Seeing Double: An Elisabeth Reinhardt Novel

by Nancy Alexander

  - 8 -

  EAVESDROP

  It had quickly become a matter of great importance – at first it was a hint, a whisper, a rumor. Nothing substantive. Nothing specific. People, who appeared to have nothing in common were congregating, people glanced meaningfully at one another then turned away. Something was happening. He could see it in the crowd; he could feel it in the air. He needed to uncover what was going on. Yosef crouched with a group of men selling handmade clothing, hats and robes to tourists in a small marketplace between Tiberius and Hoshaya, when a phrase floating by made his heart nearly stop. It was rapidly spoken, urgent and hushed “…push them into the ocean…” Two men were whispering, their body language conveying purpose, intensity, their manner familiar as they huddled behind a hemp line on which several handmade carpets were hung. Yosef peered silently through a tiny space between two carpets. The men hadn’t noticed him. They wore traditional tan thoubs with gutrahs covering their heads. One of the men was older with a greying beard, while the other, in his twenties, sported a dark, thick beard. The cacophony of the marketplace faded as Yosef focused on the two voices and funneled energy into memorizing the words he heard.

  From their dialect, he determined they were Lebanese. “…huge explosion...when the great man comes...,” said one man.

  “... Be a shock ….entire world... Jews…spies like grains of sand…know nothing!” said the other excitedly.

  “… a war unlike any they have known.....” said first man.

  “will be ready,” said the second man, “not like …when the infidels… lashed out... we will push them into the sea…our land…our ...”

  Yosef feigned sleep as the men hurried past. Panic surged, as he watched them from under drooping eyelids. A plan was forming and his people knew nothing about it. He needed to follow these men and learn what they knew and he needed help. He needed to get help without losing his quarry. Before the sun set this night, he would know all he needed to know.

  As he passed a raggedy young man selling oranges from a weathered cart, Yosef stumbled, nearly fell and released a string of invectives about his bad luck and wretched feet. That was the signal. The young man, Mikhail, sprang into action and within a few minutes a ragtag trio joined him weaving inconspicuously through the marketplace. A simple surveillance plan was devised. An urgent message was sent to Hadara, who contacted Mossad; a team was dispatched to rendezvous with Yosef. They needed to see who these men were meeting and where they were going before capturing them.

  Unrelenting heat beat down as they followed the pair along a narrow cobblestone path toward the outskirts of the tiny village. Here amid clumps of random vegetation, a few trees provided shade for children who ran about playing. It was less populated here, so the team gathered under a tree and watched as the two men approached an open air café. Tables with faded cloth umbrellas were scattered about; men crowded around them scooping hummus with pita bread and drinking sweet mint tea. Succulent aromas rose from smoky outdoor grills, as the two men greeted a third man in the traditional Arab manner. The third man was short, heavy set, swarthy and similarly dressed. He was accompanied by two muscular men with stony expressions and the demeanor of warriors. They crossed their arms and positioned themselves at the entrance to the café. Yosef frowned. This was significant. This third man must be important, very important to have two guards protecting him in this simple village. Finding out this man’s identity was crucial. They needed to break with their usual low profile protocol. They would need to go inside and find out more about this third man, this meeting.

  Inside, the three men walked to a back room reserved for private meetings. From under the tree, Yosef and his men debated. Was it more important to avoid detection or was it more important to find out what these three were saying. They could always follow and capture them to find out the plan. They agreed on a compromise. Mikhail quickly rearranged his garments and entered the café on the pretense of using the restroom. As luck would have it, the restroom was adjacent to the back room where the three men were sitting apparently engrossed in some kind of negotiation. Mikhail affixed a microphone to the rickety wall and retreated before another patron arrived.

  They heard enough to confirm the urgency of this mission and relay information in bits and pieces up the chain of command. It was not long before aid arrived in the form of an undercover assault team. The team totaling six men sat on the ground opposite the café smoking and playing a dice game as the listened through their earwigs. They learned that the original two men were indeed Lebanese. They were called Muhammad and Imad and they were uncle and nephew. The third man was a Syrian named Boulos. They were negotiating a weapons deal. Boulos had ties to a new extremist organization that had been growing since the demise of Osama Bin Laden. Calling itself The Sword of Justice it was spreading like wildfire with pockets of activity in Syria, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan. The two Lebanese men were acting as middle men for an unknown weapons dealer and Boulos was offering to buy a large amount of explosives from them for an as yet undiscovered colossal assault plan.

  Yosef and his band sat under the trees across from the little café for over two hours until the three men departed. It appeared their talks had not gone according to everyone’s satisfaction; they broke off at the entrance wordlessly walking in different directions. The negotiations had hit a snag. Muhammad and Imad walked south toward Tiberius with half the follow team trailing behind them. The men walked slowly and stopped several times to talk with people along the way. Each contact was photographed. Boulos and his guards walked north toward their Jeep Wrangler. Their trackers alternated positions and vehicles as the procession made their way across the demilitarized zone into Syria. Yosef rode with them.

