The Lie: A Novel

by Hesh Kestin

  “He commands me.”

  “This is not a good start, Dahlia.”

  “Chaim . . .”

  “Yes, Advocate Barr?”

  “With all due respect, sir, my brief is clear,” Dahlia says. “Put another way, when you fuck with me, you are fucking with Zalman Arad.”

  He shakes his head. “I am not afraid of Zalman Arad. Do you think I am afraid?”

  “We’re all in his notebook.”

  “I have nothing to hide.”

  “I’m sure you don’t, commissioner.”

  “Chief commissioner. You will report for duty tomorrow morning, seven forty-five. Sharp.”

  “As agreed with Zalman. We also agreed that I will take whatever time is necessary to arrange new counsel for my clients.”

  “Advocate Barr, I am not sure I prefer you outside the tent pissing in, or inside pissing out. Per agreement, your rank will be chief superintendent. You will be issued a pistol and a range specialist assigned. Be proficient by six P.M. Have you shot before?”

  “I instructed in handguns in the Army.”

  Zeltzer does not look pleased. “The Army is less demanding. A car and driver will be assigned.”

  Dahlia watches him adjust his cap, walk away.

  17

  Through floor-to-ceiling penthouse windows the Old City below is postcard-golden. Dahlia smokes, she and Floyd postcoitally propped against a zebra-skin headboard. An ashtray sits on his abdomen.

  “I hate it when you’re silent,” he says.

  “You don’t. You love everything about me. Admit it.”

  “You’re such a bitch, Dahlia.”

  “A bitch is what you need.”

  “So you say.”

  “Admit it. Admit you love me. Admit you love me because I’m a bitch.”

  “I love everything about you. Bitch.”

  “Admit you’ve never had a woman like me.”

  “I never have.”

  “And that you’ll never find better.”

  “Probably.” He laughs. “I’m not looking.”

  “Me neither. We’re the perfect fitting.”

  “Fit. Why are you giving up your work?”

  “I’m not.”

  “You said you were.”

  “I said I was closing my practice.”

  He lays his hand on her breast, leaving it there like a lid. “Okay, it’s official. I’m confused.”

  “How is that different from being a journalist?” She stubs out her cigarette. “I’ve accepted a position with the government.”

  “Bitch in chief?”

  “I’m to work with the police as a kind of internal consultant.”

  “The police? You?”

  “To protect the rights of criminal suspects.”

  “The police are interested in protecting the rights of criminals?”

  “Suspects. The prime minister is moving to upgrade the department.”

  “Why?”

  “Why is the prime minister upgrading the department, or why am I taking the job?”

  “Both.”

  “Because it’s been neglected. All the attention has gone to the Army and the security services. In this particular job, I can make a difference.” She pauses. “Something I’ve failed to do in private practice. I’m sick of arguing against policy. Now I can help make it.”

  “Attention means what—funds?”

  “You’ll have to ask someone else.”

  “What am I not being told?”

  “That I have to go.”

  “You always have to go. Sometimes I think you’re with me only for the sex.”

  “And what’s wrong with that?”

  “You always have to go, that’s what’s wrong with it. It’d be nice to spend some time . . . vertical.”

  “I have something you don’t.” She switches to Hebrew. “Mishpacha.”

  “Those flaky cheese things?”

  “The flaky cheese things are bourekas. Floyd, my darling, you’ve been here four years. Mishpacha: family.”

  “Americans can’t do foreign words. Bonjour, adios, shalom. That’s about it. Pizza, lo mein. Could be a few more. Tiny brain, that’s all.”

  She reaches under the covers, causing him to jump. “Lucky for me that’s all that’s tiny about you.”

  18

  In the moonless sky over south Lebanon, vague shapes appear as minor disturbances in the darkness led by a tiny light as indistinct as a distant star. It is the smoldering end of a Liban cigarette clenched in the teeth of Tawfeek Nur-al-Din, flying ahead of his troops, their faces blacked out, their hang gliders eerily silent. Three hundred feet below, the border is unmistakable: dark on the Lebanese side, lit settlements on the Israeli.

