Exile: a novel (33 page)

“If the evidence is phony,” Angel added, “who planted it?”

“Have you talked to Munira?” Marsha asked David.

Pondering the question, David felt the last swallow of coffee jangling his nerves. “Not since the arrest. And it’s tricky. Saeb is even more protective than Hana, and Munira’s torn between them. Plus, she’s twelve years old. How do I ask if her father made a suspicious-sounding phone call while they were watching CNN?”

“Suppose you liked her answer,” Marsha said. “Arif ’s the client, not her daughter.”

“It’s not that simple,” David rejoined. “I can’t just put a twelve-year-old on the witness stand with half the world watching, hoping she’ll incriminate her own father. Do I explain that I want to nail Saeb
before
she’s sworn in? Or just exploit an already traumatized adolescent and hope it all works out?

“Either way, the jury would despise me. And if she takes down one parent, or both, how will she live with it?” David stopped himself, continuing in a softer tone. “If Munira blurts out something that convicts Hana instead of Saeb, I’d descend from callous to stupid.”

Marsha put down her coffee. “I don’t mind callous,” she said coolly. “Especially when the
alternative
is being stupid.”

He needed her expertise, David knew, and his internal conflicts were affecting his judgment. “As you say,” David agreed, “Hana’s the client. But I can’t imagine her wanting me to put Munira on the stand.”

“What do we need to go after Jefar?” Angel asked David. “If Hana’s innocent, he’s a liar.”

“Unless he’s just repeating what Hassan told him. As for what we know about either of them, it’s not much. In the end, I’ll probably have to go to the West Bank and try to track down more information.” Against his better judgment, David took another sip of coffee, hoping for a lift. “Part of
our
case has to be that Sharpe’s ignoring what matters most: who planned the assassination, and who supplied the equipment to carry it out? In particular, who leaked the change of route?”

“All good questions,” Marsha responded. “But we can’t just ask the government for everything they’ve got. All we’re entitled to is information that might exculpate Arif, or at least might be ‘material to the defense.’ If what we want is classified, they can also withhold the ‘sources and methods’ they
used to get it, even if they’re helpful to us—otherwise, the argument goes, defense lawyers like us would dry up the government’s sources, maybe even get American agents killed. As for the Israelis, anything they give us is voluntary. Of course, they won’t volunteer a thing.”

“In other words,” Angel said, “we’re fucked.”

David glanced at Marsha. “Some of us, Angel, might consider that an opportunity.”

Marsha laughed softly. “You’re planning to blackmail the United States attorney, aren’t you? Or, more accurately, ‘graymail’ her.”

David shrugged away the phrase. “Hana’s entitled to a fair trial. At least in theory, that means we should get any information that could help establish her defense. If the United States or Israel refuses—for whatever reason—then they’re ensuring that Hana’s trial won’t be fair. That’s our bottom line: fair trial or no trial.”

Angel looked from David to Marsha. “Won’t Sharpe just give us whatever she has? Otherwise, it’s prosecutorial misconduct.”

“That’s certainly why she’ll want to,” Marsha answered. “But Sharpe’s interests may differ from those of the intelligence agencies of either country, whose
own
interests may be at odds with each other’s. The debate over ‘who lost Ben-Aron’ is central to Israel’s leaders, and to ours. At least for now, Israel doesn’t want to reveal that Ben-Aron’s security detail may have included a traitor. So the Americans may be monitoring—to put it bluntly, spying on—Israel’s internal investigation.” Pausing, Marsha tossed the last scrap of her croissant to the duck that had been circling her. “The United States wants to redeem itself in the eyes of the Israelis, not to mention the world, by convicting Hana Arif—and, through Arif, by cracking open the conspiracy. But the president and our intelligence agencies have another interest, which is very different from Israel’s. So if David can show that an Israeli mole set up Ben-Aron, the White House, in contrast to Sharpe, might consider that a favor. The Israelis won’t.”

Watching Angel try to absorb this, David sympathized: in a week he had morphed from a prospective congressman to the lawyer for an alleged terrorist, pitting his own government against an ally that had lost its leader in the bombing David had witnessed. He turned again to Marsha and said, “Tell Angel about the
Achille Lauro
.”

