The Hadassah Covenant

by Tommy Tenney

  Jacob had barely survived his no-confidence vote two nights before, but the narrow victory had seriously eroded the Israeli public’s perception of his leadership. Members of his own party were defecting, publicly “outraged” over his failure to disclose a family connection to a Middle East hostage crisis. His government, and therefore his prime minister’s title, was not predicted to last very long.

  “. . . therefore, I hope we can all learn the lessons Masada holds for us today. Namely, that we in Israel do not have to die as our ancestors did in order to make a simple point against aggression. We do not have to sacrifice our lives and those of our loved ones on a mountaintop merely to make ourselves heard. Today, a cell phone connection and a video camera are all that’s necessary to flood the world . . .”

  A sudden gust of wind blew back his hair, just as a flat pop floated over on the wind.

  Above their heads, a flapping banner bearing the words Masada: We Remember now jerked back and forth with a hole in its vinyl surface, then ripped free, assaulting Jacob’s head with violent snaps of its ends.

  A wild clamor of panicked voices, then the crowd fell to the ground as one. Shin Beth bodyguards leaped on Jacob, wrestled him once more to his knees. Another tried to tackle Hadassah, but in a wriggling move whose fluidity surprised even her, she shrugged him off and stepped forward.

  Something had snapped deep within her. Civility and political niceties had just flown from her mind. Rage united with a wild, soaring elation. She felt a perversely exhilarating wish to see her assassin, to confront him, to avenge her father. As on the night of his death, she heard a faint ringing in her ears and felt utterly disconnected from all that had once mattered to her. Even as the shooting sound had faded on the wind and everyone around her continued to huddle on the floor, she stood and took four steps forward into the wind, her hair whipping about her face and shoulders, her face tingling fiercely, her rage throbbing within her.

  On the stony horizon, she saw glimpses of the man—buffeted black hair, twisting shoulders, a silhouette making an agile leap.

  “Hey!” she shouted at the top of her lungs, the throb of her voice making her seem as though her feet had left the ground.

  She felt a hand graze hers, one of the agents who held her husband clawing away at her. In a perverse instinct, she looked down and stepped away. Two feet away lay the agent’s pistol. She reached down, swept up the weapon, held it straight before her, aiming at the spot where her assailant had just disappeared, and pulled the trigger with a reckless abandon. The recoil nearly sheared it from her hand, but the sense of consequence, of dead-level seriousness, enthralled her.

  She began to run. Before the bombing she had been a frequent runner and a conditioned athlete—now her limbs roared back into their previous form, flooded by her adrenaline’s fury.

  There he is—

  —leaping from one place of shelter to another.

  She fired again and saw a large rock splinter and shear away into the air, not far from her target.

  Voices were shouting behind her now, protesting, ordering her back. With new determination she waved them away with her pistol hand.

  It was time to sprint. Shouting her rage and abandon, she began to run as fast as the rocky and pitted Masada surface would allow her. The cries only grew louder behind her now, and she was almost glad for the trouble she was causing, the video trail she would soon have to face. It felt wildly free, to jump from rocky bulb to stony fissure, the pistol waving wildly in her grip above her, screaming like a she-wolf at the coward running away.

  Soon, she knew, he would reach Masada’s edge. She felt as though she would pursue him over its precipice into death itself, if need be.

  I’ll do it, she told herself through gritted teeth. I’m going to reach him first, and—

  —a grinning face wheeled crazily before her, gun expertly gripped in front of him. Aimed straight for her.

  The vicious beast had ducked and hid. Used her wild sprint against her.

  Hadassah saw the man’s trigger finger begin to clench, knew her final moment had come.

  She heard an explosion, a gunshot.

  Nothing happened to her except what took place out in front of her eyes. The terrorist, a small, grimy brown man close enough to make out a woefully short Members Only tan jacket, jerked backward under a bloody cloud.

  She looked back. Hariv, her own Shin Beth bodyguard, stood not twenty yards back, a wisp of smoke curling from the gun barrel in his grip.

