The Hadassah Covenant Page 28

I felt as though every shred of pride had been ripped from me and tossed into the dust and dirt at my feet. For an awful moment I was a vagabond, a mere pawn, a human rolling die to be tossed onto the ground for sport.

  My camel lurched as our band continued forward, but I hardly felt the motion, for now I was weeping openly, unable to stifle my sobs. We descended into the valley, then traversed the trail I had observed earlier, and emerged on the southern flank of a thin, rock-strewn strip once known as the Outer Wall.

  But here is the part I am most eager to share with you. Again, I know I have told you some of this since my return, but never in this context. Never in the light of what I’ve been describing.

  Only a few days after the delegation had rested from our journey and begun to return the treasures to their previous places in the Temple, word had leaked out among the city dwellers and pilgrims alike that Ezra had brought with him a book of the Law of Moses. Somehow, for a people who had lived for centuries with only the haziest notion of their spiritual heritage, the news sparked more interest than in all of the other treasures combined. An enormous groundswell of curiosity and anticipation began to gather. I encountered it myself, for as I strolled through the easternmost walls one afternoon shortly after arriving, an elderly woman shuffled out of a makeshift stone abode, eyed me up and down and asked me feverishly, “You’re one of the newcomers, aren’t you? Is it true they brought along the books of Moses?” I’ll never forget the voracious fire in the woman’s eyes. You might have thought I was offering roast mutton to one who was starving when I answered that yes, I believed so.

  By that night, it was all anyone was talking about. I had been graciously offered lodging in one of the city’s more inviting restored homes, and as I ventured out to where the Persian émigrés were gathered for a communal dinner, I overheard four snatches of conversation in which the words Ezra and lawbook drifted my way.

  The following morning all work stopped, and everyone in the citadel gathered in the center of the ruined capital. I was one of the first spectators there, for I had spent most of the night walking through the city, spreading the word that something historic would take place in the morning, upon this very square. Without even sleep, I had approached in the cool before dawn and walked over to take my morning prayer at the spot. The only sign of what would soon take place was a small wooden scaffold apparently erected during the night. As soon as the sun had peeked its radiant sliver over the hills of Judea, people began to stream in from everywhere. I had no idea so many even lived in such a ruined place, I thought as I gazed around just before the readings began. And what a quiet, composed group it was, for its size! Even the small children seemed to sense something special, for instead of causing commotion, most of them stared about them with wide, fascinated expressions.

  Then even the residual quiet faded into a dead silence, and I saw Ezra’s ceremonial head wrap approaching above the heads of the crowd. Carrying a thick leather-bound scroll, Ezra stepped up, set down his heavy load with a wince at its weight, and looked expectantly around him. It was a perfect place in which to change history, and Ezra appeared to sense it. Two Levite priests climbed up behind him, their hands clasped before them in postures of respectful pause.

  Now, having reigned as queen of the most bureaucratic empire in human history, and therefore having borne witness to the stupefying boredom that can ensue from a leader reading endlessly from thick bureaucratic volumes, I can tell you, Leah—I was shocked at what happened next.

  You see, Ezra did not begin to speak in the Aramaic of the day. He read straight from the original text, in ancient Hebrew. As words began to pour from his lips, I saw a strapping, weathered man turn to his thickset wife with a perplexed expression. She rolled her eyes and shrugged. I turned; all over the square, people were exhibiting the same reactions.

  Then Ezra stopped speaking.

  There was a seemingly eternal pause, one like the hush before a storm. And then the Levites began to speak. To translate.

  Now, you must remember that Mordecai taught me Hebrew, so I understood Ezra’s first reading. But there was something powerful about hearing the words rephrased by the priests, followed by the crowd’s palpable reactions as the words went forth and stirred a nearly visible swath across the square, like a strong downdraft sweeping into their faces.

