The Glory by Herman Wouk Read Free Book Online

Bud
     Halliday was getting hot and heavy since his sidetracking from Vietnam to the Pentagon. Whether that had been a prod to elicit
     jealous regret, or just more of Emily’s rattling candor, it had hurt.
    “She writes genuinely amusing letters,” said Halliday. “Of course you know that.”
    “Yes, we’ve corresponded off and on for many years. She’s an original, Emily. Is she holding to her itinerary?”
    “Apparently. Due back from Paris in two weeks. Here’s my car.” Halliday held out his hand. “See here, General, about those
     Skyhawks, entirely off the record” — Halliday paused, his face a trifle less forbidding than in Pearson’s office — “holding
     them up is a temporary diplomatic blip. Denying them to you altogether would be bad faith. That won’t happen. We’re not the
     French, and the President isn’t De Gaulle. Israel will get the aircraft. Meantime fussing by your government doesn’t help.
     Save your energy — and the considerable political capital that you’ve gained with your victory — for other matters.”
    Barak seized the moment to ask Halliday about Noah’s missile countermeasures. The airman listened with a knitted brow. “Well,
     you can get that so-called chaff on the open market. Window, we term it. It’s a question of seaborne chaff launchers, which
     I wouldn’t know about. As for the electronic stuff, that’s my bailiwick, more or less, and in the air force it’s highly classified.”
     He shrugged, shaking his head. “About the navy, I can’t say. Send me a personal letter, not through channels, and I’ll bump
     it to a good navy contact.”
    “That will be very helpful.”
    The cold drizzle fogging Barak’s windshield seemed to be drizzling into his spirit as he drove back to the embassy, angered
     by the turndown on the Skyhawks — though he had more or less anticipated it — and still hungry, for he had eaten nothing all
     day but that spongy Pentagon bread. Halliday’s few words about Emily Cunningham had raked open a healing scar, bringing all
     too frustratingly to mind that strange winsome daughter of a decidedly strange CIA official, cut off from him by her own decision;
     the slender yielding body, the enormous clever bespectacled eyes, the disorderly halo of brown hair, the antic wit of her
     talk and her letters, the whole snaring presence which she had had even as a girl of twelve. Now she was reaching for a life
     beyond that of a girls school headmistress, and he could only welcome that, but he was discovering that loving two women —
     and he loved his wife as much as ever — did not halve the pain of losing one of them.
    He had first caught sight of Emily Cunningham as a gamine with a tennis racket, scampering onto her father’s patio, and later
     presiding gravely at the dinner table in her mother’s absence; then showing him the fireflies on their lawn overlooking the
     Potomac, and prattling precocious romantic nonsense. Long afterward, in their rare encounters in Paris and in Jerusalem while
     she was studying at the Sorbonne, she had declared and insisted that she had an unshakeable crush on him. For long he had
     tried to laugh it off. But her beguiling and hilarious “pen pal” letters over the years had brightened his dogged army career
     and the constricted life in Israel. Then had come his missions to Washington, and the start of the affair. The unlucky assignment
     as military attaché had led to his getting in deep with her and — who could say? — perhaps even missing the war on that account
     …
    Never mind, never MIND , stay off that quicksand …
    He could more or less forget his breakup with that haunting woman in the drudging workload at the embassy, where the optimistic
     turmoil of victory still yeasted and bubbled. And why not? The Zionist organizations were happily swelling with members and
     funds, and clamoring for war-hero speakers like Dayan and Rabin; and these were not readily available, so the