Exile: a novel

by Richard North Patterson

  A preliminary inquiry addressed the possible complicity of members of the Secret Service or San Francisco police. This inquiry has included extensive questioning of every such person involved, polygraph examinations, a review of financial, telephone, and cell phone records, credit card charges, and other investigative steps, including wiretaps and electronic surveillance. However, no facts have been discovered suggesting possible involvement by any such person or persons.

  The final page, surprisingly terse, told David what he wished to know:

  Two days after the assassination the Israeli government ordered all security personnel involved to return to Israel. A liaison officer was provided by Israel to facilitate communications regarding these events. At this time, however, we are unable to pursue the possibility that a member of the prime minister’s security detail breached the arrangements designed for his protection by the Secret Service.

  David sat with Bryce Martel on a wooden bench near the carousel at the San Francisco Zoo, watching children riding the painted hand-carved animals that glided up and down to blaring calliope music. With the summer sunlight on his face, Martel watched the children with a smile that mingled pleasure with regret. “Some of those wooden animals,” Martel remarked, “are almost as old as I am. On the rare occasions when my grandchildren come to visit, they seem to like this. Certainly, I do.”

  Aware that Martel’s relationship with his only daughter had been stunted by divorce and secrecy, David let his father’s friend reflect for a time. Then Martel turned to him and said, “You wish to know more about the Israelis. Specifically, their security people. I assume that you’ve got something more that suggests they’ve sprung a leak.”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. The group assigned to Ben-Aron is the Special Protective Unit. They’re the elite, almost all of them exmilitary. In Israel, unlike here, military service is almost universal, a matter of national survival. So the pool of applicants is of a very high quality. The vetting is intense, and once you get the job, you lose all expectation of privacy—you’re subject to routine polygraphs and surveillance.

  “The Israelis leave nothing to chance: they fly their leaders in goverment planes so the security people can carry guns, and the planes themselves have antimissile systems.” Removing his glasses, Martel cleaned them with a crisp white handkerchief. “For this to have involved a member of Ben-Aron’s security detail would be almost unthinkable. Worse, even, than when Rabin was murdered by an extremist Jew.”

  “But is it impossible?”

  “It’s hard to imagine the Special Protective Unit taking in a traitor.” Martel put on his glasses again, briefly fiddling with their stems. “What seems somewhat more plausible is a current member going off the tracks—whether because of money or, perhaps, a religious or political conversion that revealed to him that he was protecting an enemy of the Jewish people. Even then, I don’t know how long such a person would be able to go undetected.”

  “Could this group be infiltrated by an extremist?”

  “Would members of the unit know extremists? Sure. As I say, they’re all exmilitary—the Israeli army has its share of ideologues. But recruiting one?” Martel resumed watching the merry-go-round. “Still, you clearly don’t think it’s the Americans.”

  “No.”

  Martel pondered this. “Even within this very select group,” he said at last, “one can make distinctions. Ben-Aron would have had three layers of protection—the inner perimeter, those literally closest to him, and therefore the most senior; the next most senior, the middle perimeter; then the outer perimeter. The inner perimeter would include only those in whom the Israelis had placed unshakable faith. As seniority declines, your thesis moves from the unimaginable to the merely difficult to conceive.”

  “Then what’s your advice?”

  “If you’re considering this, the Israelis certainly are—that’s why they pulled their agents out of the U.S. Obviously, you have to take a run at them.” Martel smiled wryly. “My own sense, I regret to say, is that your chances of meeting any of these people are dimmer than your prospects of entering Congress. But if the Israelis put all of them in a lineup and told you to pick one, I’d choose someone young.”

  “The outer perimeter, in other words.”

  “Precisely.” Turning to David, Martel concluded, “To kill Ben-Aron, you’d have had to be close to him. But to betray him, you only needed to know about his change of route. From there, all that’s required is a cell phone, and complete indifference to your future. And, of course, a reason.”