  She faced forward again. The man was still standing, smiling ferociously as a bright red spot spread over the leather vest protecting his chest.

  Then, amazingly, he turned and began to run again.

  She sprinted forward, guessing the man could not threaten her again.

  And then, with astonishing suddenness, the edge was before her. Swaying to halt her momentum, she found herself staring down at five thousand feet of thin desert air and sunshine. Squinting against the light, she looked down.

  The terrorist was a thin dot. Still flying. She could see the edges of his jacket ballooning around him.

  Then stone outcroppings swallowed him whole.

  Behind her, footsteps approached and multiplied. They had caught up with her. The crazy wife. She smiled shakily, turned around, dropped the gun and looked for one brave soul’s video lens.

  Boring into the camera with her eyes, she spoke.

  “I have something to say,” she said as loudly as she could through panting breaths. “My husband is not responsible for the failure to disclose my family link to the Exilarch. See, you people have it all backward. We were attacked because of a family relation we did not even know existed. I was merely investigating a faint clue when I met Mr. al-Khalid.”

  At once the grappling crowd stopped in their tracks and fixed its assembled gaze on her.

  “That’s right. The man who just died here has tried to assassinate me twice. And he was behind my father’s murder. He did not deserve the privilege of dying in a historic place where Jews died so heroically.”

  Her cell phone rang.

  She smiled, held up an index finger, then turned the phone away and spoke again.

  “It’s family. You all will have to wait.”

  She returned the receiver to her ear and winced. She did not try to cover her words from those nearby.

  “Yes, I saw it, Ari. That really stinks. You have any more options?”

  She listened, then grimaced, prompting a new round of buzzing camera lenses.

  “Where?”

  IDF COMMAND CENTER, JERUSALEM—THAT EVENING

  “Mr. Prime Minister, they’re approaching the border. We need your final authorization.”

  Jacob stepped away from her and swept his eyes across the four cabinet members clustered before him with somber faces and heaving chests.

  “Gentlemen? Have I lost my mind?”

  The group looked at each other before any of them replied.

  “No, sir,” replied his Defense Minister cautiously. “It is proportional. It’s measured. It serves a vital national security purpose, if not a military one.”

  He nodded and turned back to Hadassah.

  “Honey, Ari asked to go,” he said. “I’m not making him. Or any of them. So I don’t want to hear any blame if something should happen to him, understood?”

  She nodded, dropping her eyes to the floor. It had not been their best day as a couple.

  He turned back to the console.

  “Authorization granted. Proceed across the Iranian border. But I want egress within another thirty minutes max, understood?”

  “Roger!”

  Chapter Fifty-three

  U.S. ARMY BLACKHAWK, SKIES OVER IRAN—FIVE MINUTES LATER

  It was a cloudy, moonless night, so the Blackhawk rode nap-of-the-earth—using its advanced terrain-following radar to maintain a minimal thirty-foot altitude over the desert floor.

  Exhausted following a five-hour flight from France, Ari al-Khalid
glanced at his watch and bunched his camo-clad shoulders to keep them limber. Two other men, veterans of the Zagros Mountain rescue, stood behind him, motionless. It would be a small squad. He preferred it that way.

  The floor pitched hard beneath them; they were banking sharply. City lights tilted ahead. Hamadan, Iran—population seven hundred thousand, known as “older than history,” swept into view. One of the oldest populated places on earth, Hamadan lay cradled between the Abbassabad Valley and the rugged peak of Mount Alvand.

  It was also the famous home of an unremarkable Islamic-shaped domed tower, reputed for centuries to hold the remains of Queen Esther of Persia, also known as Hadassah the Jewess. One Mardocai or Mardkhay, otherwise known to posterity as Mordecai the scribe and Esther’s adoptive father, also rested there. In a bit of graveyard humor, Ari chuckled to himself at the irony that Muslims would be guarding the grave of a Jewish icon nearly three millennia after her death. His muted chuckle ratcheted up a notch when his mental image included Mordecai the Exilarch, leader of the Jews in exile, in the scene.

