Erich Segal - The Class

Suddenly one of their own rockets hit an ammunition convoy. It exploded, causing devastation on both sides. By the light of the flaming tower, Jason counted five motionless bodies and dozens of wounded comrades. He ordered his men to stop their advance and wait for the stretchers to come up. Then they performed in earnest the exercises they had done so many times in practice.

At last he picked up his gun and went back to the inhuman job of killing. For the sake of peace.

By the end of the first day the threat of annihilation no longer existed. For the Jordanian and Syrian air forces had suffered the same fate as the Egyptian. The Southern Command was on its way toward the Suez Canal almost unimpeded.

Though Israel was fighting a war on three fronts, it did not have three armies. Its single fighting force had to fire to the north as well as to the south. Thus, as soon as the exhausted 54th Paratroop Battalion had cleared the way for the capture of the Sinai, they drove northward where the battle for the Golan Heights was raging.

And all the while they were traveling, a fierce hand-to-hand battle was under way for the ultimate prize — Jerusalem.

When they reached the Golan on Wednesday morning they were greeted by news that paratroops had recaptured the Old City. And were at the holiest of Jewish shrines — the Temple Wall.

Meanwhile, Jason’s battalion captured the Syrian position east of Dar Bashiya. The big guns that had for years been pounding the northern kibbutzim were finally silenced.

Six days after it started, the war was over. And the face of Israel had changed. In the south it had the entire Sinai Desert as a protective buffer. It controlled all the territory to the east down to the River Jordan, giving it a defensible frontier. And in the north, Israelis were now on the Golan Heights, threatening Syria instead of vice versa.

It was a success in every way but one. It did not bring peace.

On September 1, the Arab Summit Conference at Khartoum passed three resolutions: no negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no peace with Israel.

Jason Gilbert, rocking his son in his arms, remarked to his wife, “They could have added no rest for Israel, either.”

Even as he spoke, the shellshocked and defeated Arabs were planning a new kind of war against their enemy. A campaign of terror and sabotage. They created the PLO, whose stated aim was the “national liberation” of the people who had never been a nation.

No measures seemed to prevent these new terrorists from entering Israeli territory. They could slip across the Jordan River, hide in caves, do their mischief, and either return or travel north and vanish across the Lebanese border. At first the Israeli Army tried the retaliatory raids that had proven moderately effective before the war. Now they were of no avail.

They sealed off the Jordan with a fence of minefields. They even raked the paths so that early-morning patrols could tell if anyone had passed through during the night. But like the hydra serpent of Greek mythology, every time one head was cut off, the invaders seemed to grow two more.

To deal with this problem the best commandos of every unit were recruited for a supreme counterterrorist force known as Sayaret Matkal , the General Staff Reconnaissance Unit.

Jason was determined to be part of this group. He drove to headquarters prepared to fight the same “you’re too old” battle he had fought five years earlier.

But when he met the interviewing officer he realized it was not necessary. For it was none other than Zvi Doron, whom he had so persuasively “convinced” in the paratroop-recruitment shack. This time the two men laughed for a few minutes until Zvi voiced his single qualm about Jason’s desire to join.

“Listen, saba , I know you can do this job physically. But you’re a father and a husband now. And this is not really the kind of job that makes for happy marriages. To begin with, you’ll be away a lot. For another thing, you won’t be able to talk to your wife about any of our operations. Believe me, I saw enough divorces in para reconnaissance.”

“Look,” Jason answered, “I’m not in Israel to pick oranges. I stayed here to do a job. And as long as I can still be useful, I’ll run any risk that’s necessary. Now will you take me?”

“Only if you promise to talk it over with your wife.”

“That’s a deal.”

Eva understood him too well even to argue. She knew she had married a man with fire in his soul. And in a sense, it was that fire which warmed their marriage. She would not stand in his way. She merely extracted from him the futile promise that he wouldn’t take any unnecessary chances.

After all, he was a family man with a wife and son. And a second child due in four months.

George Keller could, almost have been working in the Museum of Modern Art. Every morning for the past four years, since Labor Day 1963 to be precise, he had been going to 30 Rockefeller Plaza, in New York City, passing various security procedures and ultimately taking an elevator to the fifty-sixth floor. There he would enter portals marked simply “Room 5600.”

On the way to his luxurious office, he would walk down corridors lined with Renoirs, Picassos, Cézannes, and van Goghs. Not to mention equally priceless statuary. For he was in the midst of one of the finest private art collections in the world.

It was at this rarefied height that Governor Nelson Rockefeller and his brothers had their base of operations, each maintaining a wing devoted to his various interests, patronage, philanthropy, politics, and combinations thereof.

On Henry Kissinger’s recommendation, George had been hired to join the staff writing memoranda on international affairs for the governor. As Henry put it, “You would be laying the groundwork for the foreign policy of the Rockefeller presidency.”

If he had any doubts about leaving Harvard, they were dispelled by the knowledge that scarcely a year out of graduate school he was already earning the equivalent of a full professor’s salary.

He had not lacked for attractive offers. With each summer he spent helping to organize the Harvard International Seminar, his responsibilities had grown in proportion to his rise in Kissinger’s esteem. By the time he received his Ph.D. in government, he was the co-editor of Confluence , the seminar’s flagship publication.

Henry was fiercely loyal to his protégés and never hesitated to include George in the strategy for his own advancement. This was not out of uncritical affection. George was clearly an asset, for both his academic brilliance and his innate feeling for diplomacy. It was, if not an alliance of equals, at least a genuine partnership.

Naturally Harvard had wanted George to stay on. The department chairman even called in Kissinger to discuss how they could persuade the young scholar to remain in the academic ranks. His adviser countered that George was a strong-willed man.

“I sense his aspirations lie in Washington and not in Cambridge,” Henry offered. “But I will do my best.”

Kissinger did not exert undue pressure on George to remain at Harvard. For he himself had more use for soldiers to man the advance guard of his own career. Hence, by placing George with his long-time patrons, the Rockefellers, he had an ally he could count on in the “real world.”

In June 1963, George Keller not only received his doctorate but — and perhaps of greater importance — took the oath of fealty to the U.S. Constitution. Thus officially becoming a proud and patriotic American.

The granting of his citizenship was to him a kind of late-arriving birth certificate. By this time he had not only secured his future, he had all but suppressed his past.