The Covenant Read online

  “I never watch the news. They lie and report only horrors.”

  “That’s my Ariana. Dreams are always preferable to reality,” Esther said in a strangled tone. “The tape about the kidnapping in Israel. The doctor and the child taken by the terrorists . . .”

  She remembered something on the radio. “Yes, now I recall. Terrible story.”

  “Ariana . . . it’s Leah’s granddaughter. Elise . . .”

  “La petite in Israel? The one who is enceinte . . . ?”

  “Yes. It’s her husband, Jonathan, her child, liana . . .”

  “Mon Dieu! And you say there was a tape? They ask for the ransom money? Because if it is money . . .”

  “It’s not money they want. They say in forty-eight hours they will kill them both . . .”

  “Mon Dieu!”

  “I already have men looking for the kidnappers’ hideout in Israel. But they need time. We have to somehow get Hamas to extend the deadline . . .”

  Ariana played with the empty glass of vodka. “If we can find out who the head of Hamas operations in Europe is, the one who gives the orders, I can make sure he gets a special invitation to my club. And once he is here, my friends and I will give him such special ‘treatment,’ he will do whatever we tell him.”

  “Can you ask around?”

  “Of course. But it will take time. Call your granddaughter! The Saudis, they give money to Hamas. They will know exactly how to find him.”

  “I’ve thought of Elizabeth . . .” Esther said hesitantly. “But we haven’t spoken in years, Ariana. Do you think she’ll even . . . speak to me?”

  “Mais oui! Are you not her grandmere?”

  “It’s not what you think, Ariana. Children, grandchildren . . . They are not your good friends. Sometimes you give and get nothing back . . .”

  “Call her! It is time. She will get her husband to help.”

  “Will she? Can she?”

  “She is a good girl, your Elizabeth, n’est-ce pas? She will do the right thing. And this man, if he loves her . . .”

  “But what . . .” she lowered her voice, “if it’s dangerous? If I involve them and something happens . . .”

  There was a long silence at the other end of the line.

  Escaping the death march. Running through the woods, the gunshots ringing over our heads. Hiding in the straw, the sharp knives, the deadly pitchforks rammed in viciously just above our heads. “We choose our steps, make our choices. Elizabeth and her husband will choose theirs.”

  “It could be dangerous for you too, Ariana. All those dreks wandering around in your club. If you start up with Hamas . . .”

  Ariana Feyder closed the box with a determined click, then slipped it into her pocket. “Alors. How do the Americains say: Make my day! Besides, cherie, what does any of this matter . . .? We made a Covenant. They are threatening to kill Leah’s family . . . her child. We made our choices long ago.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line. There was nothing left to say.

  “Bonne chance, cherie!”

  “To all of us, cherie”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Kala el-Bireh, Samaria (West Bank)

  Wednesday, May 8, 2002

  1:00 P.M.

  THE TAN HONDA Accord rolled swiftly down the unpaved roads, slowing only when the army checkpoint appeared in the distance. The driver eyed the soldiers. Three were standing at attention, alert, their automatic weapons clutched in their hands, positioned for immediate use; another two were lounging in chairs, eating. Ismael took his foot off the accelerator. Flagged down, he braked, rolling down his window. “Papers,” the soldier said, sticking his head through the window. He handed them over: a card identifying him as an employee of BCN, along with a British passport and a valid work permit. The soldier scrutinized his face, comparing it to the passport photo. Satisfied, he motioned for him to open the trunk. For a fraction of a second, Ismael hesitated. The soldier’s eyes narrowed, his hand tightening around his weapon.

  “Of course,” Ismael said quickly, releasing the trunk latch. The soldier shifted his weight to a more relaxed position and motioned to his comrade to check the trunk.

  “Yesh mashehu?” the soldier asked.

  His comrade peered into the trunk, then shrugged. “Kufsaot.”

  “What in those boxes, many boxes, in back?” the soldier demanded, attempting his high school English.

  “Newspapers, magazines. Journals.”

  “What for?”

