“Thank God!” she said. “Thank God!”
“They’ll be taking us to Israel to a hospital for a checkup and observation. Can you come to Israel right away?”
“Yes! Of course!” she said as she wiped her own tears.
“How are Hope and Louisa?” he asked.
“They’re fine, fine. They won’t believe me when I tell them you called. They’ll say I was dreaming. I’m not dreaming, am I?”
“No,” he answered, reassuringly, “You’re not dreaming.”
“Do you want to talk to them?” she asked. Her voice was excited and hurried. Her mind raced. She wanted to ask everything, say everything, do everything all at once.
“No, not right now. We’re going to leave soon, so I can’t stay on very long and Tom wants to call a cousin or uncle or something.”
“How is Tom?”
“He’s fine. We’re both fine. Just tell Hope and Louisa that I love them and that I’m looking forward to seeing them. Okay?”
“Of course,” she said. And then it suddenly occurred to her that she didn’t know where he was going in Israel. “Where will you be? What hospital?”
“I’m sorry, Elizabeth. I don’t have any details, but I didn’t want to wait to call you.”
“No. No. That’s okay,” she said and then thought for a moment. “The girls and I will be on the next plane to Israel. When you get to the hospital, call Joshua and Ilana. Tell them where you are, and when I arrive I’ll call them for the message.”
“Joshua and Ilana?” Decker asked, surprised at the apparent familiarity. “You mean the Rosens?”
“Of course, Decker. They’ve been a great help and support to me while you’ve been gone. They’re such wonderful people. Here’s their number.”
Decker took down the number. “I’ve got to go now,” he said and then paused to be sure she would hear him. “I love you,” he said softly but clearly.
“I love you!” she answered.
The Swedish commander arranged for two trucks and a squad of armed men to take Decker and Tom the 120 kilometers to the Israeli border. From there Israeli security would take them to a hospital in Tel Aviv. But Ambassador Hansen had other plans. Hansen was a good politician and here was an opportunity for some very positive publicity. It was, after all, his convoy that had rescued them.
When they arrived in Israel, Tom and Decker were greeted by reporters from four international news agencies who had been called from Lebanon by Ambassador Hansen’s aide. There were more reporters at the Tel-Hashomer hospital in Tel Aviv. Hansen handled questions from the press himself “in order to take the burden off the boys,” he said. He agreed to allow the press to take a few pictures of Tom and Decker, but curiously managed to figure prominently in each. Neither Tom nor Decker really minded. They had talked and joked together on the trip through Lebanon and to Tel Aviv. They liked Hansen—he was a “jolly good” sort. He was also a politician; getting publicity was part of his job. They were just happy to be free.
After they checked into the hospital, Decker phoned the Rosens. Feeling more his old self, he decided to be a little playful. “Joshua,” he said as though nothing unusual had happened, “this is Decker. So where have you been lately? I haven’t seen you around.”
“That’ll do you no good, Decker Hawthorne,” Rosen answered. “I know all about you and Tom. Elizabeth called us as soon as she made her plane reservations to tell us the good news. Besides, you’ve been on television all afternoon.”
Decker laughed warmly. “When will she get in?”
“Just a second. Ilana!” Rosen called to his wife. “Decker’s on the phone. What time did Elizabeth say her plane would be arriving?”
There was a pause. Ilana took advantage of her husband’s poor memory for such things, and took the phone away from him. “Hello, Decker,” she said. “Welcome home!”
“Thanks, Ilana. It’s good to be home,” he answered, by which he meant anywhere away from Lebanon.
“I saw you on TV,” she said. “You’re skin and bones.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t care for the menu.”
“You know, I make some of the best chicken soup.”
“Tell him about Elizabeth, already,” Decker heard Joshua saying in the background.
“Oh, yes. Elizabeth’s plane will be here tomorrow at 11:36 A.M. Don’t you worry about a thing. Joshua and I will pick up her and the children at the airport and bring them to the hospital. If you’d like,” she added as an aside, “I’ll bring you some of my chicken soup. I’ve heard the hospital food is atrocious.”
