Exile: a novel (30 page)

“Several somethings. Saeb, among others.”

Hana searched his face for meaning. “If you’re asking how he feels about you representing me,” she said finally, “what choice does he have? I’m more concerned about Munira.” Her voice softened. “I’ve no right to ask for favors, even for my daughter, on top of everything you’re doing. But I hope you’ll help her through this—perhaps explain the process, reassure her as much as you can.

“She will feel her father’s powerlessness as acutely as at that Israeli checkpoint. You, at least, can give her hope.”

Slowly, David nodded. “I can try. But with Munira, I may be a little out of my depth.”

Hana summoned a faint smile. “Somehow I doubt that.” Abruptly, her expression became serious. “A last favor, then—could you occupy Saeb for a moment? I’d like to speak with her alone.”

David felt his own emotional reticence, a deep aversion to being drawn, against his instincts, into a familial dynamic he did not fully understand. “I’ll manage,” he said at length. “Munira aside, Saeb and I need to talk.”

The relief on her face was palpable. “I am very grateful, David. How I can repay you, I really do not know.”

It was jarring, David thought, to have Saeb sitting where, moments before, there had been Hana.

She had been still, soft-spoken; her husband seemed restless, even agitated, his fingers drumming on the Formica table. “If there’s a trial,” David began with studied dispassion, “we could be living with each other for quite a while. The strain will be considerable—neither of us knowing what will happen, and me forced to make decisions with consequences no one can predict.

“I respect your feelings—Hana is your wife, Munira is your daughter. But I’m Hana’s lawyer: any hope she has of an acquittal depends on me. You and I will need to coexist.”

Saeb’s fingers stopped moving. “You think, perhaps, that I’m not grateful for your intervention.”

“It’s crossed my mind.”

“Then I should say it,” Saeb said slowly. “I am grateful—and humiliated. We have no money to pay you.”

Was this truly at the heart of his antipathy? David wondered. Except when Saeb was angry, David found his expression difficult to read. “I am
hoping,” Saeb continued, “to raise money from the groups who sponsored my trip here.”

David shook his head. “Money’s not my worry, Saeb—my circumstances are comfortable.” Saying this, David realized that relying on his largesse might further scrape Saeb’s wounds. “As for the groups who sent you,” he added, “to say we have a massive public relations problem is an understatement. Part of my job will be to make Hana’s case in the media— Americans are already so familiar with the evidence against her that a change of venue wouldn’t help. Taking money from anyone perceived to be anti-Israel, let alone a group that espouses violence, would make things infinitely worse.”

“Then
I
am the problem,” Saeb said with sudden heat. “
I
am the one who does not shrink from violence. Your government will try to make her guilty by association.” Saeb stood, agitated, looking as though he wished to pace. “Hana’s innocent—she buried her militancy at Harvard. The only explanation I can give you is that my enemies have framed her.”

David looked at him in surprise. “What enemies? And why?”

Saeb crossed his arms, seemingly offended by the challenge. “The whys are clear: to get back at me, and to point suspicion at a woman who can’t trade her life for information about whoever else was involved.”

“Then why not just frame
you
?”

“I can’t know everything,” Saeb answered with impatience. “But Hana did not materialize these motorcycles and explosives. How could she be the planner when Munira and I were with her nearly all the time?”

“That much we agree on.” Pausing, David waited for Saeb to calm. “It’s one reason,” he continued, “why Hana may need you as a witness. And why you owe it to her—as a witness and as her husband—to say nothing more to anyone about Amos Ben-Aron, the State of Israel, suicide bombings, the Palestinian diaspora, Sabra and Shatila, this prosecution, or anything else that will inflame America’s post-9/11 sensibilities. If that makes you feel like a eunuch, so be it. There’ll be plenty of time for free expression on the other side of a jury verdict.” David’s tone cooled. “As Hana’s lawyer, I’ll give your theory every consideration—I don’t want her to die for someone else’s crime. Your job is to ensure that she doesn’t die for you.”

Saeb sat down again, hands folded in front of him, staring into David’s eyes. “As you wish, then,” he answered tonelessly. “As a Palestinian, I’m used to having my life controlled by others.”

