Seeking Refuge

by Alana Terry

  “You’ll be leaving in nine days.” Then Mr. Cooper turned to Hadassah.

  She spoke before he could say anything. “I’ll be happy to be on assignment, sir. But why not in Babylon? If you have intel on Pastor Cho, then you have intel on my dad.”

  Mr. Cooper nodded. “I have information on that whole team. But I’m not sending any of you women into Iraq.”

  Hadassah growled quietly and stared at the floor. “Not even—”

  “Not a chance. I won’t risk any of you ladies.”

  Matt angled his head toward her ear and whispered. “I agree with Mr. Cooper. If half of the intel coming out of Iraq is true, then I don’t want you near the place.”

  Hadassah closed her eyes to push back the tears of anger. “Okay.”

  “When you return, we’ll get you two some premarital counseling and organize the wedding, but I want the two of you to have some time off afterward. Maybe not a year, but no less than six months.”

  Hadassah lifted her eyes again. “Can I call Matt while I’m in Rome?”

  “As often as you like, but not with R.S.O. phones. I recommend the free internet calls, but you can do what you like on your own budget. Now, to the matter at hand, we love you, we trust you, don’t go running off by yourselves or sneaking into cabins late at night.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Cooper,” Hadassah replied.

  “No problem, Mr. Cooper,” Matt said. “But can I take her out on a date?”

  “I’m not the one you need to be asking, Matt,” Mr. Cooper said.

  Matt laughed another of his contagious laughs. “We already talked about it on the way here.”

  Mr. Cooper smiled. “You tell us where you’d like to go and either my wife or I will drive you there.”

  “Maybe the beach, or a coffee shop, or the bumper cars and miniature golf place on 158,” Hadassah said.

  Mrs. Cooper chuckled, and Mr. Cooper let out the loudest deep belly laugh Hadassah had ever heard him give.

  “Wow,” Mr. Cooper said, “that is one huge leap from coffee shop to bumper cars.”

  “Weather contingency plan,” Matt said. “And it all depends on how Hadassah’s arm is doing.”

  “How is your arm doing?” Mr. Cooper asked her.

  “The doctor in Puerto Vallarta said I’d be right as rain in by mid-May. I like the idea of bumper cars.”

  “Bumper cars it is, then,” Mrs. Cooper said. She turned toward her husband “You talk with Mr. Murray, honey, and find out what day would be good with the schedule.”

  During dinner that night, Hadassah and Matt sat by themselves and ignored the stares of everyone. It was Matt’s turn to wash up that night, along with Tameka and Paul, but Hadassah volunteered as well. The kitchen was cleaner than ever as Hadassah and Matt lingered in their duties, wiping down the spice cabinet and cleaning the inside of the oven.

  Hadassah rinsed the paprika from her cloth. “So, I know you started training a year before I arrived, but I don’t know your story. How did you meet Mr. Cooper?”

  Matt pulled his head from the oven to peer up at her. “I don’t know your story, either.”

  “I know, but I asked first.”

  “My dad and my mom, after hearing for years that I wanted to become a spy, took me seriously and asked Mr. Cooper to train me. Mr. Cooper said I was a natural, so my mom let me apprentice under him as soon as I graduated from homeschool, which was four years ago now. After my dad disappeared, my mom urged me to use my skills to find him.”

  “Your mom sounds a bit like my mom.”

  “Yeah, I remember your mom. I wonder what it would be like if the two of them got together and did miniature golf. Anyway, my mom told Mr. Cooper to train me, and so I was the first R.S.O. recruit. He taught me various forms of self-defense at first, and then taught me all about the underbelly of the world. What?”

  Hadassah looked up from the dishes and smiled. “I’m imagining your training sessions. My first one was barbed wire.”

  “I’m jealous, girl. I had to wait three months before barbed wire. Tell me more about you. Did you have a job before you came to R.S.O.?

  “Sort of,” Hadassah said, “but it wasn’t a normal one. My mom has...had a private detective agency in New York City, and I would do surveillance for her during my breaks from school.”

