Exile: a novel (80 page)

Their destination, it transpired, was the middle of San Francisco Bay. As the powerboat knifed the chill waters, circling Alcatraz, the Israeli tossed David a slicker to insulate him from the cold. Hertz’s chauffeur, now the boat’s captain, could not hear them above the thrum of the motor and the churning waves splitting their wake.

Nodding toward the abandoned prison, Hertz said, “Sorry for the chilly setting. But here we are alone, and I rather like the symbolism.

“You’ve been spinning a story, Mr. Wolfe, in and out of court, trying to spare your client a fate similar to that of the former inmates of this unhappy place. Perhaps you would care for me to join my imagination to yours. The story might make more sense.”

“That depends on how it ends.”

With a peremptory gesture, Hertz waved David to a padded seat at the stern of the boat. “I can promise nothing. But we will see.”

Shrugging, David sat beside him. “Let’s start with the assassination,” Hertz said. “Among its obvious effects was to discredit Faras and Al Aqsa, ruin the last feeble hope of peace, and cement Hamas’s hold on power. It is certainly reasonable to suppose that a man like Saeb Khalid, and Hamas itself, might desire such a result.”

A salty spray dampened David’s face. “Hamas,” he amended. “And others.”

“Stay with Hamas, for now. Hamas has a presence at Birzeit. It is also reasonable to posit, as you have, that Iyad Hassan was not Al Aqsa but Hamas, and that he misled Jefar about his true affiliation. Just as it is possible to imagine that Khalid, not Hana Arif, approached Hassan. I simply do not know, whatever you may wish to believe, and, frankly, neither do you.” Hertz placed his hand on David’s wrist. “What we both know, and Khalid knew, is that Munira Khalid is your daughter. That seems to have influenced—if not warped—events and given you another interest to protect.”

“Which may make me a fool,” David answered, “but a very determined one.”

“Then for the sake of your newfound family, I will help make you a little less of a fool.” Pausing, Hertz spoke with a steely edge. “You may have entertained a fantasy that the Mossad, or some other agency of Israel, had a hand in dispatching Lev and Markis or even, God help us, Amos Ben-Aron. You and Martel may even wonder if we did in Saeb Khalid. But it was
you,
not us, who had a hand in killing them all. You found them, and murder followed.

“The only acquaintance of yours dispatched by
us
was Muhammad Nasir, and only because he was so richly deserving—if not because of Ben-Aron, then for many other deaths. Regarding Nasir, you may console yourself that you extended his life, as opposed to shortening it. Our people in Jenin saw you slip into your meeting with him. If not for your presence, they’d have blown Nasir to little pieces.”

Meeting Hertz’s eyes, David felt the goose bumps on his skin. “I never thought the Mossad killed Ben-Aron,” David said. “But it’s clear to me that
Israelis
—including Markis and Lev—helped kill him. Are you telling me
those
men weren’t killed by other Jews?”

“So now we are suicide bombers?” Hertz said with disdain. “That is not our way. But there are some who believe that the anonymous scrap of flesh who killed Hillel Markis took his orders from Hamas, or perhaps Islamic Jihad—”

“Cut the elliptical bullshit,” David snapped. “You knew from the beginning that Lev and Markis most likely were complicit. You chose to sit on it, and let Hana twist in the wind. These men died because you encouraged the United States government to proceed with the prosecution, hoping that Hana was guilty and would try to escape the death penalty by giving you the Arab side of the plot. But she’s innocent, so all you got out of it was two dead Jews, and a Jewish lawyer to blame it on.”

Hertz’s elfin face did not change expression. “So who recruited Lev and Markis? Hamas?”

“I haven’t worked that out yet.”

“Then you and I are free to improvise. Suppose, as you do, that Lev and Markis despised the Palestinians, loathed Ben-Aron as a traitor, and wanted to save the dream of Greater Israel. The extreme Israeli right, like Hamas, had many reasons to wish our prime minister dead. But each side also despises the other.” Turning from David, Hertz spoke softly, his profile grim. “So whoever planned this would have had to use a cutout. Someone who appears to be an Israeli Jew, at least with his pants on—or, perhaps, off. And there are Jews living in Iran.”

The theory startled David. “Is that what happened?”

