Background Story

The Alhakim family are ultra-Orthodox Sephardic Jews, originally from Morocco. They were a line of scholars and Rabbis. The patriarch of the family, Saidon Alhakim, had only one child, a daughter named Merav. Saidon loved and doted on his daughter. He even gave her the academic education that was usually reserved for a son. The fact that Merav wasn’t a son, meant she couldn’t become the next in their line of Rabbis. She had to marry one. Saidon kept a close eye on the boys in his yeshiva in the hopes of finding one who was a great enough scholar to be his successor. He eventually found what he was looking for in Racah Shuraqui.

As was customary, the marriage was arranged between the parents and then youngsters were given the chance to meet and refuse match. When the two met, Racah fell in immediate love. Merav decided that the choice could be worse. Racah, unlike many men amongst the observant, was willing to allow her to pursue an academic career. Neither of them had to serve in the IDF, as they were in exempt categories. Married women and Rabbinical students were both exempt from compulsory service. While they both continued their studies, Racah in day classes and Merav in night classes, they started their family. Merav happily pursued her career in biblical Archaeology with her family’s full support. When Merav’s studies took her away from the home, her mother and father stepped in to help out with the children.

It was while on a dig that Merav met the man she would forever view as the love of her life. He was a stately Arab antiquities expert named Anwar Bakhum. Merav secretly carried on an affair with Anwar when she was away from her family. They would conduct “research” together. Anwar would somehow always have enough work done ahead of time for Merav to produce to explain their time together. The affair went on for several months before Merav found that she was pregnant. Having had sex with both Racah and Anwar, she had no idea who the father was. Since Sephardim looked like Arabs or North Africans, the child’s ethnicity wouldn’t be a giveaway either. The implications of the child did cool Merav’s passions. It put the laws of her faith front and center. Anwar wasn’t distraught or bothered by Merav’s decision to cut off ties. He did giver her a small, gold amulet of the cartouche of Atum-Re for her to give the child that he insisted would be a boy.

For the first time, Merav had a difficult pregnancy. She had to take leave from work and remain at home under the care of her family. When the child finally came, it nearly killed her. The doctors couldn’t explain why. All they could do was work to save her life. Merav managed to survive, but in an extremely diminished capacity. When she set eyes on her son, she immediately knew who the father was. The infant had the elegant features of Anwar, not the solid ones of Racah. She named him Asher, for how happy his father had made her. His status has a Jew was not in question, as that came from the mother. So, Merav raised him the same as any of her other children.

Asher was a rambunctious child. His mother couldn’t keep up with him, as she spent much of her time bed ridden. Asher also disliked the world of books that his parents and most of the ultra-Orthodox community lived in. While his brothers and sisters loved to study Torah, Asher learned just enough to get his prayers and rituals correct. Knowing that they didn’t have a yeshiva student on their hands, Asher’s parents let him spend time with the less intellectual and more militant members of the community. It was amongst these men than Asher’s brilliance would shine. The boy took to firearms in the way the most boys took to their books. They could recite Torah and Talmud from memory, while Asher could recite the capabilities of every piece of military equipment that the other boys had ever heard of and some that they had not.

As Asher grew from a child into a teen, his differences from his Racah became more apparent. Racah was a short, frail man. Asher was a tall, athletic teen. There was no height of any note on either side of his family. Asher literally stood head and shoulders above the entire family. This caused Merav to worry that the community would wonder where he got it from. The worry caused her health to spiral downwards. Merav passed away in Asher’s 15th year.

Racah asked the children each choose something of hers to keep as a personal memento. Asher didn’t expect to find anything in her stacks of books and academic papers, but looked anyway. He decided that even if he didn’t find anything interesting to him, he’d keep a small item. Asher found himself drawn to a small envelope in the central drawer of her desk. The small, gold amulet inside called to him. Racah was shocked at what it was. Why would Merav keep an amulet of a pagan deity rather than giving it to a museum? Racah let his son keep the amulet on the condition that he not show it to others in the ultra-Orthodox community. Asher agreed and wore the amulet under his clothing from that day forward.

Since he wasn’t planning to pursue a higher education, Asher didn’t wait for compulsory service. He volunteered to join the IDF a year before it was required. He signed up with the 97th Battalion, as it was the only completely Orthodox unit in the IDF.