  In a strong, fervent voice, Ezra began to read the story of our people. How G-d had made an unbelievable promise to a man living in Ur of all places—a region we had passed through on our journey. And how Abraham’s descendants multiplied until their numbers had fulfilled G-d’s promise of uncountable progeny, and brought down a pharaoh. How G-d had promised them a land of their own and how they had spent decades in search of it, circling the whole time through endless cycles of rebellion and repentance, subjugation and liberation.

  From the very first moment he opened his mouth, I knew something remarkable was indeed going to happen. This crowd, in this place, at this time, seemed incredibly attuned to the sadness of this saga of love and rejection between G-d and His people. I began to sense, and even hear, listeners respond audibly and recoil physically with each account of Israel’s turning back to idols, turning her back on the G-d who had led her out of bondage and into the Promised Land.

  Then I found I was doing the same myself.

  It was strange, for you see, during the first few days there I had been too exhausted, then too busy trying to find my way in the new society of the freshly arrived, to fully appreciate where I had come to. Certainly the ruined state of the city contributed to my difficulty, for none of the landmarks or attributes Mordecai had spoken about were still standing—at least in the state he had described them. But I simply could not muster the inner response I had expected upon finally arriving at this sacred spot.

  But now, through the words of Ezra, I began to look around me, and not only did I feel, deep down, that I was in the heart of my people’s most beloved place, but I actually began to picture them living here, year by long-past year. I don’t know if it was a result of the sun, the heat, my fatigue, the strain of standing for so long, my lack of water or breakfast, my overheated imagination, or just my own surging emotions.

  But I began to picture and then seemingly see, like misty shadows upon the walls, the people Ezra was speaking about. I looked behind me at a façade of buildings in repair, and I saw the prophet Joshua walking up with his staff in hand. I gazed at prophet after prophet standing in Ezra’s place exhorting the people back to holiness. I distantly glimpsed King David riding through a cheering throng, Queen Jezebel weaving crazily through the street, little King Josiah holding up a lawbook very much like the one before me in Ezra’s hands. I saw the armies of destruction sweep through, with chariots and war steeds raining a judgment of arrows and swords upon the innocent.

  I felt the sweep of time like a melancholy ache inside me, and the love of G-d for the people of Israel like a weary, unquenchable flame illuminating the entire tale. We had been living in a state of chaotic ignorance, and the whole G-d’s-eye picture now seized us up in its grasp.

  Even as this exalted state remained upon me, I heard a deep and powerful cry rise up from the crowd on every side, and something happened I will never forget.

  Like an actual wave of stirred water, the crowd fell to its knees in a halo of reverence, beginning at the center, at Ezra’s scaffold, and spreading through the remaining watchers like the rings of a stone thrown into still water. Strangely, I even remember the sound of it: the lingering echo of the people’s cry, followed by a split second of silence, and then the slapping sounds of a thousand knees striking the earth. The suddenness and power of it ripped the breath from my lungs.

  And then Ezra’s voice rang out again, repeating the sentence that had just been interrupted.

  “As Isaiah quoted our G-d, ‘Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins!”

&n
bsp; Hearing that very phrase, I lost control of my emotions and felt my chest heave, my eyes flood with tears. In foolish pride I sought to fight them back, but then I began to hear the sound of weeping from all about me. It began faintly, at first in the voices of women, but then I heard one and then two deeper throats sobbing, and like a tide flowing in the opposite direction now, from the edges back in to Ezra’s spot, it engulfed the crowd, man and woman, young and old alike.

  I began to hear cries, voicing words I would scarcely have believed. “We repent!” “Forgive us, O G-d!” “Come back to us!”

  Strangely, at that moment, I was transported again—only now to a moment in my childhood, when a priest of Jerusalem had visited Mordecai’s home. And all my poppa wanted to know was, Has the Shekinah returned? Has the presence of G-d been restored to the Holy of Holies?

  At that moment I thought, This is what moves Him to return, to bring His presence back to a place and a heart where He had once taken His abode.

  Genuine repentance, humbled cries to Him, desperate pleas for His return.