  “Our archives. We are a news station,” the driver said levelly. “Can I go now?”

  “You wait here,” the soldier answered firmly, walking around to the back, tearing open the boxes. He sifted through the contents listlessly. Just papers he saw, relieved. English- and Arabic-language newspapers and magazines. The soldier slammed the trunk shut and waved the car through.

  This was the last Israeli checkpoint, Ismael breathed in relief. A few kilometers down the road and he was already, for all intents and purposes, in the State of Palestine. Aside from a few widely spaced Jewish communities, he was surrounded by Arab villages and townships ruled over by Arafat’s guntoting goons and wandering gangs of terrorist thugs who called themselves a variety of interchangeable Jihadic names. Tubas was just behind him, and Jenin was just ahead. He turned onto a small side road, taking a left down a gravel path almost hidden from view by thick-leafed fig trees. The car lumbered slowly, crunching on the gravel as it headed toward a large stone villa set back almost invisibly inside a large grove of olive trees. Finally, inside a small clearing, he parked the car.

  He got out slowly, listening carefully for footsteps and looking cautiously in all directions. Satisfied that he wasn’t being followed, he walked around to the trunk and took out two large boxes, which he carried up the front steps to the door.

  He knocked seven times.

  “Ahalan.”

  “Ahalayn.”

  “Es salaam aleikum.”

  “Wa aleikum es salaam.”

  “I have the papers.”

  The door opened, and the house swallowed him. Inside, two armed men, dressed in army fatigues, nodded and smiled, while a third caught him in a warm embrace. A fourth nodded to him briefly, then got up to shake his hand before returning to the flickering images of a European soccer game being narrated in Arabic and broadcast from a television station in Dubai.

  “Where are they?” Ismael asked.

  “Downstairs. Come.”

  “Should I bring the papers?”

  The other man scratched his three-day-old stubble thoughtfully. “Yes. Bring them.”

  They walked down the steps. An iron door, three inches of reinforced steel, barred their way. Ismael waited as his companion knocked three times, paused, then knocked four times. A small iron window moved aside.

  “It’s Ismael. He’s brought the papers.”

  The harsh, grating sound of heavy iron bolts being slipped back mingled with the sound of locks turning. Finally, the door opened to admit them. Five armed men, and a cache of deadly weapons—C4 plastic explosives, grenades, dynamite—all in open boxes—gave the small hallway the look of a deadly arsenal in an old WWII movie about the Germans in Dunkirk. Not an inch of wall space was free. If anyone were to force the door open, Ismael thought, they would be met head-on with enough explosives to incinerate not only the whole house but the entire area into black ash. Nothing would survive.

  In the dimly lit corridor, Ismael made out a small desk with a phone, a computer and a fax machine. As his eyes focused, they widened in surprise and fear. Behind the desk sat Marwan Bahama.

  Known by friends and enemies alike as “The Executioner,” Bahama was legendary for the ingenuity and passion of his cruelties. Details of Bahama’s treatment of his own men suspected of supplying information even to rival terror groups was widely known. It wasn’t enough for him to just kill them. He was a connoisseur of pain, having spent years perfecting methods to prolong the depth and span of human agony.
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  An admirer of the Nazis, Bahama was well read in the practices of SS officers and concentration camp functionaries. He would slice off fingers and extremities one by one, pour battery acid down throats, scorch skin with blowtorches, cover backsides with industrial glue and then set them alight . . . There was no end. But his favorite torture was to abuse small children in front of their parents. This he learned from Saddam Hussein’s security forces.

  Bahama, who came from a middle-class farming family in southern Hebron, had not only finished high school, but had been studying for a degree in biology from Bir Zeit University. In his junior year, his unmarried sister began a series of clandestine romantic meetings with a boy from the neighboring village. When she was discovered, Marwan was given the task of redeeming the family honor. He did so without reluctance, slitting her throat as she lay asleep in her bedroom. Hamas recruited him soon after.

  Bahama looked at him through half-closed lids, reminding Ismael of the cold, watchful eyes of resting crocodiles measuring prey.