  “So, while everyone was opening Christmas presents, you were spying on people?”

  “I only spied on the baddies. I was also a lifeguard for a summer, but that was when I was fifteen.”

  “But what about Africa? Did your mom send you there?”

  “You know about Africa, do you?”

  “Everybody does, I think. It was such a crazy story, with you being sixteen and all alone in the field.”

  “I was seventeen,” Hadassah said, “and I wasn’t alone, because God was with me. But I think I’ll save that story for our first date.”

  “This is our first date.” He paused in his scrubbing, wiped his brow and looked at her. His face glowed. She forgot to breathe.

  “Okay, you two lovebirds, are we finished yet?” Tameka asked. “I want to go to sleep at some point tonight.”

  ON THE DAY OF THEIR date, mist and fog enveloped the whole campground. Mrs. Cooper drove them to a coffee shop a block from the beach and promised to pick them up in three hours. A first date at the seaside! A second date, rather. They took their tea out onto the beach and sat under one of the piers in the unseasonably cool mist. Her chai tasted better than she anticipated, but it went cold before she finished it. Matt had ordered her a chocolate chip cookie, but she was too engrossed with what he was saying to eat.

  “My dad took me to South Korea when I was eight to visit the homeland and my grandparents. He was the main speaker at a conference, so we had all expenses paid. After the conference was done, he took me around to some fun places.”

  “Was that when you went spear fishing?” she asked.

  “Yeah. You remembered.”

  “Yes, and I thought you were so arrogant when you said it.”

  “Do you still think so?”

  “Go on.”

  “I love your diplomacy—I could just kiss you.”

  She scrunched her nose at him. “Not yet.”

  He chuckled nervously and stared at his feet again. “So, yeah, one day my dad told me my Korean was atrocious and I talked with an American accent. I tried to explain that I was American, but he didn’t really go for my excuse. He dropped me off in the food court in one of the malls and hid in a toy shop. I had to ask around until I was given directions to this toy store. By the time I met him there I spoke without an accent, so he bought me something.”

  “Were you scared?”

  “Not really; it was more like a game and I had fun. I also got some pretty sweet loot out of the deal. I was big into spy toys back then, and I got this whole set of gadgets.”

  She giggled. “Did you think you’d be doing this sort of work?”

  “Are you kidding me? I was convinced of it! But what about you, girl, did you think you’d be doing this sort of work?”

  “Not in the way we are now, but I was sure I’d be doing something in this field. My mom started training me the morning after my Bat Mitzvah.”

  “So you’re into all the Jewish traditions, huh?”

  “My mom’s parents are Hasidic Jews from the Lower East Side in Manhattan. They live in Tel Aviv now. But my mom still eats kosher and keeps a lot of the traditions.”

  “Did you tell your mom about me?”

  “I did.”

  “Would she disown you for marrying a Korean?” he asked.

  “My dad wouldn’t,” she said, “but I can’t read my mom when it comes to this sort of thing.”

  “My mom was upset at first when I told her you weren’t Korean, then when she found out that you weren’t just Jewish but are Pastor Michelman’s daughter, she was ecstatic. She’s gonna love you.”

  Hadassah smiled and sipped her cold chai, then stared off at the mist lingerin
g over the waves.

  Matt scraped the sand from under his fingernails. “Isn’t it strange how our dads disappeared on the same trip to the Middle East but you and I haven’t talked about it this whole year?”

  Hadassah gazed at him, trying to draw his stare from his fingernails back to her eyes. “I didn’t want to talk about it much, but mostly because I hate talking without putting together a strategy.”

  “Isn’t that what we’re doing here at R.S.O.? Besides, I think I know why they’d be alive still.”

  “Free labor.” This time Hadassah averted her eyes and absently scraped the tips of her fingers.

  “That’s the reason for the cargo ships.” His voice sounded hollow. After a minute he reached out his sandy hand and took hold of hers. “I remember this story my dad told me about these people called the Moravians.”

