by By Jon Land
Berger’s eyes sharpened. He scanned the room, as if to look for Danielle, aiming his next words directly at her.
“Operation Blue Widow saved the state of Israel, Danielle, but it nearly destroyed your father in the process. He promised himself he would get Hanna Frank, now Anna Pagent Rahani, back to Israel, no matter what it took. The wait for an opportunity proved agonizing but, finally, it came when she reached him about a shopping trip to London that December.”
“What went wrong?”
“Everything.”
* * * *
Chapter 52
C
an you get yourself and the children out of the hotel?” Yakov Barnea asked Hanna, his voice calm and composed.
“Yes, but I must bring Habiba the governess to help me.“
“Do you trust her?”
“Completely.”
“All right. I’ve got men in the lobby now. Don’t worry, they’re disguised as hotel workers so they won’t give us away.”
“I’m not worried.”
“I’ll have the cars brought round. We’ll be waiting when you get downstairs. I’ll be inside a black taxi just before the entrance. Hurry.”
Hanna hung up the phone and gathered up the rest of the few belongings she would be taking with her. Layla was still sobbing when she rose and extended a hand toward her.
“Come, we’ve got to leave.“
“I don’t want to go!” Layla fussed.
“Daddy’s waiting for us. It was supposed to be a surprise.“
Hanna looked at her oldest daughter and knew she’d been caught in the lie. Layla’s gaze also revealed something else, something that looked like hate. Hanna turned back to the phone, wondered if she should phone Barnea and call the whole thing off. But it was too late. If her suspicions were correct, it was now or never. The stakes had grown frighteningly high.
Hanna signaled Habiba to bring Kavi, then reached down and grabbed Layla by the wrist.
“We’re going.”
“No!”
Layla was still crying when they rushed down the hall, the one suitcase Hanna had packed abandoned behind them. All she carried was a small shoulder bag, packed with her personal items and jewelry. She hit the elevator button with her elbow, reluctant to let go of Layla for fear the child might dash away at the slightest opportunity.
The elevator door slid open, its compartment empty at such a late hour of the night. Hanna pressed L, comforted instantly by the steady whir in her ears as the machine descended.
The elevator chimed upon reaching the lobby, and she held her breath as the door opened before her, terrified the security guards who accompanied her and the children in force on these trips would be waiting. But none of those in the lobby paid her any attention, and Hanna focused on the circular drive fronting the hotel’s entrance. Her eyes sought out the black cab that meant freedom, the end of the nightmare these last five and a half years had been.
Hanna felt Layla resisting, still fighting. She was forced to drag her oldest daughter across the polished marble floor of the lobby. To survive her ordeal, Hanna had never considered at length the ramifications of this moment for her daughters. It meant, by necessity, that they would never again see their father or the only home they had ever known, and Layla was old enough to be profoundly affected by that. Hanna was forcing them into a different world, a different culture, forever prisoners of the difficult decisions she had made.
It was more than that, though. The children had proven the best cover she could have ever hoped for, preventing Abdullah Aziz Rahani from ever suspecting the truth even as the attention he lavished on his daughters, especially Layla, distracted him from her. In Saudi Arabia the girls had been objects, part of a plan that served her nation. Once in Israel, though, they would be only her daughters; sad and bitter about being uprooted, perhaps even hateful once the complete truth could no longer be hidden.
The notion of it all now terrified Hanna. The professional in her, completely devoted to the spirit of her mission, had insulated her from the truth of her predicament. But now the reality of it crashed down upon her.
Halfway to the door, a man dressed as a bellhop came straight for her, a grim expression on his face and a pistol coming up in his hand. . . .
* * * *
Chapter 53
I
was the bellhop,” Hyram Berger said, his spine rigid and his voice cracking a little. “Yakov Barnea remained outside in the cab. My job was to escort Hanna, her daughters, and this governess named Habiba Aswari out the door and into the car.” The old man swallowed hard, his eyes suddenly looking frightened as if he were now back in the London Hilton again. “I was almost to Hanna when the Saudis charged down the stairs from the mezzanine. The men we had posted in the lobby opened fire and the Saudis returned it.
“We didn’t, couldn’t, know then that Layla had called her father. Abdullah Aziz Rahani’s men, ten or twelve of them, had the entire lobby covered. I was hit in the leg and the shoulder, went down still shooting.”
“What about Hanna?”
“She never stopped,” Berger said, as if it still surprised him. “Kept right on moving for the door, dragging Layla. The governess Habiba was in front of her, still carrying Kavi. I caught a glimpse of Yakov Barnea bursting through the entrance alongside another of our men disguised as a taxi driver. They were firing too. You’ve been in that kind of fight, haven’t you?”