  21

  The Israeli consulate occupied a reconfigured mansion a few blocks from Carole’s penthouse, its high ceilings and decorative moldings a remnant of affluent San Francisco from the days before the federal income tax. But the office given Avi Hertz seemed barely wider than it was tall, furnished only with a desk, two chairs, and a telephone. He waved David to a chair with no effort to ingratiate, bringing to mind Martel’s admonition: “Avi Hertz has dedicated his life to one thing: the survival of the State of Israel. How he deals with you will be determined by that, and nothing else.” Though his elfin face had a trace of humor, his laconic speech, economy of movement, and impenetrable gaze suggested the self-discipline through which Hertz had become the human equivalent of a one-way mirror, absorbing much while betraying nothing.

  With a slight gesture of his left hand, Hertz indicated the letter on his desk. “I have read your letter, Mr. Wolfe. Reduced to its essence, you seem to want any information our government has about Hana Arif, Saeb Khalid, and the assassins of our prime minister. Including any supposed lapses in his protection, and culminating in sworn depositions of anyone in his security detail who was present when it happened. Or was there something more?”

  Hertz’s uninflected tone made this catalog sound preposterous, even to David. Determined to be as opaque as Hertz, he answered, “Nothing more.”

  “You understand the difficulties, of course.”

  David shrugged. “I understand my client’s difficulties. Consistent with my obligations to her, I’ll try to accommodate yours.”

  Hertz tented his fingers. “The principal difficulty,” he said finally, “is that you see your interests as primary, and the interests of Israel as subordinate. In your conception of reality, we become an arm of your investigation—the Attorney General’s Office, the Shin Bet, even the Mossad all working on your behalf.”

  “I only want whatever helps my client,” David answered, “subject to the same conditions the judge imposed to protect my own government. There’s a place where our interests intersect: your government is interested in much more about the assassination than the case against Hana Arif, and in order to defend her I need to learn much more.”

  “Was that haiku?” Hertz inquired. “Or merely a paradox? In either case, our inquiry into our prime minister’s death involves the most sensitive matters. It must be built slowly and with great care. What is at stake for us is much larger, and more concrete, than your speculations on behalf of a single client—”

  “Tell me this,” David interrupted bluntly. “Does the government of Israel believe, or at least suspect, that someone in the prime minister’s security detail was complicit in his murder?”

  Hertz’s expression did not change. “I am authorized to tell you,” he said, “that we have found no information that would tend to exonerate Ms. Arif.”

  “Or implicate her?”

  For the first time, Hertz’s tone betrayed impatience. “If we had such evidence, we would immediately inform your government. Which, as I understand your system, would be required to provide it to you.

  “That is not our situation. We have no evidence that Arif did not do exactly what she’s charged with—conspire to assassinate Amos Ben-Aron. And no evidence that she did, beyond what is already known to you.”

  “Nothing more?” David kept his tone polite. “She didn’t, for example, buy motorcycles or steal explosives?”

  He
rtz’s gesture, an upward turning of palms, suggested that the question was too absurd to answer.

  “So who did?” David prodded him. “Not Al Aqsa, surely.”

  Hertz touched the crew-cut bristles of his thinning hair, then gazed silently at David. “Now you are over your head,” he said finally. “And well beyond the scope of your defense.”

  “That’s not for you to say,” David answered. “Which is why we have a judge.”

  “Which is why you’re here,” Hertz rejoined. “To cement your predicate for whatever legal tactic you’re pursuing.” The disdain behind his words was apparent. “I do not begrudge you your priorities—you are, after all, a lawyer. But only that, and for a woman accused of helping to do Israel great harm. We have many such enemies, and much larger priorities with which you do not seem concerned. I can only ask that you attempt to comprehend them.”

  David let his own annoyance show. “I’ve had this conversation before, with Sharpe—the same condescension, the same lofty references to national security, the same invocation of grand ‘priorities.’ My job is to make sure Hana Arif isn’t swallowed by everyone else’s ‘priorities’—geopolitical or, less grandly, the merely political.

  “The question of whether an Israeli chosen to protect Ben-Aron conspired to help kill him could cause your government great trouble, perhaps even determine which forces within Israel hold power. And it also bears directly on whether Hana was part of a larger design, or its victim. About which, I suspect, your government may already know more than it is saying.” David paused to choose his words with care. “I know that this is delicate, especially if someone in Ben-Aron’s security detail facilitated a suicide bombing planned by those who want Israel to disappear. Perhaps there’ll come a time when your priorities, and mine, will require some accommodation.”

