Exile: a novel (25 page)

“That’s right.”

“So exactly how does he know
who
was handling Iyad Hassan?”

“Hassan told him—several times. And Jefar knows Arif on sight.” Sharpe hesitated and then added, “You know the hearsay rules as well as I do, David. Jefar’s testimony against her is admissible at trial.”

“Maybe, maybe not. But you didn’t indict her on the secondhand word of a failed suicide bomber. What’s your corroboration?”

“We found a piece of paper with her cell phone number on it,” Sharpe answered, “with Hassan’s fingerprints
and
hers. Hassan’s cell phone showed a call to that same number, a little after midnight on the day of the assassination.”

David felt a stab of dismay. “So you recovered Hassan’s phone?”

“Yes. From a garbage can along Market Street.”

“Let me get this right. You have one call to Hana’s phone from Iyad Hassan. Is that his
only
call to her number?”

“Yes.”

“I assume Hassan called other cell phone numbers, and received calls from other numbers. Including on the day they blew up Ben-Aron.”

David heard the silence of thought, Sharpe weighing her obligations. “That goes beyond the face of the indictment, David. Your fortunate successor will no doubt file a discovery motion, and we’ll give him or her whatever we’re obliged to. By then, I would think, you’ll have resumed your pursuit of elected office.”

She had told him all she was required to. David thanked her and hung up, driving faster now, the commentary on NPR receding to the margins of his consciousness.

The federal detention center was institutional and modern, a featureless two-story complex on an old army base. For David it was like checking into a hospital: clean, sterile, and entirely unwelcoming. The one new feature was the media gauntlet outside, a swarming cadre of reporters, photographers, and technicians with minicams. Driving past them, David had the uncomfortable sensation of not wanting, for once, to be recognized.

David parked, presented his credentials at a guard station, and passed through a metal detector. Within minutes a U.S. marshal had ushered him through the large room with tables where families could visit the incarcerated. Beyond that were several doors with wire-mesh windows, so that those meeting in the rooms behind them could be observed but not overheard. Through one of the windows, he saw Hana at a Formica table, hands folded in front of her, head bowed as though in prayer.

She wore the red jumpsuit reserved for those accused of the worst crimes and subject to the highest security; the jumpsuit was too large, and she seemed lost within its shapelessness. Thinking of Hana as he had first seen her—proudly arguing the Palestinian cause, poised on the cusp of her people’s future, and her own—David found the sight both painful and difficult to believe.

The marshal opened the door, letting David inside.

Hana stood at once, hope flickering in her eyes. She started to reach for him, then stopped—at most, David was her lawyer, she seemed to remember, and she had forfeited the right of intimacy long ago.

He stood gazing at her, the table between them. “Are you okay?”

She summoned a wan smile. “Such a foolish question. But one cannot rehearse for moments like this, where there is nothing good to say. You and I learned that thirteen years ago.”

David sat across from her. He could not shake off the surreal image of
the two of them locked in a room with tile floors and cinder-block walls, monitored by an armed guard. “When can I see Munira?” Hana asked.

This concern, at least, was familiar. “Every day,” he assured her. “There are family visiting hours when you can meet her and Saeb in the room outside. A guard will watch, and you’re not allowed to touch. It’s also best to talk softly—the guards tend to eavesdrop. But at least you’ll get to be with her.”

Hana touched her eyes. “Assuming I want her to see me like this. But I guess I have no choice. That’s the worst of this, I’m already finding—to be her mother and yet not be, with no way to comfort her.”

Her pain was so palpable that David could not believe that she would ever risk imprisonment. But he knew to his sorrow that Hana, whatever she might feel for someone, could be subject to passions that superseded love.

“Where are they holding you?” he asked.

“In a cell—one bunk, a small desk, not much light. Worse than a college dorm room. But they say the exercise yard’s quite airy.” She shook her head, dismissing this wan attempt at levity. “What will happen to me now?”

David glanced around the room, scrubbed bare of personality. “First I have to explain something. Whatever I say here, whatever you say, remember that someone may be listening. I know there’s an attorney-client privilege. But under the new antiterrorism provisions, the government can put together a team of people to monitor our conversations—anyone not connected to the prosecution. The rationale is that they’re looking for conversations in furtherance of an act of terror.