The boat lurched abruptly, causing David to shift his weight. “You and I are writing a story,” Hertz answered. “All we need is for our story to be plausible. What makes
this
aspect plausible is that Iranian intelligence, with the help of our indigenous Arabs, operates within Israel.”

“And through Hamas,” David countered. “With the help Saeb Khalid, who had become an agent of Iran, Hamas could provide a bomber to kill Markis, and a sniper to kill Lev. That eliminates the two Israelis who might link Ben-Aron’s assassination to your not-so-fictitious, quasi-Jewish agent of Iran.”

“Yes,” Hertz responded coldly. “We were hoping to trace that link, slowly but surely. I think we could have done so. But you helped make the plotters—the Iranians and Hamas, in our story—nervous about Lev and
Markis. We are not yet certain who put you onto the two Israelis. But if those who did believed they were helping whatever political cause they serve, their plan went badly awry.” Scorn seeped into Hertz’s voice. “They, and you, might have imagined that there was an official cover-up in progress. Let me assure you that it is difficult to conceal anything in Israel, though there are forces—the extreme right and politicians allied with settlers—who might have wished to do so. As it is,
you
precipitated the only cover-up by helping get two people killed.”

Making no effort to wipe the sea spray off his face, David simply stared at Hertz. “I’m willing to share the credit with you, given that you could have helped Hana and chose not to.”

“She was never our concern,” Hertz answered coolly. “We couldn’t trust her, and her agenda had become
your
agenda. So we didn’t trust you, either.” After a brief pause, Hertz spoke in a lower voice. “This much I can tell you. The leak in Ben-Aron’s security was ours, not the Americans’. Someone on our side told Hassan’s handler—perhaps Saeb Khalid, perhaps his wife—about the change of route.”

“‘Perhaps Saeb Khalid, perhaps his wife,’” David echoed. “Come off it. You know about Munira borrowing her father’s phone. If you had a scrap of evidence that Hana was connected to Iranian intelligence, Sharpe would have used it.”

“We didn’t believe she was connected to Iranian intelligence,” Hertz replied calmly, “but to her husband. What’s to say, for example, that Khalid didn’t blackmail Arif into taking a call from Markis on the day of the assassination—using
his
cell phone—and then calling Hassan while Khalid watched CNN with Munira. Maybe Arif handled
all
the calls to Hassan—
that
would make sense of Hassan’s statements to Jefar. Even your theory of defense—that Khalid concocted evidence against Arif—doesn’t rule out Arif passing information from Markis to Hassan while claiming to wander Union Square in a daze. You can’t be sure, and neither can we.”

The accuracy of this threw David off balance, subverting his sense that, at least with respect to Hana, he had come to know the truth. Hertz watched him closely. “Perhaps, Mr. Wolfe, you now better understand our reluctance to take you into our confidence. It is quite possible that Munira, while correctly implicating Khalid, was indeed with him at the very time that her mother was calling Hassan.”

David chose to say nothing. “But let us continue,” Hertz said smoothly, “to one of your more legitimate questions: who had the capacity to plan and carry out this assassination in the United States? Not Al Aqsa, by itself;
even Hamas, which has its loyalists among the Palestinian student population in the United States, could not put all this together. The Mossad
could,
but didn’t. That leaves the Iranians.”

David studied their wake, two stripes of white roiling the aqua waters. “And their reasons?”

Hertz shrugged. “That’s a matter of sophisticated speculation. But you guessed at
some
of the reasons. To begin, the Iranian government is run by fanatical clerics and true believers. One of their goals is a nuclear Iran. An arsenal of nuclear weapons would, in effect, immunize Iran from attack, allowing them to continue to fund and assist Hamas, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and whoever else they want, expanding their reach in the Middle East and in the world. All while advancing the one goal that unites every one of these groups: the eradication of Israel.

“The Iranians are sophisticated enough to have recruited Lev and Markis without either man knowing that he was working for Iran; to involve Hassan through Saeb Khalid; and to set up the infrastructure in the U.S. needed to equip and support Hassan and Jefar. By killing Ben-Aron, they could kill his peace plan, discredit Faras and Al Aqsa, ensure Israeli reprisals on the West Bank, divert the attention of both Israel and the United States away from Iran itself, and be certain that the next Israeli government would be as adamantly opposed to peace negotiations as is Hamas.

