Hebrew word in a land where very

little was really okay.

David spotted it first, a slim black column of smoke beginning to rise

like a pencil line drawn slowly against the windless and dazzling cobalt

blue of the horizon.

Ground smoke, he said into his helmet microphone.  Eleven o'clock low.

The Brig squinted ahead silently, searching for it and then saw it on

the extreme limit of his vision range.  He grunted, Rastus had been

right in one thing at least.  The youngster had eyes like a hawk.

Going to attack speed now, he said, and David acked and lit his

afterburners.  The upholstery of his seat smacked into his back under

the mighty increase in thrust and David felt the drastic alteration in

trim as the Mirage went shooting through the sonic barrier.

Near the base of the smoke column, something flashed briefly against the

drab brown earth, and David narrowed his eyes and made out the tiny

shape, flitting swiftly as a sunbird, its camouflage blending naturally

into the backdrop of desert, -so it was ethereal as a shadow.

Bandit turning to port of the smoke, he called the sighting.

I have him, said the Brig, and switched to command net.

Hello, Desert Flower, I'm on an intruder.  Call strike, please.  The

decision to engage must be made at command level, and the answering

voice was laconic, and flat.

Brig, this is Motti.  Hit him? While they spoke they were rushing down

so swiftly that the details of the little drama being played out below

sprang into comprehension.

Along a dusty border track three patrol vehicles of the border police

were halted.  They were camouflaged half tracks, tiny as children's toys

in the vastness of the desert.

One of the half tracks was burning.  The smoke was greasy black and rose

straight into the air, the beacon that had drawn them.  Lying

spreadeagled in the road was a human body, flung down carelessly in

death, and the sight of it stirred in David a deeply bitter feeling of

resentment such as he had last felt in the bullring at Madrid.

The other vehicles were pulled off the track at abandoned angles, and

David could see their crews crouching amongst the scrub and rock.  Some

of them were firing with small arms at their attacker who was circling

for his next run down upon them.

David had never seen the type before, but knew it instantly from the

recognition charts that he had studied so often.  It was a Russian MIG

17 of the Syrian airforce.

The high tail plane was unmistakable.  The dappled brown desert

camouflage was brightened by the red, white and black rounders with

their starred green centres on the fuselage and the stubby swept wings.

The MIG completed its turn, settling swiftly down and levelling off for

its next strafing run upon the parked vehicles.  The pilot's attention

was concentrated on the helpless men cowering amongst the rocks and he

was unaware of the terrible vengeance bearing down upon him on high.

The Brig lined up for his pass, turning slightly to bring himself down

on the Syrian's tail, attacking in classic style from behind and above,

while David dropped back to weave across his rear, covering him and

backing up to press in a supporting attack if the first failed.

The Syrian opened fire again and the cannon bursts twinkled like fairy

lights amongst the men and trucks.

Another truck exploded in a dragon's breath of smoke and flame.

You bastard, David whispered as he levelled out behind the Brig and saw

the havoc that was being wrought amongst his people.  It was the first

time he had thought of them as that, his people, and he felt the cold

anger of the shepherd whose flock is under attack.

A line of poetry popped up in his mind The Assyrian came down like a

wolf on the fold, and his hands went purposefully to the chore of

locking in his cannon sselectors and flicking the trigger forward out of

its recess in the moulded grip of the joystick.  The soft green glow lit

his gunsight as it came alive and he squinted through it.

The Brig was pressing his attack in to close range, rapidly overhauling

the slower clumsy-looking MIG, and at that moment he knew he would open

fire David saw the Syrian's wing-shape alter.  At the fatal instant he

had become aware of his predicament, and he had done what was best in

the circumstances.  He had pulled on full flap and while his speed fell

sharply he dropped one wing in a slide towards the earth a hundred feet

below.

The Brig was committed and he loosed his salvo of cannon fire at the

instant that the Syrian dropped, ducking under it like a boxer avoiding

a heavy punch.  David saw the blaze of shot pass high, rending the air

above the sand-coloured air-craft.  Then the Brig was through, missing

with every shell, spiralling up and around in a great flashing circle,

raging internally at his failure.

