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twisted through streets that even the small Porsche could barely scrape through. “Here we are.” Beside
     a moss-encrusted low stone building, she pulled into a grassy plot. Shouldering gun and purse, she led him into a dark small
     eating place. “Too late for breakfast, too early for lunch,” she said. “Nice, no other customers. I’ll order for you.”
    “You’re not going to eat?”
    “Not me. Had a big breakfast.” She rattled in Arabic at a fat aproned man behind the counter, and almost at once he smilingly
     served the humus with a basket of warm pitas and a bowl of olives. “Hearty appetite,” she said. “I’ll go and get the tank
     filled. It’s a long way to Hebron.”
    “I’ve got to be with you in the car, no?”
    “Pah! We’re not on the highway. There are no cops in these back alleys.” Dzecki shrugged, and she left. He scooped up all
     the humus and tehina with the pitas, washed it down with a beer, and was beginning to feel very good and relaxed when Daphna
     showed up, a man in a blue police uniform following her into the shop.
    “You own the Porsche this lady was driving, Adoni?” the policeman asked him.
    “Yes, any problem?” Dzecki tried for a light tone.
    “It will be impounded. Please follow me,” said the policeman, producing a notebook and going out.
    Dzecki and Daphna looked at each other for a long moment, and she said softly in English, “Sorry, Dzecki. Sorry, sorry, sorry.”
    A sad laugh broke from him. “What you mean is, ‘Ani mitzta’er.’ ”
    She looked puzzled, then her face brightened, and she ruefully laughed too. “Just so. Only feminine, Ani mitzta’eret. Me and
     the Mekhess, hah? Noah will kill me for this.”
    “No problem,” he said, “let’s just hope Guli isn’t in Switzerland.”

2
The Telephone Call
    “Green rocket to starboard,” called the lookout on the flying bridge of the
Eilat
.
    Pale in the setting sun, the rocket was arcing straight up into the sky over Port Said, beyond the horizon some thirteen miles
     away. The captain was dozing in his wheelhouse chair. Noah was navigating, checking bearings so as to stay well in international
     waters. The destroyer was slowly steaming the dogleg course in sight of the high Sinai dunes, which it had been patrolling
     turn by turn with the
Jaffa
for months. Shabbat routine, and the off-duty crew were sleeping, reading, or taking showers.
    Noah’s eye was at the alidade but his mind was on Daphna Luria, as it had been since they left port. What a rotten break,
     their cancelled Friday date! She had demurely told him, in one of their long telephone calls, that a girlfriend in Afula was
     going skiing in Austria, and had given her the key to her flat, where there were marvellous rock-and-roll records. That was
     all, but from the heated husky note in her voice, and from picturing the rest, Noah had been in a joyous fever for days. At
     last, at last … of all times for the damned
Jaffa
to lose an engine …
    “What’s this? Rocket to starboard?” The captain jumped from his chair, went out on the wing, and trained binoculars at a yellow
     light blossoming high in the sky. After a long moment he said, “Noah, what do you think?”
    Noah was reluctant to believe his eyes, yet there it was, floating like a starshell but growing bigger. “By my life, they
     really may have fired one, Captain.”
    “It’s possible. Battle stations, Noah.”
    Darting into the wheelhouse, the exec seized the microphone.
“Emdot krav, emdot krav.”
(“Battle stations, battle stations.”) The siren wailed, and sailors came swarming and yelling out of hatches and passageways
     and up ladders, some half-dressed, some naked but for shorts, pulling on life jackets as they ran.
“Azakah, azakah.”
(“Alarm, alarm.”) This was the emergency order to fire at will. The AA guns opened up at the swelling light with a deafening RAT-TAT-TAT and streams of red tracers.
    “Left full rudder. All engines ahead flank.”