  “Salaam aleikum. Allah be praised.” Ismael nodded with a brief, nervous smile.

  Bahama acknowledged the greeting with a slight nod: “Allah U Achbar. There is no god but Allah the merciful. What have you brought, brother?”

  “I have brought the newspapers and magazines with the story of the Zionists. And the e-mail addresses with instructions.”

  “Good.”

  “Are they well?”

  Bahama eyed him quizzically. “Who?”

  “The Jews.”

  “The Jews are still alive.”

  “Can I see them?”

  Bahama stared at him: “Why?”

  Ismael swallowed. “These are my orders.”

  Bahama shrugged, then got up, leading the way through a narrow dark hallway toward a thick red door bolted and locked from the outside. Bahama lifted his shirt, revealing a long, thick metal chain at whose end rested a key. He unlocked one bolt. Then reaching into his underwear, he produced two more keys.

  “Still warm,” he laughed. Ismael forced a smile, watching as two other locks came undone.

  “Are they the only keys?” Ismael asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And what if the door is forced open?”

  Bahama smiled. “Look.”

  Ismael followed Bahama’s finger as it punched a six-digit code into a small white keyboard, memorizing the numbers. “It’s a motion detector. If someone fires into this door, or bangs into it without typing in the code, fifty kilos of explosives will detonate inside the room.”

  Fifty kilos, Ismael shuddered. The bus bombings and hotel bombings that had littered kilometers with human flesh had been accomplished with only ten kilos. Bahama finally pushed the door open.

  The smell of human excrement hit Ismael like a slap in the face. The cell was too dark to see anything at first, but as his eyes adjusted, he made out the thick concrete walls, the filthy floors littered with old bottles, cigarette butts and empty candy wrappers. A tiny bead of light from the hallway revealed dust motes as thick as carpeting in the fetid air.

  “Where . . .?” Ismael shrugged.

  Bahama pointed to a far corner. There, beneath a filthy blanket, he made out the eyes of a man who stared at him in stony silence. There was a sound, a child’s voice. “Aba!” It took Ismael a while to make out the other pair of eyes, a child’s pretty dark eyes, so like his own child’s; eyes that looked up at him in terror. Bahama switched on the electricity, flooding the room in light.

  “Please,” the man said with parched lips. “The child’s skin is burning with rashes from not being cleaned. She needs a bath, clean underwear. She needs food.”

  Bahama walked over to him. He reached out and smoothed down liana’s hair. The child cringed, clinging to her father, whimpering in fear. “Do you know what the Nazis would do with squalling Jewish brats?” he asked Ismael. “They would hold them upside down by the legs and tear them in two, like chickens.” With stunning swiftness, he kicked Jon in the face. “Get her to shut up, or I will,” he screamed. Jon gathered liana into his arms, his hands now covered with his own dark blood, which streamed from his nose.

  The child screamed, terrified.

  Ismael looked down on the ground and spit. “I’ve seen enough. We need to talk.”

  Bahama shut off the light, and the two men went out.

  “These are not the orders,” Ismael told him with quiet fury, disgusted at the brutality. “Look at these newspapers and magazines. All over the world, they are writing about the doctor and his little girl . . .”

  “. . . little Jewish whore,” Bahama swore.

  “That may be so,” Ismael cut him off firmly. “But we need them for more videos to play on the western news networks. They can’t look as if they’ve been harmed. We need them to say that they are settlers, occupiers of sacred Palestinian lands, and have been kindly treated by Izzedine al-Qassam according to the tenets of Muslim hospitality and compassion. This is going to be very bad publicity. Very bad. These are your orders.”

  Bahama’s chin shot up belligerently. “From who?”

  “From Musa himself.”

  “Musa, eh?” Bahama looked up, surprised and pleased. It was actually, to his mind, quite an accomplishment that the director of all Hamas political activities was directly involved on such a personal level in a local operation under his command, one he had personally planned and executed to perfection.