  By late afternoon, the Jeep pulled over and the men walked briskly toward a small house. It was a simple one story structure made of stone and mud with a weathered door and small square windows spaced evenly around the building. Outside the door, loosely stacked cinderblocks enclosed a small garden of limp, dying plants; rough-hewn logs covered the roof on which a satellite dish about 4 feet in diameter stood erect. As the men entered the house the trackers abruptly pulled over and took cover in a scraggly grove of cedars, snapping photos and looking for a place to hide and wait.

  - 9 -

  THE HOSTAGE

  The child could hear swirling sand pounding against the parched hide tent as she lay curled against it, the thin carpet barely buffered her small frame from the lumpy ground. She was cold and frightened. By her count, this was her third night here in this place with these strangers. She had not seen their faces; they had kept her bound and blindfolded, but she recognized several of them by voice. Three men and one woman were with her, she clearly heard other voices, people talking outside the tent, their voices urgent and hushed. She thought they were talking about her. The woman who cared for her was kind and helped her eat and relieve herself, but would not answer her questions and did not comfort her when she cried. The men moved around her busily, but they had not touched her, only the woman. She thought the men were guarding her, but she couldn’t figure out who they were guarding her from or why she had been taken in the first place. Saroyah did not understand any of this. One minute she was enjoying her kittens and the next she was gagged and thrown in a trunk. It was unreal, like a dream. She was scared and confused and more than anything she wanted to go home. She knew her mother would be terrified and searching for her. All of them would be searching for her, she was sure of that. What she was not sure of was whether they would find her.

  Perfectly still and hardly breathing, she listened for sounds that could help her learn where they had taken her. Camel, donkey and horse sounds could be heard off in the distance as could the sound of automobile motors and car doors slamming. People were up and busy even at this late hour of the night. Based on the time of her dinner and the quietness around her, she thought it was around the middle of the night. She had decided she was in a camp of some sort. She’d been in c
amps before, they were familiar to her, but this one felt different. She didn’t hear children’s voices or anything that seemed like family life going on in the camp. No women talking and laughing as they cooked or did the washing or carried their babies about. No, there was something very different about this place of mostly men who talked little between themselves and seemed somehow formal with one another. Like an army maybe? Just 11 years old, Saroyah was mature for her age, the youngest of 4 children born to Jamila Faysal and her husband Gamil Ajram, she had lived in the Faysal Family Olive Grove her whole life.

  Just over the border from Israel, she had learned a great deal about the Arab-Israeli conflict and understood that her family had connections, involvements in this long-standing conflict that made them important. Her uncle Abdullah had an important role in the Lebanese Army, her uncle Hakim also worked for their government, but his wife Hadara lived in Israel and was sometimes spoken of in whispers. Often there were raised eyebrows and subtle head shakes when Saroyah would come upon adults speaking of them. She never understood about that, but she knew it was important and she wondered if that had anything to do with those men she’d overheard meeting at the Olive Grove. Maybe that was why she was here now, tied up, blindfolded and frightened.

  - 10 -

  RECOLLECTIONS

  Elisabeth Reinhardt sat perfectly still watching cardinals, black-capped chickadees and gold finches dart about the garden, lighting on their feeders, pecking for seeds in the freshly mulched garden. It was a beautiful garden, newly emerging sprouts and awakening blossoms popped up around her. The morning sun was just rising in the east amid bird songs and the early morning sounds of a community preparing for the day. Her eyes burned with lack of sleep and her mind struggled to recall a fleeting image from years ago, a word a gesture. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the image, tracked back from the moment it flitted through her mind. Samira had ended an elaborate tale of events when with a toss of her glossy black hair she had uttered, “es beshert,” meaning ‘it was meant to be.’ In that instant a memory flashed through Elizabeth’s mind. She rose left the room where she and her brother Sammy had been interviewing Samira and secluded herself in the enclosed patio overlooking the garden. There she sat trying to localize the memory. Something about that small phrase, that feminine gesture, that expression tugged at the back of her mind.

  “Es beshert, es beshert,” she repeated closing her eyes and breathing rhythmically. That was familiar. Someone from years ago, someone she knew well, someone she had worked with. Who was it? She focused on the story that Ari Ben-Aviv rambled on about in her office. She had barely listened, worrying about their escape, worrying about the men in the street glaring menacingly at her building, searching the windows for clues as to his whereabouts. What had he said, this handsome young man who now sat in their Chicago safe house talking with Gil and Stella? Who was he, really? Reviewing his words and concentrating on their content. She had thought he was making it up as he jabbered on. She had thought it was a story for the listeners, whoever they might be, but now she thought differently. What he said was fitting into a picture slowly forming in her mind.

  She had been a young psychologist, just finishing her Doctorate, working at the Student Counseling Center at the University of Chicago. Her daughter had just turned five and she was working part-time so that she could spend more time at home with her. Her husband Martin had been diagnosed with leukemia and was undergoing treatment, his prognosis was not good. Elisabeth remembered herself at that time; young, just beginning her professional life, a wonderful child to love and raise and a sick possibly, no probably, dying husband.