Decker appreciated their kindness. “Sure, Ilana. Sounds great.”
Decker next called the Washington office of NewsWorld, where it was nine in the morning, and asked to speak to his editor, Tom Wattenburg. He was all ready to say, “Hi, Tom. This is Decker. Any calls for me?” when the switchboard operator said that Tom Wattenburg had retired and that his replacement was Hank Asher.
“Hank,” Decker said when Asher came to the phone, “you mean they promoted you ahead of me?”
“Well, if you’d show up for work once in a while,” Asher responded with a faint chuckle. “And by the way, I’ve got a bone to pick with you. I get up this morning and what do I see? Your ugly mug on the Today Show. You guys called NBC but you didn’t notify your own magazine! And another thing, you took the key to the hotel room when you left and I ended up havin’ to pay for it: cost me four bucks.”
“Hey, we didn’t have anything to do with calling NBC,” Decker said in his defense. “But no kidding? The Today Show?”
“Yeah, and seems like everywhere else, too,” Asher answered, trying to sound disgusted. “But at least they mentioned you guys work for NewsWorld.”
Actually the publicity for NewsWorld was great and would certainly boost sales for the edition Asher had planned for Tom and Decker’s “first-person” article on their lives as hostages.
Tel Aviv, Israel
The next morning as he shaved and brushed his teeth, Decker examined his face in the mirror. He was getting used to his skeletal appearance, but now he was thinking of Elizabeth. How would she react? The important thing was that he was safe; in a few months he’d be back to normal physically. It was best to concentrate on the positive. What would never be “back to normal” was the way he felt about her. The bittersweet truth was that in his isolation he had come to love her in a way he otherwise never could have.
Because of her flight, Elizabeth probably had not seen him on television, so when she walked in the door of the hospital in a few hours she would be seeing him for the first time. As he finished brushing his teeth, Decker noticed a box of sterile cotton balls and was struck by one of those crazy ideas that sometimes hit him. He stuffed several pieces in his cheeks to see if it would make his face look fuller. Looking in the mirror, it appeared he had mumps. Decker laughed so hard he almost swallowed one of the cotton balls. Fortunately, these ideas usually only hit him when he was alone.
One thing was certain, though. Decker did not want to be wearing a hospital gown when Elizabeth arrived. He tried to charm a nurse into doing some shopping for him, to no avail. Then he thought of Hansen. Decker figured Hansen owed him and Tom a favor for all the good publicity, so he called the British Embassy. This time he was in luck. Hansen sent over two aides and a local tailor, who measured Decker and Tom for suits. The aides did some quick shopping at Polgat’s on Ramat Alenby, an outlet of fine men’s clothes. They brought the suits to the hospital, along with the tailor and a sewing machine, and the tailor hemmed the suits on the spot.
When Elizabeth arrived, Decker and Tom were sitting in the hospital lobby sipping tea and reading the English edition of the Jerusalem Post. They looked like transplants from a fancy British gentlemen’s club, an appearance they played to the hilt. The act worked fine until Elizabeth’s and Decker’s eyes met. Then it was all hugs, kisses, and tears. Despite the suit, Elizabeth immediately realized the seriousness of Decker’s condition as sh
e put her arms around him. The bones in his back were easily distinguishable through the fabric. Instinctively she understood what Decker was trying to do and attempted not to look too worried.
Ilana Rosen put down her thermos of chicken soup and hugged Tom. Hope and Louisa jointly hugged their dad. Somehow the hugs merged and evolved into a mass hug. Even Scott Rosen, who had come along with his parents, joined in.
After a few moments of this they sat down to talk. Elizabeth sat beside Decker and they held hands as they all talked about what had happened over the last three years. On the other side of Decker, Hope and Louisa took turns sitting next to their father. Decker was amazed at how much his daughters had changed. Hope was now sixteen and Louisa eleven. He had never noticed how much they both looked like their mother. He had missed so much of their lives … Decker tried not to focus on his regrets.