  Like all the others, he had met Musa el Khalil in the training camps in Sudan and had tremendous admiration for him, and unbridled envy. Like all low-level Hamas operatives in Palestine, Bahama aspired to rise to the head of the general organization in Europe, to be the one who sent out the thousands of e-mails with instructions to terror cells all over the world. But he knew he had to be cautious. Hamas operatives who stepped on too many toes found information about their whereabouts leaked to the Mossad or to rival PLO factions, who were only too happy to make sure they were blown up in their cars or beds. Just like in a real army, one had to follow orders, however distasteful, and then bide one’s time. “Let me see the orders,” he barked, annoyed at having his rank thrown in his face.

  Ismael opened up a copy of Time magazine, pulling out the fax containing the coded message from between its pages. Bahama scanned the page, looking for the Web addresses he needed to find his latest orders. He sat down in front of the computer. As a security precaution, identical coded orders were posted on two separate Web sites. Only when both e-mails were posted, and matched perfectly, were the orders to be executed. Forgeries were impossible. The secret numerical codes that marked each communication had to match exactly, as did the spaces between the letters. And there was also a secret code to indicate that the e-mail was false, or being sent out under duress.

  Bahama printed out the two e-mail messages, then held them together against the light to ensure their letters overlapped perfectly. They did.

  “All right. We will clean them up and make the next video tonight. We will follow the instructions.”

  “Get a woman in here. A mother. To clean up the child. We need to show the child isn’t frightened. That we are good people fighting a just war, you understand?”

  “Games, games, games,” Bahama shouted, slamming his fist on the table. “Always these games they play. Arafat and his trips to hotels, signing his papers, smiling and getting his picture taken. The sodomizing bastard who fills his Swiss bank accounts and leads our people to Hell! Enough games. When will they unleash the Jihad against the Jews? Let us round them up and slit their throats? That is how you get rid of Jews. You are all soft. You sleep in soft beds with soft women . . .”

  “Are you saying you won’t do it?”

  Bahama looked at him with half-closed lids. “Please tell Musa. Tell him it will all be done. We will make another tape, release the message as written. But tell him I need an answer. How long do they need the Jews to live?”

  “Why?”

  “Because we need to move on. O
ur next safe house doesn’t have room for a well-guarded prison. We can’t move them with us. We need to get rid of them. Tell Musa, as soon as possible. I give him another twenty-four hours. That’s all. Then we will finish them off and go.”

  “Not without orders, brother.”

  “Tell Musa what I said,” Bahama said quietly. “Tell Musa while he is in Paris taking baths in his fancy hotels, I am stinking like a camel in hellholes surrounded by Jews. Tell him that. We need orders soon.”

  “I will tell him.”

  Ismael walked up the stairs and out to the car. The cool night air chilled the layer of fine sweat that covered his body. He shivered, hugging himself. Then he got into the car and drove quickly down the darkened driveway.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Hadassah Hospital, Jerusalem

  Wednesday, May 8, 2002

  2:00 P.M.

  LEAH OPENED THE hospital door. Elise had a room full of people surrounding her bed.

  “I’m going to see that tape,” Elise told them.

  Leah took Elise’s hand and kissed it. “Don’t get excited, darling. Remember, you promised.”

  “I am going to see that tape. NOW!” she shouted, near hysteria.

  The white-coated doctors exchanged meaningful glances. Dr. Gabbay sat down beside her, putting a fatherly hand on her shoulder. “Elise, I promise you. We’ve all seen the tape. There is nothing on it, except a fuzzy picture of Jon and liana. They are both alive and look well. The rest is just propaganda. It’s just going to upset you.”

  Elise pulled her hand away and sat up, facing them all. “My husband and child have been kidnapped by terrorists. Do you think there is anything on that tape that could upset me any more than I already am? Do you think for one second that I am thinking about anything else?” She took a deep breath, struggling for control. “Please, I have to. I have to read their faces.” She began to weep.

  Leah embraced her. “Please, Doctor. Show it to her already. There’s no choice.”

  Dr. Gabbay turned to the others and shrugged, pointing to the exit. “Elise, calm down. I’ll be back in a minute.”