At the instant that David recognized the MIG's manoeuvre he reacted with

a rapidity that was purely reflexive.  He closed down his power, and hit

his air brakes to punch a little to the speed off the Mirage.

The MIG turned steeply away to port, standing on one wing-tip that

seemed to be pegged into the bleak desert earth.  David released his air

brakes, to give his wings lift for the next evolution, and then he

dropped his own wing-tip and went sweeping round to follow the Syrian's

desperate twists with the Mirage hovering on the edge of the stall.

The Syrian was turning inside him, slower and more manoeuverable; David

could not bring his sights to bear, his right forefinger was curled

around the trigger but always the dark shape of the MIG was out of

centre in the illuminated circle of the sight as the aiming pipper

dipped and rose to the pull of gravity.

Ahead of the two circling aircraft rose a steep and forbidding line of

cliffs, .  rent by deep defiles and gullies.

The 1VUG made no attempt to climb above them, but selected a narrow pass

through the hills and went into it like a ferret into its run, a

desperate attempt to shake off the pursuit.

The Mirage was not designed for this type of flying, and David felt the

urge to hit his afterburners and ride up over the jagged fangs of rock,

but to do so was to let the MIG escape, and his anger was still strong

upon him.

He followed the Syrian into the rock pass, and the walls of stone on

either hand seemed to brush his wingtips, the gully turned sharply to

starboard and David dropped his wing and followed its course.  Back upon

itself the rock turned, and David swung the needle nose from maximum

rate turn starboard to port, and the stall warning device winked amber

and red at him as he abused the Mirage's delicate flying capabilities.

Ahead of him the MIG clawed its way through the tunnel of rock.  The

pilot looked back over his shoulder and he saw the IIirage following

him, creeping slowly up on him, and he turned back to his controls and

forced his machine lower still, hugging the rugged walls of stone.

The air in the hills was hot and turbulent, and the Mirage bucked and

fought against restraint wanting to be free and high, while ahead of it

the Syrian drifted tantalizingly off-centre in David's gunsight.

Now the valley turned again and narrowed, before climbing and ending

abruptly against a solid dark purple wall of smooth rock.

The Syrian was trapped, he levelled out and climbed steeply upwards, his

flight path dictated by the rocks on each side and ahead.

David pushed his throttle to the gate and lit his afterburners, and the

mighty engine rumbled, thrusting him powerfully forward, up under the

Syrian's stern.

The eternal micro-seconds of mortal combat dragged by, as the Syrian

floated lazily into the circle of the gunsight, expanding to fill it as

the Mirage's nose seemed to touch the other's tail plane and David felt

the buffeting of the Syrian's slip-stream.

He pressed the cannon trigger and the Mirage lurched as she hurled her

deadly load into the other machine in a clattering double stream of

cannon fire and an eruption of incendiary shells.

The Syrian disintegrated, evaporating in a gush of silvery smoke,

rent through with bright white lightning, and the ejecting pilot's body

was blown clear of the fuselage.  For an instant it was outlined ahead

of David's screen, cruciform in shape with arms and legs thrown wide,

the helmet still on the head, and the clothing ballooning in the rush of

air.  Then it flickered past the Mirage's canopy as David climbed

swiftly up out of the valley and into the open sky.

The soldiers were moving about amongst their vehicles, tending their

wounded and covering their dead, but they all looked up as David flew

back low along the road.  He passed so close that he could see their

faces clearly.  They were sunbrowned, some with beards or moustaches,

strong young faces, their mouths open as they cheered him, waving their

thanks.

My people, he thought.  He was still high on the adrenalin that had

poured into his blood, and he felt a fierce elation.  He grinned

wolfishly at the men below him and lifted one gloved hand in salute

before climbing up to where the Brig was circling, waiting for him.