Joshua and Ilana introduced Tom and Decker to their son, Scott, a brawny, 260-pound, six-foot-three-inch Orthodox Jew with thick black curly hair and beard. The Rosen family had grown much closer over the past three years.
Everyone wanted to know how Tom and Decker had escaped and what had happened during their captivity. Again, neither mentioned the dream. Sometime later the subject turned to how they had become hostages in Lebanon in the first place. Until that moment no one realized they had actually been abducted in Israel and smuggled over the border. Everyone assumed they had gone into Lebanon to pursue some story and were taken hostage while there.
Upon learning the truth, Scott Rosen asked if they had reported the details to the Israeli authorities. They had not, but agreed to tell the police later that day. Scott didn’t want them to wait. He insisted they call the police immediately and when they said it could wait, Scott became indignant. “Well, I’ll just go call them for you,” he said and walked off to find a phone.
Ilana Rosen, who had been getting more embarrassed by the minute, apologized for her son. “I’m really sorry, Decker and Tom,” she said. “He’s just so firm in his beliefs that nothing comes before God and Israel.”
“Or is it Israel first and then God?” her husband interrupted.
Ilana understood her husband’s exasperation. “When the Palestinians destroyed the Western Wall, Scott went crazy with rage,” she said. “He wanted to put every Palestinian in Israel on trial.”
“He wanted to do much worse than that, and you know it,” Joshua interrupted again, this time earning himself a firm pinch on the leg from Ilana. Despite the pinch—or more likely to spite it—he continued. “If he had not been with us at the very time it happened, I might believe he was one of those who attacked the Dome of the Rock after the wall was destroyed.”
“What?” asked Decker and Tom in unison. “What happened?” Tom added by himself.
“Did NewsWorld have a team here to cover it?” Decker asked.
“Oh, Daddy!” said Hope in recognition of the silly unimportance of his question.
“Exactly one week after the wall was destroyed,” Joshua explained, “a group of about forty Israelis attacked the Dome of the Rock. They killed sixteen Muslim guards and drove everyone out of the Mosque before setting explosives. They totally destroyed it. Some have accused the police of being part of the conspiracy because by the time they arrived all of the Israeli terrorists had escaped.” Rosen’s inflection on “terrorists” made clear his revulsion. He did not like terrorists, no matter which side they were on.
“It was terrible here for many months.” Ilana said. “We’ve been in Israel for some of the worst, but you cannot imagine all the car bombs and suicide bombings. Security was unbelievable. I couldn’t even go from our house to the market without going through checkpoints.”
Joshua continued, “There were huge protests and the Arab countries threatened war. It didn’t come to that, at least not yet, but it probably did more for Arab unity than anything in the past sixty years. Even Syria and Iraq are talking again.”
There was something ominous about the way Joshua had said “at least not yet” that Decker couldn’t leave unexamined. “Has something happened recently?” he asked.
“Things calmed down some after a while,” Joshua began. “The Arabs wanted to rebuild the Mosque; many in Israel wanted to rebuild the Temple. For two and a half years the area remained roped off from both Jews and Arabs. Then three months ago, after Moshe Greenberg became prime minister—”
“Prime minister?” Decker interrupted. “That radical?”
“Don’t let Scott hear you say that,” Rosen said. “But actually Greenberg doesn’t seem quite so radical now as he once did. Nowadays he’s considered somewhat of a moderate. That’s less because he’s changed and more that the mood of the country has swung so much further to the right as a result of the continuing threats from our Arab neighbors. But as I was saying, three months ago after Greenberg was elected prime minister, he announced that Israel would immediately begin rebuilding the Temple.”
“Wow. I’m surprised the Arabs haven’t already declared war.”
“The Arabs never cease their war with us,” Rosen replied. “But yes, you are right. They are very upset. But since they have never been able to win an all out war with Israel, the Arab countries prefer terrorist actions. One effect of the years of America’s War on Terror is that while the United States monitors and subdues terrorism’s backers, politically it has greatly freed Israel to search out and destroy its own terrorist cells. As a result, unless the Arab states are ready to start a full-scale war, there’s little else they can do. I don’t mean to minimize the danger. Even now the Syrians have troops amassed near our mutual border, and there are always rumors about some huge terrorist attack being planned here or somewhere in the world.”
