Mirage Page 10

  He looked up from his desk when Daniel entered and smiled warmly. As a senior commanding officer, he had his pick of the cream of young officers completing their basic training. Daniel had been his particular choice.

  ‘Daniel. Just the guy I wanted to see. Grab a seat.’

  Daniel sat down. Even after four months he was still in awe of the former Mahal pilot whose exploits he had read about as a kid. ‘How’s the conversion to Mysteres going?’

  ‘Fine, Ben. It’s a superb aircraft.’

  ‘They’re okay, I guess. But the future is supersonic fighters.’ Patterson leaned his elbows on his desk and regarded the young pilot. ‘Speeds of Mach two and above, Daniel. Cairo and back in thirty minutes. A fighter that could fly six, maybe eight sorties a day.’

  Daniel had been keeping pace with the development of supersonic aircraft in other countries by gleaning what he could from the aviation press. Turn-around speed alone could give such an aircraft a fourfold increase in strike power over subsonic fighters, provided increased fuel did not displace the payload of conventional weaponry. But such aircraft were beyond the resources of tiny Israel.

  Patterson appeared to be reading Daniel’s mind. He said: ‘You’re wanted to serve on a user co-ordination group.’

  Daniel was dismayed. He knew all about pilots being taken off active flying duties to spend their time in obscure countries advising various contractors who were building French aircraft under licence. He made no attempt to disguise his alarm. ‘Does this mean that my flying’s not up to scratch?’

  Patterson shook his head. ‘No, Daniel. You’ve been selected because you’re my best pilot. And you’re not going to a licensee company but to Dassault’s themselves. You’re to spend four months helping on the development of the prototype of a new supersonic fighter that we’ve ordered from them. We’re to be the first squadron to be equipped with them.’

  Daniel’s resentment at being posted away from Israel to the grey skies and cold of Paris largely disappeared when he saw the sleek prototype that was taking shape in Dassault’s workshops. It was Marcel Dassault’s first supersonic fighter and the first aircraft that was being designed from scratch with Israel’s needs particularly in mind. For Daniel, that year marked the first of several visits when he happily exchanged flying, blue skies, sunshine and girls for the privilege of working in workshops and drawing offices alongside the men and women who were building what was to him the most beautiful machine in the world. By the end of 1965 he was as familiar as Dassault’s designers with the aircraft’s 500,000 drawings and specifications - from the most insignificant piece-part drawing right up to the huge full-size drawings of the jigs and press tools for assembling the wings and fuselage.

  To Daniel fell the honour of being the first Israeli to fly the Chel Ha’Avir pre-production model. Small. Robust. A dream to fly, the trim little fighter possessed a confidence-inspiring sleek gracefulness that typified all Marcel Dassault’s designs. And yet, despite its diminutive appearance, it could carry a payload of bombs and rockets approaching that of its Phantom and MiG rivals.

  Worries as to how the new jet would measure up to the formidable MiG-21 - which the Soviets were supplying in increasing numbers to Israel’s enemies - were allayed a few months before the Six Day War. In April 1967, a flight of Syrian MiG-2 Is tried to enter Israeli airspace and were intercepted over the Sea of Galilee by No. 133 Squadron flying the new Dassaults. The amazing aerial dogfight that followed brought people flocking on to the roofs and balconies of Tiberias. Seven MiGs were shot down without a single Israeli loss. The surviving Syrian pilots returned to their base to report on the new phenomenon bearing the Star of David insignia.

  A week later an unarmed CIA U-2 spy plane set off from Cyprus on a photo-reconnaissance over-flight of Israel. Confident that they were unassailable at 50,000 feet, the U-2’s aircrew approached the Israeli coast and suffered the embarrassment of suddenly finding themselves surrounded by four small delta-wing fighters who seemed unaware of the fact that small delta-wing fighters were not supposed to be able to climb to 50,000 feet. The gestures of the pilots suggested that it would be in the best interests of the U-2 if it did its over-flying elsewhere. Advice that the U-2’s crew accepted.