  The legends had better be correct, Ari thought to himself grimly. The Rabbi of Baghdad had privately assured him, over satellite phone barely a half day before, that they were. He had further assured him that if there was any chance of securing a final record of what had taken place between Mordecai and a palace concubine named Leah, it would lay with Mordecai himself. In his tomb proper.

  It felt wrong somehow not only to be violating hostile airspace but doing so for the purpose of desecrating an ostensibly Jewish archeological site. But then, he had to remind himself, there was a crisis at hand. The Americans flying him here were under instructions to fly him back to Baghdad and conduct no more flights on his behalf, no matter the outcome. The Americans’ patience had run out, and their indulgence of Israeli interventionism had nearly run its course. Things were about to blow up, literally and figuratively, if the Exilarch matter did not go away before the next news cycle.

  And worse yet, Jewish innocents would be murdered. He had seen the footage of the beautiful little girl with the knife blade against her throat, and her tormentors screaming his name, his very own name, as the cause of her impending murder. The very thought of it made his throat go dry and filled him with an anger he could scarcely contain.

  They were circling. The Delta Force held up the fingers of one hand. Five minutes. He raised up the satellite phone to his ear.

  “All right, Jerusalem, we’re five minutes out. Is the Chief Rabbi ready to authenticate as soon as I’m back up?”

  “Roger, pit viper. Everything is go.”

  The chopper nosed downward into a valley, forcing him to wedge his elbows and knees against the firewall, and began its dive.

  Soon they were near and low enough to see the dome itself. Close enough to see, at a wildly cockeyed angle, the dust plumes and rivers of street clutter being swept away by their rotors.

  With a flapping sound, the ropes were away, one knot in his fist, and it was time to jump.

  It all unspooled in a blissful whirl of violent motion.

  The rope falling between his boots and gloved hands, then hard dirt, then without a pause he was running hard and fast toward the gaping black door of the tower, already kicked in by his companions. He was the man on the spot—not even spared this jump because they needed a translator, an early, onsite authentication—and flashlight beams swirled around the circle of the ornate mausoleum.

  He could hardly gain a physical sense of the place, he was moving so fast, breathing so hard. Fingers gripping his arm pulled him over. Light beckoned him downward to a sarcophagus that already had been yanked open. An old coffin of splintered wood, nearly smothered in sheets of disintegrating parchment, shards of old jewelry, Stars of David in wood and plaster . . .

  Swiftly, before they might dissolve in thin air, he ripped a large plastic baggie from his chest pocket and began grabbing each piece of parchment one by one. Every sheet. Every word—a mere sentence could save him right now.

  He held one up for a quick glance. Ancient Hebrew to be sure, the paper remarkably well-preserved, yet old, surely old enough—the ink degradation consistent with—

  “Time to go, sir. Let’s analyze on the helo.”

  “Roger.”

  Another quick glance to confirm the sarcophagus was empty; he nodded and followed the men out into the night.

  A swift wind announced their Blackhawk’s return, this time for a hover evacuation. Things were safe. He gripped his baggie tightly and began to run for the deck, flexing his leg muscles for the leap.

  And jump . . .

  Twenty minutes later, he was back over Iraqi airspace and on the phone to Jerusalem, announcing that a promising scan was imminent. As he sat piecing the jigsaw puzzle of parchment together, he could not help but read a few lines . . .

  Benjamin, my dear,

  This letter is from your mother. Not the mother you know and love and who takes care of you, but the one who brought you into this world, loved you dearly, and whose life was taken from her before you could form any memories of her.

  My name was Leah.

  I have written you this letter, which I trust you will find after I am gone, to unburden myself of something I have long held to my bosom. I wish to tell you the truth of someone whose love claimed my heart before yours did.

  His name was Mordecai, and yes, he was the Mordecai of great renown across Persia and especially to our own people. The adoptive father of Queen Esther, rescuer of the Jewish race from destruction.