“As an American,” David retorted, “I’m not. So I don’t enjoy it now. But it seems we have a common interest—your wife, and your daughter.”

“Yes. So it seems.” Saeb let the comment linger, then asked, “This issue you raised—national security. What exactly are you after?”

“I can’t tell you, I’m afraid. Obviously, you’re no longer my client—I can’t represent a prospective witness, or anyone but Hana—”

“I’m her husband,” Saeb protested.

“I think we’re clear on that. But Sharpe could cross-examine you about anything you learn from me. So this is where you start to trust me.”

Saeb considered this, then shrugged. “As you say.”

“I do.” David glanced at his watch. “There’s not much time left. Before they take her, Hana wants to be with you alone. I’ll do my best to distract Munira.”

Saeb hesitated. “For a moment,” he said grudgingly. “I don’t want you upsetting Munira. Forcing her to come here was damaging enough.”

Sitting across from David, Munira was a portrait in misery, the black of her dress and head scarf starkly outlined against the bare white walls. “Will they murder her?” she asked.

How could he best speak, David wondered, across the gulf of gender, age, culture, and religion to this traumatized girl afraid of losing the mother she had so recently resented, and who now must experience this as guilt? Her only consolation, in Hana’s absence, would come from a father whose own trauma was sealed long ago. Her only knowledge of the legal system would be what David chose to tell her.

“No,” David answered gently. “In America, being charged with a crime doesn’t mean you’re guilty. We don’t just ‘kill’ the innocent.”

“The Zionists do,” Munira said vehemently. “Or they arrest people for no reason, lock them up in prison without trials. They, too, say that we have ‘rights.’ But it’s all a lie.”

Though heartfelt, the speech had a curious pseudoprecocity, like a catechism memorized by a child. “Whatever you believe about the Zionists,” David told her, “I’m asking you to believe in me, just as your mother does. Do you think maybe you can?”

Munira looked down, unable to respond. “I don’t lie,” David said flatly. “There
will
be a trial—that was what the hearing was for. Did the judge seem fair to you?”

The girl’s eyes flickered, regarding David with surprise, perhaps at being asked for her opinion. Then she shook her head, less in demurral than confusion. “Americans hate my mother. On television they call her ‘terrorist.’ ” The girl hesitated, then asked, “Do
you
believe her?”

So much for never lying. “Yes, Munira. I do.”

The girl looked at him more closely—for an instant, David had the uncanny sense that she intuited more than she could articulate, knew him better than was possible. He was reminded of her mother’s keen intelligence, her swift perception, perhaps nascent in Munira. “For the jury to find her guilty,” David continued, “the prosecutor has to prove her case beyond any reasonable doubt. If she can’t, the court will set your mother free. I’m determined to make that happen.”

Though Munira’s long lashes covered her half-closed eyes, David thought he detected a brief glimmer of hope. “How long will it take?” she asked.

“I’m not sure yet. Six months, maybe.”

Though this estimate was optimistic, Munira looked crestfallen. “Six months,” she repeated dully.

David guessed at her imaginings—of an alien hotel room in an alien city, of a silent, brooding father, of a mother taken from her for reasons she still could not understand. “You can see her,” David promised. “She hasn’t gone away.”

Not yet,
he saw Munira thinking. Tears surfaced in her eyes.

“If you like,” David said softly, “when your father’s busy, I’ll take you to see her myself.”

The black cloth around her neck pulsed, perhaps with the effort of choking back her grief. “Can I see her alone again?”

“Yes,” David promised. “I’ll make sure of it.”

Driving away from the courthouse, David watched a clump of demonstrators chase him in the rearview mirror. “Self-hating Jew!” a bearded man shouted. “You’d sell your mother to Heinrich Himmler!” This was merely a down payment, David supposed, on what was sure to come.

Briefly, he thought of decisions made, or not made—of the life he had wanted with Hana, the life he had lost with Carole. And of regrets he could not allow himself to feel, or to share with either woman.

Enough, he told himself. There was much to do, and a man he had to see on a matter of national security.

