Hesh Kestin - The Siege of Tel Aviv

“If you can take your eyes off that cheap bitch for a moment, I wouldn’t be the only one having to carry on this stupid conversation with your vapid relatives,” he hears her say in Hebrew, using a tone meant to suggest something on the order of Darling, do you think we should order dinner now or have another round of drinks? Which is precisely how she explains the veiled reprimand to her husband’s non-Hebrew-speaking relations.

For answer, General Al-Sheikh excuses himself, walks over to the bar, and without so much as a pardon-me asks of the young lady, “Miss, do I know you? You seem awfully familiar.”

In reply the young lady rises from her barstool, stands straight and elegant in her four-inch heels—and salutes.

“Captain Alex Shabbati, sir!” she barks. “You taught me everything I know about aerial combat, sir!”

The good general, who through three wars and countless hours in the sky thought he had seen it all, shakes his head with an uncommon briskness, as though shaking off a mosquito. “Clearly, captain, not everything.”

Within forty-eight hours, the problem is bucked up to the head of Fighter Command, then to the commanding general of the IAF, then to the IDF chief of staff, then to the minister of defense, before it lands with an unwelcome thud on the desk of the prime minister herself, who runs her eyes over the single paragraph labeled Issue attached to Major Shabbati’s military biography and security summary.

“Must I read the whole thing or can you spit it out?” she says with her usual impatience. Shula Amit can be charming, but rarely wastes this talent on subordinates.

The defense minister clears his throat. “Simply put, when not in uniform our ranking ace dresses as a woman.”

The prime minister examines the photos in the file. “Quite fashionably too.”

“Madam Prime Minister, the defense establishment does not find this to be a laughing matter.”

“Who’s laughing? This suit is classic Dior—probably a knockoff, but still…”

“Nor do I find it—”

“Though the purse is way too big. A delicate outfit like this…”

“Madam—”

“Then again, doubtless he carries his service pistol in it. Dior never had that problem.” She offers a lethal smile that vanishes immediately. “Why is this on my desk? Can’t you people deal with something so small? No, tiny. Miniscule . You are the defense minister, are you not?”

“There may be political ramifications, madam. Sacking the man would put us in a bad light. If he went to the press we’d never hear the end of it—”

“Gays are not barred from serving in the military. As you well know, one of our leading generals is as pink as a Mediterranean sunset.”

“Major Shabbati isn’t gay.”

The PM lifts one of the photos. “With such a tuchus ?”

“He’s as straight as I am.”

“I’ll take that for what it’s worth. Look, Duvvid, is there some reason he shouldn’t serve? Has he suddenly forgotten how to—what was it the newspapers said about him?—knock an apple out of the sky at four hundred miles an hour? The man isn’t thirty and he’s a legend. If he is still—”

“The best, yes. No question.”

“So?”

“He goes to bars this way, restaurants. Dances with foreigners. They could be spies.”

“I dance with foreigners. Every one of us does. The head of the Navy sleeps with a Bulgarian with tits he is apparently ready to die for, though we both know she works for us. Incidentally, they’re fake. What then is the problem?”

“The Air Force believes such behavior may be detrimental to morale.”

“Whose?”

“The men under his command. Presumably.”

“Presumably?” the prime minister asks. “You’ve taken a poll? Look, we’re at the edge of an historic moment. In a matter of weeks, perhaps days, we may finally have a breakthrough with the cousins.” As is common in Israel, she uses the Hebrew term for the entire Arab race, who as sons of Abraham are genetically related to the Jews. “Is it so important that one of our flyboys, even the best of them, dresses, shall we say, more elegantly than expected? He does his job. Why don’t you and your subordinates in uniform simply do yours?”

“The brass wish to sack him. I think they’re right.”

“And I think that if we go around sacking people who in their non-working hours do odd things, then we might as well be Saudi Arabia. Put another way, you sack Major Shabbati and I will sack the entire Air Force command, and you with them. Now was there something else, or can I return to leading this country into a new era of continuing prosperity and, hopefully, peace?”

“I shall make your decision known to the Chief of Staff.”

“Thank you,” the prime minister says. “And if you can find out who is his dressmaker, I really would like to know.”

AT THIRTY, DAMIAN SMITH has just negotiated a new and lucrative contract with CNN in Atlanta, where he can claim a fairly active though not exciting sex life—according to Smith, what the hell else does anyone do in Atlanta?—and has just had his teeth recapped for high-definition television, the aesthetic standards of which demand nothing less than glaring perfection. On this particular Wednesday, Smith finds himself scheduled for a remote with Connie Blunt, the one person at the network he cannot abide: vain, overpaid, thinskinned, shallow, under-educated, and pretty enough to get away with all of the above. Smith detests people like this, though it rarely takes more than two drinks for him to admit that he himself is people like this. If not worse.

On the screen behind him is a still of winds battering the Caribbean; the still will become video as soon as he goes live. In his earpiece, the segment director’s voice counts steadily down to the end of the commercial break. “Three, two, one.”

“And welcome back to Breaking News on CNN, as gale force winds batter coastal areas of the Dominican Republic,” Smith reads from the teleprompter. “With hundreds of fatalities and property damage already estimated at three hundred million dollars, the US Weather Service is now issuing hurricane warnings for Florida and up the Eastern seaboard as far north as Maryland. Still officially designated a tropical storm, Lucille is expected to make landfall by tomorrow morning. The National Weather Center warns the storm may well grow into a hurricane as it mixes with cooler air moving east. Officials in both Florida and neighboring Georgia have called for coastal residents to evacuate, and the Red Cross has gone on high alert. More on Lucille as we receive updates. Meanwhile, in a surprisingly more peaceful situation…”

Behind him, the screen goes to a simplified map of the Middle East, zeroing in on Kuwait, then to a grand Arab-style building, then to the building’s ornate Hall of Unity, where diplomats from member states of the Arab League raise their hands to vote.

“…In the Middle Eastern nation of Kuwait, member states of the Arab League voted unanimously today to pursue peace with Israel with no preconditions, an historical first. From Jerusalem, Connie Blunt. Connie, how is this news being received in Israel?”

Framed by Orthodox Jews dancing at the Western Wall, Blunt, thirty-five, a lot blonder and clearly female but otherwise a smudged carbon copy of the anchor in Atlanta, breaks into what passes for incisive reportage in American television news.

“Damian, news of the Arab League’s sudden turnabout in its refusal to negotiate with Israel, which only two of its member nations recognize, hit the Jewish State with all the force of what one Israeli I spoke to called ‘a big wet kiss.’ Newspapers, television and radio here have been calling this, quote, ‘the beginning of true peace in the Middle East.’ Never has the Arab League agreed to sit down with Israel without the intervention of middlemen such as the US or the European Community, with—and this is the important part—no preconditions, no demands that Israel close down its settlements on the West Bank. Damian, this looks so much like the real thing…”