Marsha smiled faintly, a cynical crinkling of her eyes. “The
Achille Lauro,
” she began, “was a luxury liner boat-jacked by a terrorist network run by a man named Abu Abbas. The CIA was pretty sure Abbas was hiding out in Egypt—though Mubarak, Egypt’s president, assured them that
he was moving heaven and earth to find him. The CIA had doubts. So the CIA and the Israelis redirected their intercept capacity and overheard our friend Mubarak’s aides arranging Abbas’s departure. Instead of expressing our government’s disappointment, we simply forced Abbas’s plane to land in Sicily.” Marsha took a final sip of coffee and poured the remnants on the grass. “Now our intelligence people may be doing the same thing to the Israelis, hoping to learn whether someone in Ben-Aron’s security detail helped kill him.

“If our intelligence agencies succeed, David may be entitled to know. Then it’s the Americans who have a problem—they may not want the Israelis to know that they have this information, or how they got it. How
that
gets resolved is well beyond Sharpe’s pay grade.”

Angel looked bemused. “How would it all play out?” he asked Marsha.

“Hard to say. In 1988, Congress passed a law requiring the CIA to name the former Nazis it had recruited. But for a good while the CIA interpreted that law to exclude disclosure of the fact that its payroll included five associates of Adolf Eichmann, who planned Hitler’s extermination of six million Jews. I suppose they thought that a bit sensitive for public consumption. There may be several reasons why our intelligence agencies won’t just drop their files in David’s lap.”

“But in the media,” Angel argued, “Hana Arif is the new face of terrorism. If I were Sharpe, I’d claim that the government knows nothing that discredits its case. Then I’d accuse
us
of jeopardizing national security to free a terrorist assassin, and David of being her sleazebag leftwing lawyer. She’ll prejudice the judge, turn the media against us, and poison the jury pool.”

Angel, David saw, had begun to perceive the hidden costs of defending Hana Arif. But what made his prediction so depressing was its prescience. “That’s why I want that hearing closed. But just as an exercise, try assuming Hana’s innocence.”

“I am,” Angel said defensively.

“Good,” David responded. “Then she’s been framed. She’s the victim of a conspiracy about which the Israeli and American governments may have information we can’t get. And both governments have a bewildering variety of interests that trump any deep concern that Hana may be executed precisely because she
doesn’t
know who plotted the assassination.” David looked intently at Angel. “We’re Hana’s lawyers. So we may have no choice but to make our government—and the Israelis—choose: give Hana what she needs, at whatever risk, or risk Judge Taylor throwing out the case.”

“How could she?” Angel said. “The victim is the Israeli prime minister.”

David felt fatigue fraying his equanimity. “It’s a long shot, I agree.” He paused, and when he spoke again to Angel he was also speaking to himself. “And it’s certainly not a crowd-pleaser to make Sharpe fight for Hana’s rights, or put at risk the pleasure of facilitating her execution. But if we lose, it’s Hana who will do the dying. We only have to live with the result.”

16     
B
y the time David reached his office, his secretary, Anna Chu, was referring media calls to the public relations firm he had hired for the duration of the case. Anna, a sharp, middle-aged woman who knew David well, asked what to do when the inevitable hate mail started to arrive. On the theory that he might learn something helpful in selecting a jury, David decided to read it. Then he closed the door to his office and listened to the voice-mail messages that had come in overnight.

There were several more from people he knew, none supportive. The doctor in his malpractice case had found another lawyer; Stan Sharfman, who had sat next to David at Carole’s dinner for Amos Ben-Aron, had withdrawn his financial and political support; Senator Shapiro simply left her private cell phone number, though in a tone so chill that David dreaded calling her. The absence of any message from Harold Shorr reminded David of his obligation to place another call he had no heart for.

After deleting the last message, David leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes.

