The Lie: A Novel

by Hesh Kestin

  In a few minutes a road sign comes up for Ben Gurion Airport. They pass the exit. She reaches into her handbag for her phone.

  9

  Close to the Lebanese border, half-hidden in an apple orchard under camouflage netting, three Israel Defense Forces jeeps stand lined up next to a small tent, its flaps raised like wings. A twenty-year-old lieutenant is playing serious dominoes with his sergeant, a Bedouin tracker called Salim, who passes him a thick joint. The lieutenant in turn passes it to a grease-spattered corporal working under the closest of the jeeps.

  “When you come to the Negev, I will show you a real tent,” the Bedouin says. “Not made of canvas from a machine, but of pure black wool from goats, loomed by hand.”

  The lieutenant exhales. “If you’ve got more shit like this, I’ll fucking move in.” He checks his watch. “Yudka,” he tells his driver under the jeep. “We’re on the line in two hours.”

  Yudka is all of nineteen, a chubby boy with acne and only two goals in life: to drive for a general and to have a girlfriend. “It’ll be ready, Ari.”

  The lieutenant pushes over the dominoes, sprawling back on the stony ground. “Wake me when it is.”

  Just then his cell phone rings. He reads the number flashing on the tiny screen. He lets it ring.

  “Girlfriend?” the tracker asks.

  “Worse. My mother.” He pauses. “How’s the Bedouin divorce rate?”

  “Negligible,” the tracker says. “Should I marry and tire of my wife, I can get three more. Not so my mare. There is none like her. Let me tell you, Ari. They say we are primitive. We are not primitive. We are practical.”

  Ari pulls the brim of his forage cap down over his eyes. “Jews smart,” he says. “Arabs lucky.” He is asleep.

  “Or if the first wife gives me only daughters,” the tracker says.

  10

  At the Kiryah military compound in the center of Tel Aviv, a bored sentry examines the taxi’s occupants, then waves it through.

  Once a pleasant neighborhood of two-story homes, the Kiryah is now headquarters of the Israel Defense Forces and certain of the nation’s security services. Except for the strange fact that everyone on the cracked concrete pathways is in uniform, the Kiryah might be a red-roofed holiday village. Below ground, tunnels lead to three floors of bombproof reinforced concrete command bunkers.

  The cab draws up before a building unmarked but for a stenciled number.

  “Last stop,” Dahlia’s escort announces from the front passenger seat. “You know where to go?”

  “I know where to go,” she says.

  Inside at a battered desk, an eighteen-year-old soldier, M-16 slung over the back of her chair, peers studiously into a compact mirror as she applies lipgloss. “Name?”

  “Dahlia Barr.”

  The girl checks the computer in front of her. “The left-wing attorney? From the newspapers?”

  “The human-rights attorney.”

  The girl points with her lipgloss to a staircase on the right, its worn marble steps once a luxurious architectural detail. Now the steps are chipped, cracked, stained.

  On the third floor Dahlia passes open doors, each framing an officer on the phone or facing a computer. At the end of the corridor she pauses before a west-facing window. It looks out over the city to the wall of hotels lining the beach.

  The voice that greets her is familiar, yet spectral somehow, the voice of a powerful ghost. “Have yourself a good look. They’re building another hotel. Soon we won’t see water at all.”

  Behind a tidy plywood desk in a small office sits a small, tidy man, skin olive against his shock of unruly snow-white hair. At seventy-five, he is still wiry, his intensity all but hidden beneath the perplexing calm that conceals an intimate knowledge of the strategic risks facing the State of Israel. He stands as Dahlia enters. His trim mustache is as white as his pressed open-collar shirt.

  “I can remember when out these windows was nothing but blue,” he says by way of greeting.

  “I can remember when I was your student.”

  “The best law student I ever had. And the most charming.”

  “I’m not sure of the protocol. Do I kiss you or salute?”

  He motions like a beloved uncle, but they embrace with strained formality. “You were always my favorite, Dahlia.”

