Irritated, Sharon sits down on her bed. She’s never shared a room except occasionally during IDF night duty when no one had an assigned cot and just dropped onto whatever one was available. She adds this complaint to the list of issues to bring up with Danny.
Trying to break the ice, she asks Pazit whether she’s made friends.
“Yes,” the girl replies, then she turns up the volume on her transistor radio, and the room fills with a Beatles song. Having silenced any further conversation, Pazit dances to the beat. “‘Back in the USSR. Back in the USSR.’”
In the hall, Sharon places a call to the office. When no one answers, she settles on the living-room couch with Naomi. Elazar is out. Two Israeli men show up, silent and tired. They shower, grab a plate of sandwiches Naomi has prepared, and take it to the third bedroom. Naomi serves Sharon coffee and cake, and the two of them chat about everyone they know, avoiding the elephant in the room.
At eleven o’clock, Pazit’s music is finally turned off by her mother’s decree, and Sharon falls asleep. The shrill ring of the phone in the hallway pierces her dreams of Châtillon-sur-Indre. A minute later, Naomi informs her that Danny will pick her up shortly.
The night is cold and moonless. Sharon stands close to the building entrance, wearing her coat, hat, scarf, and gloves, and wonders how long this night will be. Anticipation at seeing Danny for the first time since January swells in her. She wishes she weren’t half asleep and that her teeth would stop chattering.
He pulls up in a Renault and lets Elazar out, and after a brief hello to him, Sharon slips into the passenger seat. She leans over and kisses Danny’s cheek.
“Great to see you, sweetheart.” His hand touches her arm, then rests on her sleeve as if he has forgotten it, and he gazes at Sharon for what seems a long time. In the car’s whitish light, his face looks drawn.
She glances at his hand, wondering what to make of the gesture. And that sweetheart again. He withdraws his hand and grabs the stick shift.
The boy with the blue star tattoo, she thinks, and rests her palms on the vent to warm them. When she reveals to him what she’s found, he won’t be able to hold back his excitement. His reluctance will melt when she tells him about Evelyne Niquet’s love for him.
“I was going to drive to the office where we can chat, but I’m beat,” he says. “Do you mind if we talk in the car?”
“The sooner you enlighten me about what’s going on, the better.”
“Let me start by showing you something.”
“I also have something important to tell you.”
“I’ll go first.” He drives three blocks toward Napoléon’s canal, turns left then crosses the bridge. He swings into the wide water basin parallel to the canal’s east side. The marine repair shops and windowless warehouses are deserted for the night.
He stops the car but keeps the motor running. “What do you see?”
She strains her eyes in the dark. She can’t even detect the streetlamps on the opposite bank. “Nothing. A ship is blocking my view.”
“Stand outside and look,” he tells her.
“Must I?” She’s exhausted, but she buttons her coat and scrambles out. Salt-carrying wind blows from the ocean onto the oil-slicked water, where the mast sides of four Saars loom. Four? They are anchored side by side, looking like huge, proud sentries. Sharon lets out a yelp, then slips back into the car.
“Four Saars? Docked right here? Unprotected?” she whispers. When she left, the French navy kept each completed boat in its highly secure west-end harbor—and there was never more than one at a time there.
“After I captained Saar Seven out without a champagne party, our French naval friends punished our ‘ungentlemanly’ act by removing their protection. Each subsequent boat that has come out of CMN was launched into the water—the fourth one only ten days ago—but it can only dock here.”
“The Saars’ production has continued all along? Is Saar Twelve coming too?”
“Last year’s civil unrest is still fresh in the government’s memory, so Amiot exploits it to keep his people employed,” Danny replies. She knows he’s referring to the general strike that started in May 1968 with the students’ revolution and quickly spread to include all labor unions in France. Danny lights a cigarette. “With only one official crew, we rotate taking out one boat for testing and training, but we return it at nightfall.”
“And this has been going on for nine months?”
Danny points his cigarette toward the Atlantic Hotel on one side, then to one of the buildings diagonally across the canal. “We are running our own surveillance for any unwelcome activity.”
“That’s why you need more men,” she states.
“There’s more. The saga of the five remaining boats has turned into an international crisis. Amiot is beside himself because he’s heavily invested financially. Our government won’t pay him the balance until the French government assures us they will allow the boats to be delivered. The Germans designed and partially subsidized the project; the Italians have a stake in the development of the navigation systems. The French—well, it depends on whom you’re talking to.” Danny cranks open the window and blows out smoke. “The mayor of Cherbourg is incensed that this political conflict has landed right on his belly button. He’s petrified of a Palestinian attack in the center of town. He’s pressuring Pompidou to get it over with, but at the same time the mayor has been warned to keep it quiet; media exposure increases the risk that one terrorist cell or another will take it upon itself to sabotage the boats.”
She recalls that Amiot saw to it that no local paper ever reported on the Israelis’ presence in Cherbourg. “How long can anyone hold back the media?”
Danny’s cigarette points somewhere east. “Not long now. The French are about to launch their first nuclear submarine with great fanfare right next door to CMN. The media circus will come to town. Who’s going to miss the sight of our Saars?”
“When is Saar Twelve being launched?”
“The sun and moon align on December twenty-third, but we won’t wait that long. Amiot is rushing the production.”
Sharon recalls that in these Normandy waters, high tide can reach fourteen meters, making it possible for a boat to slide on tracks out of its cradle and into the water. The urgency to launch before the highest tide means a crisis of immense proportions. “What if the Saar is not ready? There have been so many technical issues before. The propellers—”
He cuts her off. “Waiting till January is not an option.”
On the silent dock, a Peugeot passes by. Two men wave at Danny, stop by a distant lamppost, and step out. Each with his hand on his right hip, they walk around, check with a flashlight behind a cluster of oil barrels, climb on top of two fishing dinghies moored on planks, disappear behind a warehouse, and reappear from its other end, their flashlights searching its roofline. One of the men takes out a walkie-talkie and speaks into it. They climb back into their car and drive slowly the length of the dock to the bridge.
Sharon doesn’t realize that she’s been holding her breath until the men—and their not-quite-concealed pistols—are out of sight. “Do we have a trained commando unit here, ready to defend our boats on French soil?”
“That’s one possibility we must be prepared to address.”
Scenes from an action movie flash in her mind—the rat-a-tat-tat of machine guns, bursts of fire, men wearing keffiyehs yelling the war cry “Allahu Akbar.” No, it would be quieter—explosives planted under the boats. It means that the Israeli crew here also includes frogmen.
Existential fear floods her brain cells. “What’s the other possibility?” she asks.
“We must be ready for the moment that we get the green light and all five boats are released to leave.” Danny sucks on his cigarette. “You see the problem?”
“It takes twenty-two men to crew each boat.” Until now, the core crew manning each boat, supported by some trained reservists, sailed it home and flew back for the launching and testing of the next boat. “You need a hundred and ten men,” she says.
