The Lie: A Novel

by Hesh Kestin

  “Nice dungeon.”

  Without thinking, Dahlia stands. Whoever this is, his insignia indicates he outranks her by two grades, but that is not what draws her to her feet. She is seated in the room’s only chair. “Welcome, deputy commissioner.”

  “Shem-Tov, Kobi,” he says crisply, last name first, a practice inherited from the British, who administered what was then Palestine from its capture in World War I to their withdrawal in 1948. Even civilians introduce themselves this way. It often confuses foreigners. Blue eyes, square chin, well over six feet—Dahlia thinks the man looks like an advertisement for the native Israeli, subspecies militarus professionalis. He does not look like a cop at all. Even at the highest ranks, like Chaim Zeltzer, Israeli policemen affect a kind of sloppy impermeability. Not here: no slouch, shoulders set back, blue uniform pressed to within a millimeter of perfection. The deputy commissioner’s short blond hair is topped by a black-and-white knitted skullcap in a checkerboard pattern that appears to have been hand-crocheted. White ritual fringes dangle down his trousers at the sides. This Orthodox gear normally would be signal enough that Kobi Shem-Tov is one of those religious men who shield themselves from physical contact with women, and thus from temptation. For the black hats it is absolute—with the crocheted-skullcap crowd one can never be certain. On the other hand, the guy is clean-shaven, which suggests flexibility.

  At once, as though reading her mind, he resolves the problem.

  She puts out her hand in return. “Dahlia Barr.”

  His grip is relaxed but firm, the tight flesh of his hand cool. “I know.”

  “I’m glad someone does.”

  “You’d be surprised.” He grins. “Headquarters considers you a one-woman tsunami. Enjoying your accommodations?”

  “I’ve worked in worse.”

  “In the Army we call it hazing.”

  “You’re Army?”

  “Fresh meat. From Army Intelligence to Police Intelligence.”

  “Why do police and intelligence sound like a contradiction in terms?”

  “We’re improving. I was Zeltzer’s big acquisition, until now.”

  “Ooh, Zeltzer,” she said. “Sounds like fun.”

  “One is subordinate to the rank, not the person. Good commanders are not necessarily pleasant.”

  “Is Zeltzer a good commander?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think he’s a piece of shit.”

  “That’s because he doesn’t like you. I wouldn’t like you either if Zalman Arad had stuck you up my ass.”

  “Charming.”

  “Zeltzer’s expression, not mine. Meanwhile, I have no intention of descending from the sixth floor to the second sub-basement every time I need to consult with you on matters of interrogation.” He smiles. “You appear surprised. In confidence, not to be repeated, it did not take long for me to understand that there are zero rules for what we may call elevated levels of interrogation. Somehow or other Zalman Arad received an unhappy memo to that effect. You are the result. Now kindly stop smiling and pack your papers. I’ll show you to your office.”

  “And what, pray tell, is this?”

  “Zeltzer being vindictive. Or just teaching you an early lesson.”

  “I’m beginning to like you, Kobi.”

  “That is entirely my intention. It’s a bit of a secret, but as a condition of my transfer to the Police I not only demanded your job be created but helped pick you for it. Just because our enemies use torture is no reason we should follow. We’re better than that. Directorate meets at fourteen hundred hours.” He points to the files on her desk. “Be prepared.”

  24

  At the Lebanese border IDF troops comb the ground. Three armored personnel carriers and a dozen jeeps stand with their motors running. Helicopters hover overhead, above them a single drone transmitting live video to the rear.

  A jeep pulls up. A lieutenant colonel, about thirty-five, his face a deep olive, steps swiftly out, removing his sunglasses. He carries a Micro Tavor rifle, one of the first to be issued. Eventually the weapon will replace the Galils and M-16s that are the standard personal weapons of the IDF. The Micro Tavor is not issued to just anyone in khaki.