  “Somehow I feel I let you down.”

  A red phone lights up on the plywood desk. He picks it up. “Tell the prime minister I’ll call back.” The prime minister could be voted out tomorrow; the security establishment is forever. He smiles. “Only in Israel could we elect such a clown. How could you let me down?”

  “Politically.”

  “Because you defend those I would hang?”

  “Something like that. Though as you know, hanging is now forbidden.”

  “Unfortunately,” he says. “Dahlia, Dahlia. In a democracy, even the worst scum must be defended in court. And you defend them so well.”

  “Why am I here, Zalman?”

  “And the lads?”

  “Ari is a lieutenant, paratroops. Uri enters the Army in September.”

  “The Jewish State in the hands of its infants. I saw them last at the young one’s bar mitzvah. Such beautiful boys.”

  “Not to put too fine a point on it, but Zalman Arad never sits down to a meeting without already knowing everything about the person opposite. So why do you ask?”

  “Dahlia, sometimes I think you are too much like me.”

  “Except we are on different sides of the political divide.”

  “Only within Israel does this seem to matter. The cousins see only filthy Jews.” Cousins is the term Israeli Jews commonly use for Arabs, Jews and Muslims being descended from one father, Abraham. The irony is implicit.

  “Why am I here?”

  He pushes a paper across the desk, then a pen.

  A glance tells her what it is, but not why. Another person would give in, if only to learn what signing it will reveal. “The Official Secrets Act? I can’t sign this.”

  “You have Zalman Arad’s word it will not affect your role as a defense attorney.”

  “And if Zalman Arad is hit by a bus?”

  “Let’s hope not. But I take your point.” He moves the paper and pen back to his side of the plywood desk. “Dahlia, you may not be aware that we are in the midst of a massive reorganization of the security apparatus.”

  “There are rumors.”

  “The state faces an evolving threat.”

  “I deal every day with the state’s evolving efforts to contain that threat.”

  “The cousins in Gaza are determined to wipe us out. In Lebanon the same. Iran will soon have nuclear weapons. Pakistan already. And now another front.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “According to growing intelligence, we face terror from within.”

  Dahlia laughs derisively. “It’s never happened. They are Arabs, but they are Israelis.”

  “They are twenty percent of the population, thirty percent among those of school age. In Algeria, five percent was enough to wear down the French. Terror is unpleasant, more so when it is homegrown.” He pauses. “We have information our enemies are now attempting to incite our fine Arab citizens to violence. Never mind that Israeli Arabs are not exactly lining up to emigrate to Gaza or Ramallah—apparently, living in a democratic society under the rule of law is habit-forming. But there is always the disaffected youth. These can be influenced.” He drums his fingers on the desktop. “I am not telling you a secret when I mention that we are currently negotiating with Washington for a massive arms deal. Certain persons wish to torpedo these negotiations. They wish to cause an uprising within Israel that will have a negative effect on public opinion in America. An internal intifada.” Another pause. “I will not allow this to happen.”

  “We do have criminal courts. Your people picked me up outside one of them.”

  “Sometimes pragmatism must trump principle.”

  “Pragmatism
must trump the rule of law? Is that what you’re saying?”

  Arad sighs. “Let us conjecture. Say we find a certain young Arab citizen is part of a group planning to attack a train, a bus, a school. We don’t know where, but we know when. The courts by nature are . . . procedural. Motions, counter-motions, counter-counter-motions. Let us say we have only twenty-four hours. Would you not agree we must consider extraordinary means?”

  She lights a cigarette. “Do I understand you correctly?”

  “I think you do.”

  “The State is now considering torture of its own citizens?”

  “Extraordinary means. If it will save lives.”

  “Torture, Zalman?”

  “How many Jewish children would you expend for a principle, Dahlia?”

  “I don’t deal in the hypothetical. As you taught me, it makes bad law.”

  “This is not about good or bad law. This is about survival.”