The artificial lights of the bunker were dim after the brilliance of the

sun.  An engineer helped David from the cockpit as his mates swarmed

over the Mirage to refuel and rearm it.  This was one of the vital

skills of this tiny airforce, the ability to ready a warplane for combat

in a fraction of the time usually required for the task.  Thus in

emergency the machine could return to the battle long before its

adversary.

Moving stiffly from the confines of the cockpit, David crossed to where

the Brig was already in conversation with the flight controller.

He stood with the gaudy helmet tucked under one arm as he stripped off

his gloves, but as David came up he turned to him and his wintry smile

exposed the gold tooth in its nest of fur.

Lightly he punched David's arm Ken!  Yes!  said Major-General Joshua

Mordecai.  You'll do.

David was late to fetch Debra for dinner that evening, but she had

already learned the reason from her father.

They went to the Select behind David's Tower, inside the Jaffa Gate of

the old city.  Its unpretentious interior, decorated with patterns of

rope upon the walls, did not fully prepare David for the excellent meal

that the Arab proprietor served with the minimum of delay, mousakha

chicken, with nuts and spices on a bed of kouskous.

They ate almost in silence, Debra quickly recognizing and respecting

David's mood.  He was in the grip of postcombat tristesse, the adrenalin

hangover of stress and excitement, but slowly the good food in his belly

and the heavy Carmel wine relaxed him, until over the thimblesized cups

of Turkish coffee, black and powerfully reeking of cardamon seed, Debra

ask, What happened today, David?  He sipped the coffee before replying.

I killed a man.  She set down her cup and studied his face solemnly, and

he began to speak, telling her the detail of it, the chase and the kill,

until he ended lamely, I felt only satisfaction at the time.  A sense of

achievement.  I knew I had done what was right.  'And now?  she prompted

him.

Now I am sad, he shrugged.  I am saddened that I had to do it.  My

father, who has always been a soldier, says that only those who do the

actual fighting can truly know what it is to hate war.  David nodded.

Yes, I understand that now.  I love to fly, but I hate to destroy.  They

were silent again, both of them considering their own personal vision of

war, both of them trying to find words to express it.

And yet it is necessary, Debra broke the silence.  We must fight, there

is no other way.  There is no other way, with the sea at our backs and

the Arabs at our throats.  You speak like an Israeli, Debra challenged

him softly.

I made a decision today, or rather I was press-ganged by your father. He

has given me three weeks to brush up my Hebrew, and complete the

immigration formalities.  'And then?  Debra leaned towards him.

A comnission in the airforce.  That was the only point I scored on, I

had just enough strength to hold out for the equivalent rank I would

have had back home.

He haggled like a secondhand clothes dealer, but I had him, and he knew

it.  So he gave in at last.  Acting major, with confirmation of rank at

the end of twelve months.  'That's wonderful, Davey, you'll be one of

the youngest majors in the service.

Yeah, David agreed, and after I've paid my taxes I'll have a salary a

little less than a bus-driver back home.  'Never mind, Debra smiled for

the first time.  I'll help you with your Hebrew.  I was going to talk to

you about that, he answered her smile.  Come on, let's get out of here.

I'm restless tonight, and I want to walk.  They strolled through the

Christian quarter.  The open stalls on each side were loaded with garish

and exotic clothes, and leather work and jewellery, and the smells of

spices and food and drains and stale humanity was almost solid in the

narrow lanes where the arches met overhead.

Debra drew him into one of the antique stores in the Via Doloroso, and

the proprietor came to them, almost wriggling with pleasure.

Ah, Miss Mordecai, and how is your dearly esteemed father?  Then he

rushed into the back room to brew more coffee for them.

He's one of the half-honest ones, and he lives in mortal fear of the

Brig.  Debra selected an antique solid gold Star of David on a slim

golden neck chain, and though he had never before worn personal

jewellery, David bowed his head and let her place it about his neck. The

golden star lay against the coarse dark curls of his chest.

That's the only decoration you'll ever get, we don't usually give

medals, she told him laughingly.  But welcome to Israel anyway.  It's