  In the opening days of the 1967 Six Day War, the outstanding performance of this new aircraft enabled Daniel and his fellow pilots to achieve the most spectacular and decisive victory over the air forces of their country’s enemies. The Egyptian commander, whose air force had been destroyed in one day, ruefully described the Dassault as having the performance of a gnat and the sting of a cobra. So closely allied was the aircraft with Israel that Marcel Dassault himself chose a name for it that was synonymous with the illusions and distortions of the burning deserts whose skies it was destined to rule; a name that spoke of the twisting wraiths of nightmares and dreams.

  Mirage.

  PART TWO

  1

  TEL AVIV July 1967

  Daniel completed his thirtieth daily length of the swimming pool and this time tried thrusting himself away from the side of the pool with his left foot. The destroyed nerves in the sole and heel of his foot meant that he could not feel the tiles but the sudden stab of pain across his instep made him immediately regret the foolhardy experiment. It had been the same for two weeks now: a hard or gentle push always produced the same result. Upon waking each morning he set his feet gingerly on the floor in the hope that the night’s sleep would have performed a miracle of healing. And each morning he tried convincing himself that the sharp, needle-like jabbing pain that brought him to full wakefulness was less than the previous day. A conviction that was helped along by the assurances of his doctors who said that the foot was healing with remarkable speed.

  The pain as he pushed away from the side of the swimming pool was a sharper version of the same pain that forced him to walk with a slight limp no matter how hard he tried to disguise it.

  Leonora anxiously watched her son climb out of the pool and flick the strands of blond hair from his eyes. She would have taken his stick to him but she knew from experience that such a gesture would be met with a sharp rebuff. Her sympathetic eyes followed Daniel as he tried to walk without hobbling. He gave a groan of relief as he flopped on to the sun bed beside her, and turned up the volume on a tiny machine that was belting out the Beatles’ ‘All You Need is Love’. The machine was one of the sought-after compact cassette tape recorders that Emil had obtained for Daniel through a wartime friend at Philips in Eindhoven.

  ‘You shouldn’t walk without your stick, Daniel.’

  Daniel gave her an easy smile. ‘I don’t need a stick, mother. It’s nothing but a little stiffness.’

  ‘A crushed foot is nothing?’

  Daniel groped under the sun bed for his cigarettes. He lay back and exhaled smoke while staring up at a jet contrail in the impossibly blue sky. The Beatles tape ended so that the only sounds to disturb the hot afternoon were the hum of air-conditioning from the house, and the whistling of the workers in the packing shed. Under Leonora’s shrewd management, the moshav had grown into a large business which had expanded to encompass two neighbouring moshavs. There were now twenty acres under intensive cultivation and, largely due to Daniel’s insistence that the moshav should diversify into engineering, there was even a small factory, hidden by cypress trees, where Ferguson tractor spares were made under licence. What had been the original bungalow now formed the walls of the kitchen and breakfast room of a spacious, tastefully furnished five-bedroom villa. As the business prospered, so the moshav’s first field had been encroached upon to provide the house with a surrounding acre of shaded lawns and carefully-tended flowerbeds. There was even a clay tennis court screened by a line of conifers. Daniel yawned and looked at his watch.

  ‘Another ten minutes,’ Leonora observed.

  ‘I just wanted to see the time,’ said Daniel, not trying to hide the irritation in his voice.

  ‘There’s no need to bite my head off.’

/>   ‘Mother - I wasn’t biting your head off.’

  The beginnings of another of their good-natured arguments ended with the sound of a car turning into the drive.

  ‘That’ll be him,’ said Daniel anxiously, making sure his walking stick was hidden under the sun bed.

  Leonora pulled a cotton dress over her swimsuit and went to investigate. She returned a few minutes later with Ben Patterson in tow. Not speaking to him, which was uncharacteristic because she usually chatted animatedly to new arrivals. The gangling, easygoing Texan was in uniform and carrying a briefcase. He grinned down at his junior officer.

  ‘Hi, Daniel. How’s it going?’

  ‘He’s not playing football yet,’ Leonora commented frostily.

  ‘I can still beat you at tennis, mother dear.’

  ‘Ha!’ said Leonora tartly. ‘Sending me aces on your serve? And only returning balls you don’t have to run for? You call that beating me?’ ‘Mother - go and get some beers.’

  ‘Make that two beers for me, please, Mrs Kalen.’