“As of now, Hana, you’re a suspected terrorist. Your coconspirators are unknown, the pressure to identify them unprecedented. I don’t trust the government to be overly nice about your rights.”

Hana’s eyes clouded. She gazed about the room, as though seeing anew the prison that might become her life. “You can call your lawyer, collect,” David went on. “But phone calls are subject to eavesdropping, as well. As for calls to Munira, Saeb, or anyone else, husband them with care. You get three hundred minutes a month, fifteen minutes at a time—if you use the whole fifteen minutes, that’s four to five calls a week. And the government can listen to those, for sure. As for calling your parents, I’m afraid you won’t be able to.” David spoke more softly. “I’m sorry to be so blunt. But for your own protection, and even sanity, you need to know the rules.”

“Can’t you get me out of here before the trial? I must be with Munira.”

“Your lawyer can try to get you bail, but he won’t succeed.” David kept his tone dispassionate. “This is a potential death penalty case. And there’s no bail when the victim’s Amos Ben-Aron. The only quick way out is extradition to Israel.”

“Will they do that?” Hana asked in alarm.

“They might—that’s out of your control, and it’s a Catch-22.” David paused, pained at watching her absorb the depth of her dilemma. “This is a lot, I know. How much of it do you want to learn right now?”

Hana squared her shoulders. “All of it.”

“Okay,” David said slowly. “Israel doesn’t have a death penalty, except for ‘crimes against the Jewish people’—in essence, Holocaust-related mass murder. On the other hand, a defendant may have more rights here. As an accused Palestinian terrorist, I’d choose to be tried in America. Even after 9/11.”

Hana crossed her arms as though hugging herself against the cold. “Go ahead.”

“The worst case,” David went on, “would be if you’re tried in America for the murder of the Secret Service agent, tried in Israel for the murders of Ben-Aron and Glick, then sent back to America for execution.” Forcing himself to play out his role as a lawyer, David looked into Hana’s face. “I’m not saying you’re guilty, but Sharpe is convinced you are. The point I’m making is this: if you know something more than you’ve told me, anything at all, you need to think about giving it up.”

Hana closed her eyes. “Have you said it all now?”

“Yes.”

“So now it’s my turn. I have nothing to ‘give up.’ That’s the problem with being innocent. I don’t care what they say, and I don’t care who’s listening.” Her eyes snapped open, and she spoke clearly, to the walls. “So hear me, whoever’s out there. What kind of terrorist mastermind passes out her cell phone number? What master of subterfuge takes midnight calls from a suicide bomber using her own cell phone, then saves it for the FBI?

“I have no connection with Al Aqsa. I don’t know those men.” She paused, then spoke more softly. “I know you’re doing your job, David—I asked you to. So let me tell you who I’ve become in the years since you believed I was worthy of becoming your wife. I’m a mother. A mother who loves Munira far too much to let Saeb raise her without me. To stay with Munira, I might murder Amos Ben-Aron. But I would never risk abandoning my daughter.”

They stared at each other across the table, as intensely as they had as lovers. Quietly, David said, “Then I’ll find you a good lawyer.”

“Not you?”

The question carried hurt and challenge and also, David sensed, desperation. He felt his need to answer overcome his fear of being overheard by eavesdroppers. “Not me,” he responded, “for so many good reasons that it’s hard to pick the best one. But here are a few. I’m not objective. I used to
be your lover. I knew Ben-Aron, and saw him die. I heard you advocate violence more than once. The U.S. attorney despises me. So, by the way, does your husband—whose help your lawyer will need.

“But here’s the best one, as far as I’m concerned. In the last year, I’ve sat across a table from ten other people almost as scared as you. But looking into their eyes, let alone defending them, didn’t tie me up in knots. That’s the kind of lawyer you need—”

“One that doesn’t give a damn?”

“No,” David answered. “One that doesn’t need you to be innocent. I lost that the first night we made love.”

Hana did not look away. “Was it the first night, David?” she asked, her voice as soft as his. “Or the last?”

David kept himself from answering. The deepest reason, he knew, lay not in their first night or their last but in the life he had built since then, after wanting nothing more than a life with Hana Arif.

