The Lie: A Novel

by Hesh Kestin

  At fifty, Dudik Barr is graying but thick and confident in the way of self-made men. A former major in the IDF, he had spent a total of eight years in uniform when he retired as a military judge to take up private practice representing Israeli high-tech companies wishing to go public on Wall Street. Early on, he decided to forgo hourly fees and instead be paid in stock. As a result, he is now a director of seven companies, three in Tel Aviv and four in California.

  When she enters the garden, Dudik stands.

  That is one thing about my husband, she thinks. He has always been an unerringly polite son of a bitch. “A bus was burning on Allenby—”

  “It was on the news. I heard it in the car.” He sits when she does. “I took the liberty.”

  Before her is a shot glass of arak, the anise-flavored alcohol of the Mediterranean that, under so many names—raki, ouzo, pastis, sambuca, ojen, kasra—is common to its disparate cultures. Dudik used to laugh at her for preferring a man’s drink. “A hairy man’s drink,” he liked to say. These days he could not say it. Arak is now a popular drink among twenty-somethings in Tel Aviv. Dudik’s own taste runs to single malt, the more expensive the better. There is a bottle of it on the table.

  She pours the shot into a glass full of ice and tops it with an inch of water.

  “Cheers,” Dudik says. He never uses the Hebrew toast.

  “L’chaim.”

  “I ordered appetizers. I hope you’re hungry.”

  “I can eat,” she says. “That’s why I’m so fat.”

  “You’re not fat.”

  “In the twenty years of our marriage, I gained a pound a year.”

  “I gained two. So it’s good we’re divorcing. We’ll be thinner.”

  “I told you on the phone, I’m not here to talk about the divorce.”

  He refills his glass from the bottle. INCHGOWER, the label reads, 14 YEARS OLD.

  She guesses he brought it. Moshiko wouldn’t know a single malt if it made a pass at him in a bar. She smiles at her own unspoken joke. “You always were such a snob.”

  “I’ve an appointment at eight, Dahlia.” He sips from his Scotch. “Just to get this out of the way, you were right: I should have told you first. Not the boys.”

  She smiles. “Just to get this out of the way, that’s not why I’m here.”

  “You’re ill?”

  “Do I look ill?”

  For a moment his face darkens, its broad planes taking on a deep shadow all its own. “The boys?”

  “Our young men? No, they’re fine. I spoke with Ari earlier.”

  “It’s quiet in the north,” he says. It is as much an aspiration as a statement of fact. In the Middle East, statements of fact can be quickly undone.

  “Thank God for quiet in the north.”

  “Am I to keep guessing?”

  “I need your advice.”

  “My advice?” He lights a cigarette. “You don’t want me in your life, but you want my advice.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I’m listening.”

  She had rehearsed some of this in her mind, starting with: “Dudik, I don’t like you, but you’re the smartest man I know.” She does not bother with the introduction. She knows that in a similar case he would come to her. This is not a matter of the heart. It is a matter of the head. She goes through it for him, summarizing as though it were a legal brief.

  “Head torturer of the State of Israel?” he says.

  “Special Adviser for Extraordinary Measures to the Chief Commissioner of Police.”

  His lips purse for a moment, then straighten as his mind shifts into gear. “So what do you want to know?”

  “Don’t be obtuse.”

  “Obtuse? It’s your decision.”

  “That much I know.”

  He sips from the Scotch. “Zalman Arad is using you to cover his ass. It’s not personal, it’s political. Zalman wants you because of who and what you are. If Dahlia Barr approves of—what are we calling it?—extraordinary measures, no one can say they are not critically necessary. What made you a pain now makes you an asset.”

  Moshiko brings a tray of appetizers. “Just like old times,” he says. “You want to order?”

  “This ought to hold us,” she says.

  When Moshiko goes away, Dudik completes his thought. “Human Rights Attorney Moves to Police. It’s a compelling headline.”

  “They intend to crack down on Israeli Arabs.”

