The Covenant

by Ragen, Naomi

  Born on the eve of Israel’s independence to Jewish refugees who had been thrown out of their home in Egypt, along with 650,000 other Jewish refugees from Arab lands, he’d been brought up to understand the meaning of sacrifice and the worth of Jewish self-rule and self-defense.

  “Mrs. Margulies,” he said warmly, extending his hand. He was surrounded by tall, taciturn army men.

  She remembered watching him on television on Memorial Day, as he addressed the friends and families of fallen soldiers. Instead of speaking of glory, pride and duty, he had spoken about little boys in Purim costumes and mothers kissing new recruits on their way to the induction center. He had spoken about beloved sons and daughters, each one an incalculable loss to their boyfriend or girlfriend, brother, sister, father or mother—each one an unbearable rip in the fabric of the country’s life. If your son had to be in the army, you’d want him under the command of such a man, she’d thought.

  She got up and held out her hand. He took it, warmly.

  “Please, both of you. Sit down.”

  Leah took his advice gratefully. She was as weary as she had ever been in her life.

  “First of all, we think we have located where your husband and child are being held.”

  She felt her body tense. “Thank God!”

  “Yes. But now comes the hard part. To get them out alive and well.”

  “When?” Elise pleaded, her eyes boring into his.

  He didn’t look away. “I don’t know yet. I don’t want to lie to you. They are in a safe house in one of the villages in Samaria. But we believe the house is booby-trapped. We need time to organize.”

  “But the deadline . . .!”

  “We have every reason to believe that they will extend it.”

  She looked up at him. “Do you believe that?”

  He shifted uncomfortably. As former commander of forces in Judea and Samaria, he’d had extensive contact with terrorist groups and had observed firsthand how they cynically exploited all agreements to build up their infrastructure, train terrorists, and smuggle arms. How they hid behind small children when they fired. How they placed their explosives in ambulances to ferry them around. No. He did not trust a terrorist to be a gentleman.

  “It’s not a question of trust. We are working on another angle. I can’t say much right now . . .”

  Elise studied her hands, then hugged herself tightly. “You know who I keep thinking about, General?”

  He didn’t move, studying her silently.

  “Danny Haran.”

  The effect of the name on the army men was immediate and devastating.

  On April 22, 1979, the Abu Abbas faction of Yassir Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Front (PLF) landed four terrorists on the seashore in Nehariya. Armed to the teeth, they walked into an apartment building and broke into the home of Danny Haran. They kidnapped the young father and his four-year-old daughter, while the mother hid in the storage space beneath the ceiling with the baby, covering its mouth in a desperate attempt to keep it from crying and revealing their hiding place.

  Danny Haran and his daughter were taken to the beach. As the young father was forced to look on, terrorists smashed in the head of the little girl with rocks just before shooting him. Back home, in a tragic accident, the baby suffocated. Only the mother survived.

  “I have a question for the general,” Leah said suddenly. “Elise, translate for me?”

  “Bubbee, please . . .”

  “No, no, it’s all right. What is it?” General Nagar said in Israeli-accented English, kindly. “My English is not wonderful, but also not so terrible.”

  “I heard on the news that the prime minister of Israel called on Yassir Arafat to free my Jon and liana. Is your prime minister joking? Is this a joke?”

  The general didn’t meet her eyes.

  “Maybe Elise, you should translate?”

  General Nagar exchanged glances with his entourage. “No, it’s not a language problem. For the IDF to go into these territories is a political problem . . . We aren’t supposed to go into Palestinian-held territory. That was the Oslo Accords we signed. We pulled our troops out so that they could police themselves . . .”

  “Are you telling me that you are going to keep an agreement that the other side has broken? They aren’t fighting terror. They are the terrorists!” Leah said incredulously.

  Elise saw the muscle in Nagar’s cheek flex. “This may all be true. But we are not a military dictatorship. We are a democracy and the IDF is not the one who makes the final decisions. The prime minister does. And the defense minister. We simply carry out the government’s policy.”