  “I heard my dad talk about the Moravians before.”

  “Yeah. There were two of them who actually sold themselves into slavery for the sake of reaching the West Indies’ slaves with the gospel. They worked on a sugar plantation in St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, and after several years as slaves, they formed a church.”

  “I don’t know many people nowadays who would do something like that.” Hadassah grimaced as she tried to imagine. “Most of the slaves... at least the women... Kiri...”

  “I can’t even think of suggesting that.” He pressed his lips together and shut his eyes. “But our dads, if they are alive, have got to be serving the slaves and bringing them the gospel.”

  As they both stared out at the ocean’s steady surf, Hadassah glided her thumb back and forth across the top of his hand the way Mom used to do with Dad whenever he looked overwhelmed.

  “So, uh, are you going to take me to New York sometime?” Matt asked.

  “Absolutely. And I’ll take you to Coney Island where we’ll have the best hot dogs on the planet.”

  “Wait, I thought you were kosher.”

  “Just my mom. You’ll understand when you get to know her. And when do I get to meet your mom?”

  “Probably as soon as we get back.”

  Chapter 35: Operation White Stone

  THEIR DAYS OF BLISS were but a breath, with all their starry-eyed gazes at one another. Her cast came off the day Matt left and her bags were packed a few hours before she left with her team to catch her plane. She packed her phone in the hopes of seeing Matt’s face through video while she was in Italy.

  The air, when she landed in Rome, felt stiflingly hot after the cool weather back at the Lighthouse, but the heat didn’t inhibit Hadassah’s sense of impending adventure. She was on assignment again, even if the stay was to last a month, and even though she missed Matt.

  Hadassah, Christina, Tameka, Hyun, Pedro, and Zach met in the café closest to the baggage claim and prayed together before meeting up with their driver outside the terminal. Everyone’s face had a glow—the rest of them must have been just as excited as Hadassah.

  She recognized Eli as soon as she saw him standing in front of the church. He looked no older than thirty, but he had a sternness to his face which would have looked more appropriate on a man of forty-five or fifty.

  “I’m Elisha,” the man said as they all piled out of the minivan. “But call me Eli. Shalom, Hadassah, you look just like your mother.”

  Sometimes Hadassah wished Mom filled her in more often. “Shalom, and thank you. How do you know my mom?”

  “Eva and my mom served together when they were kids in the IDF. Your mother took you to visit us when you were younger, about three or four years old, and we played together a few afternoons.” He would have been old enough to be the babysitter, but he was gracious enough not to say so. “Didn’t she tell you she recommended you for this trip?”

  “No, she’s known to keep that sort of thing secret,” Hadassah replied. She didn’t know Mom had any connection to this operation at all.

  After a light meal, Eli took them to one of the offices in the back of the church, where a conference table was set up and on the table, in front of each chair, was a folder labeled with each team member’s name.

  “Is this our assignment while we’re here?” Pedro asked, thumbing through the folder.

  Eli looked up briefly, as if a fly had bothered him. “The first two pages are rules of protocol and some suggestions to close the culture gap when you’re following our suspects, who are mostly Arab. I don’t want any of you to draw unwanted attention by inappropriate comments, dress or behavior. I sent all of this to Mr. Cooper and Mr. Murray, but it seems some of you overlooked the memo.” He glanced at Christina.

  “We just got here.” Christina pulled up the strap of her olive green tank top.

  Eli continued as if he had never been interrupted. “Page three has your schedule for the meetings with me, and when you will have time for meetings among yourselves. Page four is the map to where you will be staying tonight. Also, notice the worship service times; I recommend trying to attend as many as you can. There is a house of prayer we participate with; you’ll see it marked on the map. You are welcome to spend as much time at the prayer house as you need. I’ve communicated with the leaders, and they said you have special access there day or night.

  “Turn to page five and you will see a map with circles. At the top of your map you will see the name of your teammate. I’m sending you out two by two, just like Yeshua did back in the day.

