The Gun Runner's Daughter

by Neil Gordon

  She’d climbed up the steps to the second floor, her father’s bedroom and his office; the third floor, her room and Pauly’s room; and then to the attic, where, she knew, was Bennie Friedman, and he was, with Dov Peleg, young Israeli men she had known for years, hunched around a reel-to-reel tape recorder and a video monitor, on which the living room played in black and white. None of this was strange: business as usual in her father’s house. Nor was she interested in what they were doing: during these taping sessions, she often sat chatting with Dov, on whom she’d had a schoolgirl crush for years.

  Tonight, however, was different. Dov, whispering, ushered her in with a smile: “How are you, love? Shh, big business tonight. Come see your dad tell the White House to go to hell.”

  On the monitor, filmed from an angle above, she saw her father, Michael Levi, and another man at quarter profile from their scalps. The other man was in uniform. Next to each sat a crystal rocks glass and a cigar. And her father was speaking.

  “Greg, you’re backing me into a corner. You know that.”

  The uniformed man looked slowly around the room before answering, and Allison glimpsed his face: outsized, handsome, confident. When he spoke, it was with a light Western drawl.

  “Ron, the president sees Iraq as our best bet in the region. You know that. Saddam’s no idiot. He’s not going to use American supplies against Israel.”

  “He’s used chemicals on the Kurds.”

  A shrug. “Kurds aren’t Jews. Halabja isn’t Tel Aviv.”

  Her father drew on his drink. When he spoke again, his tone was still pleasant, conversational, his syllables agreeably clipped with his faint tinge of a Brooklyn accent. “I don’t think you’d like this to be exposed, Greg. I don’t think you’d like the New York Times to publish that a senior naval officer assigned to the NSC staff is facilitating the sale of chemical-ready warheads to Iraq.”

  The other answered in the same conversational tone. “Ron, forgive me, no one’s going to listen to accusations from you.”

  Her father nodded now, as if Eastbrook had just confirmed something he’d long suspected. It was, Allison thought, like a tennis game, the three of them in the taping room turning their heads in unison to follow serve and volley. “If we can’t stop you, we’ll have to stop the suppliers.”

  And now the other laughed. “Why? There’s plenty to go around here. You know what’ll happen if Hussein gets out of hand? My president will bomb him into the Middle Ages. Then fortunes’ll be made resupplying him. Christ sake, Ron, you’re killing the golden goose.”

  But her father wasn’t amused.

  “You’re making a serious mistake, Greg. This isn’t about money.”

  “Oh, come off it. Don’t get all Zionist on me, okay?”

  With a nod, her father stood up.

  “Colonel Eastbrook, I’m speaking now as the direct representative of Prime Minister Shamir. And I am telling you that Mr. Shamir will not stand by while Jews are gassed by Iraqi chemicals. If the United States will not interdict the supply of Iraq, Israel will, and we will do it by any means necessary. Have I made myself clear?”

  “Yes, Mr. Rosenthal. You have.” As if tiredly, Eastbrook unfolded himself from his chair and turned to the door. Then he turned, and only now, for the first time, did his tone change. “You tell Shamir to do what he has to. But be damn sure that it stays away from me. You hear?”

  That was all she remembered, except that when the meeting ended there was soft applause in the little dark room around her, and then Dov pushed her to the door:

  “ Yalla , sleep now. They’ll be gone in ten minutes. Your father is a wizard.”

  Then she was in bed, in the dark of her room, as far below doors closed, and the cars drew off, and, after a long time, she heard Pauly pad to her bedroom, always at a run, and then a long time later her father’s quiet step mounting the carpeted stair.

  Perhaps this precise memory seems implausibly detailed. The only part of it, however, that she’d had to recall had been the parts that occurred to her alone. As for what had happened between her father and Colonel Eastbrook, that was transcribed word for word on the transcript before her, accompanied by more photographic memorializations, which, to Alley, were just another memory aid: a dozen precisely focused black-and-white photographs of Eastbrook in the Grace Court living room, and—in case her memory was still missing details—a videocassette that she could consult later.