  “And what, exactly, is ‘government policy’ concerning the kidnapping of Israeli citizens from their cars and holding them in Palestinian-controlled territory? What do the prime minister and defense minister say about getting my husband and child released . . .?” Elise’s voice rose.

  He stared at the floor. “Official policy is to give Arafat more time—twenty-four hours—to allow his security forces to free them.”

  Leah rose up off the chair. “I was in Auschwitz. I know how a murderer of Jews thinks. He thinks how to kill, not how to save. A whole day, your government needs, to figure out who’s the murderer, and who’s the saver? How many thousands of attacks you had already? Twelve thousand, fourteen thousand? And how many dead Jews? How many crippled children? From Arafat’s own police! He didn’t try to bring in a ship full of arms? Your government should have its head examined. If they let my family perish, then there is no Jewish State, and no Jew should be foolish enough to live here!”

  “Bubbee, please.”

  “Bunch of idiots!” She got off the chair and stalked out of the room, leaving the unsmiling men with looks of astonishment and shame on their faces.

  “I’m sorry . . .” Elise muttered.

  “No, don’t apologize . . .”

  “She’s upset. The prime minister said this yesterday. Does that mean that Arafat’s time is up . . .? And if yes, when will you be moving in our troops?” Elise asked.

  The general seemed taken aback.

  “May I?” A tall young colonel stepped forward.

  “Go ahead, Amos.” General Nagar nodded.

  “Please, Mrs. Margulies, not a word of what I tell you must leave this room. It’s a matter of life and death.”

  “I understand. You can trust me . . . us,” Elise promised.

  “Whatever the politicians say publicly, they haven’t held us back. We in the army haven’t acted until now because we didn’t have the information we needed. But now we do.” He saw the information sink into her eyes. “I can’t give you any more details. Please.” He reached out and took her hand. “Trust us.”

  She looked up at him, at the clean-cut face, the dark, intelligent eyes. He was some mother’s son, some young woman’s husband. Someplace else, in another country, he would be a young executive, or an engineer. He would be building a new home for himself, expanding his business, planning a vacation. But he wasn’t someplace else and he would be risking his life and the lives of other young men to free her family. She squeezed his hand back, nodding. “I do trust you. Believe me.”

  “And please tell this to your grandmother, from me, personally,” General Nagar added warmly. “Whatever the official policy, there was not one minute of the day when the IDF sat back and waited. Not a second. Do you understand?”

  Elise blinked, her chin trembling, as their eyes met in perfect understanding.

  ”There’s another reason we came. We’ve brought you something. A second video from the terrorists. We picked it up before the networks got it. I thought you’d want to see it first.”

  Elise was stunned. Another video! Can I stand it? “Yes! Please, put it in. And call my grandmother back, will you?”

  The images flickered across the screen. Again the brutally dressed Islamic killers with their gunbelts and submachine guns, their headbands with Arabic lettering across their foreheads, looking like some monstr
ous parody of themselves, she thought.

  “What do you think they have written there?” Elise mused.

  “I’m an idiot, kick me?” Leah suggested.

  “I seriously doubt that, Mrs. Helfgott,” General Nagar said solemnly, just a flicker of a smile crossing his somber face.

  There was the usual rambling, hyperventilating words of wisdom from the little monster of the hour, Elise thought, probably more threats, more demands. Unlike last time, she didn’t even want them translated. What difference did it make what they wanted? What difference did it make what they threatened to do? She was helpless to meet their demands, and helpless to prevent them from carrying out their threats. She wondered for the first time if the men standing around her felt the same way.

  “Please, just fast-forward it, to Jon, liana!”

  There they were.

  “Oh, my God! Something’s the matter with Jon!” Elise shot up.

  The soldiers, even Leah, searched the wan image of the young man in vain to see what had so alarmed Elise. They looked at each other, puzzled. He seemed tired, but otherwise . . . He was still in control, and there didn’t seem to be any new physical signs of abuse since the last tape.