  A young captain disengages himself from the group of even younger officers around him. “Shalom, Gadi,” the captain says, recognizing the superior officer at once: Lt. Col. Gadi is a legend whose commando exploits are part of the unwritten lore of the IDF officer corps. Even so, in the IDF officers and enlisted men are called by their first names. Israel remains a first-name society—even in elementary school students call teachers by their first name. The IDF is perhaps the only army in the world where a private will address the chief of staff with easy familiarity, even to the extent of using his nickname. “Yaron, sir. I had no idea you were in this sector—”

  “Socialize later. Report.”

  “We got here twenty minutes after radio contact was suspended. Seven dead. Two jeeps destroyed, RPG, the lead vehicle abandoned, motor still running. Blood on the ground from there through the fences. Ambush point sixty meters south. We found twenty-two hang gliders. Unbelievable, hang gliders.”

  Gadi points to the first fence.

  The young captain nods. “Twenty-three sets of tracks, another set of boots dragged.”

  Gadi replaces his sunglasses. “Very good, Yaron. Continue searching.” He has a mild lisp: thearching. “You have about ten minutes before the tanks arrive, after which there won’t be a track on the ground that doesn’t look like hamburger.”

  For the briefest moment Gadi wishes his old intelligence officer had remained in the Army. Kobi Shem-Tov had been the best field intel man in the IDF, like himself a veteran of the chief of staff’s commando unit. Now where was he? Adjudicating parking tickets? Who would be making these decisions today, some kid fresh out of intelligence school?

  “We’re going in?”

  “Not my decision.”

  “Request permission to join, sir.”

  Gadi smiles bleakly. “Yaron . . .”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Let’s leave operational staffing to the brass. You okay with that?”

  “Okay, but not happy.”

  “In this place there’s nothing to be happy about. Anything else?”

  The young captain looks suddenly sheepish. “I almost forgot.” He reaches into his placket pocket. “This was found in the sand.”

  “A cigarette butt?”

  “Not one of ours, sir. Lebanese.”

  “Clearly. Only one?”

  “Where the infiltrators were dug in, near the hang gliders, maybe twenty more.”

  “In the same spot?”

  “In a pile.”

  “One person, twenty cigarettes. How long does it take to smoke twenty cigarettes?”

  “I’m not a smoker, sir.”

  “It has to be hours. Are there tracks going the other way?”

  “None that we could find.”

  “Yaron, get these men searching a hundred and eighty degrees from the ambush point.” Gadi pulls a military cell phone from his chest pocket. “Skull, this is G-One. Requesting a general alert, status red. The entire eastern sector to a depth of twelve kilometers. Full air. We know how many crossed back. We don’t know how many stayed behind. I’ll remain at the scene.” He listens, then snaps it shut.

  “Sir, with your permission. There are twenty-two hang gliders. All of these are accounted for.”

  “How so?”

  “Aside from the one prisoner on foot and the other dragged, twenty-two sets of tracks.”

  “You ever see those videos where a hang glider instructor takes up a trainee?”

  “Fuck. We don’t know how many actually came over?”

  “Exactly. Have your men search for tracks going the other way.”

  “I’m sorry, Gadi. I—”

  “Yaron, is there anything that makes you believe this discussion is not over?”

  In the south, a cloud of dust rises as t
he first units of a tank brigade approach. In a few minutes, the sound will be deafening.

  25

  In a windowless meeting room, bare but for a large flat-screen on one wall, four officers sit around a conference table. Along with Zeltzer, Kobi, and Dahlia is a darkly intense man wearing thick tinted glasses and an even thicker mustache. He is Chief Supt. Zaid Jumblatt, the highest-ranking Druze in the Israel Police.

  Jumblatt smoothes his mustache, first one side, then the other. “So you are saying none of these three are candidates for extraordinary means?”

  “None of these is a candidate,” Dahlia says, not so subtly advancing the case for grammar as well as civil rights. “Two Arab troublemakers, would-be politicians. A university student and a housepainter. We still have free speech in this country.”

  “There is a difference between free speech and incitement, madam.” In not using her rank, Jumblatt is making sure she knows who is the professional. “They incited to riot.”

