No Honeymoon for Nancy

If Henry Kissinger's Middle East marathon was a grueling chore for him, it was also something less than a honeymoon for his new wife Nancy. Like her husband, she was constantly shadowed by a hovering clutch of Secret Service men on the breathless course from Algeria to Egypt to Jordan, and back and forth between Syria and Israel. One of the agents even swam parallel with her, stroke for stroke, when she came down to the pool from the sixth-floor apartment that she and her husband occupied at Jerusalem's King David Hotel.

Though Nancy went along only on one of the 13 shuttles to Damascus, she managed to meet nearly every dignitary her husband dealt with during the month, from Hafez Assad to King Hussein to Moshe Dayan. Almost invariably she would stand with her right knee bent, so her willowy 6-ft. figure would not tower over shorter men. In addition, she touched a few bases that Henry missed, managing to meet with a passel of VIPs and not-so-VIPs, ranging from the Baron and Baroness Edmond de Rothschild (at a swank restaurant near Jerusalem) to Dr. Mieczyslaw Rodziewicz, a young Polish archaeologist who was working near Alexandria. She commiserated with his exasperation upon discovering a new apartment building above a potentially rich dig.

Mrs. Kissinger showed a genuine interest in archaeological and religious sites. In Damascus, she visited the ancient Umayyad mosque and the Turkish baths. There she startled her conservative Muslim guide by asking whether men and women had ever bathed there together. The horrified guide said, "Oh, no, no!" He then added that women had been allowed to bathe but separately. In Israel, she toured the fortress at Masada where Jewish zealots made a suicidal last stand against the Roman Legion in A.D. 73. Later she helicoptered to the ruins of Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee. Near the site, she chatted in fluent French with a Franciscan friar.

In upper Egypt, her exhausting itinerary included treks to the distant temples of Luxor, Karnak and Abu Simbel, with the Aswan dam thrown in. Through it all, she asked enthusiastic questions, and the ordeal was considerably mitigated by the warmth of the Sadats. Said the Egyptian President: "You are a part of Henry's family here."

Like her husband, Mrs. Kissinger has a remarkable store of nervous energy, as well as a streak of impatience. For the most part, though, she maintained considerable composure in living with the erratic schedule of the drawn-out disengagement talks. She played her role with great dignity and effect, hardly ever becoming flustered. Her clothes, from sporty jackets to dresses to pantsuits, were always appropriate and immaculate. Even when she walked about the Air Force 707 in her stockinged feet, a reporter could not help noticing that her toenails were color-coordinated with her clothes.

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