This was his life now. He had to wall off his emotions and husband his personal resources, or he would be no good to Hana or himself. That meant relying on the habits of a lifetime: plenty of exercise and sleep, coping with chaos by listing his priorities, then addressing them with a rigor that, at least, conferred the illusion of control. The first thing, he concluded, was to confront the mental undertow that would erode his concentration until he called Betsy and, especially, Harold.

The talk with Betsy Shapiro was mercifully brief.

“You must know why I called,” Betsy said. “I can’t support you for
Congress now. Neither can the mayor.” Her voice was polite but cool, indifferent to his reasons. “I’m sorry, David, but you don’t come back from defending the murderer of Amos Ben-Aron. Any effort to justify yourself would only be demeaning.”

Harold made things easier—he refused to take David’s call, leaving him to wonder whether this refusal stemmed from anger or from hurt, and whether the hurt was more for Carole or himself. But no answer could lessen David’s guilt.

The mail, when it came, offered him another incentive for self-preservation.

After directing Angel to research their argument against Hana’s extradition, David read the letters, some anonymous and some not, that Anna had left on his desk. The only buffer was their sameness:

Dear Lying Jew (remember that I’m Jewish):

Why are you trying to get a Jew-killer off? May you and this Arab murderer fuck each other and die of AIDS...

Another said, more painfully:
Your hands are dripping with the blood of a man who sought peace for the Jewish people, and all those who will die because of his murder. I hope to see you suffer a slow and terrible death from cancer...

And another:
Anyone who sides with a murderous Arab slut who killed a defender of Israel is a self-hating Jew, as bad as Hitler...

Sometimes the theme was David’s greed:
As a Holocaust survivor, I am ashamed that you are a Jew who sells out other Jews for money. You fulfill the stereotype of a greedy Jew, and I therefore declare you not Jewish...

Or:
You’re a shyster who would send his mother to the gas chambers for a fee . . .

Or:
I am a Holocaust survivor, and you make me think of the Jewish collaborators in the ghetto of my native city of Lodz. Except you do this not to live, but for Arab dollars...

David did not read the last few letters. “Throw these out,” he told Anna, “and any like them. And don’t let Angel see them. We’ve got too much else to think about.”

David drove to the federal detention center.

The conversation with Hana began with what would become their pattern: an emotional reticence punctuated by ambiguous silences, which both could blame on the fear of eavesdropping. To David, it became like watching Hana through glass; she seemed untouchable and poignant, except when he wondered if she was a liar and a murderer.

Today, the subject was extradition. “I don’t know what the Israelis are going to do,” David told her. “But unless you want to be tried in Israel, we need a strategy to head that off. You know the considerations. We may have better access to government files in the United States. But Israel has no death penalty.”

Hana folded her hands in front of her. “What an irony
that
would be,” she said. “Hoping for the Zionists to save my life by imprisoning me in the land they stole from us, until at last I die of natural causes. The final humiliation, so interminable.”

David studied her. “Worse than death?”

“More certain.” Hana looked up at him. “I do not believe for a moment that the Israelis will give me a fair trial.”

Though her fears were understandable, there was too much history, David knew, for her to separate distrust from reason. “I’m not sure you’ll get a fair trial here,” he answered.

“Nor am I. But at least there is you, David. Perhaps the only Jew who does not hate me.”

David mustered a smile. “That’s not my only qualification, I hope.”

“No,” she answered softly. “There are many other things. Such as courage. Even locked away, I know what this has cost you.”

David chose not to answer. Discussing his personal misery with Hana, who had caused it, would cross the boundaries he had drawn for himself. As though seeing this, Hana looked away.

“About extradition,” he told her after a time, “it’s your decision. But I could never counsel you to risk your own execution. Not just for your sake, but Munira’s.”

Turning, Hana held his gaze. “This is all about Munira, David. Dead or in prison, I could not be her mother. A trial in America, I think, is my only chance to influence who my daughter becomes. Or even hold her in my arms.”

Her feelings about Saeb as Munira’s father, David sensed, were implicit in her answer. “All right,” David said at last, “I’ll do what I can for both of you.”

“About extradition,” Sharpe told him a week later, “I still don’t know what the Israelis want. Neither do they, I think. For myself, I want to keep your client here.”