  Leonora moved off without acknowledging the request. Patterson watched wistfully as she entered the house. He peeled off his jacket and sat beside Daniel. ‘You know something, Daniel? I reckon it’s worth having a foot shot off to be looked after by your mother.’ ‘It wasn’t shot off,’ said Daniel boredly. The way men found his mother attractive - sometimes friends his own age - always irritated and puzzled him.

  ‘Pretty damn near.’

  ‘So what’s the final verdict?’

  Ben rubbed his chin as though hoping that the gesture would defer having to give an answer. ‘You’re off flying duties.’

  ‘How long for?’

  Ben’s silence prompted Daniel to repeat the question.

  ‘I think you must know the answer to that, Daniel,’ said the Texan quietly.

  Daniel stared at Patterson. ‘Oh - for God’s sake—’

  The older man avoided Daniel’s gaze by staring down at the sun-baked flagstones. ‘Daniel - you’ve got a steel pin in your foot.... We have no choice. We have to ground you.’ It was a measure of the Texan’s high principles that he said ‘we’ rather than the responsibility-dodging ‘they’.

  Daniel pulled himself up on his elbows. ‘That’s crap, Ben - and you know it. My foot’s going to get better. The doctors are amazed at how quickly it’s healing. Already I can do anything. I can run. I can—’

  ‘It’s not going to get better and you can’t do everything,’ Ben cut in. ‘For one thing there’s no sensation in your sole. I’ve got all your medical reports and X-rays right here.’ He tapped his briefcase. ‘We’re not worried about the pin, but no feelings means that you can’t fly.’

  A desperate note edged into Daniel’s voice: ‘What in heaven does lack of sensation matter?’

  ‘It matters a lot if you can’t feel a rubber bar properly.’

  ‘In the Second World War the British had a legless fighter pilot, for God’s sake. Haven’t you seen the movie Reach for the Sky?' ‘In the Second World War the British weren’t flying supersonic jets like the Mirage,’ Ben replied. ‘Listen, Daniel - you know as well as I do that one little Fouga jet trainer today could make mincemeat of a squadron of Douglas Bader’s Spitfires.’

  Daniel slumped back on the sun bed. He knew that further argument was futile. The ChelHa’Avir demanded one hundred per cent physical fitness in its air crews. Their minds would be made up. The silence that followed was broken by Ben releasing the latches on his briefcase.

  ‘I’ve got some papers here you’re to read and sign.’

  ‘Discharge papers?’ Daniel made no attempt to disguise the bitterness in his voice.

  Further conversation was interrupted by Leonora returning with chilled cans of lager. Daniel’s expression told her what they were talking about. Deciding that it would be best to leave the two men alone, she made an excuse and returned to the house.

  Ben poured two glasses of beer and held one out to Daniel. ‘I’m sorry, Daniel - really I am. If it’s any consolation - you’ll get a decent disability pension and a gratuity payment. And there’s sure to be a generous payment from the Mahal Association.

  ’Pension ... gratuity .... The words jarred painfully. Daniel stared up at the sky while Patterson balanced his briefcase on his knees and fumbled with a pen and a sheaf of documents.

  ‘Ben - isn’t there something I could do while remaining a serving officer?’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well... couldn’t I go back to work on the Dassault user coordination groups?

  I enjoyed my stints in Paris.’

  Ben nodded. ‘Yeah. I’ve got a spell in Switzerland coming up. Outfit called Luftech. Documentation sub-contractors for Sulzers - the licensees. They’ve finally unbent and decided they need our help. But you have to be a serving pilot. I hate to be brutal, Daniel, but Dassault and their licensees aren’t interested in the opinions of noncoms.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Ben - I was brought down by a SAM. What’s that if it’s not experience?’

  ‘Sure. And so were thirty other pilots.’

  The information shook Daniel. ‘Thirty! But I thought—’

  ‘The official figures are just that,’ Ben interrupted. ‘Unofficially we lost over twenty per cent of our fighters. Most of the losses were due to ground fire - SAMs like the one that nailed you although the Mirage did best of all. We only lost nine.’

  ‘But with fifty Mirages on order, there must be something I can do at Dassault’s.’

  Ben looked sympathetic. ‘Maybe there is, Daniel. I wouldn’t know. I don’t have that sort of influence. What about your father?’ ‘What about him?’ said Daniel guardedly.