Asher’s skills brought him to the attention of the special forces and he was quickly recruited to the Maglan unit. His appearance would make it easier for him to operate behind enemy lines. Despite them not being an Orthodox unit, Asher leapt at the chance. Not only did Asher meet expectations in his Maglan training, he exceeded them. Having finally found something that he both excelled at and enjoyed, Asher pushed himself to succeed. He was the best marksman, ran the fastest and drove the most aggressively. While others were washing out or barely squeaking by, Asher was breezing through.

The unit commanders had never seen anything like it. Neither had the Mossad agents who frequently worked with the Maglan unit. Asher received additional training with the Mossad, since he didn’t seem to require some of the lessons that his fellow Maglan did. The Mossad taught him stealth by blending in, not just sneaking around. They drilled him in several languages and gave him flight training normally reserved for the Air Forces.

It didn’t take long for Asher to get completely co-opted by the Mossad. With him, they could get an agent into places where the typical mid-30s Ashkenazi Mossad agent would stick out. Asher’s Sephardi ancestry meant that he could pass as a local in most Arab, Turkish, Persian or Berber controlled countries. If his English was good enough, he could pass as any one of several ethnic groups in the United States.

Initially, the Mossad used Asher in a more direct role. He would sneak into enemy territory with Mossad or Maglan teams and fulfill the role of sniper. A few terrorists found the end of their careers through one of his bullets. When the Arab countries began to suffer unrest, Asher was sent with teams to make sure that anti-Israel fanatics didn’t take over leadership. The teams didn’t wear identifying markers. That way, if they got caught or were killed, Israel could deny involvement. Asher didn’t give up his amulet, even though he was mocked for it.

While Asher was on a mission into Egypt, his team was nearly caught. A group of Bedouins came upon their encampment. The Israelis just played like they were young men from Cairo avoiding the insanity. The Bedouins didn’t believe them and it boiled into a confrontation. When the leader grabbed at Asher, he got a hold of the amulet instead. Staring at it, he waved his kinsmen off. He handed it back to Asher, apologized for being disrespectful and led his kinsmen away. Asher was never mocked for wearing his mom’s jewelry ever again.

A chemical attack took place in a small kibbutz in the north of Israel. It wasn’t publicized since the kibbutz in question was actually a Mossad cover. Somebody knew that it was a Mossad cover and specifically targeted it. It had no other military, religious, economic or political value. They managed to take the chemical signature of the agent apart and traced it to agents that should have been destroyed at the Deseret Chemical Depot in Tooele, Utah in the United States. As it wasn’t exactly politic to ask the United States if they weren’t reporting missing chemical weapons, it was decided to send in an espionage team.

Hill Air Force Base, in Layton, Utah in the United States, was going to be hosting the joint training exercises for the new F-35 fighter. As the identities of Israeli fighter pilots were always kept secret, it would be pretty easy to sneak a pilot and flight crew onto the legitimate training. Pilots didn’t even know each other unless they flew in the same wing. The Mossad “pilot” and his team would just come from a wing with no pilots selected for the trip. Asher was selected to be the pilot as he not only spoke English and had the skills, but he also had the youth and military background. To the United States government, he was the young hot dog IAF pilot Seren (Captain) Asher Halevy.

Asher had never been on a military base that wasn’t at a constant state of war alert before. He and his teammates found the security to be distressingly lax. The Israelis got a taste of what a nation who didn’t truly fear invasion was like. Simple ID checks got you off and on base. The Air Force Security Police just wanted to have a casual peek in your car windows, to ensure that you weren’t sneaking equipment off base or people on base. They even made nervous jokes about jet engines.

The laxness was to their mission advantage. Asher wasn’t to be involved in the operational end of the mission. He was the distraction. While all the Americans paid attention to the gregarious, young, hot dog pilot from Israel; the “ground crew” had members who could disappear and look into the chemical weapons problem. The other Israelis ignored anything out of place, as the IDF had to have a reason for everyone included in the training.

Mechanical failure served to make their mission even easier than planned. The F-35 that Asher was to train on suffered a critical engine failure and needed a couple weeks downtime for repair. Asher and his crew were given the choice of returning to Israel for the time or remaining in the United States. If they remained in the United States, they would be allowed to take the time as leave. Not surprising to either the American or Israeli authorities, they all chose to remain and see the sights. Asher’s crew split for “Vegas.” Some of the American pilots decided that Asher needed to see how they spent leave. So, they dragged him down to a place called Scofield Reservoir for boating, drinking, four wheeling, and more drinking.