  19

  Dahlia’s headlights illuminate flowering orange trees while overhead sprinklers surround her with a steady, rhythmic pshh . . . pshh . . . pshh before hitting the car with a sound like slapped flesh. At the end of the dirt road is a small farmhouse. Even in the restricted glow of her headlights it is clearly neglected, its paint flaking, the stucco on its walls showing bald patches that reveal the concrete below. A dog runs out barking, then wags its tail in recognition.

  She leaves the car without locking it and as she steps into the night air breathes in the fragrance of orange blossoms, heavy with perfume and promise. And memory. She stands for a moment before the door. It is ajar. She walks in.

  Two older women sit in the small book-lined living room watching the television news. A round-faced politician is being interviewed. Dahlia’s mother looks up. Erika is seventy, sharp-featured and austere. The other woman, whom Dahlia has always called Auntie Zeinab, the same age but softly maternal in Arab dress, rises to embrace her. Even before the death of Zeinab’s husband, when Dahlia was four, the Arab woman was close to Dahlia’s mother for no apparent reason. Six years later, when Dahlia’s father died, the friendship deepened, a puzzle to Zeinab’s neighbors in the Arab village down the road in Wadi Ara, and a conundrum to Dahlia as well. The two widows could not have been more different. Even as a child Dahlia suspected that something other than an interest in far-left politics united them, but she did not care. This way she could see Auntie Zeinab several times a week.

  “Niece of my heart, when I don’t see you I weep.”

  Dahlia is suddenly awash in the musty scent of her aunt’s clothes, her skin. She kisses her, then turns to her mother. “Good evening, Erika.”

  “How good can it be? To live in such a time? Once we were heroes.”

  “My darling niece, you look so tired,” Zeinab says. “Let me prepare mint tea.”

  “You always spoil her,” her mother says.

  “I am her second mother. I was present at her birth.”

  “As I was present at your son’s. But you do not see me baking him cakes, making him mint tea.”

  Zeinab is already in the kitchen. “You cannot,” she shouts. “He resides in Canada.”

  “My mother would not look after your son were he right here.”

  Zeinab steps back into the living room. “My dear niece, he soon will be,” she says in the careful and slightly formal Hebrew of those whose native tongue is the sibilant provincial Arabic of the villages. “Even at this moment he flies. He comes to write another book.”

  Erika lights a cigarette, the cheapest local unfiltered brand, packed in plain paper, no cellophane. The harsh tobacco is so dry it flares. “All his books will not bring justice. We live under fascism.”

  “Erika, I came to tell you I—”

  “What, that you continue to support the government by pretending to defend its victims in its kangaroo courts? That your obscene husband continues to make millions while Palestinian children starve?”

  “No Palestinians starve, Erika. You know that. What I’ve come to tell you is that you will no longer have to suffer his obscenity.”

  Zeinab enters with a tray.

  “Dudik and I are divorcing.”

  “My dear niece! How awfu
l for you.”

  “It’s mutual, auntie.”

  “From birth I have loved you as my own daughter, praying daily for your happiness. Now this. And the children. How difficult for them.”

  “Her children are already ruined,” Erika says. “One an officer in an army without morality, the other soon to join him. Your father, Dahlia, would shudder at what has become of his daughter, his grandsons, his land.”

  Suddenly it has all gone wrong. How could I have thought otherwise, Dahlia thinks. She had hoped to find some common ground with her mother by telling her she and Dudik are through. But it isn’t her capitalist son-in-law she hates—it is everything that has not gone precisely her way. “Go to hell, Erika.”

  Zeinab puts down her tray. “My niece!”

  Dahlia won’t be stopped. “Mother, you are nothing but a heartless communist who loathes her country and even her grandchildren because none of us buys into your stupid, self-hating politics. I might forgive you this, but not how you have enlisted the aid of a woman who—because she had the misfortune to share a birthing room with you—remains loyal beyond all reason. If he hadn’t died in battle, my father would today be dead of shame.”

