The Shield: a novel (5 page)

“
Now the new orders: Get the guys ready to move. Pack everything up and be ready in a couple of hours. The new platoon commander will be here by then. The company will move out in the afternoon, and your trucks will be here on time, or so they promised.”

“
Where?” Uri inquired.

“
There was no official announcement, but my guess is that we are going to be part of a force set up to seal the Egyptian border,” Noam responded. “Let me know when the new commander arrives. I’ll be at the company HQ.”

“
This is the Sabbath. How come we are going to do something on the Sabbath?” Uri asked. The only exception for Saturday activity would be a war, and he knew nothing about fighting anywhere in Israel. The country was on a permanent war footing, but there had been no actual shooting for a while.

“
According to the radio, which you apparently haven’t heard, the Government declared a state of emergency and the Knesset is debating instituting emergency laws. They expect the debate to be over in a couple of hours.  Even the religious parties are participating, despite the Sabbath. You can assume that it’s a more serious situation than just a simple war.” Lieutenant Noam Shaviv shook hands with his ex-sergeant and walked away. Uri Dayan looked after him, with misgivings he could not articulate crowding his mind. He was worried about having to nurse a new, inexperienced officer at a time when trouble could start at any moment.  Even more, he had difficulty imagining running the platoon without Noam, in whose shadow he had lived and fought for close to ten years. But there was nothing to do but what he was ordered. At least that part of his army life had not changed.

Moh
ammad al Husseini relaxed in his living room’s easy chair. It was a nice living room. If you didn’t look out the windows you wouldn’t be able to tell that it was in Jenin. He had a nice view from his hilltop villa on the outskirts of town and could almost see the Israeli town of Afula in the Galilee, which his people had attacked more than once. Although Jenin was divided between competing (and often violent) militia groups, Mohammad felt safe. He was the local commander of Azz A-Din Al-Qassam – the military arm of the Hamas movement. Since Hamas dominated most of this area, he was, de-facto, the most powerful man in the northern West Bank and did as he pleased. For a while the rival Fatah militia, with the help of the Palestinian Authority, attacked and almost destroyed Hamas’ strongholds. It was a close thing, but after a couple of years, with Allah’s help, Hamas was on the rise again. This time they were more cautious and did not trust Fatah, or anybody else. Most of their armed force did not show itself unless absolutely necessary. And when they thought it was necessary, their enemies tended to die quickly. In the best tradition of Islam, the families of those killed were subverted to serve Hamas or killed.

The doorbell rang. Moh
ammad heard his young third wife open the door. After a polite knock at the living room door several men filed in. They sat on the sofa and ottomans. Mohammad gestured to the woman, who, though young and inexperienced, was eager to please and was doing a good job as a servant. She bowed and disappeared into the back of the house.

The men waited quietly until she brought coffee and sweetmeats and placed them on the low table in the middle of the room. After another look at her husband she left, closing the door behind her.

Mohammad al Husseini studied the faces of his underlings. They had known each other for a long time and trusted each other implicitly. This was a group that had sent numerous suicide bombers, initiated shooting attacks, survived years of fighting against Israel and other Palestinian factions, and was still here to plan more. They looked worried, which was no surprise. The Israeli radio had strange news on Friday. No one in the group had heard the news firsthand as they spent most of the day praying in their local mosque, but they heard reports and even today, a day later, the TV kept repeating the amazing story.  But at the moment the most worrisome part, as far as Mohammad was concerned, was the announcement that emergency laws were in force. Those were based on the old British laws from 1945-1948 and were harsh and unforgiving – He knew this both from the history courses he took in college and from real life. Habeas Corpus was suspended, so that a suspect was not required to be brought before a judge after arrest and could be held by the security forces indefinitely. Acting against the state became, at least in theory, even more dangerous
than usual. As a lawyer, Mohammad al Husseini did not like these laws one bit.

“
Allahu Akbar
,
” said Mohammad. Whatever else had changed, God must still be praised.

“
Allahu Akbar,” the men answered as one.

“
I see that you are worried.” Mohammad said, smoothing his full beard
.
“I can’t blame you. We lost radio and cell phone contact with our brothers in Gaza. It seems that we also cannot reach our Syrian leadership. I expect an imminent assault by the Jews who will, no doubt, use this situation to their advantage. It is possible that they somehow messed up our communications on purpose and will try to get us. But this is neither here nor there.

“
Now to the bright points: We know that the emergency laws have been implemented a couple of times in the past. It never led to serious problems – the Jews are soft and can’t repress their enemies brutally or completely. We will benefit from their weakness and be only slightly inconvenienced. The most important fact may not have occurred to you: I think that the Israeli announcement about time travel may be true – they never lie to their own public and are trustworthy in this respect. This means that we are now in 1941 and my great uncle, Hajj Amin al Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, is alive and well in Germany. He has significant influence with Hitler and if we can help the Germans win this war, we will exterminate the Jews just like my great uncle promised our people back in 1939.”

“
How can we help the Germans?” asked the commander of the northern Jenin district
. 
“We are much weaker than the Israelis, let alone the Allies.”

“
But we have access to a significant weapon: information. There’s enough knowledge in the books at our universities to let the Nazis win this war.  And we win with them,” Mohammad proclaimed.

“
I am assuming you have a plan,” the same commander said.

“
Yes. And it is devastatingly simple: We smuggle several of our people equipped with books about nuclear technology and 20th century history out of the territories into Egypt, Jordan and, possibly, Lebanon. All we need is for one of them to meet a German agent and give him the books. It should not be difficult – there are plenty of German spies in this area. Some of them are our fellow Arabs and relatives. They’ll do the rest. My great uncle has Hitler’s promise to exterminate the Jews in Europe and help us to exterminate them in Palestine. With a German victory this promise will be realized.”