  Briefly, a movement of regret went through her chest. This is what Nicky had been looking for. He was looking for a videotape that Dov Peleg had told him about in a café, weeks before Dov died.

  Dov had been disavowed, completely, during Iran-contra: she knew that because it had been in the Israeli papers.

  So, embittered, he had given an interview to a reporter.

  Telling him about a video he had made, years before, of a meeting between Ronald Rosenthal, Michael Levi, and Greg Eastbrook.

  Then Dov had been killed. Quickly, she leafed back through Dov’s interview with Nicky. And her eye caught on her name.

  “There was me, Bennie Friedman. Ron’s daughter, Esther, came in for a minute. She saw the whole thing.”

  And so Nicky Dymitryck had come to Martha’s Vineyard to find the only other witness of the meeting. Hoping to find a way to make her tell.

  Wonder was passing through her. How gratified Nicky must have been to discover her forgery and embezzlement. Now he had found a way to force her to help him. It was, in fact, the only chance he’d ever have to get the tape Dov had told him about, and he knew it. A coincidence? Not quite: he’d hoped for a crime of some sort when he’d had Stan Diamond send in his rental check. That was the only coincidence: that Diamond should have been a tenant.

  It was a good plan Nicky had had, to capitalize on that coincidence. So good that only his death, probably, could have stopped it.

  Allison’s breath was coming in sharp gasps now, her hands trembling. Without looking any further through these papers, she bundled them back into their plastic holder and put them aside. Then, with a big effort, she forced herself to leaf through the rest of the safe’s papers, trying to read the minimum possible, nearly wincing with disgust. She caught the words Iran, Promis, Honeywell, Casey, Kashani , and many other words and names familiar to her from the papers. But she did not read them and when, by the bottom of the pile, she had not encountered anything else relating to Iraq, she replaced all the papers, save those in the Iraq file she had put aside, in the safe with the gun and the currency, swung the door closed, and spun the lock.

  She should not, she knew, be surprised. She knew more than enough of her father’s business not to be surprised by the grim reality of the proofs before her. Yet this was different than the clueless half-truths of newspapers. Many of these documents she had just seen had been direct copies of classified intelligence reports, Israeli and American. Many of these documents would never again be seen outside of the highest security apparatuses in those governments. And seeing the black, blurred type of the photocopies had breached the wall of doubt she had so long held in place.

  Carrying the Iraqi file, she walked slowly back to the dining room, and fumbled the file into her backpack. Her movements, she found, were hurried, clumsy, and for a moment she felt a new kind of fear, as if she were being chased, a fear reminiscent of childhood. Perhaps, she thought suddenly, all fears were reminiscent of childhood, fairy-tale terrors. That thought made this fear easier to handle.

  But how brilliant Nicky was! In the dining room she stopped, suddenly appreciating the enormity of his intelligence. Someone like Eastbrook, she knew, was virtually impossible to pursue, for whatever his crimes may be, any government—Republican or Democratic—preferred ignoring those crimes to the national security risks of their revelation. What she had, now, in her backpack was probably the only thing in the world that could stop Eastbrook’s senatorial campaign, and there was not now, nor had there ever been, another way for Nicky to get it except from her.

&n
bsp; With that realization came another. A slower and much more shocking one.

  Crouching on the floor by her backpack, she slowly examined it.

  And slowly, step by step, she saw that what she had just found in her father’s safe could, used properly, not only stop Eastbrook. It could also assure her father’s conviction.

  Had Nicky known that, too?

  But that was not all. For now, more slowly, came the third realization, and it was the most shocking of all.

  Nothing ever means one thing, Allison knew that. Every meaning is always double, and only the slightest shift in perspective is required to go from a simple truth to its opposite.

  These documents, in one context, ruined Eastbrook and convicted her father.

  But in another context, they meant something else altogether, something so astounding that for minutes, squatting on the dining room floor, she did not even know where she was.