  “I shouldn’t think it’s as general as that,” he says with casual authority. “Something is happening, something specific. Something big.”

  “Big enough to trash the rule of law?”

  “Big enough to have a prominent human-rights attorney do it for them.”

  “I won’t.”

  He laughs. “Dahlia, we’re discussing Zalman Arad. He doesn’t look three steps ahead. He looks at the endgame. In some case where it will be necessary, some speculative, imaginary, even improbable case in which an Israeli citizen—not some crazed Palestinian from the territories but an Israeli citizen—must be, let us say, coerced using any means available in order to save lives . . .”

  She picks up a stuffed grape leaf, then puts it down. “Zalman’s words exactly.” She pauses. “Would you do it?”

  “I wasn’t offered the job.”

  “And if you had been?”

  “Never happen. But in terms of effectiveness . . .”

  “I could make a difference. As things stand, this kind of decision, it’s made by whoever happens to be in command. No checks, no balances. No rules.”

  “You could make a difference,” he says. “Are you making a difference now?”

  “Not much more than any other attorney.” It is difficult for her to admit. Especially to Dudik. Your powers are limited, he used to say about her work. Your intellect is wasted.

  “There’s your answer. The government gets political coverage if and when extraordinary means must be used. You get to make a difference.”

  She tears off a piece of warm pita, dips it into the small dish of hummus, and brings it to her lips. “I get to make a difference, you get to make money.” At once she regrets this. It is old news. And Dudik has been trying.

  “Suddenly, the old Dahlia is back,” he says. “You come to me for advice and then you turn on me. Look, I really do care.”

  “If you really cared, you wouldn’t be breaking up a family.”

  “I’d love to know what this is about. I thought we were having a conversation about your career.” He rises. “As I said, I have an appointment.”

  “You’d love to know what this is about?” she says, looking up at him. “It’s about greed. Anger. Unwillingness to compromise. Ego. Bitterness.” She pauses. “Pain.”

  “Pain.” He allows a reluctant smile. “Agreed.” In a moment he is gone.

  13

  From the rear of the unmarked police car climbing to Jerusalem, Edward Al-Masri peers out at the green winter landscape of central Israel, so much the opposite of Canada’s. Here, winter is the only time it rains. How odd, he thinks, that in Canada winter is the barren season in which nothing grows, and in summer everything is in flower. Here, in summer the hot dry winds denude the fields. Backwards, everything is backwards, he thinks. His hands are tied behind him, his shoes removed so that in the unlikely event of an escape he will not be able to go far. Of course, the last thing on his mind is escape. Here in the backwards land of his birth, his usefulness will come only in captivity. In Canada, in America, in Europe, all his freedom has been meaningless, a talking head on television. Now that he is silenced, his voice will be heard. He will make a difference at last.

  14

  That evening in Caesarea, the beachfront village that is home to wealthy Israelis and well-heeled part-time Zionists who visit from time to time, Dahlia steps from her car to the open front door of a beautiful stucco home. Through the open French doors at the rear of the house she can see her seventeen-year-old son doing laps in the pool as, to the west
, the sun has all but descended below the dunes lining the Mediterranean. She drops her bag on the foyer table.

  At her approach, Uri climbs out, towels off. “Dad moved out.”

  “I heard.”

  He joins her on a chaise. “Mom . . .”

  “Sweetie?”

  “I’m glad it happened.”

  “My child . . .”

  “I know it’s been hard for you. Dad wasn’t nice.”

  “I wasn’t so nice to him.”

  “He has someone else. He told me.”

  “That was thoughtful of him.”

  “I told him to go fuck himself.”

  “Uri, he’s entitled to live his own life.”

  “Not at our expense.”

  “Even at our expense, my sweet. Believe me, sometimes we must make decisions that cause pain.”

  “He could have been nicer to you.”

  “Your father and I, we weren’t really cut out for nice. It happens.”

  “It’s not supposed to.”