  “Where have I heard that before? Russia? Syria? China?”

  He waves his hand. It parts the smoke. “In such places, these practices are utilized to preserve those in power. Here we would take such steps to preserve lives. Innocent lives. Many innocent lives.”

  “It never works. And I can’t imagine why you are telling me this.”

  “Listen, then. As I speak, elite units are being transferred to the Police from the Army and the security services. We are bringing in key officers, specialists, the best. The state will not be threatened from within.”

  She laughs. “The Israel Police is unable even to patrol the roads.”

  “That is exactly why we are augmenting its abilities.”

  She rises. “With all due respect, Zalman . . .”

  “I have not finished.”

  She sits. “So the Police will decide whom, when, and how . . . to torture? How does this concern me?”

  “As a defender of civil rights, are you not concerned?”

  “How does this relate to me?”

  “Someone must make such decisions.”

  “Zalman, I can only pray for the man who must carry this burden.”

  “You may pray. But it will not be a man. Dear Dahlia, it will be you.”

  She stubs out her cigarette. “Zalman, you are mad.”

  “Because?”

  “Because I have dedicated my entire life to the cause of human rights. You expect me to take part in a practice that is its anathema?”

  “Who better, Dahlia? Soldiers, policemen, academics, politicians, bureaucrats? None of these has your résumé, your instincts, your will to do the right thing until the last possible moment. Whom would you trust with such decisions? Someone else—or yourself?”

  She looks at her cigarette stubbed out in the glass saucer. She stops herself from lighting another. “I need time.”

  “My dear Dahlia,” the old man says. “You have none.”

  11

  Edward Al-Masri pulls the tan plaid blue-piped suitcase off the moving belt and follows the man who would not sit next to him through the passage marked NOTHING TO DECLARE. A tired-looking customs officer in thick glasses waves the Jewish passenger through. Al-Masri is stopped.

  “Is it your duty to harass only Arab citizens, or merely your pleasure?” Al-Masri says.

  The customs officer points to the next table, where a colleague spills out the contents of the luggage of a black-bearded Hasidic Jew. Most of it is toys, the same toys. “I have a lot of children,” the Hasid is saying.

  The first customs officer asks, “Is this your luggage, Mr. . . . ?” He checks the passport in his hand. “Al-Masri.”

  “Professor Al-Masri.”

  “Mazel tov. Is this your luggage?”

  “Are you accusing me of stealing someone else’s bag?”

  “Is it yours or someone else’s?”

  “Go to hell.”

  “Sweetie, my shift ends in ten minutes. Let’s not make this more difficult than it has to be. Yours?”

  “Very well, then. Mine.”

  “Purpose of visit?”

  “This I was already asked at immigration.”

  “Humor me, Mr. Al-Masri.”

  “Professor Al-Masri.”

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance. Professor, doctor, mister, whatever. Believe me, this does not have to take long. A few questions, and you are on your way. Purpose of visit?”

  “To see family.”

  “Where?” The customs officer opens the suitcase.

  “Baka al-Gharbiya.”

  “Ah, Baka. I grew up next door. In Afula. Does Abu Adel still roast coffee there? I smell it in my dreams.” The officer feels something in the suitcase lining.

  “I haven’t been back in five years. I now make my home in Canada, where Arabs are not punished for being Arabs.”

  The customs officer slits open the lining with a razor. “I didn’t know that, professor. Tell me, are these Canadian? They look like euros to me.” He begins to stack the banknotes on the counter. Seemingly out of nowhere, a couple of police constables appear and stand on either side of Al-Masri.

  Rather than being startled, Al-Masri looks amused. “You people had police already in place? Do you have X-ray eyes?”

  “Better,” the customs inspector says, admiring the carefully stacked banknotes. “Our college girls in Montreal can feel a lump in a suitcase lining the size of a shirt button.”

  “Yet they let me board the plane? It could have been a bomb.”

  “All hand baggage is chemically scanned.”