“Much too often,” Danielle replied, not caring to recall the specifics.
“Well, this was my first gunfight outside of a traditional battle in war. You know what struck me the most? How loud it was, the way the gunshots echoed in the confined space, burning my ears. I don’t think I heard anything after I went down, or maybe I was screaming too loud myself, and Hanna’s youngest daughter had awoken in the governess’s arms and was wailing. To this day I don’t know for sure everything that happened.”
“But you said Hanna kept moving for the entrance, toward my father.”
Berger nodded. “Just behind the governess and Kavi, until her oldest daughter pulled away from her. Hanna ran across the lobby into the center of the firefight after Layla, yelling her name, yelling at her to stop. I remember the shattered glass along the front wall blown outward just before our man dressed as the driver went down. The governess was hit too, and I remember seeing your father was standing there alone, firing with one hand and holding Kavi with the other.
“He backed out of the doorway, turned to the side to shield Kavi, who was still cradled in his arm. A car screeched to a halt behind him, the windows down. I saw muzzle flashes from inside. The child’s head snapped backwards. Blood sprayed the glass, speckling it. Your father twisted and opened fire on the men in the car.”
“They had shot the little girl,” Danielle murmured, deeply saddened by Berger’s account of the tragic events.
“Your father was holding her limp in his arms when I crawled out through a shattered glass wall. I ripped my hands apart on the jagged shards before I reached the cab. I remember not caring about the pain. Your father was covered in blood. Staggering, firing at men I couldn’t even see as he lunged for the cab.” Berger’s gaze turned even more grim. “The next thing I knew he was pulling me into the backseat. I remember him piling the wounded governess into the car too, then the engine racing and the tires screeching before I passed out.”
“You left without Hanna and her oldest daughter.”
“We had no choice. Your father knew that. We could never have gotten past all that firepower in the lobby to her. He wanted to try, I’m sure he did—I could see it in his eyes.”
“But there was the younger daughter to think about too. You heard her crying. She must still have been alive.”
A sad, quizzical expression crossed Berger’s face. “It wasn’t the little girl I heard crying, Danielle. It was your father.”
“That’s all I know,” Berger finished, collapsing in exhaustion into the chair across from Danielle.
He massaged his eyelids, then held his palms over them. “I’ve said enough.”
“But Kavi died in my father’s arms. Yes or no?”
Berger nodded, head still in his hands.
“And Layla?”
“Grew up into quite a woman, I understand. Progressive by Saudi standards.”
“Political?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I have my reasons. Just answer the question.”
Danielle watched Berger’s eyes flicker uncertainly, as if she had surprised him for the first time.
“No Saudi woman is political openly.”
“What about you, Mr. Berger? What happened after that night in London?”
“I woke up in a London hospital, where I spent the next five months. I was treated like a prisoner, allowed no phone calls or visitors. By the time I recovered, and the Israeli government negotiated my return, the operation was officially over, and your father had been moved into the Office of Strategic Planning, which he would eventually head.”
“Thanks to the Blue Widows ...”
“I assure you the irony of that was not lost on him either. But the fact remains, the tragic ending aside, the operation had saved Israel from almost certain destruction in the Yom Kippur War. From that point on, we never faced another concentrated attack, and we never will again, God willing. Your father changed history, Danielle.”
“The life of that one little girl was probably just as important to him.”
“I can’t say one way or the other,” Berger told her. “I was transferred to the embassy here, and we never spoke again. I was never debriefed. No one from Israeli intelligence or military ever asked me a single question. Like nothing had ever happened and, for all intents and purposes, it never had. Operation Blue Widow, after all, had never been officially sanctioned. Your father had the only files, and my guess is he destroyed them after the rest of the women were recalled.”
Berger looked down briefly, seeming to study the Oriental carpet at his feet before continuing.
“His status as a legend in Israel’s history was solidified. He would have been given command of the IDF or a cabinet-level position if he hadn’t clashed with Sharon over the Lebanon invasion ten years later. Militarily, of course, your father was proven correct, but the stand made him a liability politically.”
“It runs in the family,” Danielle said.
Berger’s gaze grew slightly distant until it locked on Danielle. “I look at you and I see him. That wasn’t true with either of your brothers.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Don’t. Your father never learned to detach himself from the personalities he worked with. You should learn from his mistakes . . . and mine.”
“You never told me what happened to Hanna Frank.”