  “We’re not supposed to be always in a state of war with our neighbors. House fires are not supposed to happen. Sickness. Your father did the right thing.”

  “Walking out? How is that right?”

  “He should have done it earlier. I should have.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  She looks away. “The pool needs cleaning. Promise me you’ll clean the pool.”

  “Mom . . .”

  Dahlia pauses. “All kinds of reasons, some better than others. You were the good reasons. You and Ari. The rest was just . . .”

  “I know you have someone, too.”

  For a moment she is stunned, then oddly relieved. She laughs. It comes in a burst, a snort. “And I thought I was being so discreet. I know I was away a lot. I suppose the phone, the sudden hang-ups . . .”

  Uri shakes his head. “Starting when I was in tenth grade, we knew. Ari and me, we knew.”

  “I tried not to—”

  Uri shakes his head. “Starting in tenth grade. You began to look better. Healthier, almost. You smiled more.”

  “Oh, my little Uri.” She is fighting tears.

  “Plus, you were so much less bitchy. It was like you had a life.”

  15

  The next day at a sidewalk table outside a café opposite Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda Market, Floyd Hooper, thirty-five, television-handsome in a black CNN T-shirt, sunglasses well back on his head, lays down his Jerusalem Post as Dahlia sits. Behind them the market is alive with shoppers, the shouts of vendors boasting of the magnificence of their eggplants, the freshness of their tomatoes, the fragrant integrity of their olive oil. Through the smoke from his cigar he blows her a discreet kiss. Not for the first time does she wonder how it is that her husband and her lover both smoke cigars.

  She looks around. “Shouldn’t we be inside?”

  “You are so late.”

  “In this part of the world the clocks have rubber hands. Perhaps inside would be better, no?”

  “Who’s going to see us? Besides, I’m a journalist, and you’re my source.”

  “Of pleasure, I hope.”

  “You can’t imagine. Now, tell me what’s so important to get me out of bed this early in the morning.”

  “It’s noon.”

  “Five A.M. in Atlanta. I ordered.”

  “When we break up, I’ll never think of you without having to pass gas.”

  “But you love eggs with fava beans.” He does a poor imitation of a character in a movie. “I ate his chopped liver with some falafel and a nice Manischewitz.”

  “Fool.”

  “For love.”

  “You are such a dummy. F-U-L. Meaning fava beans. It’s not so terribly hard, is it?”

  “Getting harder by the minute.”

  “Why do men think something like that is amusing?”

  “Don’t you just love me for it?”

  “I do love you for it. The ful and the smelly cigar and never seeing you when I need to, that’s just frosting on the cookie.”

  “Icing on the cake.”

  “That after four years here, someone with only five words of Hebrew—hello, thanks, left, right, and blow job—that such a person is correcting my English . . .”

  “Such a person wants to know why you had to see me. It’s not one of our days.”

  “I’m giving up my practice.”

  He stops relighting his cigar. “You’re giving up your practice?”

  “And getting a divorce.”

  He puts down the cigar.

  “Kitten got your tongue?”

  He laughs. “Cat.”

  “You are so cute when you’re speechless, I could eat you up.”

  “Be happy to give you the chance,” he says. “I’ve got the rest of the day off.”

  “Aren’t there any Israeli atrocities you can blow out of all proportion?”

  “It’s a slow day for atrocities. Let me guess. You’re getting a big fat settlement, so you’ve decided to stop defending the innocent. Anyone else, yes. You . . .”

  “Even the noble grow weary.”

  “Why don’t I believe you?”

  “Because you’re a liar by profession. All journalists are. So you can’t believe everyone else isn’t. It’s called projection.”

  “God, I want to fuck you.”

  “I’ve an appointment at the Knesset. I’ll be at your place by three.”

  He reaches across the table for her hand and squeezes it. “If you’re as much as five minutes late, I swear I’ll start without you.”

  As the waiter approaches, she withdraws her hand. “I’ll never forgive my mother.”

