Golda Meir’s phone rang shrilly by her bedside. As usual, at the Sabbath, she had stayed at her three-room flat on Baron Hirsch Street Row in Ramat Aviv. Since it was Yom Kippur, she had eaten before sunset with her son’s family at his place next door, and then stayed up late talking with her daughter. Swearing, she fumbled in the dark for the handset, and blinked as she clicked on the small bedside light.
“Yes?”
“Golda, I am very sorry to waken you so early, but I have urgent news.” General Yisrael Leor, her senior military aide, paused for a moment to make sure she was fully awake.
She pulled herself to a half-sitting position on her pillow, feeling a rising dread. “Go ahead, General, I am listening.”
“We have authoritative intelligence that the Arabs will attack today, at sunset, invading our country in an act of war.”
“Authoritative? What’s the source?”
“Zvi has been talking at length with the Angel. He is convinced.” Zvi Zamir was the director of Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency.
Golda shook her head to try to clear it. The effects of the radiation treatment she was secretly receiving for her spreading lymphatic cancer were like a constant fog. “Isn’t Zvi in Paris?”
“He was, but he flew to London last night to meet the source in person.”
The source, code name Angel, was Ashraf Marwan, the playboy son-in-law of former Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. A very connected Mossad-paid informant who had passed on valuable information several times before.
Golda glanced at her window, trying to gather her thoughts, seeing only darkness. “What time is it?”
“It’s four a.m., Golda.”
She took a deep breath and coughed involuntarily. Zvi Zamir is certain it will be war, so that’s enough, she thought. Time for action.
“Call all senior staff to a meeting at my office. I’ll need a car here in forty-five minutes to take me there. Call up reserves and mobilize forces, urgently. Contact Ambassador Dinitz and get him on a plane to the US ASAP—I need him face-to-face with the Americans. Tell Zvi I want him back here from London. And get the US ambassador—Keating—and his advisor back in to see me as soon as he wakes up.”
“Yes, Prime Minister.”
Golda quickly considered the probable reactions of the military men who advised and surrounded her. The men she counted on, and ultimately commanded.
“And, Yisrael, this is of utmost importance: strongly reiterate to everyone you talk to that we must not strike first. It will be tempting, but the Angel has been wrong before, and we cannot be seen as the aggressor in this, no matter what. American support will depend on it.”
General Leor read back her instructions, and they ended the call.
Meir pulled the thin sheet down, welcoming the still, warm air of the lingering night on her aching, 75-year-old legs. She painfully rolled onto one hip and sat up on the side of her bed, rested a moment, then pushed with both arms until she was standing unsteadily on her bare feet. A wave of nausea passed over her.
The day had begun.