  “You didn’t know your father. He hated injustice.”

  “I knew him. He hated you.” The silence in the room stretches into minutes as Dahlia sips her tea. A crushed mint leaf sits at the bottom of her cup: more fragrance. “Oh, and one more thing: I am giving up my practice.”

  “As if it does any good.”

  “To join the Police.”

  A long pause. “You do everything you can to hurt me.”

  The Arab woman’s face appears to melt. “My dearest niece, I pray Allah will give you strength.”

  At that moment Dahlia senses the truth: She has come not to bait her mother but to inform the woman who—beyond cause, beyond limitation—has always loved her. “Auntie, if only Allah had made you my mother.”

  20

  Early the next morning on the northern border, Ari leads his three-jeep patrol on a gravel road parallel to the combed-sand security margin. The sand is disked smooth six times a day. Beyond it are three fences, all electrified. Anyone coming over the border and able to get through the fences would have to set foot on the combed sand. Antelope, foxes, wolves, the occasional leopard that does not know it is supposed to be extinct, wild boar, and smaller animals like the highly social hyrax—all of these leave tracks in the sand. When hyraxes travel as many as twenty sets of tracks can be seen, and little else. So every four hours all this natural history is erased. If not, the prints of two-footed predators would be invisible in the tangle of tracks of those with four.

  Eyes down, Salim walks slowly ahead, studying for sign.

  Ari pulls a pulsing cell phone from his pocket. “Mom, I told you never to call me at the office.”

  “Save the jokes. Dad told me.”

  “Whatever took you people so long?”

  Ahead of the jeep the tracker stops, circles. He squats down, examining something in the sand.

  Ari raises his hand. Yudka stops the vehicle. The jeeps behind halt.

  “I wanted to keep the family together.”

  “Yeah, till the grandchildren are married. Get real, mom. We’re fine. We’ll be fine.”

  “Uri is just a baby.”

  “He’s seventeen. He called me from school. He’s cool. Really.” Salim approaches, looking puzzled. “Mom, I got to go.”

  “Ari, don’t be—” It is all he hears. The cell phone is already in his pocket.

  “What?”

  “I never saw this,” the tracker says. “Not in three years in uniform.” He holds up a cigarette butt.

  “Salim, someone stupid in the morning patrol tossed it.”

  The tracker shakes his head, pointing to the Arabic calligraphy on the butt. “Liban,” he reads. “It’s Lebanese.”

  21

  Dahlia is still speaking into her phone as the morning sun glances off the gold-hued Jerusalem stone of the headquarters of the Israel Police, just within the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Arab East Jerusalem. “Ari, don’t be a hero,” she says. “Be careful.” She realizes the line is dead. She drops the phone into her bag.

  Entering the six-story building, she shows her ID to the sentry.

  22

  Ari stands in the jeep, sweeping the fence with his binoculars, searching for breaks. He is looking the wrong way. Heavy automatic fire breaks out from the Israeli side. For a moment he believes it is friendly fire, an error, but in a heartbeat he knows. The machine gunner in the second jeep is already returning fire. Ari leaps out to take cover behind his jeep when an RPG destroys the second vehicle, bodies flying. Almost immediately another RPG takes out the third. Ari’s driver takes a shot to the head, his brains spattering the flat windshield like pancake batter. Yudka will never drive for a general, nor will he ever have a girlfriend. He should have been wearing his helmet. They all should be, but the border has been quiet for years.

  Ari and the tracker return fire in the direction of the shooting, though neither can see their attackers. They are dug in. It’s impossible the enemy could be on the wrong side of the border without disturbing the fences or the sand margin. But there is no time for speculation. As Ari replaces his spent magazine, Salim leaps to the right, screaming in pain. The tracker has been hit in the foot. Somehow a shot got under the jeep. He is now out in the open, exposed from the waist down. The firing stops. Ari tries to reach for the jeep’s radio. A burst of automatic fire pings the jeep, then ceases.

  An amplified voice, at once melodious and threatening, calls out in English from somewhere in the low bushes south of the gravel road. “Officer in command, please be so kind as to put down your weapon and raise your hands.”

