Hadassah Covenant, The (17 page)

At that he turned and smiled at me, so bright and genuine that I vow I was pulled back to those very days. Yet I also looked deeper into his eyes and saw tears, and was poignantly reminded of what I often allowed myself to forget—that the love of so long ago had never died. Though it had ripened into a beautiful friendship, there also throbbed a vital, inner core that remained too hot to touch, to even approach without care.

“You’re still there, Jesse,” I continued as straightforward as I could manage, “the boy who led me on the most breathtaking adventure of my life. Do you remember? Running as fast as we could
through the Royal Gates market and that impossible crush of hawkers and travelers and soldiers, then jumping onto the old palace’s gryphon gates. You were so fast and you had such long legs, I despaired of ever catching up with you.”

“Why are you telling me all this?” he asked, shaking his head. “Do you honestly think my memory needs refreshing?”

“Because you said that Mordecai and I were the only ones left who might remember your younger days. And I want to reassure you that I do. I remember all of it—the kind, handsome youth you once were—and every age of your life since then. Nor do I have to work hard to remember. It’s all right there, in the man you are today.” I took both of his hands and stared into his eyes. “Every wonderful quality you ever had seems to simply pour out of the man you’ve become.”

His fingers tightened around mine, while his eyes remained fixed upon the distant columns of the Apadana. Although its only sign was a slight trembling of the shoulders, I knew Jesse well enough to realize that he was weeping.

“Nor have I forgotten my first kiss,” I said in a voice now breathy and wistful. “I’ve never forgotten the sensation, the swoon, that came over me. It seemed to just separate my head from my shoulders. The soft feeling of strength that took hold of my whole body when our lips touched. Or the sense of you, an essence far more powerful than anything I’d ever felt before . . . ” My voice drifted to a close, and I stood searching his face.

He smiled a little self-consciously. I remember because I never see that smile except at the most gentle, close moments between us.

Then I heard a sob, and the sound of panting. And I realized that it was coming from me. Emotion had just launched itself out of my lungs. My legs weakened beneath me, my knees gave way, and I found myself sitting precipitously on a patch of bare earth.

“What is it, Hadassah?” Jesse asked, lowering himself into my line of sight.

I shook my head and merely tried to breathe, partly because I knew that any attempt at speech would only result in embarrassment, and partly because I knew I could never answer him.
Never
.

I could never answer him because I was weeping, despite all my kind words, over all the bittersweet years life had forced between that
carefree, vibrant young man of fifteen I had loved with such intensity and the man he had become. I wept because my next memory was of how the virile young Jesse of my first kiss had only survived a short while after that golden afternoon. My anguish had yanked me back to the sound of pounding in the middle of the night, of his grandmother bursting in to tell Mordecai and me that he’d been taken. That the royal patrols had snatched him and several hundred other young men, then carried them away to suffer the most cruel disfigurement possible.

I think my dear friend instinctively knew the cause of my tears, for he did not ask further. He merely encircled my shoulders with his strong arms, pulled me to my feet, and led me, one slow step at a time, back to the harem.

But, dear Leah, I weep as bitterly for you on this day as I did for Jesse on that one, for just as his manhood was torn from him, your woman’s heart has been torn apart and those beautiful emerald eyes of yours filled with a sadness which . . .

P
RIME
M
INISTER’S
R
ESIDENCE—THE NEXT MORNING

One good thing about being the Prime Minister’s wife, Hadassah reminded herself, is getting better-than-average assistance from government bureaucrats. Thanks to the Internet and the help of a few overeager researchers, she was managing to conduct a respectable investigation from the privacy of her living quarters.

At ten o’clock the doorbell rang, and Hadassah let in a young case manager from the Interior Ministry, a very nervous and too-thin young blonde, who introduced herself as Isabelle as she paused over a thin file.

“Ma’am, there is no record of any Israeli citizen, Holocaust victim or survivor, or repatriated remains bearing the name of Rivke Kesselman, sister of David. I’m very sorry.”

Hadassah sighed and sank to a chair. Perhaps the simplest interpretation
of her father’s words had not been the true one after all.

“The only thing I
did
find, however,” the girl continued, pulling a large manila envelope out of her backpack, “I’m not sure if you’d be interested in. You see, it comes from London.”

Hadassah sat upright.
London! Of course . .
. that’s where the family had ended up!

“No, please go on,” Hadassah replied, “I’m very interested.”

“Well, there’s a public record of a 1950 marriage between an Iraqi citizen named Anek al-Khalid and a young Hungarian émigrée listed as R. Kesselman. There’re no relatives listed, though. It just says she was a war orphan. She died a few years later.”

Hadassah felt as though the air around her was growing thick, like a flow of cooling lava. She stared hard at the floor, transported in thought.
Of course . .
.

