The Glory Read Free

The inspector looked at the credit cards, the driver’s license, the wad of dollars, and the
     small stash of Israeli currency. “Tourist?” he inquired.
    “Making aliya,” said the American.
    The squint was not a defect after all. It cleared away in a look of utter amazement, then returned more pronounced and suspicious
     than before. Lifting the hood of the Porsche, he squinted under it, borrowed the flashlight from the man under the car, crouched
     to squint more intently at the engine, and scribbled in a pocket notebook. Then he said, “Documents.”
    “Don’t they go to the Mekhess?”
    “I’m the Mekhess.”
    A shiny white Mercedes pulled up nearby and the Israeli in the windbreaker jumped out, seemingly in a hurry, for he went off
     toward the windows at a trot, swinging his overlong arms. Barkowe produced a rubber-banded envelope, and the inspector took
     a long leisurely squint at the papers inside. Meantime two of the other men were pulling up the floor mats, one was flashing
     the light into the gas tank, and another was kicking the tires. Long queues lounged and fidgeted at all the windows, but even
     while the inspector was glancing over his papers Barkowe saw the burly man lope back to his Mercedes and drive off through
     a gate into the waterfront traffic.
    “New car?” said the inspector at last.
    “Almost new. I drove around Europe a bit when I first picked it up.”
    “Where was that?”
    “In Milan, Porsche agency.”
    “Ah good, no problem then.” The squinter snapped the rubber band around the envelope and handed it back to Barkowe. “You can
     book return passage on this same boat tomorrow.”
    “Slikha?”
(“Pardon?”)
    “You have to take this Porsche back to Milan.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    The Mekhess man blasted a spate of Hebrew at him.
    “Slower, please,” said Barkowe.
    The squinter said in heavily accented English, “Your model Porsche not available in Israel. No model in Israel, no car come
     in.”
    “Oh, so you do speak English? Fine. The New York consulate didn’t mention any regulations about models.”
    “
Ani mitzta’er
. New regulation.”
    “Is that my fault? Look, let me make myself clear. I’ll fight this up to the American ambassador if I have to, but I’m not
     taking this car back to Italy. That’s an absolutely insane idea.”
    Squinting toward a chain-fenced area full of cars, the inspector said with a shrug, “Impounded vehicles park there. Storage
     charge, twenty American dollars daily.”
    W hen Noah Barak returned to the wardroom of the
Eilat
from the supply section, four officers at lunch burst into a popular new song of the war.
    O Sharm el Sheikh
    Once more we’ve returned,
    Our hearts to you ever,
    Ever have yearned …
    Noah poured coffee from a simmering pot on a sideboard. “Look, isn’t the joke getting old?”
    “What joke? What old?” said the captain, a roly-poly lieutenant colonel (the Israel navy used army ranks), gesturing at a
     blown-up newspaper photograph taped to a bulkhead. It showed Noah, wearing only shorts and an officer’s cap, nailing the Star
     of David flag to a pole atop a stone fortress. “Who else in this navy captured an enemy base singlehanded?”
    It was in fact a very old joke. On temporary detached duty, commanding a patrol boat in the Red Sea, Noah Barak had led a
     landing force ashore at Sharm el Sheikh, only to find that the base had been abandoned in the pell-mell retreat of the Egyptians.
     So at negligible risk he had “captured” the deserted base, an army photographer had snapped the shot, and it had appeared
     next day on the front page of
Ha’aretz
. Aboard warships jokes tend to be durable. He had been serenaded off and on for months about Sharm el Sheikh.
    Noah shook his head irritably and took the coffee to his cabin, where a telephone chit on his tiny desk read,
Daphna Luria called. Phone her 1800 tonight Ramat David
. He could seldom see the luscious Daphna, tied as he was to