  For a moment Ari recalls the amplified voice of a lifeguard at the pool in which he learned to swim: Boy in the red trunks, quit splashing or leave the pool. Ari is not about to leave the pool. He fires in the direction of the amplified sound.

  From his position in ambush, Tawfeek Nur-al-Din raises his megaphone and speaks again. “Commander, surrender and save the life of your tracker, or both of you die here. Do the right thing, commander.” He signals to the marksman at his side.

  Salim jerks in the air like a marionette, crying out in pain even before Ari hears the shot. It has hit his knee.

  Tawfeek Nur-al-Din raises the megaphone to his lips, almost kissing it. “Jew, with intention that missed being a fatal bullet. Shall we have another shot?”

  23

  A young constable wearing a tight skirt and an Israel Military Industries 9mm pistol shows Dahlia to an office in the second sub-basement.

  “This is it?”

  “Bomb-proof,” the girl says as she leaves. It is meant to be humor.

  The room is airless, poured concrete walls left unpainted, a single bulb hanging from the low ceiling over a metal desk holding a phone, a computer keyboard, and a monitor. Behind the desk is a tall gray filing cabinet, rusting in places, drawers open, empty.

  Dahlia picks up the phone. Dead. She turns on the computer. The screen requests a code. No one has given her a code. “God help me,” she says aloud. She thinks, For this I gave up my practice? It occurs to her she has not fully evaluated the price. For this I gave up my life? She recalls a cousin, the sole religious one in her secular family, who discovered on her wedding night the groom was not functionally heterosexual. She opens the desk’s top drawer: three fat files. Ah, work.

  She has gotten through the first folder, marking it up in her neat way in a red pen she has brought from home, a good thing, because there is not so much in the desk as a rusty nail to write with.

  The file concerns the case of a young Druze from Daliyat al-Carmel, just inland in the hills from her own home in Caesarea. The Druze make up a minority of about a hundred thousand in Israel, practicing a religion that split off from Islam a thousand years before. The community voluntarily undergoes conscription to the IDF, many Druze havin
g risen to leadership positions in the Army and Police. Awkwardly, they have done the same in Lebanon and Syria, where there are even larger concentrations. In a practice known as the border telephone, Druze families who are split by the artifice of lines on a map regularly gather at the Syrian border to call out to each other. The military authorities permit this, not so much as a humanitarian gesture but because the Druze are valued as fighters in both armies. And to gather information.

  The file in Dahlia’s hands describes a young Druze farmer, one Majid Halabi, a reserve corporal in the IDF, who was caught crossing the border back from Syria. He is suspected of working for Syrian intelligence. Investigation has revealed that Halabi is in serious debt, a sign of motive. But according to his written statement what he needs more than money is a wife on whom to spend it, for whom to build a house, with whom to establish a family. Because he is closely related to other members of his clan in Daliyat al-Carmel, he claims to have gone to Syria merely to acquire a bride who is not his cousin. Through the border telephone arrangements were made for him to meet three candidates. According to his statement, more damning than exonerating, he had crossed back and forth three separate times. Though this in itself is enough to guarantee a prison sentence, Police Intelligence is recommending “moderate” extraordinary measures to discover whether his visits to Syria have another dimension. What, Dahlia asks herself, can “moderate” mean? Is there a menu, or does each interrogator follow his own instincts? There is so much she does not know. She turns back to the file: It has not been established what, if anything, Halabi was carrying when he crossed over into Syria; in any case, Intelligence questions whether he could have gotten away with the crossings without the cooperation of the Syrian Army or the Mukhabarat, Syria’s secret police. Though the border is fenced on both sides, its length over mountainous terrain hardly makes it impregnable—in some spots one can look down on the fence from only a few meters further along the same barrier. Is Halabi a suitor or a spy? Complicating the problem is the vocal Israeli Druze community, which is exerting pressure on the prime minister’s office to resolve the matter one way or the other. Dahlia is in the midst of reviewing her own notes when the door opens.