  ‘A major-general must have some clout somewhere.’

  Daniel shrugged. ‘I don’t think he has much to do with the air force.’

  ‘Don’t you know?’

  ‘To be honest - no.’

  ‘Well, he must have some influence with someone,’ Ben observed. ‘I heard that he turned up in the area where you were shot down in his own helicopter.’

  Daniel looked surprised. ‘He what?’

  ‘A Super Frelon.’

  ‘You’re kidding?’

  ‘Nope.’

  Daniel lit another cigarette. ‘Well - even if he has got influence, I wouldn’t dream of asking him to use it. I’ve never asked him to do anything like that for me.’

  Ben held out the documents to Daniel. ‘Maybe you should make a start. You’ve nothing to lose but your pride.’

  Daniel ignored the papers and gestured angrily at his injured foot. ‘I’ve already lost a lot of that to this mess. Give me those.’ He seized the papers, scrawled his signature several times without bothering to read them, and thrust them back at Patterson.

  ‘There’s another form from the Mahal Association in Philadelphia.’

  Daniel had heard of the organization. It was run by an influential group of American businessmen; former Sherut airmen - one time rebel fliers in the days of the Haganah - who were now bankers, financiers and industrialists. ‘I don’t want any handouts,’ he muttered indifferently.

  Ben’s grin masked his anger. ‘I’m one of the trustees, Daniel - they’re not handouts but dividends from money invested by men and women who risked their necks flying for Israel just like you did. If it makes you feel any better, I’ll fill out the form for you but I’ll need your signature on this consent form so that we can send them your medical report on the crash.’

  Daniel took the form and signed it with bad grace. What the hell did it matter if a bunch of do-gooders in America knew about his foot?

  Patterson returned the papers to his briefcase and glanced at Daniel, who was staring up at the sky.

  ‘Well,’ said Patterson awkwardly, ‘guess I’d better be moving.’ He drained a can of lager and stood. ‘I’ll keep in touch, Daniel.’ Leonora had been keeping a discreet watch on the men. She emerged from the house. Patterson turned a warm smile on her which she ignored. ‘T
hanks for the beers, Mrs Kalen. Hey, Daniel - take it easy on the tennis until that foot’s fixed, huh? I’ll drop by next week to see how you’re doing.’

  Normally Daniel’s responses to such repartee were quick and witty. The slowness of his answer did not pass unnoticed by Leonora.

  Daniel closed his eyes and lay back, listening to Leonora bidding Patterson goodbye. He must have said something to annoy her because she suddenly raised her voice. Daniel heard her return and light a cigarette although she rarely smoked. He glanced sideways at her. She was agitated, inhaling quickly on the cigarette as if she found it distasteful.

  ‘So what did he want?’

  Daniel shrugged and snapped another cassette into the tape player. It was Simon’s and Garfunkel’s ‘Windmills of Your Mind’ - Michel Legrand’s haunting ballad sung over the brilliant flying sequences in The Thomas Crown Affair - the film that Daniel and Leonora had seen together the week before. The lyrics were nonsensical but the strange song brought back to Daniel vivid images of the timeless deserts, mountains and plains of his beloved Israel seen from 40,000 feet as he exultantly wheeled his tiny Mirage in a frenzy of orgasmic spiritual freedom on the very threshold of space. From that height there was little to be seen of the hand of Man; it was exactly as the land had been when God had prepared it for Abraham and his descendants. The pain that exploded in Daniel at the realization that he would never fly again was like a blunt scalpel slicing with brutal recklessness into his defenceless soul. Suddenly Leonora’s arms were around him as he wept; her arms cradling his head as she drew him to the soft mother warmth between her breasts. She crooned softly to him as she had done so often when he was a child.

  Patterson parked his Sunbeam Talbot outside the double garage and tossed the keys to Meir Hoffa - his former batman. The ex-corporal and his wife had been Patterson’s caretaker and housekeeper for twenty years.

  ‘I won’t be needing the car again today, Meir,’ said Patterson, retrieving his briefcase from the car’s front seat. ‘I’ve got a load of paperwork to get through so I’ll be needing the tape recorder on the terrace.’