  “You’ll have tomorrow and the next day mostly free, so I recommend familiarizing yourself with Rome. You’re free to go now and find your host home, but please, remember the first two pages on protocol and dress.”

  Christina rolled her eyes at him. “Are you for real?”

  “If you think I’m hard to take, you should meet my friend Elijah.”

  “That’s cute, Elijah and Elisha.”

  Eli glared at her briefly. “I guess it’s good for you that he’s in Kiryat Shmona.”

  Christina curled the edge of her lip and squinted. “Where?”

  Hadassah stood from her chair. “In Israel. Northern border, next to Syria.”

  Every eye turned to her.

  She shrugged. “I’ve always wanted to go back, so I studied the geography.”

  As everyone packed the folders into their bags and held out the page showing their host home, Zach stopped and said, “You never told us what our purpose and end game of this operation is.”

  “Those various locations you will survey and spy out hold the members of what we believe is a human trafficking ring stretching through Italy, Albania, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Egypt all the way to the Gaza Strip and even Israel. We believe their victims are mostly women and children and we don’t trust their operations or businesses to be within the realm of the law—anyone’s law—or of morality. I’m also convinced these guys are involved with some kind of terrorist activity. But we can’t get the authorities to take us Jews seriously on what we’ve found. One of these guys has connections with the Mafia, but that intel won’t leave this conference room. Also, the police and military have so many other concerns, they don’t want to invest money and people power without some hard evidence. Over the next month, I hope each one of you will bring me back hard evidence.”

  The team filed out. All except for Hadassah, who stood at the conference table and tried hard to remember Eli from all those years ago.

  “I’d love to catch up with you sometime this week, Hadassah,” Eli said as he straightened up the room and pushed the chairs into place. His tone almost sounded pleasant.

  “Maybe you can tell me what I was like at three,” Hadassah said. “My mom never talks about it, and my dad only says I was cute.”

  He gave a smile. “You were. And you’ve grown into a beautiful woman.”

  “Um. Eli—”

  Once more, his expression turned hard. “Do you have someone in your life?”

  “I do.” She scraped at her fingertips and thought of Matt. Was Mom upset about him? Did she arrange this? She decided she would e-m
ail Mom first thing when she got to the host home. She had a few questions for her about Eli. Then an e-mail to Matt.

  “I WAS SO EXCITED WHEN I saw you talking to Matt,” Christina said when they were finally alone at the host home. “He told me a year and a half ago that he was in love with you. And you guys work so well together. If I was in love with someone at R.S.O. I don’t think I could go on assignments with him and not buckle under the heartache.”

  They talked in low voices as they set up their sleeping arrangements in the spare bedroom of a family’s home. It had been the father’s office, but he took out his computer and most of the books. There was enough room to make a bed on the couch and a bed on the floor and they would need to sit on the desk to check e-mail. As for the sleeping arrangements, they decided to switch every few nights between the couch and the floor.

  “You can take the couch tonight,” Hadassah said. “I want to e-mail my mom and Matt, and I wouldn’t want to step on you.”

  The next day, after sleeping off some of the jet lag, and while Pedro and Zach explored a few of the surveillance locations, Hadassah, Hyun, Christina and Tameka shopped for the perfect blending-in look. When they gathered with the rest of their teammates for dinner and the meeting, even Eli approved of their apparel.

  Christina sat down next to Eli at the conference table. “Glad to know I’m up to standard.”

  He nodded toward her without making eye contact. “Glad you know how to keep with protocol.”

  Christina gave an exaggerated roll of her eyes, then a flat smile, then a, “Thanks.”

  When the meeting started, Hadassah concentrated on every word that was said.

  “We may need to shift surveillance locations each week, or every couple of days, so we don’t arouse suspicion,” Pedro told Eli.

  “I have given some thought to that.” Eli drummed his fingers on the conference table. “We’ll also be shifting you to different host homes periodically to keep the families safe.”

  “What do you know so far about the people we’re watching?” Zach asked.