Ranch

Retired major general Ariel Sharon was practically neighbors with Judith Margolies. It took a scant half hour for her to be driven from her kibbutz of Yad Mordechai to his home at the Sycamore Ranch a little to the east of Sderot.

She was driven by Colonel Yehoshua Saguy. He was the chief intelligence officer of the 143rd Reservse Armored Division. Saguy was also the first stepping stone in a bridge that Judith hoped would lead to the Prime Minister. Certainly she had exhausted every other avenue, and now, on the very brink of national catastrophe, she was near despair.

Neither Judith nor Saguy were in uniform, as they were not in a duty status, but both had brought their Class Bs in duffle bags they stored in the boot of the colonels car. Judith, who was twenty-six years of age chronologically, chose not to wear the long-sleeved minidresses that she normally affected. They were quite popular in 1973, even in Arab countries. Instead she wore somewhat more conservative attire, as she was to meet a married military man who was her own age in terms of calendar time. But she would not be able to disguise how she looked to be two decades younger than she was.

The Sycamore Ranch had all the olfactory ambiance of your run-of-the-mill sheep farm, but Judith did not even crinkle her nose. After all, there was livestock at Yad Mordechai too. The general was expecting them. He was sitting on his porch sharing tea with his wife Lily when Yehoshua drove up, and rose to greet his visitors. Despite their non-duty status both the colonel and lieutenant colonel Margolies saluted the general out of respect, then Yehoshua drew near to shake his superior officer's hand. There was real affection between the two men. Sharon said, "Yeshi, you have brought arm candy with you, and you never spoke of her!"

"It is nothing like that, sir," the colonel said with a slightly embarrassed grin. "This is Sgan Aluf Judith Margolies and she, or rather what she has to say and to show you, is the reason I have come."

Judith bowed her head to affirm what the colonel said. Lily Sharon came down from the porch to join her husband, who was genuinely confused. He said, "I knew you looked familiar, I have seen photos but I assumed they were from the Second War. So youthful you still are! How do you manage to do it?"

"Time travel, sir," said Judith, with a completely straight face, and just for a moment Sharon believed her. Then he decided it was a delicious joke and broke into his characteristic laugh. If Judith was B'nei Elohim she would not have spoken so, even as a joke.

"Lily, We are to entertain a celibrity today," he told his wife. "This is Judith Margolies." And such was Judith's fame as a soldier and a Nazi hunter that Lily could only remain silent and stare in genuine awe. But more soberly, Sharon said, "Whatever you have come to tell me is for the ears of Lily also. If not, then you might as well leave now."

Yehoshua assured him, "Sir, nothing we have is from Israeli intelligence, because Israeli intelligence has practically nothing. That, in fact, is precisely the problem."

Judith hefted the briefcase she was carrying. "If we could go indoors, sir?"

In the general's spacious home Judith saw a large dining table under an ornate chandelier. She asked General Sharon for his permission to use it to lay out what she had brought, which he cheerfully granted. She reached into her briefcase and began laying out documents. As she did this, Sharon, his wife, and Colonel Saguy seated themselves, and Judith began to speak as she worked.

"I think, general, that despite the fact that you were born here and I came from Britain, we are very much alike. We are both patriots who have fought hard for the continued existence of our small country, and we both hold the opinion that lately it is led by idiots. And how very unfortunate that is, sir. Within twenty-four hours you, I, and Colonel Saguy will be in field dress and the country will be at war."

She paused to see the startled reaction of the general, then continued to lay out her evidence. She said, "Aman has nothing like this, sir, because the Egyptians have put the canal under a SAM umbrella that makes aerial reconnaisance quite perilous, and besides, the belief that Egypt will not attack has taken on the dimensions of religious belief."

"There what is the source of this information?" demanded the general.

"The B'nei Elohim, sir."

General Sharon had been raised to think in entirely secular terms, and he was proud of that fact. "The ones with the crazy white horns? They are religious kooks themselves."

"Kooks, sir, perhaps, but they are kooks who grounded most of the Egyptian air force on the first day of the Third War. They have aided me in every way to bring Nazi war criminals to justice. And now they have reached out to me with this imagery, even as I am now reaching out to you, sir."

Sharon began looking at them. The photographs were mostly white, with the Suez Canal running through them as a gray band, and they were speckled with tiny shapes that were quite distinctive: Soviet-supplied T-55 main battle tanks. To the untrained eye they resembled nothing so much as a sketch done in ink by an atavistic child, but Sharon knew every kilometer of the canal. It was unusual, but clearly genuine.