“I’ll find you a good lawyer,” he repeated.

David imagined his legal mentor in the criminal defense bar—silver-haired, urbane, and seemingly imperturbable—addressing him with the quizzical expression that, in Sacher, passed for astonishment. “Not hers,” David answered.

“Too bad. Because I can’t see legitimate Arab-American groups raising money to defend her. No one will, at least no one with whom I’d want to be associated. But that’s not the worst problem, David—not to me, at least.” Sacher paused, and then chose total candor. “If Arif were a drug dealer, no problem. Instead she apparently made Amos Ben-Aron the first victim of a suicide bombing in America, less than an hour after he gave a speech that I, as a Jew who cares for Israel, had waited for a decade to hear. There’s no way I could defend her with the commitment she’s going to need.

“This case will be huge and difficult, the ultimate high-profile defense of an alleged terrorist. But that’s why it’s such a problem for you.” Abruptly, Sacher’s tone became avuncular. “I appreciate that you knew these people in law school and that, as lawyers, we’re all supposed to believe she should have the best defense. But many people in this community—including
our
community—won’t care about that. And lots of
those
people are the ones you need to finance your entry into politics.

“Frankly, I don’t know
who’ll
defend her. As long as
someone
does, I
don’t much care. Neither should you. Dump it on the federal public defender if you have to, David, but don’t derail your life.”

David heard a click on his cell phone, signaling an incoming call. “I’ve got to go,” he told Sacher. “Please, think about a lawyer. The public defender’s just not up to this.”

Hitting another button, David said, “Hello?”

“Are you insane?” Burt Newman’s speech was even more rapid than normal. “Just tell me you’ve got an evil twin who’s doing this, or maybe that you forgot to take the lithium that keeps your two personalities together. Anything.”

Filled with apprehension, David glided into a lane of cars stopped at one of the toll booths at the entrance to the bridge. “What’s happened?”

“You tell me. Thirty minutes ago I was the political consultant to the Jewish JFK. Then I turn on the news, wanting to hear about this terrorist they’ve busted, and some beat reporter tells me you’re representing her. So I call your place, get Carole—damn near in tears—and find out it’s true.”

David lowered his window, passing three dollars to the attendant. “It’s Sharpe,” he said. “She must have leaked it to the media.”

“Surprise. So Sharpe screwed you—I don’t give a fuck. Welcome to the big leagues, pal.” As David accelerated, starting across the bridge, Newman continued unabated. “Until tonight, everyone was on your side. The state’s senior United States senator. The congresswoman whose seat you want, ready to announce that the term she’s about to win will be her last. Harold and Carole, with her golden Rolodex. The city’s high-end donors, lined up to help you preempt a primary fight. In two years plus, you were waltzing into Congress with unlimited potential.”

“I’m getting out of this, Burt—”

“The first Jewish-American president,” Burt continued talking through him. “The one who could make us all proud. It wasn’t unthinkable, David. Not with the country’s largest state behind you, and all the money you’d need to get off the ground. At least
I
dared to think it. What’s unthinkable is what you’re doing now.”

David reached the first span of the bridge, the city looming larger in his windshield. “What do you suggest I do?”

“It’s good that you still care. I was hoping you would, so I’ve already drafted a statement. Want to hear it?”

“Sure.”

“Here goes: ‘Like every decent American, I grieve the loss of Amos Ben-Aron, a man I knew and deeply admired. And, like every American, I expect
our government to conduct a full and impartial inquiry into the terrible circumstances of his murder.’ That’s the preamble, David. Still with me?”

“Yeah.”

“Here’s your escape hatch: ‘Hana Arif is an acquaintance from law school, as is her husband, Saeb Khalid. Before any charges were brought, and before I became aware of the circumstances alleged in the indictment, Ms. Arif and her husband asked me for advice. In light of those charges, I will help Ms. Arif obtain a lawyer to give her the defense that our system accords everyone, regardless of the crime with which they are charged. As soon as I have done so, my obligation to the legal system will be over, and my brief involvement in this matter at an end.’ ” Grimly, Newman added, “That’s the very best I can do.”