And Yatom didn’t look easy to kill. A little under six feet he was only slightly taller than the doctor but considerably broader. Yatom had been a champion wrestler in his youth and had a grappler’s thick neck and shoulders. He moved easily despite his bulk. At thirty-five his hair was mostly gray, but cropped so short it was hard to tell. He wore no jewelry, but had a typically wide IDF officer watchband strapped across a thick left wrist. Yatom was a hairy Ashkenazi who, his ex-wife used to say, looked like the shtetl strong man in Polish circus sideshow.
Yatom neither saluted nor acknowledged General Brom other than to tell him that “The rest of the sayeret is fine too—except for Yoram, of course.”
“Tov!” said Brom with a smile.
“It’s one way to get out of the army” said Yatom ghoulishly.
“Obviously I need a replacement.”
“You have other qualified men,” said Brom’s aide, Captain Zeev, a young handsome man with a paratroopers red beret in his shoulder epaulette. He ignored Yatom’s superior rank just as Yatom had ignored Brom’s.
“That’s not the issue,” Yatom noted irritably. “It’s the security clearances.”
“We’ll take care of it Danny,” said Brom, with a note of sympathy in his voice. “Now let’s go through the mission.” The sympathetic note fled.
Yatom looked at the tray of refreshments. Room service in a second rate hotel, he thought—not bad at all. He reached for the coffee with one hand and Danish with the other.
Brom spent an hour with Yatom. There would be further interviews, but the truth was that there wasn’t much to tell. The raid has gone mostly as planned, the loss unfortunate, but to be expected.
Brom wasn’t one to cry over the loss of every soldier, although that seemed to be the mood of the nation, and had been for some time. He dismissed Yatom and called in Major Mofaz.
Unlike Yatom, Mofaz was an observant Jew and had donned a small yarmulke after his decontamination. Like Yatom he wore a fresh uniform unadorned with rank, but he wore a thick wedding band on his left hand to go with the standard bulky watch on his wrist. Slightly smaller but just as thickly muscled, Mofaz shared Yatom’s love of fighting. Not a wrestler, Mofaz was an expert at krav maga, the brutal, no holds barred brand of Israeli martial art. A couple of years younger than Yatom, he was a less flexible more ideological officer—whether that was good or bad depended on the superior.
Mofaz gave Brom a brief salute when he entered, forcing Captain Zeev and Brom’s secretary to stand and offer salutes to Mofaz. It was a bit awkward, but Mofaz unlike many of his fellows appreciated military protocols. Brom returned the salute and bid him to sit. The ravaged refreshment tray had been replenished but Mofaz had already eaten while cooling his heels with the rest of the men.
Brom went through most of the interview in his usual business-like way, and Mofaz answered in the clipped bland way of combat soldiers. That is, until Brom reached the part where Sergeant Grof got hit.
“When did Sergeant Grof—Yoram—fall?” Brom asked.
“I don’t know,” answered the Major. “I didn’t see it. Communications—as I’ve told you—were quite difficult. But shortly after I planted my charges and returned to the area of the capsule I received a garbled message. When I looked over, it appeared that Sergeant Grof indeed been shot. He was prone and not moving.”
“What did you do then?”
“Grof was near the control booth and the area we called ‘the alcove’ in training.”
“And?”
“The rest of the team had laid their charges and already withdrawn to the capsule. I told them to remain in place. Then I went to Grof.”
“Was Grof dead when you got to him?”
“Yes. But our orders and our ethics demand that he be evacuated; dead or alive.”
“Go on” said Brom.
“I got to Grofs body under heavy fire. I had to crawl to him. I couldn’t even lift my head.”
“What did you do then?” Brom pressed. “I tried to raise Yatom on the radio, but could not get through.”
“So you were stuck” concluded Brom. “Yes, it’s true, for about a minute, maybe two Iwas stuck.”
Being stuck is a bad thing in combat. In the IDF, an army that prided itself on innovation and aggression, it was a very bad thing.
“It was only for a minute or so” Mofaz continued, “and then Yatom arrived with two men. We then proceeded to evacuate Sergeant Grof.”
“But not before you refused Yatom’s order to leave Grof behind, yes?” asked Brom.
“Is that what Yatom told you?” said Mofaz. “Questions for questions?” Brom said a little unpleasantly. “Yatom did not say you refused his order—he just told me what happened. But my conclusion is correct?”
“I argued with Yatom, because it is our doctrine to retrieve the fallen, and it was our orders for the mission” said Mofaz urgently. “Besides the moral issue, a body left behind would have revealed the origin of the raid, and given the Iranians an important bargaining chip. We all know this, and Yatom did the right thing in the end.”
“My concern is not whether Grof got out or not” said Brom. “It’s for the best that Grof was evacuated—certainly. Your relationship with Colonel Yatom, that’s the issue. Such incidents sometimes reveal attitudes, tensions maybe that can interfere with the effective functioning of a small unit.”
“Yatom is an excellent officer,” Mofaz said simply. “You don’t like him though.”
“It’s not my job to like him. I would like to continue in the unit. How does he feel about it.”
“The same I imagine,” said Brom. “We are done.” Brom rather quickly debriefed the rest of the team, there being no serious discrepancies in any accounts, or any particular tactical surprises.
Other officers and intelligence agents would further debrief the men as to technical aspects of the mission. Finally, he brought Yatom back in for a few words private words, without his aide or military secretary.
Yatom was obviously tired and a little bored. It was already nearly noon. The mission had ended before dawn, and Yatom hadn’t slept in well over a day. Nonetheless, Brom continued in his brisk business-like way. Soldiers go without sleep. Brom couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a good eight or nine hours.
“Danny,” said Brom, “the mission was a success. I’m pleased as is the government. We’ve not solved the problem completely, but this should help. I don’t need to remind you, but I will anyway, that officially, this mission never occurred.”
“How are the Iranians treating it?” asked Yatom. “From our intelligence intercepts and agents on the ground, it appears that the mullahs will acknowledge a major industrial accident in Natanz. They are considering an evacuation of nearby areas do to possible radiation leakage.”
“Casualties at the plant?” continued Yatom.
“Heavy. We knew that would be the case—they operated the plant around the clock. There was no way to avoid that.”
Yatom frowned. Most of the dead would be civilian technicians.
“Do they know we raided them?”
“Not clear. They know somebody hit them. Whether us or the Americans.” Brom trailed off, and then changed the subject. “You are satisfied with your team?”
“Yes. I need the replacement. If possible a few others” said Yatom.
“How did Lieutenant Shapira perform—any concerns?”
“Shapira’s fine. Smart, extraordinarily fit, knows several languages. He didn’t have much to do on the mission, but did that well.”
Brom looked at him. “You’re not still uneasy that he’s American? It’s highly unusual for immigrants to be accepted into our best units. And you have two—Shapira and Bolander.”