  Minutes during which she suddenly understood what else could be done with those documents. Minutes in which she suddenly understood, perfectly, as if it had been whispered into her ear, not now but every day since her father had been arrested, what else could be done with these documents.

  It was impossible. And yet, she knew, it was also perfect. Meeting Dee again, after ten years, and falling in love. As if they had never parted, but always been secretly, surreptitiously together. Nicky arriving, looking not for anything about her father, but for something—this thing—about Eastbrook’s role in the covert arming of Iraq. And then the embezzlement of her father’s property. If she had planned it, she could not have thought it out better. Briefly, she wondered if this is what they taught in the CIA: to take advantage of chance, to string chance events into an unexpected meaning, and so alter the course of politics. It was perfect.

  Or could have been. Slowly, still thinking, she rose. It could have been perfect, but only if Nicky had not died. As it was, Nicky’s death ruined everything.

  And even if he had not died, would she have the courage? The . . . the courage, yes, but also the total unscrupulousness required to use these documents in that other context.

  Did she? Grimly, looking at nothing, she asked herself. Once before she had done something terrible to save her father, something so unspeakable that even now she only approached its memory barely, not even acknowledging it to herself. But then, she had only sacrificed herself to hide an unspeakable truth from him. For what she was envisaging now, she would have to sacrifice not only herself, although that sacrifice would be enormous, but others too.

  In return, however, she would save the most important thing in the world.

  She shook her head, as if to free herself of the thought. Really, it didn’t matter. Nicky was dead, and without him, she could do nothing. And with that comforting realization, she slipped her arms into the backpack, picked up her helmet, and, turning off the lights, went quickly out the door.

  4.

  In the street again, in the thick October light, she unlocked her bicycle with clumsy movements, still trembling, mounted, and kicked into motion onto the street in front of a van, the outraged face of its driver, a Hasid, flashing out of his window. Allison didn’t notice. On the avenue she entered the line of traffic and accelerated, then banked tightly down Fifty-fourth Street, gathering speed, standing straight-legged on the pedals, dropping her hands on the handlebars and lowering her helmeted head against the wind, the wind that grew with her speed, and then, more suddenly, fell as she braked to a stop in front of a small storefront, which a faded sign advertised in Hebrew and Yiddish as housing “Klavan’s Religious Articles.”

  Jesus. In shock she stared at the storefront. She would not have believed that it could still exist, never mind be open for business. In disbelief, she hesitated. Then in doubt. Both were brief, and she dismounted and walked her bike into the dusty interior of the store.

  Again, the pervasive smell of old fabrics and cooked food. She paused as her eyes adjusted from the bright sunlight, then gradually the view of a man in shirtsleeves, payess , a yarmulke, and a sparse, untrimmed beard came into focus. Somehow she had the impression that he had been watching her through the window. To his back, she spoke.

  “What are you doing here, Drew?”

  The man answered without turning. “The name is Peretz, and you fucking know it.” His accent, strangely nasal, was flat and clipped.

  That made her stop. But what, she thought, had she expected? “I’m sorry. I forgot.”

  “Remember it, okay?”

  Silence. Then, relenting, he turned and stepped into the dim sunlight that the store’s dirty front permitted, revealing a thin face with a massive nose, complexly and unusually crooked. His eyes were slightly squinted, as if their degree zero was somewhat searching.

  “How are you, Esther?”

  Esther. She could not remember when last she had heard her real name used but by her father. In wonder, she watched the man before her. “And you?”

  “ Baruch ha shem .” He shrugged, watching her carefully, his black eyes squinting over his nose, which, she now noticed, was badly scarred.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve broken that nose of yours again.”

  “No, but they had to operate for a deviated septum, from that prick cop at the Russian embassy.” Drew had, during his time in the now defunct Brooklyn Jewish Defense League, held some kind of a record for breaking his nose in street fights. That was before he joined the JDL’s more religious, more militant, more right-wing successor, Kahane Chai, and changed his name.

  “Lemme see.” She stepped forward, reaching a hand up, familiarly and with affection.