“Of course what, ma’am . . . ? May I be of some assistance?”

“I’ve been so blind! If she
is
living, what other kind of record would there be? I’ve been trying to prove a negative. Tell me, Isabelle. Did you find any further records of this Mr. al-Khalid?”

The young girl pursed her lips and nodded emphatically. “Actually, it seems this Mr. al-Khalid has been making quite a public spectacle of himself lately.”

Hadassah gasped. “You mean he’s the al-Khalid who’s stirred up so much trouble at the World Court?”

Isabelle nodded somberly. “One and the same.”

“Oh, man,” Hadassah sighed. “Here we go . . .”

J
ERUSALEM

In the next few days, an odd rumor began to trickle through the intricate layers of Jerusalem’s social and political circles. It seemed the First Lady of the nation, so recently described in the press as
homebound and depressed, had been sighted walking briskly through a variety of governmental offices and archives. Sometimes she had been spotted with a frustrated-looking bodyguard rushing to keep up with her, sometimes with a befuddled bureaucrat at her side, sometimes even alone.

Mindless of protocol, regulations, or accepted procedure, Mrs. ben Yuda had apparently charged into these various offices, blithely challenging their occupants to provide her with sensitive information not usually provided to anyone outside of the intelligence community.

Even more mysterious than the manner or location of these appearances, however, was Mrs. ben Yuda’s personal demeanor. She was almost universally described as radiant with purpose and energy.

What the capital gossips could never have known—not to mention the First Lady’s
Shin Beth
protectors—was that every one of her excursions had been relentlessly shadowed by a Palestinian man following her from an always discreet and concealed distance. The thin young man wore mirrored sunglasses and a bulky student’s backpack, but a different change of clothes on nearly every occasion—one of a dozen reasons why his constant shadowing had not been detected.

Perhaps another is that when the First Lady came closest to him (that is, within even seventy yards), he always seemed to be listening intently to someone speaking through his cell phone. In a strange side-effect of cell phone use, his lack of focus on her presence, his gaze trained instead upon the ground during such moments, had seemed to render him almost invisible.

Perhaps Hadassah’s greatest safeguard, unbeknownst to her, had been her haste. Her bristling determination to proceed quickly from one place to another had made her a veritable dervish through the various corridors and lobbies. Combined with her perimeter of red-faced bodyguards, her rapid pace had given the young terrorist the briefest reason to pause and hesitate on the four occasions when he had shifted forward on the balls of his feet and come within a split second of charging toward her, cell phone still in hand—its speed dial’s explosive recipient now strapped heavily upon his back.

Chapter Seventeen

The Wall Street Journal
, June 30, 2003, pp. A1, A6

. . . Last week at the United Nations, a new organization, Jews for Justice from Arab Countries, was established to seek reparations for Jewish refugees and for centuries of Muslim racism. Abraham Sofaer, himself an Iraqi Jew, states the claims of Iraqi Jews are legitimate: He notes that much of the real estate of Baghdad and central Iraq is really Jewish owned. The Israeli Ministry of Justice has set up the World Organization for Jews of Arab Countries (WOJAC) to collect reparations claims against all Arab countries: So far 25,000 forms have been filed . . .
.

In Baghdad, Muslims are becoming aware of the game that is afoot: One local newspaper, Al-Saah, has noted that “returning Jews” are trying to seize Baghdad real estate. A sign on a factory bulletin board in Baghdad warns Muslims to “resist the temptation to sell anything to the Jews [lest] the money they make be turned into bullets to be used against the Palestinians.” Iraqis who endured Saddam’s rule have contempt for the Jews and Kurds now clamoring for property after years of comfortable exile
.

—“L
ONDONER
C
LAIMS
A
NCIENT
J
EWISH
T
ITLE AND A
F
ORTUNE IN
I
RAQ
”

P
RIME
M
INISTER’S
R
ESIDENCE
—R
EHAVIA
, J
ERUSALEM

T
hat evening Hadassah
borrowed a page from the ancient queen with whom she shared a name and prepared dinner for her husband. The official residence of course boasted a full complement of chefs and serving staff, but every so often she liked to slip back to her days as a gourmet cook and give the staff an unexpected night

While standing over poached whitefish and broiled asparagus in
the nearby private kitchen, she thought through her strategy. And when the hour came and Jacob arrived home, she and the meal were more than ready. All that remained was the lighting of the candles upon the small table she had set up in their living quarters in front of a glowing fireplace.

He arrived the way he always did, a Burberry overcoat folded over his right forearm and his cell phone unfolded in the other as he attempted to finish up his last call.

“Well,” he said with a smile as he snapped the cell phone shut and perused the table setting. “What have we here?”