  “For being a monster?”

  “For not suggesting younger men.”

  16

  The home of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, sits on a high hill with commanding views of a Jerusalem united under Jewish rule in 1967, but the view most often seen by its 120 members is as fragmented and cliquish as that in any high school cafeteria. Not only do members of its dozens of political parties rarely deign to dine together, but often their religious views mitigate against it.

  Just as the design for the concrete and stone Knesset building became a cause for sociopolitical wrangling—its original exterior columns were transmogrified into bizarrely notched rectangles in order to avoid any reference to the classical architecture of Greece and Rome, the two cultures that all but destroyed the Jewish people—even its dining room became an issue: Eventually the facility was divided into two cafeterias, one for milk products and one for meat, because under Jewish law, foods containing either may not be mixed. Rabbinic supervision is so rigorous that several years earlier, when an Orthodox member of Knesset found a well-cooked cockroach in his meat loaf, the cafeteria was closed for a week until the entire meat kitchen could be cleansed: pots, pans, dishes, silverware, and everything else that might come into contact with food. The problem was not sanitary but dietary: Though Jewish law permits the eating of some insects—grasshoppers, for example—cockroaches are as unkosher as pork.

  This culinary issue was apparently resolved, because as Dahlia crosses the meat cafeteria she sees that the room is again full of Orthodox Jews chatting noisily over their chicken soup or turkey schnitzel, none of them looking up as she passes, lest they display an impure interest in the female form. But as Dahlia moves through the more liberal tables a number of parliamentarians (and the newspaper columnists who fatten off of flattering them) greet her with a wave or a smile. At the far end, where the right-wingers congregate, her entrance is noted with clenched stares. Once the news is out, she thinks, these will be the ones making noise: Why has a liberal been given keys to the torture chamber?

  Considering that this is the meat cafeteria, the two fiftyish men at the table where she stops are appropriately beefy. They abruptly cease conversing.

  In the dark blue winter uniform of the Israel Police sits Chief Comm. Chaim Zeltzer, his massive shaved head glistening with sweat; o
pposite, in a brown suit, colorful shirt and clashing tie, is Daoud Idris, an Arab member of Knesset whose Hebrew is better than that of the Jew across from him, though it does carry a mild Arabic accent, the odd p sounding too much like b. Idris is known to delight in punctiliously correcting the Hebrew of Knesset members who did not have the good fortune to grow up speaking Hebrew. Neither man rises.

  “Advocate Barr,” Zeltzer says. “You’re early.”

  “I’ll be happy to wait.”

  “Not at all, dear lady,” Idris says with oily courtesy. “We have completed our discussions.” He looks her over. “So this is the famous Dahlia Barr. From the newspapers, I envisioned a larger woman, mannish in figure. Not such a . . . one.” Her look does not encourage him. “Nevertheless, as a member of Knesset, I commend you for your record on behalf of the human rights of the Palestinian people. If ever I can help you in these virtuous endeavors . . .” As if conferring a medal, he rises to present his card. “Chief commissioner, distinguished advocate.”

  Zeltzer makes a point of watching him walk off. “Pompous piece of shit. We let them into the Knesset and they act like they own it. So, Advocate Barr . . .”

  “I’m pleased to meet you, too, commissioner.”

  “Chief commissioner. But please, call me Chaim.”

  “Dahlia, then.”

  “So we finally meet, though in truth, we have been close enough on many occasions. Your clients are my bastards.”

  “Were.”

  “So I am given to understand.” Ignoring the empty cup in front of Dahlia, he pours himself coffee from the carafe between them. “Just so we are clear, I expect your full cooperation.”

  “We’re on the same team.”

  “You are on my team. You will report directly to me.”

  “With pleasure. Except with regard to certain extraordinary matters. In these, my report is to the adviser to the prime minister for security affairs.”

  “Despite his saddling me with”—he pauses in search of the least offensive noun—“an outsider, Zalman Arad does not command the Israel Police.”