  “No. Don’t touch me. Come on, Esther. Show some fucking respect.”

  She let her hand fall, unaccountably hurt. They had been children together, best friends before Rosenthal had moved her and Pauly to Brooklyn Heights. He had kissed her once.

  Drew spoke again. “Sorry. I’m sorry, Essie.”

  She nodded, not looking, still aching. But her answer did not show it. “So, what are you doing in Brooklyn? Aren’t there Arabs to shoot in Hebron? Or wait: you all do peacenik Jews now too, don’t you?”

  He ignored the comment and answered, instead, in the rising tone of frustration. “There’s no one to take care of this fucking store. Since Dad died, and my brother’s out in L.A.”

  “Sell it.”

  “Yeah, right. You got anything for my mom to live on?” Quickly, he seemed to regret the question. “Don’t answer that. How’s your dad?”

  For a moment she registered, curiously, how completely the expectation of shame disappeared here. Answering was a luxury. “Trial starts in a few days.”

  “I heard when this is over he’s going to stand for Knesset.”

  “Buy himself an election, sure.”

  Drew paused, then spoke with a kind of hesitant argument. “Well, he’s not going to get any justice here.”

  He was surprised by the response, as was she. “Oh, fuck him, Drew. Peretz. This isn’t about justice.”

  She was looking down now, fingering an object on a display, and her cheeks were red. Perhaps in all the world, she thought, only Drew knew what she thought about her father.

  He answered softly. Nearly beseechingly. “Don’t say that, Essie. It’s a crime and you know it. Anyone’s earned a Knesset seat, then why not him? You know what he’s done over there? Shuls, yeshivot, hospital care. Myself, I’d have done six to ten in Dannemora without your dad, and believe me it’s hard to keep kosher while you’re being shtupped by the Nation of Islam. Don’t let the goyim turn him into a criminal to his own daughter. It’s not true.”

  But in Allison’s mind, she heard her father’s voice: “Truth? What the fuck is truth, okay?” Outside the window, a woman passed in a gold wig and a flowered dress. In her mind’s eye was Drew, a long-haired high school boy in an oversized plaid shirt, dirty blue jeans, a tiny knit kipah bobby-pinned to his head, balancing a basketball in his lap while they listened to Mott the Hoople at a diner
jukebox. After she’d left Borough Park he’d been arrested for possession of a handgun; his father had called Rosenthal for help, and Rosenthal had called D’Amato. Then Drew had had his nose broken by a cop during a protest in front of the Soviet embassy, and his father had called Rosenthal again, this time in panic because the cop had been hospitalized from a blow to the ear with Drew’s heavy boot, repeated three times. Stein had avoided trial with a plea that put Drew at Wiltwick for nine months, a harsh and punishing experience, immediately after which he’d joined the Israeli army.

  Even after they’d left for the Heights, she’d still see Drew sometimes. She’d bike out and they’d sit at a diner; he’d meet her on the promenade. Then she’d gone to college and he’d gone to jail, then Israel, ultimately putting his reform school experience to use in the Bekáa Valley, and she hadn’t spoken to him but twice since then. Once he’d called, after Pauly died. Then again when her father was arrested. She turned, longing to touch that boy with the long hair in the oversized plaid shirt.

  But how could she explain to him this other world? The world of her new life for which he had such contempt? The world of her father’s business: Switzerland, London, Marbella, Madrid; would Drew even understand her indignation at her father’s activities? And how could she tell him of falling in love with Dee, and then meeting that idealistic man on the day of his murder? She felt pressure against her lungs and she drew in a big breath, as if about to speak. Then she let it out again.

  “Is there anything I can do? Tzippy?” Her heart warmed at the Hebrew nickname, but at the same time she knew that for all his pleasure at seeing her, she was the past and he wished she hadn’t come. She shook her head.

  “You could leave all this behind. You could come to Israel.”

  She shook her head again, and forced a smile. “Yeah, right. Quite a catch I’d be. They’d marry me to the town fool.”