  And then, with my tears now flowing unchecked, I thought of my own covenant with Him. A thrill rushed through me, because I knew that I had in fact joined another moment of consequence, another front row seat at the move of history and stirring of G-d. I bowed my head further and allowed snatches, outbursts, even songs of gratitude, to flow freely from my lips.

  When I raised my head again, I knew that everything had changed. Perhaps not outwardly—Jerusalem remained a wreck, its people still divided into various factions over issues both trivial and sublime. But invisibly, spiritually, I knew with a deep conviction that the people of Israel had just turned a great corner. And with a certainty just as embedded inside me, I knew that I had been intended to witness this. He had ordained my being there with a purpose I did not yet fully understand, yet whose existence was as sure as the sky above me.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Leah, I cried out bitterly and desperately for such a moment to come, and it did. G-d heard my prayer and answered it in a spectacular fashion. He is not even through answering it, I am certain. As long as I live, I know now that He will use my powerlessness and surrender to accomplish His purposes through me. Even when I am not aware of it.

  And I know He will for you.

  I thought of you many times, you know, during my long hiatus in Jerusalem. Shortly after the day of Ezra’s reading, I felt that my reason for being there was on the wane, and the next chapter in my covenant might well reveal itself back home in Susa. It seemed almost like some kind of war had been won in Jerusalem, or at least an inevitable triumph had been set in motion. But back home I sensed that matters were still very much in doubt. Danger persisted for you, Mordecai, Jesse, and indeed all the Jews of the exile.

  So the months passed. Ezra continued to reform and reorganize Israel like a priestly whirlwind, aligning her ever closer to the image evoked in his readings, and I attempted to make myself useful, wondering how and when I would be able to make the journey eastward.

  Then a letter came with the royal courier. It was written and addressed by you.

  And I knew that my sojourn in Jerusalem truly was coming to an end.

  PRIME MINISTER’S RESIDENCE—REHAVIA, JERUSALEM

  “Hadassah?” said her husband’s voice, small and tinny through the scrambled telephone.

  “Yes?” She put down the Hadassah scroll, feeling somehow guilty that she was reading it again.

  “I think you should see this. Channel eight.”

  “You mean there’s something now coming on that’s worse than the last thing you asked me to watch?”

  “Yes, my dear. I believe so.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  This had better be good, she huffed inwardly as she reached for the remote and flicked on the television.

  The bearded Arab anchor of Al-Jazeera TV was speaking into the camera, his face pale and drawn. Then it shrank to a corner of the screen and the same anchor returned. “According to Al-Jazeera, the footage of these executions is so grisly that even their own virulently Islamic affiliates refuse to air it. But according to the network’s reports, this new video shows young Hana al-Feliz, the sister of the first girl killed on live TV and the very one shown recently begging the London Jewish activist Anek al-Khalid for her life, then being brutally executed—followed immediately by her mother and father. This would leave the family’s two-year-old daughter as the only remaining hostage. Her name, we believe, is Hadassah. . . . ”

  The First Lady of Israel looked up from where she sat, saw the room go a murky monotone around her, and fell back against the headboard. . . .

  NSA HEADQUARTERS, FORT MEADE, MARYLAND—LATER THAT DAY

  At the center of the most secret and protected three hundred acres on earth, on the third floor of a structure so vast it could fit four Capitol buildings inside its mysterious mirrored walls, lay Room 3E099—hallowed nerve center of the National Security Operations Center, command post of the National Security Agency. The agency itself, with its acronym NSA, had once earned itself the nickname of “no such agency” because of the government’s persistent denials that this employer of twenty-seven thousand people—largest in Maryland—even existed.

  In one corner of a large room crammed with electronics equipment, a cluster of technicians leaning and standing before a vast high-definition monitor betrayed the fact that a major signals analysis was under way. “Signal intelligence,” or SIGINT, was actually the agency’s official mandate, although those parameters had stretched considerably over time.