  “Don’t you see? His hands!” Elise shouted. “Look! Look how he’s holding them!”

  Only then did they notice that the thumbs seemed off-kilter. “They’ve broken his thumbs. And his head. He can hardly hold it up! You’ve got to do something. He’s being tortured!” Jon, my Jon.

  Leah’s head swam. This was not supposed to happen. Those days were over. They’d cried a tear, laid a wreath, made a speech. Jews were not supposed to be taken out of their homes and tortured anymore.

  “Look at liana!” Elise burst out.

  She was dressed in what seemed almost like a Queen Esther Purim costume: the frilly white dress with its bows and ruffles and puffy sleeves. She had a big, strange bow in her hair, hair that had been carefully washed and brushed. She was leaning back into Jon’s arms when suddenly, unexpectedly, she began to hold out her arms to the camera and smile.

  They watched, stunned.

  Elise pressed rewind and watched it again, flabbergasted. What in heaven’s name? Who could she be looking at that would make her smile and hold out her arms? Who? A sliver of light, tiny and as sharp as glass, suddenly pierced the thick darkness of Elise’s despair: someone had made their way inside, past the booby traps, to where Jon and liana were. Someone her daughter smiled at and held out her arms to. A friend. Even the soldiers seemed amazed.

  “What could your daughter be looking at, Mrs. Margulies?”

  Elise shook her head helplessly, rewinding the tape, pressing pause and touching the screen. Was it a trick? A cruel stranger holding out a doll, or candy to make the child smile for the cameras, to demonstrate for BCN, CNN and BBC reporters and their village-idiot viewers, how happy and content the kidnapped little Jewish child was, and how well they were treating her just before they murdered her and her father . . .?

  No. She knew that smile. It was real. liana didn’t smile like that at people she didn’t know, no matter what bribes they were holding out. More than that, her willingness to leave her father’s arms was also uncanny and impossible to stage.

  “Maybe they are holding out candy?”

  Elise shook her head. “liana can’t be bribed. She doesn’t even like sweets!”

  “Under normal circumstances,” the young colonel said softly. “But if she were very hungry?”

  Elise looked at him. She hadn’t thought of that; hadn’t thought of liana being very hungry, so hungry she’d be willing to leave her father and run smiling toward a stranger holding out food . . . She couldn’t imagine it. Any of it. She knew what her child would do under normal circumstances. But under these conditions? Was the colonel right?

  Yet some instinct told her otherwise: liana would want the food. But she wouldn’t go about it that way. She’d reach out for it, but she wouldn’t give them a smile, not her liana.

  But maybe she was drugged, or—she thought with alarm—in a state of shock. Who knew what scenes she’d been subject to in the last few days? If they’d harmed Jon, and she’d been in the room, a witness . . . Oh, I can’t even think, can’t even imagine how something like that would have frightened her. But shock wouldn’t get that kind of smile out of her, that real, bonafide, from the heart, honest-to-goodness, true-to-the-bone liana smile. You only got that if she loved you.

  She studied the child’s face, her body. Her whole being was stretching toward a familiar, welcome sight.

  “It has to be someone she knows! Someone she trusts!”

  The army men looked at each other in confusion.

  But how was that possible?! For someone liana knew—they knew—to be inside a house surrounded by Hamas terrorists? She wracked her brain helplessly, pondering the impossible riddle.

  Leah put her arm around Elise’s shoulder. “There’s an angel in the room, and liana’s seen it. Only an angel could make her smile like that.”

  It was, Elise thought, as reasonable an explanation as any other.

  The last and final deadline, the tape said, was in twenty-four hours. She looked at her watch. It was 2:25 P.M. HOW much time was left? And when, exactly, had the clock started ticking?