  She remembered herself, how she looked and felt. She remembered the treatment room she used at the University’s Student Counseling Center, a space she shared with three other clinicians. She used that room on Wednesday and Friday mornings from eight to noon. She had loved those times, those students. They were fresh, idealistic and sometimes troubled. In her mind, she saw a young woman who reminded her of Samira. She looked like Samira, sounded a lot like her, too. Neither Ari nor Samira had fully disclosed the reasons for their time in Chicago, how and why Ari had called her and come to see her. For a young man seeking her help, he had been oddly uncommunicative, evasive even. Samira had been no better. The Chicago branch of Chevra Hatzollah was more than a little confused and just a tad irritated. Here they were reaching out to these two who apparently needed their help and wanted their help and they were being stonewalled. The answer lay in her memory, she was sure of it. The key to unlocking their mouths lay in the recesses of her mind.

  She thought back to the Student Counseling Center and reconstructed her therapy space. Breathing deeply she moved into a trance, clearing her mind of everything present and allowing herself to float into the past. She envisioned the small square room in the basement of the Humanities building. The cold linoleum tiled floor was brown and green; the desks were blocky school teacher desks. The chairs were metal with slender padding covered in green plastic. A tall black filing cabinet sat in the corner containing one drawer for each of the psych fellows to deposit clinical notes. Elisabeth brought the files into view. In her mind, she stood at her open drawer examining the pale tan folders, staring at the tabs on each where she had written names in her characteristic bold square print. Last name followed by the first name and then the middle initial. After the name there was a 5 digit number. In her mind she reached out her hand and extracted a file. The name on the tab read “Eiliat, Hadara A 74319.”

  - 11 -

  IN THE OLIVE GROVE

  Jamila paced back and forth in the hallway weeping and waiting for an answer. In one hand, she held an iPhone which she stared at as she wept. In her other hand she clutched a small stuffed bear Saroyah loved. How could this happen? Who were these monsters that would steal a child from her home, her little girl, an innocent little child who knew nothing of the world? Jamila wanted to scream! She wanted to throw something! She wanted to kill someone! Whoever had taken her little Saroyah would pay, and they would pay with their lives. Jamila had never before been so angry, so terrified, so determined in all her life. She had resources. She had connections and she was determined to use them. She would do anything to save her child.

  Gamil looked devastated as he entered with her brother Hakim. He rushed forward and embraced his wife and they wept together bemoaning their child’s fate and expressing their mutual fear for her safety. Hakim came forward and embraced his sister and her husband as they wept, whispering assurances that they would find out where the child was being held and she would be safely returned. Jamila looked up at her older brother, her red eyes begging him for the truth and asked, “Is Hadara helping? Does she know who did this?”

  Hakim nodded solemnly, “of course she is helping,” he said but offered no additional information. The less said the better. At this time, they all understood that.

  Amal and Hala Faysal sat silently on the sofa watching and listening. Never before had such a thing happened to their family. Now in their 70’s, they had turned over the operation of the Olive Grove and family matters to their daughter and her husband. Now Jamila turned to her parents and said “Abbi, Ummi, I do not wish to upset you but I felt that you needed to know what happened here.” Her parents reached for her and she knelt before them. “We are a family, my child,” her mother said, “Your pain is our pain. Do what you think is best and we will be with you as ever you need us.”

  “And for advice, my daughter,” her father said with his characteristic slight sarcasm, “We are not without a modicum of wisdom, you know, so come to us as you wish.”

  Turning to his son, Amal said “Hakim are you doing all you can to help your sister in her troubled times?” Hakim came to the older man and took his hand, “Of course Abbi, Hadara and I both are going full force on this. It is complete madness.”

  Amal Faysal took his son’s face in his hands and looked directly into his eyes, “This has to be more important than anything els
e in your life. You will use your contacts to the fullest extent possible to help resolve this, do you understand me Hakim?” Lowering his voice to a whisper he said, “I know that you have many contacts that others do not know about. There are those who can help. Now is the time to take risks. Do what is necessary to save Saroyah.”

  “Of course, Abbi,” Hakim replied trying to move out of the older man’s grip, but his father held fast. “Hakim,” he whispered again his expression deepening, “your role in this may be more critical than you realize. Whatever needs to be done you must to do it and quickly.”

  Hakim was not certain what his father meant but he nodded his assent and with a slight bow, extricated himself from his father’s clutches. Hakim had some facts about his father’s history with hidden matters of state but through the years there had been hints that Amal had not been a stranger to covert activities. Now he wondered exactly what information his father had about his activities and how he had come by this information.

  Turning to his sister Hakim asked, “Have there been any communications from the kidnappers?” Gamil watching these exchanges gave Hakim a curious look before turning back to his wife. She shook her head and turned away. Gamil did not know what his father-in-law had said to Hakim but it was secretive and intense and it worried him. He didn’t think there had been any contact from the kidnappers and wondered why Hakim was asking Jamila the question and not him. Men were to talk to each other about such matters not to the women and yet Hakim was treating Jamila as an equal. Gamil was being excluded, his role was being minimized. He sensed that something oddly out of order had just occurred. He wondered what was going on. Did they know something he didn’t want them to know?