  “A demonstration,” Dahlia says. “My mother demonstrates every week before the Knesset. For one reason or another, thousands do. It’s called democracy.”

  “With rocks?”

  “Chief Supt. Jumblatt, even if rocks were thrown—”

  “Are you questioning whether rocks were thrown? We have six injuries. Chief commissioner, if we don’t make an example of these two, we will have twenty more just like them tomorrow, and two hundred more next week. I know these people. They hate us.”

  Dahlia closes her file. “Hate is not yet a crime in the State of Israel. Pending further information my decision is final. Nobody touches them. Incitement to riot is indeed an offense. In consequence, the matter will be referred to the Office of the State Prosecutor. Our hands will be clean. And that includes the case of the young man who crossed and recrossed the border.”

  “With all due respect, madam,” Jumblatt says, “this is bullshit.”

  “You’re a Druze, chief superintendent. You have relatives in Syria?”

  “I don’t cross the border illegally.”

  “There is no legal way to cross that border. We are in a state of war with Damascus. The man says he’s looking for a wife. According to his file he was found to be in possession of nothing more formidable than an erection.”

  “Madam, you are new to this—”

  “Chief superintendent,” Dalia says quietly.

  Zaid flashes a reluctant smile. The back of his mouth is largely gold. “Chief superintendent, then. If this bastard is not made an example of, we’ll have Druze crossing back and forth like ants at a picnic. In one hour I can know his every secret.”

  Kobi taps a pencil against the plastic water bottle in front of him. “Change, Zaid. Get used to it. From this point forward, it has been decided by powers higher than those in this room that independent counsel will make any and all decisions regarding enhanced measures. At this moment in the history of the State of Israel that independent counsel is Chief Supt. Barr.”

  “Three cases,” Zeltzer says from the head of the table. “Three negatives. Why am I not surprised?”

  Kobi raises his water bottle and sips from it. “With all due respect, Chaim, we have a situation before us that is a bit more urgent. And certainly more grave.”

  Zeltzer hawks up and spits into his handkerchief. “Brief her.”

  Kobi picks up the remote control in front of him and kills the lights. “Dahlia, I believe you know this man.” The flat-screen comes alive with a head shot of Mohammed Al-Masri. It is the beginning of a slide show: Al-Masri on CNN, Al-Masri with his wife and child at an anti-Israel rally at United Nations Plaza in New York, Al-Masri in the El Al departure lounge at Montreal International Airport, Al-Masri in detention at customs at Ben Gurion Airport. Finally, the suitcase, tan plaid with blue piping.

  “Do I know him? Mohammed Al-Masri was a fellow student at Pardes Hanna Agricultural High School. We studied in the same classes.”

  Zeltzer wipes his lips with the handkerchief. “What sort of Arab goes to school with Jews?”

  “An ambitious one,” Dahlia says. “Why are we looking at these photos?”

  Kobi turns up the lights. “Your friend was stopped at the airport with a suitcase containing the equivalent of one million dollars in euro notes. Give or take.”

  For a long moment the silence in the room is palpable, a presence all its own. Though Dahlia’s face is blank, the face of a veteran defense attorney receiving unwelcome news, her lips become slightly pursed and her eyes narrow. As quickly, she recovers. “I never said he was my friend.”

  “Certainly no friend of Israel,” Kobi says.

  “If that were a crime we would have to jail half the world.”

  “The crime here is currency smuggling,” Kobi says.

  “Obviously.” She does not wish to fight with the only person in this room she likes.

  “Less obvious is why,” Kobi says.

  She turns to him as though they are alone in the room. “How does Al-Masri explain the money?”

  “Mr. Al-Masri says it is to build a home for his mother in Baka al-Gharbiya.”

  Zeltzer comes into it. “Per our chief of intelligence here, you know the mother as well, chief superintendent. She works with your own mother. A peacenik.”

  “I know Zeinab Al-Masri and hold her in high regard.” Dahlia takes a breath. “As a girl, I have on numerous occasions been to her home. She is . . . above reproach.”