  Chapter Thirty

  Paris, France

  Thursday, May 9, 2002

  Midnight

  MUSA EL KHALIL was the perfect product of his culture. Born in the Jebalya refugee camp northwest of Beit Lahiya in the notorious Gaza Strip, a camp set up more than fifty-five years ago for Arabs who had heeded the call of their own leaders to get out of the way of advancing Arab armies, he’d had the word “refugee” baked into his soul for as long as he could remember.

  A runty child with a badly formed leg who had been constantly teased by his older brothers, Musa had learned early how to defend himself by virtue of a viciousness and stealth that left those who teased him forever wary. His schooling minimal, he joined youth organizations funded and run by Al-Mujam’a, or “The Assemblage,” an organization founded in 1978 by Sheik Yassin. There the angry, needy child found nourishment for his body, and sustenance for his bitter soul. Along with the free helpings of soft drinks, humous and pita bread, he was fed such teachings as that of Abu Hurayra: “The Day of Judgment will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them . . .” and the Hadith that declared: “It is Allah’s wisdom that the struggle between Muslims and Jews shall continue until the Day of Judgment and the ultimate victory.”

  Musa, like many other children, took the message to heart, desiring nothing more than to make the cut for membership and to receive the training and weapons that would raise him into the highly honored mujahid fellowship.

  Recognizing something in the teenager’s dark, pitiless eyes, Hamas recruiters gave Musa el Khalil his heart’s desire when he turned fifteen. He soon proved their instincts correct. Sent to dispatch a storekeeper in East Jerusalem accused of collaborating with the Israelis (actually, a Hamas member’s cousin had a less successful store next door), Musa got a job carrying the heavy sacks of spices for the elderly, portly Arab merchant. And then, early one morning, he used the knife meant to open the canvas sacks of cumin and kamoun to slit the unsuspecting old man’s throat. By the time he’d walked out into the bustling Arab street, and taken a crowded blue Arab bus back home, he was ready for his next assignment.

  It was not long in coming. Indeed, numerous assignments followed, allowing him to establish a reputation for ruthlessness and cruelty that flagged him as a rising star among the new recruits. In reward, he was sent to a terrorist training camp in Syria, one of many that operated in Egypt, the Soviet Union, Poland, North Korea and Cuba.

  There he was taught that dying while killing the enemies of Islam was a privilege. A blessing. All who joined Hamas, it was drummed into him, had to be ready to die in a religious war. It was Islam against the corrupt west. Islam against the infidels who believed in Hinduism, Judaism an
d Christianity . . .

  Musa el Khalil, however, was not interested in dying. He was interested in climbing up the ladder of success in an organization in which his natural abilities had made him supremely qualified to serve. Secretly, he laughed at the sermons of the crippled sheik, delivered in a high-pitched girlish monotone from a wheelchair. If a man with no legs, and no strength, could command respect by virtue of his viciousness and cunning, he had no doubt his own physical disabilities, lowly birth and lack of schooling would do nothing to impede his progress.

  He couldn’t have been more correct.

  In 1983, he was secretly delighted when the Israelis put the sheik behind bars, seeing in it a power vacuum that would allow him more freedom to develop his own ideas. Two years later when the Israelis traded Sheik Man-sour and fifteen hundred other terrorists for three Israeli soldiers kidnapped from Lebanon, he had already begun implementing those ideas with great success.

  Under Khalil’s direction, operatives began spreading rumors amongst Palestinians of nonexistent Israeli atrocities. Making up stories of soldiers raping Palestinian mothers, slicing up small children and using their blood in bread, they fanned hatred to a fever pitch. Soon, young people began throwing rocks at soldiers. The rocks then turned into Hamas-supplied Molotov cocktails, and eventually into the Intifada.

  Inevitably, Yamam—the counterterrorist unit of the Israeli Police Force—picked him up. He was sentenced to six years in Israeli prisons. Musa found the experience most instructive—even better than the training camps. Watching how his cellmates often traded information for cigarettes and other trifling privileges, leading to Israeli raids on ammunition caches and terror cells, Khalil devised the idea that Hamas members be set up in such a way that no cell member would know more than four or five other people.