  “Still, a passenger with contraband?”

  The customs inspector removes his thick glasses to stare directly into Al-Masri’s eyes. “Israel has no power of arrest in Canada, professor.” He replaces his glasses and turns to the two constables. “These smuggled funds will remain with the Customs Service until we are otherwise advised.” He turns to the constables. “Gentlemen, Mr. Al-Masri—excuse me, Professor Al-Masri—is all yours.”

  12

  She knows Dudik is already at Moshiko’s. Dahlia had wished to get there first, but the early evening traffic in Tel Aviv has been compromised further by a burning bus on Allenby Street, which the security people have closed off two blocks ahead of her and a block behind. Her taxi driver, a real taxi driver this time and remarkably relaxed for the breed—one A. Einstein, according to his name plate—returns from a closer look to report the bus was not bombed.

  “Who would guess that it is not terrorist?” he says in a Russian accent. “Some gangster blows up the car of another gangster, and the car is next to the bus, which catches fire.”

  “Makes for a change,” Dahlia says from the backseat.

  Normally, she reads briefs while traveling. Now all she can think of is the strange prospect of seeing Dudik at Moshiko’s, having willed herself to do so. Another woman might have lapsed into bitter nostalgia, remembering the two of them as they had been, young attorneys, Dudik in the pressed uniform of an officer in the Judge Advocate General’s Office, she fresh from law school and finishing her apprenticeship, about to go out on her own. It was at Moshiko’s he proposed. In the garden. No doubt he would be there now, peering down at his expensive watch, one of his many expensive watches. In the garden, for sure. It was where they had always sat, once in a light rain, laughing.

  But Dahlia is not another woman. She remains focused on the need to avoid confrontation over the divorce, the one thing, aside from the boys, that ties them together, the only thing, really, the divorce, that has survived—

  “There is a God,” Einstein interrupts, starting his engine. The cars ahead begin to move.

  If it had been a terrorist bombing, they would be there for an hour while the special squads of Orthodox Jews in their beards and fringes who volunteer for this gruesome work carefully comb the area for bits of brain, an ear, the odd finger, lest these pieces go unburied.

  They pass the burned-out bus and the remains of a silver Volvo that seems to have melted into it, then turn right onto Ben Yehuda. The stre
et has not changed much from the days of their youth. Apartments above shops, mostly small. Even the supermarkets here are small. Everywhere else, they are new and huge, American-style, with a dozen checkout counters. As they pass the Super-Sol off Gordon, she can see the same two checkout counters she had known when she and Dudik were just starting out and living a block away. The cab pulls in right behind Dudik’s red sedan, the biggest one BMW makes.

  It is the same Moshiko’s, three tables on the sidewalk looking a bit forlorn on this cool evening, inside a ceiling fan turning slowly for no good reason other than it always did. She can already smell the rich, dark scent of grilling meat.

  But it is not the same Moshiko who comes out from behind the refrigerated case full of kabobs, lamb and chicken, and merguez, the peppery sausage Dudik used to order with clockwork regularity until his stomach could no longer handle it. This Moshiko who embraces her could be Moshiko’s own father, the same sharp-featured walnut-colored Yemenite face, the same knitted skullcap, the same scent. Eau de Moshiko, she used to call it. Equal parts slow-burning charcoal, some bizarre lemony cologne, stale sweat.

  “Such a long time,” Moshiko tells her when finally he lets her loose.

  “Too long. I’ve been so busy with work.”

  “Funny,” he says. “Dudik said precisely the same. He’s in the back.”

  It is early. They are the only customers. She threads her way between the tables and out past the tiny kitchen, where an Arab cuts onions, and into the garden, such as it is: the unadorned back of a stuccoed apartment building forming a rear wall, a cactus too big for its pot, the same willow tree, in the far corner mint spreading over the big cement floor tiles that, twenty years earlier, had not been terribly straight. Now they are jumbled, nearly upended. She thinks, Like everything else in my life.