“What about the Temple?” Tom asked.
“Oh, it’s really quite a massive undertaking, as you might expect. They removed all the stones from the remains of the Western Wall and from the old steps that had been excavated. They’ll use what they can and the rest will be put in a museum or something. They dug out the tunnels, but found only some minor artifacts,” Rosen replied.
“I guess that supports your theory that the Knights Templar took everything and that the Ark of the Covenant is in France,” Tom said. “So, how long before the Temple is finished?”
“The completion date is set for four years from now. That is if we don’t go to war—”
“Enough news and politics, already,” Ilana Rosen interrupted as she gave her husband’s leg another pinch. “Maybe Elizabeth would like to talk for a while.”
Joshua thought hard for a second. “Uh, oh, yes, of course,” Joshua agreed, as though he suddenly recalled his part in some conspiracy with Ilana and Elizabeth. “Maybe Elizabeth has … uh … something to say.”
“Go ahead, dear,” said Ilana, urging her on. Decker listened intently as Elizabeth spoke.
“Decker, while you were gone, you know that Hope and Louisa and I spent a lot of time with Joshua and Ilana. They were a great support to us. I don’t think we could have made it through all this without them. And, well, I just wanted to tell you that while you were away, I—that is to say, the girls and I—”
At that moment Scott Rosen returned, flanked by two plain-clothes detectives. They wanted the address of the house where Tom and Decker had been taken hostage and they wanted it now. They also wanted descriptions of the men who did it, and any other details that Tom and Decker could remember. Elizabeth’s revelation would have to wait.
The police left two hours later. Scott Rosen followed them in a cab to the station to tell them how to do their jobs. Joshua and Ilana took Hope and Louisa to eat, and Tom fell asleep on a couch. Decker and Elizabeth were finally alone.
“I missed you,” Decker said softly, as he held his wife close.
“I missed you,” she responded.
“I never knew how much you meant to me until I didn’t have you. I thought of you every hour. Constantly. When we get back, I’m going to tell Hank Asher that I’m not taking any a
ssignments where I’ll have to be away from home for more than three days.”
As the night waned, the couple went outside and sat under the stars. Elizabeth listened quietly, holding her husband’s emaciated body to her as he recited the poetry he had composed for her over the past three years.
Two days later, Decker was told he would be released from the hospital the following morning. It was nearing Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and the hospital wanted to reduce their occupancy as much as possible before the Jewish High Holy Days. Tom, however, had developed serious problems with his back and kidneys while in captivity and was to remain for continued observation and more tests. That night Decker was able to leave the hospital for dinner, so he and Elizabeth shared a romantic candlelit dinner in old Jaffa.
“Elizabeth,” Decker said at one point when the mood grew quiet, “I’m sure you must remember all the times I’ve said that I’ve never really felt there was any one place I could call home. I guess it’s just that I’ve lived so many places.”
Elizabeth remained silent but nodded affirmation. Decker reached across the small table and placed his left hand over hers. With his right hand, he softly ran the back of his fingers along the smooth curve of her face.
“Over the last three years I decided that if I ever got home to you, then that’s where home would be. When we get back to Maryland we’re going to make that home, whatever that means and whatever that takes.”
A single tear came to Elizabeth’s eyes. Having Decker back had kept her emotions at a fever pitch since he first called her from the UN outpost. It had been a constant struggle not to cry. Now, the intensity of Decker’s feelings, though she didn’t fully understand them, nudged her gently and briefly over the edge, and she wept.
Decker and Elizabeth finished their meal, then stayed at the table to talk. They did not speak of their time apart but rather of good times they had spent together in years past. As Elizabeth spoke, Decker looked across the table admiringly at his wife, watching her every move. Elizabeth noticed the attention with no small amount of enjoyment.
In His Image Page 12