The assembled commanders looked at Moh
ammad with awe. This was the thinking of a great man.  It would realize their wish: a world without Jews or Israel. They stroked their beards in anticipation of the great events. They also didn’t notice the contradiction between their leader’s statement of their communications having been nefariously disrupted by the Jews and his trust in the Israeli’s announcement of time travel.

The discussion on who to choose for the mission, which routes to take, and other mundane arrangements took a while. In the end, one of the attendees had a proposal: “I suggest that we continue our regular activity. This would be a bad time to stop suicide bombings or rocket attacks. If we do, the Israelis may suspect that we are up to something and start investigating.”

“I see that I promoted the right man,” Mohammad responded. “It will be up to you.  Arrange for several bombings and some rocket attacks. Don’t tell me the details. Do it the usual way. Go with Allah’s blessing.” He chose to ignore the fact that due to the Israeli security service’s efficiency and the security fence, the number of suicide bombers successfully getting into Israel was negligible and none of the factions in the West Bank had any rockets – those were all in Gaza. But with Allah’s help, anything was possible.

Sulha, the young third wife of the great man, moved away from the living room door, which she had left open a crack, just in time to get out of the way of the dispersing commanders. She jotted down the details and an hour later, left a note in the cracked wall of the neighborhood mosque.

After his commanders left, Mohammad called a number in Ramallah: “I need to meet with the Chairman tomorrow in the afternoon.”

“
Let me call you back,” the voice on the other end responded.

The call
came twenty minutes later: “The Chairman will see you tomorrow at three in the afternoon. No weapons, please.”

***

Itamar Herz, Managing Director of Israel Aircraft Industries, otherwise known as IAI, felt that he was in a dream. He was chairing a meeting in his large office with the Minister of Defense, several of his department heads, and two managers from Israel Military Industries (IMI). All this was not unusual, except this Saturday, like most Sabbaths, the company was supposed to be closed. The hastily printed calendar on the wall and another on his desk were open to June 21, 1941. He forced his attention back to the proceedings.

“
We will need to stay current with operational information from both Eastern and Western Europe,” Nitzan Liebler, the Defense Minister, was saying. “We need this capability yesterday. What do we have available now?”

The division heads looked at each other. A spy satellite project manager said: “We have two satellites ready to launch. The plan was to go from Baikonur – it was cheaper than doing it ourselves. If anybody here can give us a rocket, we can launch in two days. That is if the rocket is a Shavit, otherwise we will have to rework the satellite’s envelope to fit.”

“We have the third stage of a Shavit launcher ready, actually several of them - leftovers from the communication satellite tests last year. We can refuel and have them ready for launch in about 24 hours. We need to get the other two stages from somewhere,” Itamar said.

The Military Industries representatives looked at each other. “I’m not a rocket guy, but it seems to me that we can build a Jericho 3 minus the warhead cone and use it to build a complete Shavit. After all, that’s what a Shavit launcher is.”

“How long will it take to do that?” Nitzan Liebler inquired quietly.

“
Probably a couple of weeks,” the Military Industries man responded.

“
Too long. We need it now.” Liebler was getting testy. Israeli Military Industries was a company controlled by the government, as was Israel Aircraft Industries. Since Israel was a small country surrounded by enemies, the government maintained majority control of several strategic companies. This allowed the companies to engage in activities on the open market while giving the government control in matters of national defense.

“
We can dismantle a Jericho or two and have the Shavit assembled and ready to launch by Tuesday. A second will probably be ready a day after,” the other manager said. “We can restore the Jericho with new rockets in a couple of weeks. We’ll need special funding for that though – We have no budget reserves and no way to pay for this stuff.”

“
Do that immediately. Let my secretary know how much you need.  We’ll transfer the money from our emergency fund,” the Defense Minister was visibly more relaxed. He needed the surveillance ability in place as soon as possible, and having the IAI and IMI cooperate and agree on a way to accomplish it was more than half the job.

“
We will need a written order signed by you and the Prime Minister to disable a Jericho,” said the first Military Industries manager.

Nitzan Liebler had the quiet serene look that meant he was ready to explode.  “May I remind you that we are under emergency regulations? You will receive your signatures, but in the meantime stop wasting time. By the way, will the satellites have any communication relay abilities?”

“The one over Western Europe will not if we launch it as is,” the satellite program manager said.  “It can transmit high resolution images on request and give us diagnostics data.  We can also steer it to a different orbit. We could modify its programming a bit to allow a small text buffer for communications. Just take into account that you will need a small dish antenna pointing at the satellite to talk to it. At the speed it is moving, your window of communication from a mobile station will be about ten seconds. Using burst transmissions will allow the passage of several thousand characters every hour and a half – when the satellite is above the antenna. If you want it, it will take another day to modify the programming and test it. This will also likely decrease the resolution of the images we get, but not very significantly”.

“
Okay, do the modifications,” the defense Minister said.

The meeting dispersed with only It
amar Herz and Nitzan Liebler remaining in the big office.

“
Why the urgency with satellites? We can cover the area with spy planes,” Itamar asked. 

“
Our resources are limited and having several jets over Europe at all times is not only wasteful but also dangerous. As you know, it is not inconceivable for a Messerschmitt fighter to reach the operating ceiling of an F-15.  And accidents happen. We don’t want even a small chance of one of our pilots falling into the hands of the Gestapo or of the Germans seeing our jets. The results would be serious, so we’ll take the risk only if absolutely necessary.”