“On the surface, Iran’s ultimate reward would be to keep Israelis and Palestinians at each other’s throats, thereby extending and inflaming the chief cause of hatred between Israel and the United States on one side and radical Islam on the other.” Hertz looked at David intently. “That’s
your
theory, and that might be enough for them—after all, it mirrors their purpose in using Hezbollah to provoke us to act in Lebanon. But suppose Iran also believed that Ben-Aron intended to make peace with Marwan Faras, and then attack Iran’s nuclear facilities—assuming this were possible— before their nuclear weapons program came to fruition.”

Once more, David was surprised. “Is
that
what Ben-Aron intended?”

“There are those who think so. Among them, the Iranians.”

“Still,” David said, “assassinating Ben-Aron is a risky thing for Iran to do—far riskier than encouraging Hezbollah to fire rockets from Lebanon into Israel. For Iran to be exposed as having murdered the prime minister of Israel could lead to a concerted military operation by Israel, the U.S., and maybe others, intended to bring down the Iranian regime.”

“True. So it is also possible that rogue elements within the Iranian secret intelligence service—the most fanatic—did this without the approval of the mullahs or this miserable Holocaust denier who is their figurehead
president. It is even possible that they put this together without involving Hamas itself, as opposed to a couple of its sympathizers.” Turning, Hertz gazed across the gleaming water at Alcatraz. “As for the locus of the risk— Khalid and/or Arif—they were reasonable choices. Neither was on your Secret Service watch list, or ours. They were just two more opponents of Israel, Khalid seemingly more adamant than his wife—”

“But if Khalid was caught,” David cut in, “the Iranians were vulnerable. That’s another reason why framing Hana made sense: she knew nothing about her husband, nothing about Iran. She was an absolute dead end, and Saeb—as Iran’s operative—had more than sufficient reason to offer her up as the subject of a frame. If she were guilty, she could lead you to Khalid, who could lead you to Iran. But if she’s innocent—”

“Yes,” Hertz said with the ghost of a smile. “That is why, unlike Sharpe, I do not consider your assertion of a frame to be quite so silly. And the Iranians could not reasonably anticipate that you—the key to Khalid’s hatred of his wife—would choose to represent her. Or that Munira would choose to air her complaints about cell phones to you.

“If you’re right, perhaps the Iranians planned this frame from the beginning. Or perhaps Khalid tinkered with the plot given him by the Iranians in order to implicate his wife, hoping the United States would execute Arif on his behalf—a dangerous thing to do, knowing the Iranians, as Khalid surely would have understood. But perhaps he didn’t much care to live himself.” Sitting back, Hertz crossed his arms. “In any case, regardless of whether Arif is innocent or guilty, you managed to put Khalid in the crosshairs, just as you did with Lev and Markis. So now he’s dead, and there is much we may never know—including the role played by the mother of your child.”

The depressing truth of this enveloped David. For a while, he watched the seagulls gliding in their wake. At length, he said, “So you think Khalid was murdered?”

Hertz put on a pair of sunglasses. “Quite possibly,” he said in his most impassive manner. “I can’t tell you who, if anyone, was with Khalid when he expired. But there’s a fair chance that when the FBI looks at the security tapes in his apartment, they’ll see two men getting in an elevator around the time Khalid died, neither of whom are residents. But even if those men are found, they will know nothing of use, except that they were sent to murder Khalid.”

Once more, David found himself wondering which elements of Hertz’s narrative were supposition and which far more than that. “However it happened,” Hertz concluded, “Khalid’s death is the final step in the perfect roll-up, an operation that leaves no trace. If it was murder, it is merely a minor
adjustment in an otherwise flawless plan. Especially if Arif is as innocent as she claims.”

“And yet,” David said with real anger, “you remain perfectly willing to watch our government put Hana in prison for life, or even execute her.”

Hertz shrugged. “We did not believe her innocent. We do not know it now.”

It was his turn, David knew, to make a move in the chess game Hertz had laid out for them. He folded his arms against the cold. “Then let’s talk about what matters to you. Once Munira ties Khalid to the same cell phone used to call Hassan, the breach of Israeli security is on the table in a very public way. Perhaps you don’t care about the political upheaval that may provoke, or the schism within Israel when I link Ben-Aron’s murder to the Israeli right. But is your government willing to have the vulnerability within its most elite security detail exposed for all to see?”