  He was a man of justly deserved fame and adulation. But he was also a man capable of great depths of feeling and affection. In the days before I first looked into your eyes, I spent much time with this great man.

  You see, in the long months of Megabyzos’ failed rebellion, before the general was unsuccessful in his attempt to overthrow the King and found himself pardoned and back at the palace, thanks to the Queen Mother’s unpredictable loyalties, I spent my days in hiding, deep in a secret apartment below the Persepolis harem. That is where this strange affection for an older man grew into a love I can hardly explain, I fail to understand, and I refuse to dismiss.

  I knew that I loved him long before I realized the nature of my affection, for in the months and years previous I had grown to see him as a protector, a wise and loving palace father. However, during those weeks in hiding, those interminable hours with no one else but Hadassah to speak with, my emotions grew deeper still.

  I wish I could tell you the countless small courtesies and signs of thoughtfulness Mordecai showed me during those times. As you can imagine, the conventions of personal privacy and hygiene quickly fall to the wayside in such an environment. Yet never once did he fail to suffer any privation or undergo any effort to spare my dignity.

  But then, as anyone in a highly precarious confinement might, I began to grow irrational. One night something gave way inside of me. I entered a period of wild, reckless agitation—thrashing, muttering, threatening with increasing loudness to shout out until someone came to extricate us from that adequate but awful place.

  In my irrational fury, I only caught the briefest flashes of how Mordecai did it, yet he somehow reached in and, with only the most fleeting display of his masculine power, caught me. How he did a thing like this with the utmost gentleness remains beyond me, but he did. His fingers closed over my mouth. His knees pressed behind mine and buckled them. I fell backward into his embracing grasp.

  I surrendered at once.

  Even today, I fail to adequately describe or understand the sensation, for his was such a bewildering blend of control and tenderness. I could hardly move a finger, yet I felt wrapped in a blanket. I felt wrapped in love. And just as quickly, the urge to scream and flail about left me.

  How long we stayed like that, I cannot tell. I only remember that ever so gradually, my breathing slowed and my madness quenched itself against the firmness of his hold.

  At one point I became aware that his arms arou
nd me were no longer necessary. And somehow, I also sensed that he knew this, too.

  I pulled my right hand slowly, softly, from his. Then I used it to reach up and carefully peel his fingers from over my mouth.

  Then I looked into his eyes.

  Only then did I see the tears which had hovered there, trembling just above those he had already shed. I have never seen such a combination of empathy, grief, and overwhelming love in the face of another person. Not even Artaxerxes, for all his beguiling passion that long-ago night, had come even close.

  I reached up and traced the closest tear, along its bright path from his eye.

  “Was that for me?” I asked in a near-whisper.

  “No,” he answered, smiling faintly at the twist of his reply. “No, it’s not. It’s for me.”

  “Did I cause it?” I asked.

  He nodded yes, and more tears came into view.

  “I’m sorry for acting this way. I’m just not sure I can take any more. . . . ”

  “Shhh,” he interrupted. “That’s not why. That’s not it—not at all.”

  “Then how did I cause it?”

  He closed his eyes briefly, delicately. He breathed in deeply, then out again.

  “I weep because only in your pain can I hold you like this. And I would give my remaining days—”

  He stopped. Then a look of determination came over his face, and he leaned over sideways. From the bedding beside us he retrieved a tightly rolled-up parchment. The one he often wrote upon over in a corner when he thought I was sleeping.

  Then he began to read to me an astonishing document. It was a love letter, written with no thought of ever being delivered. A statement of affection like none I have ever heard before, or certainly since. A resigned but genuine overflow of love from someone who harbored only the faintest hope of ever seeing it come to life.

  Listening to his words, savoring the strong and confident tones of his voice, scrutinizing every twitch of the male pride he was relinquishing to me at great sacrifice, I felt something burst into life within me. In some ways, it was like the birth of something warm and thriving out of nothing. But in other ways, it was merely a transition. A deep shift from one kind of love to another far more delicate and overwhelming.