Cherbourg, France
September 1968
It is one o’clock in the morning, and in the living room of the apartment, Danny discusses the new development.
“Are you saying that Saar Six departed without the blessing of the French?” Sharon asks him. She’s been concerned about the possible illegal aspects of this operation, and now, barely a few hours after her arrival, she is in the thick of such activity.
“The local French navy is not in charge of us. Our relationship is merely collegial. Their permission has become a custom because they offered to host each Saar in their secure harbor while it was being tested.” Danny’s green eyes behind the glasses enlarge. He smiles at Sharon, then addresses the men. “Our crew of twenty-one men suddenly left. You’re here to replace them since Saar Seven is about to launch. You were all handpicked. Each of you must stretch your gray-matter cells to absorb all that the local engineers can teach you. You’ll work in the shipyard and start testing Saar Seven as soon as it’s in the water.”
“There are only five new men here, not twenty-one,” Sharon says.
“Five new officers,” Danny corrects her. His left eyebrow raises the way it does when he’s humoring her. “More deckhands are coming from Tel Aviv in three separate groups. You’ll meet the first at Orly tomorrow.”
Sharon swallows. She just spent five hours on the train from Paris. Her arrival from Tel Aviv yesterday feels like a week ago.
Danny waves to the new men. “You’ve had a long day. Go shower and sleep. A car will come for you at oh seven hundred.” To Sharon he says, “Can we talk in your room?”
She follows him in and settles on the bed, cross-legged, feeling discombobulated. Once she gets to Orly airport, should she fly back home?
Danny closes the door and sits on the only chair. “Three boys. Eighteen years old. Wet behind the ears, and they don’t speak French. They weren’t told their final destination in case they got lost coming out of customs and decided to ask for directions.” Danny locks eyes with Sharon. “Take the train with them from Orly to Paris. As you already know, that train goes to Gare du Nord, so from there, take a taxi to Gare Saint-Lazare—it’s shorter than riding two Métro lines—buy three tickets and put them on the train to Cherbourg.”
Eighteen years old to her twenty. The demarcation between childhood and adulthood is her two-year military service and the intense months surrounding the Six-Day War. “Just send them off? Not accompany them here?” she asks.
“No. After you put them on the train and give them the no-Hebrew drill, you take the train to Brussels, where you’ll meet three more guys—”
She interrupts him. “Brussels in Belgium?”
“Do you know another Brussels?”
Sharon’s head is reeling. “After Brussels, will I be flying to the North Pole?”
He laughs. “Only to London, where you’ll collect four seamen and take them by train to Portsmouth. That’s in England.” He waves in a direction that Sharon imagines is north. “From Portsmouth, there’s a ferry to Cherbourg.”
All this foreign travel and being responsible for groups of men, some of whom are only boys who can easily get lost—it’s too much. Babysitting Daphna and doing domestic chores for her roommates suddenly seems like a more attractive option.
Sharon takes a deep breath. “Having spent eighteen hours in Paris doesn’t qualify me to traipse from one European capital to another.”
“Courage and wits,” Danny replies. “That’s how you and our army of eighteen- to twenty-year-olds won the most remarkable military victory last year. I’m sure that you’ll do well.”
Who assigned her to stand in for her entire generation’s fortitude? If quitting now were possible, she would do it. “All this traveling in one day?”
He smiles. “Tomorrow night, you’ll check into a hotel in the Brussels airport and meet the group in the morning. Day after tomorrow, you’ll stay at a hotel in Heathrow. That’s one of London’s few airports. Are you with me?”
“Not at all. Let me write it down.”
“It’s all in here. Three groups, three airports—Orly, Brussels, Heathrow. We’re spreading out the entries to avoid detection.” He hands her a small notebook. “Most important, I want you to survey each airport and train station. Find your gate way ahead of meeting your charges. Since incoming flights from abroad go through passport control, wait outside that exit with the crowd. Don’t push forward and get noticed.”
She says nothing, certain that she’ll mess up.
He goes on. “When you scout an airport terminal, locate its side and main exits and the nearest train station. Check the direction of the trains on each platform, because there may be different entrances.” He scratches his chin, darkened by hair grown since his morning shave. “It’s hard for people not to notice a tall, very pretty girl with exotic looks. Avoid engaging in small talk with, uh, strangers.”
She doesn’t think of herself as exotic. Although her hair, eyes, and eyebrows are dark brown, her skin is light. She wishes she had inherited her father’s blue eyes. “I don’t flirt, if that’s what you mean.”
“Good. And we don’t want you fumbling about once you pick up the boys. Be confident where you’re going, but look casual. No running, no drawing attention.”
We. At her intelligence unit, officers from the navy, army, and air force met for joint briefings. The scenario Danny is laying feels like a Mossad project. The one thing she knows about such work is that there is no room for a single mistake. “This assignment is way over my head. I have no experience in any of it.”
Danny lets a moment pass. “I trust you. Now trust yourself.”
Sharon digs her fingers in her hair, looking down. She came here to probe Danny’s Youth Aliyah experience, not for this. “I’ve asked you before, and I must check again. Am I expected to do anything illegal?”
“Not at all, but it doesn’t mean that we want to broadcast our activities to the world.”
What if one of her charges draws the attention of border police or airport security? Here, the embargo seems to be ignored by all. Will it become headlines because of her single misstep?
“Remember the comma?” Danny asks.
“Chutzpah?” She gives him a small smile.
Chutzpah should be her new mantra. If Danny doesn’t doubt her ability to tackle this complex assignment in a foreign land, she should muster the boldness and daring to prove him right. Alon would have been incredulous at what she’s being asked to execute. When she finished her one month of basic training in IDF, she was invited to sign up for the officer course. She declined. No way was she staying in that base for four additional months of rigorous field exercises. Alon hadn’t encouraged her to see it as an opportunity to acquire leadership skills. Would she have become an officer if he had pushed her the way Danny is doing now? She can’t blame Alon; he’d been young too and had taken her refusal at face value.
“Another thing,” Danny says, and she looks up. “Don’t let the boys make any stops in Paris on the way.”
“What sort of stops?” she asks, alarmed.
“They’ll have lists of shopping from their girlfriends, mothers, and sisters. They’ll slip into stores. Make sure they’re never out of your sight.”
His words only add a new level of concern.