  “Nevertheless,” Kobi says, “we do not buy Al-Masri’s story.”

  “It is conceivable,” Dahlia hears herself saying. “Arabs do build houses.”

  “Conceivable but hardly necessary,” Kobi says. “Nothing prevents the legal transfer of foreign currency. This was smuggled. Hidden.”

  “Apparently not very well.”

  “That is exactly the point, Dahlia. Why hide the money, and why so clumsily?”

  She considers. “And why euros? Why not dollars?”

  “Only a guess,” Kobi says. “The highest denomination American banknote is one hundred dollars. Euros are available in five-hundred-euro notes. To bring in the same value in dollars would require an entire suitcase.”

  She nods. “Perhaps police and intelligence are no longer mutually exclusive categories.”

  “Also,” Kobi says, “American hundred-dollar bills are widely counterfeited. Thus hard to move. Euros are more sophisticated, with some forty security measures within the surface. Laser printers can duplicate dollars, but not euros. Hence they are more trustworthy and thus universally transferable.” He fingers the white ritual fringes that hang out of his trousers. “Many of these subtleties are not widely known.”

  Dahlia finds herself nodding. “You are suggesting that a professor of political science is unlikely to be aware of them?”

  Kobi looks her directly in the eye. “Not without the advice of, let us say, specialists.”

  “Where is he now?”

  Jumblatt leans forward. “He is my guest in this building.”

  “Since?”

  “Last night.”

  “Forty-eight hours. Then he must go before a judge.”

  Zeltzer slams his fist on the table. “To bring him before a judge we must admit we hold him. Once that occurs, we send a signal to his accomplices. And to the press. When that happens, he will doubtless get himself a lawyer. Someone like you, chief superintendent.”

  Dahlia pauses to consider whether this personal attack is worth responding to. “Chief commissioner, the law on secret imprisonment is well established. It is known as habeas corpus. The man is a citizen of the State of Israel. As such he is protected by its laws, just as you are.”

  Zeltzer’s face begins to grow red. “Chief superintendent, with all due respect, I am not a fucking traitor. We gave Al-Masri everything, a free university education even, demanding nothing but that he remain a loyal citizen. While Jewish boys died on the battlefield he was exempt from service. This is how he repays us? Scum!”

  “Forty-e
ight hours.”

  “I am in command here, chief superintendent. Not you, not Zalman Arad, not even the fucking prime minister.”

  “The law is the law, chief commissioner.”

  “In matters of national security the law is wrapping paper. We will keep this piece of shit until he tells us where the money came from and where it was headed. If he refuses to speak, we will take measures. This meeting is terminated.”

  As they stand, Kobi signals to Dahlia, his right hand palm down at his waist, patting the air: Be patient. His left hand twists the white ritual fringes at his side as though praying she will be.

  26

  In southern Lebanon, over serpentine mountain roads half-hidden by arching cedars, a column of three white vehicles marked UN on all sides and on their roofs makes its way northward. The first two vehicles are closed trucks. Inside the third, an ambulance, a bouncing shaft of sunlight illuminates Ari and Salim hog-tied on the floor, black sacks over their heads. The tracker’s leg is bleeding through crude bandages. Two Hezbollah fighters guard them, weapons pointed. Salim moans. A Hezbollah fighter kicks him. It is not even personal.

  27

  In the basement pistol range at Police Headquarters targets fall as Dahlia, wearing ear protectors, empties a 9mm magazine, then expertly drops the empty and inserts a fresh clip to repeat the exercise.

  Kobi stands behind her next to an instructor, who marks a form on a clipboard. Kobi applauds. “Impressive.”

  Dahlia raises her earmuffs higher on her head. “I’m sorry?”

  “Now I know why I want you on my side. Though I could have sworn you’re left-handed.”

  “You notice such things?” She reloads both magazines.

  “Part of my job.”

  “I am left-handed.”

  “You did that with your weak hand?”