  Right now the Al-Jazeera video feed was the most tantalizing signal on earth.

  Before them glowed the oversized face of a two-year-old girl, her cheeks tearstained, her eyes red and frightened beyond imagining—yet still beautiful in an unearthly way.

  “Look!” came one sharp voice from the group along with a pointed finger. “Anyone else see that flicker? The way it distorted the scan lines—that wasn’t in transmission. That happened during filming.”

  “Like a power spike?” asked the man in the chair at their center.

  “Maybe. Usually they use power packs or even old-fashioned lithium batteries. But because they were using a kidnapped crew, they could have had a problem. They could have plugged into a wall socket.”

  “So is that a traceable spike?”

  “Are you kidding? Remember where you are. Everything’s traceable, if you throw enough bandwidth at it. Matter of fact, if we can get a decent degradation read, we ought to be able to calculate a distance from the source.”

  “Sweet. I want to get these scum, don’t you guys? I want a report in five minutes about any event in Baghdad that could have caused power spikes.”

  A young woman at the back of the gathering swiftly walked away.

  “The light on that al-Qaeda blanket is a little bit one-sided. Maybe a twenty-five-degree angle? You guys think they opened a window?”

  “Why would they?”

  “No power?”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “How about no air conditioning? It’s hotter than Hades over there.”

  “Okay. Let’s run with that. How about I jack up the brightness and we all stare at this thing really hard.”

  “For what?”

  “Fluctuations, shadows, patterns. Anything. If I knew exactly, I wouldn’t be asking for help.”

  Onscreen, the blanket bearing Arabic script shifted from black to an unnatural gray as the sensitivity of the signal’s color palette was multiplied three hundred times. While the little girl’s mouth moved in slow motion beneath it, the cotton surface seemed to shimmer with a million tiny luminous fluctuations. Digits galloped across time-counters at the bottom of the screen.

  At minute four-point-sixteen, a discernible shadow roughly the shape of a cigar traveled across the fabric from left to right.

  A shout arose so loud that four other NSA leaders in opposite corne
rs of the room jumped to their feet, and an outside door clanged open against the foot of a pistol-brandishing NSA security officer on full alert.

  The technicians at the screen hardly noticed—they were too busy grabbing for the rewind button. Voices called out speculations of the flying object that might have caused it. Military chopper. Large bird. Commercial airliner. No way, you idiot—that thing’s traveling below stall speed! Blackhawk. Apache. Huey . . .

  Then the young woman returned with her results. At 11:21 A.M. local Baghdad time, the Corps of Engineers reported that a car bomb had exploded only twenty yards away from a major electrical substation in the Khudra neighborhood. CIA estimates put the power spike at a six-kilowatt surge within an initial quarter-mile radius around the source.

  “All right, who can tell me how bad six kilowatts looks to an ordinary household power plug?”

  “There’re too many variables. I could tell you in an American house, but see, Baghdad has four completely different, totally incompatible power supplies—depending on the neighborhood—originating from one of four European countries that have contracted with Iraq over the years. So your answer depends completely on whether we’re dealing with the French grid, the German grid, the old British one, or the complete joke of a Russian excuse for a power plant. We don’t even know whether they use sixty-nine-or one-thirty-eight-kilovolt lines.”

  The man in the chair slammed a large fast-food drink cup on the console. “I don’t want to hear that! I know it’s not exact—but give me a rough estimate. Your best educated guess.”

  “I’d rather work backward from what we saw onscreen,” murmured a man leaning over his shoulder. “I’d say, if you’re starting with a six-kilowatt spike, then that should be between two and five miles away.”

  Fingers punched on keys. A map of Baghdad splashed onscreen. “Okay. So that likely puts us within Khudra, which is one of the city’s biggest neighborhoods.” The map blew up by two levels of magnification, until individual buildings were visible. “Okay. We caught a break. Streets in Khudra run perfect north to south, so our angles are simple.”