Colonel Saguy said, "We counted thirteen hundred tanks, sir, T-55s, some T-62s, all nearly flush on the western bank of the canal. That is far more than they've ever brought forward in exercises before. It is more than they had even last May, the first time we thought they were going to cross over."

"Thirteen hundred? That's their reserves as well. But this photograph, I've never seen the like."

Judith supplied an answer: "It's a negative of a thermal image taken from a B'nei Elohim platform that...well, sir, it can best be described as an airship. It moves fairly slowly, sounds like a faint whirlwind, and it would not do for it to be seen by day. These images are from two nights ago. No one in Zahal cares to have a look, but the entire Egyptian Second Army is sitting on the canal from Qantara to Deveroir, and the entire Egyptian Third Army likewise is parked from Suez City north to the lake."

Sharon didn't ask whether the enemy was massed on the shores of Great Bitter Lake as well. He knew even the Egyptians would consider it unfeasible to make a crossing there. And there were no roads to Israel north of Qantara. But he did say, "This is hard to believe. Certainly our own high-altitude reconnaissance planes, flying out of range of the SAMS, would have seen something."

"No sir," said Lilith. "Everything, everything is under camoflage netting, so you can only catch them after dusk with infrared, and when you go thermal you need to fly under a thousand mneters to resolve the gun barrels. They've been getting all this ready since August. But Chief Idiot Eli Zeira preaches that Egypt isn't confident about going to war and Sadat is doing everything in his power to feed that belief, right down to a flow of pure shit from a double agent."

"How will they breach the sand berm we've piled up flush along the east side of the canal?"

"With four hundred fifty water cannons, sir, powered by petrol and drawing water from the canal itself. Then they'll use ferries and throw over pontoons. The B'nei Elohim say they will start at 1400 tomorrow and they will have at least five bridgeheads punched through the berm by dusk. They'll bring SA-6 and 7 air cover across the canal with them, not to mention self-propelled triple A."

"I believe her," Saguy said. "The Egyptians have brought forward everything they need for a crossing. This is no exercise. And when they break through the poor fellows garrisoned on the 'impregnable' Bar-Lev Line will be fed to a meat grinder."

"Why do your religious kooks say Sadat will start a war he knows he can't win?"

"My kooks, sir, say Sadat thinks he needs this war just to stay in power. They say the last war, the Six Days, was so humiliating to the Egyptians even losing another war will be acceptable if they can win back a piece of the Sinai, maybe enough to reopen the canal to shipping. And we know Syria wants the Golan back, sir. The B'nei Elohim say it's going to be a two-front war. But with everyone in our government buying into Zeira's 'assessment' we're going to be caught by surprise and lose not only the Golan but the whole Sinai peninsula."

Sharon said, "If Sadat and Assad are tempted to cross the borders of the country itself the PM may resort to the Samson Option. Things are different now than in the Six Days. She could send Cairo and Damascus up in clouds of radioactive smoke."

Judith said, "Yes sir, the B'nei Elohim have also said as much. The Soviets would, of course, retaliate by taking out Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and the Americans will sit back and count themselves lucky it ended there. But it won't end there for us. It will be like the Nazi catastrophe all over again, for us."

In the silence that followed, the general's wife Lily blurted, "Never again!"

Sharon was on the verge of a decision, but he said, "Tomorrow is Yom Kippur. There are twelve religious kooks in the Knesset who would never assent to a mobilization on our highest holy day."

Judith replied, "Not even the National Religious Party could block mobilization when hostilities actually break out, sir, which will be, as I said, at 1400 tomorrow. Besides, tomorrow is also Ramadan, which is Egypt's highest holy day. They're willing to set it aside to start a conflict. The only question, sir, is whether we take our own religious principles to be a suicide pact."

The general's face grew stern. It was as though he had switched from a retirement mindset to his old ways as a commander with the flick of a switch. He said, "I am calling you both to duty status as of this moment, on my own authority. Are your unforms on hand?"

"Yes sir," they said together.

"Take these documents to Major General Shmuel Gonen at Southern Command in Be'er Sheva. By the time you arrive I will have already spoken to him by phone." He looked directly at Judith and continued. "You have proceeded correctly to go from Yehoshua to me, and now you're going from me to Gonen, and I will do my best to persuade him to send you on to General Elazar. At best, we can get a pre-emptive strike on Syria and Egypt overnight. The next best would be a general call-up of reservists at dawn tomorrow, which would give us half a day to get ready. At worst, someone in the chain from Gorodish to Golda will put your photos in the round file. But you have to try, because as my wife just said, 'Never again'!"