“It doesn’t matter now. Believe me.”
“I believe it does matter. I’m here because a week ago an old Israeli-Arab woman was murdered in Jerusalem. An old woman who lived as a recluse for years, even decades, and financed her life by selling diamonds to a jeweler in the Old City. An old woman who kept a picture of two young girls taped inside her dresser so it would never be found.”
With that Danielle produced the tattered black-and-white snapshot and leaned over to hand it to Berger.
“Are these girls Layla and Kavi, Mr. Berger?”
He gazed up at her, the picture trembling in his hand. “I can’t be sure, it’s been so long. It looks like them, yes, but. . .”
“Yes?”
“What you’re suggesting about this old woman in Jerusalem, it couldn’t be true. She wasn’t Hanna Frank.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because Hanna Frank died in 1973,” Berger managed, his voice cracking slightly. “She was stoned to death.”
* * * *
Chapter 54
C
ome, Layla, “ her father said, crouching so he was eye to eye with her, “you must throw the first stone. ...”
Layla Aziz Rahani thrashed in bed, the dream assaulting her, seeming like a videotape replay as her father pushed the rock into her hand, closed her fingers around it and . . .
...she turned back toward her mother, buried up to her neck, only her head showing ten feet away. Her father had kept her back when he had made her mother swallow one at a time the diamonds he had bought for her, a few still in their original settings as rings or earrings. But Layla had sneaked up closer, strangely unmoved by the agonizing grimaces that came when each stone was forced down her throat.
Then she watched her father fasten the black cloak over her mother’s face before tightening Layla’s hand around the rock he had given her.
Layla awoke in her bed, she and her bedsheets soaked in sweat, glad to be free of the nightmare. She rose and climbed into her bathrobe to check on her father. The nurse Marta was usually with him twenty-four hours a day, but somehow Layla found the process of checking on her father herself soothing. She lived in constant fear of the moment Marta would come to her with the inevitable news she dreaded: that her father was gone, that the machines had at last failed to pump life into him. Even in his current condition, he was all she had, the memories of the happier times easier to conjure when she could visit his bedside.
How could you have done this, chosen Saed over me as your heir?
If Layla had been able to peer this far ahead into the future all those years ago, maybe she would have made a different choice. Maybe her mother had truly loved her more, which made the memories of those final moments even harder to bear. . . .
Layla drew the rock overhead and held it there. Her father patted her shoulder in support. She gazed back, reassured by his strongly somber gaze. The rest of the men gathered held their distance behind them, looking silent and purposeful. Layla had to do this to renounce the part of her that was her mother. She hated that part, wished to excise it from her body. Her father had explained this was the only way to rid herself of it forever.
Her arm had begun to tremble now. The rock clutched in her hand felt incredibly heavy.
The first stone to be cast was hers, her father had explained, a great privilege he said she had earned by calling him from London weeks before. Layla’s stomach fluttered. She felt herself weakening against all the insistence of her father to remain strong. She tried to remember the terrible thing her mother had intended to do, still felt tears beginning to well in her eyes.
So she focused on the world of her mother instead, the world that had spawned her and made her do these terrible things. That world was the reason why this was happening. That world was to blame. That world was why Layla held the rock in her hand, which she finally began to bring forward, angling down, feeling her fingers release their hold upon it. . . .
She had entered the hospital room she’d had built for Abdullah Aziz Rahani after the stroke to find the veiled nurse Marta by his side. Marta bowed slightly and took her leave as soon as she saw Layla.
Hovering over her father’s bedside usually made Layla feel better, but not tonight. Tonight the memories were too strong, evoked by the inevitability of what she had committed herself to.
Her hatred for the West, for the United States, had only grown greater after the stoning. Layla had been attending a prestigious school where many of the students were the children of American businessmen living in Riyadh, and she began to get in fights with both the boys and the girls. She was warned repeatedly that such behavior would not be tolerated but did nothing to change her behavior. She liked pulling their hair or pinching them until they cried. They yelped like animals and yelled for their mothers, which only infuriated her more.
She wanted to do to them what she had done to her mother, do it to every last one of them. But there were so many, at the school and beyond. Eventually her behavior grew so intolerable that the school dismissed her in spite of the Rahani name. Her father hired tutors for her at home and used his influence
to have the school closed down for religious reasons.
He began spending even more time with her, involving Layla increasingly in his day-to-day world she came to love. She welcomed the opportunity to incorporate herself into his businesses as she grew into her teens, taking vast pleasure that he showed no such attention to the children his other wife had given him, including his oldest son, Saed.