Though a WASP aristocrat by background, Martel, a classmate of David’s father at Columbia, had shared Philip Wolfe’s interests in art and music. Beyond that, the two men’s paths had diverged: Philip Wolfe became a psychiatrist; Bryce Martel had occupied a series of vaguely described governmental posts until, at the end of his career, he’d emerged as a leading antiterrorism analyst, perhaps the harshest critic of an intelligence apparatus that he described as “almost as self-serving and incompetent as the politicians who abuse it.”

This apostasy had earned Martel a dignified exile at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. David’s faded childhood memories of Martel’s visits with his father, spent debating such things as the merits of twentieth-century symphonic music, were refreshed by Martel’s faithful attendance on Philip Wolfe as he slowly died of inoperable brain cancer. David, realistic enough to know that—even under the best of circumstances—he would never pierce his father’s emotional carapace and comprehend his inner thoughts, was grateful for Martel’s calm acceptance of death, and for the unexpected chance to learn more about his father’s life. Martel seemed to understand this; every few months, over a superb meal in one of the few restaurants whose wine lists were sufficiently imaginative to please him, he and David still talked about matters old and new. “Your father became a psychiatrist,” Martel once told him, “because, like many psychiatrists, he
wished to understand himself. But whatever he discovered, he did not wish to share. Including how he felt about being a Jew.”

Now, to his surprise, David needed Martel for another reason: to help untangle what promised to be a complex, even byzantine, case.

In his late sixties, Martel remained trim, with salt-and-pepper hair, a keen, weathered visage, and bright green eyes still too sharp to require glasses. He liked the outdoors, as his well-worn hiking outfit—pure New England in its scuffed boots, faded khakis, and well-worn flannel shirt— suggested. Besides, he’d added casually, it was best for David to talk with him where others would find it hard to listen.

“They’re tired of me,” Martel said with weary acceptance, “but they’ll be all over you—looking for radical ties, clues about who else planned Ben-Aron’s assassination, anything that explains why you took this case. It’s a puzzle to them, David. Which, in these perilous times, also makes you their target.”

Martel’s tone suggested that it was also a puzzle to him, but he was too polite, or respectful of human complexity, to ask. “Whose target?” David asked.

“Your own government’s. Not to mention the Mossad. You can reasonably expect to have your home and office phones tapped, along with Harold’s and Carole’s, and anyone who works with you on defending Hana Arif. And, of course, everyone’s cell phone conversations will be overheard.”

“By the Mossad?”

“In a heartbeat. The Israelis have sleepers in almost every embassy. In America, they recruit people who can get them sensitive information, or they dig it up themselves.” Martel stuck his hands in his pockets, trudging steadily along the trail. “You still may think of yourself as David Wolfe, the future congressman you were last week. But to our government, and Israel, you’re the lawyer for a terrorist who’s shaken both countries to the core. They want to know the same thing
you
do—who’s behind the murder of Amos Ben-Aron. By now, you’re no doubt under surveillance.

“Your only advantage is that they may think you’re too naive to know that. So you can have a little fun—stage conversations to mislead whoever’s listening until they don’t know true from false.” Martel smiled thinly, his eyes on the horizon. “I know it sounds like something from a book for boys. But it’s as serious a thing as you’ll ever face, carried out by serious people. So don’t say anything indictable.”

More than anything Martel had said, the last remark shook David badly. “I feel like I just stepped through the looking glass.”

“Never doubt it. Especially given your belief that the leak in Ben-Aron’s
security came from the inside. That’s yet another reason you’re causing such excitement: our government believes it, too. Our people want to know what Hana Arif knows, and you want to know what they know.”

“Hana swears that she knows nothing.”

Martel turned to him, his expression neutral. “We’ll get to that toward the end. Your first problem is penetrating what we—and the Israelis—are doing to find out.

“On the American side, the CIA is running traces on the two assassins, Arif, her husband, and anyone else who pops up along the way. They’re tapping all their assets, and any foreign intelligence agency they can pump for information. But the FBI and Secret Service are coming up with very little to suggest that the Secret Service or SFPD was the source of any leak.”