  Hertz took the time to weigh David’s words, absorbing both their substance and the unstated threat they were intended to convey. “Your letter says you plan to visit Israel,” he said simply. “Consistent with our interests, we will help you if we can.

  “To repeat, we have nothing that would exonerate Arif.” His voice, though softening, betrayed a buried anger. “We remember the Holocaust well, Mr. Wolfe. We are not in the business of murdering the innocent because they are not ours. Or protecting the guilty because they are.”

  “So,” Hana said gently, “now you are at odds with the Israelis. And still you do not speak of your fiancée.”

  It was David’s first visit since the polygraph examination, and he felt more at sea than before: to his doubts about her innocence and his fear of being manipulated to some ruinous end, the examination had added a sense of guilt about mistrusting her. He had no heart to speak of this, nor to engage her sympathies by intimating what he had sacrificed to help her. “How many times in our relationship,” he asked, “have you begun a sentence with ‘So’? And what percentage of those sentences have caused me some discomfort?”

  Hana’s lips had the trace of a smile, though her eyes did not. “So,” she persisted, “Carole is no longer your fiancée.”

  “That particular sentence,” David answered, “proves my point.”

  Hana’s eyes met his. “I am sorry,” she said quietly, “and ashamed. I discover that being charged with murder has created a peculiar narcissism. ‘Will he help me?’ ‘Will he understand how much I need him?’ And, yes, ‘Will he believe me?’ ”

  She paused, looking down for a moment. “I was angry at you, David. Then I considered how much defending me must be costing you. For thirteen years, you remained in my heart and mind the David you were to me at Harvard. You had the right to expect more contemplation of what I’ve done to your life as it really is. Or was.”

  Though touched, David steeled himself against his own emotions. Evenly, he said, “You have a family, you’ve been charged with a capital crime, your face is on the cover of Newsweek, and you have a few concerns about who will raise your daughter. I have no expectations of you.”

  “Perhaps you should.” To his surprise, Hana reached across the table, resting her hand on his wrist. “I want to be a friend, if it is not too late.”

  Instinctively, David glanced at the window, to see if a guard was watching them. Seeing this, Hana withdrew her hand.

  “And your fiancée,” she asked at length, “is that beyond repair?”

  “It would seem so.”

  “Because of me,” she said tonelessly. “And now the Israelis are unhappy with you as well.”

  “Yes. But that, at least, is relevant to your defense.”

  With veiled eyes, Hana absorbed this tacit rebuff. “Then tell me.”

  “There’s a conflict,” David began, “between your rights and what the U.S. and Israel perceive as their national security interests. How the U.S. and Israel define those interests may also conflict: to maintain this prosecution, our government may want the Israelis to cooperate with me more than the Israelis want to.”

  “Which makes Sharpe’s position more difficult?”

  It was easier, David discovered, to speak to Hana as the lawyer she once had been. “It could,” he answered. “As a first resort, she’ll say that her case against you is a straightforward murder prosecution, made remarkable only by the identity of the victim—in essence, that I’m using Ben-Aron’s identity to expand the case in a way that threatens the interests of both countries but has nothing to do with your innocence or guilt. And I’ve got only two means of leverage against the Israelis themselves: to pressure them through the media and, with Judge Taylor’s assistance, through Sharpe.”

  “Do you have any grounds for that?”

  “I think so.” David considered how to describe where matters stood. “The Americans, Israelis, and you are all part of a three-way Catch-22. But

  we’ve got a chance of putting the Israelis to a choice: either they tell me what they found out about Ben-Aron’s assassination—however painful, and wherever it may lead—or they jeopardize Sharpe’s ability to maintain a case against you.”

  Hana tilted her head, gazing into his face. “At what cost to you, David?”

  “How do you mean?”

  She paused to choose her words. “You live in a frightened country— not the one that existed when we met. I have seen myself in the magazines: I am an alien creature, like Bin Laden, and what I am accused of makes Americans fear for their children and the world they will live in. Just as, for years, I have feared for Munira.

  “Now you, who are Jewish, are tampering with those same existential fears in the Israelis—worse, you’re suggesting that their enemies are not just Palestinian but, perhaps, Jewish. This must be part of what happened between you and Carole.” Her voice was gentle. “And so I cannot help but wonder, amid all this, just how you are living.”

  David summoned a deflective smile. “On Chinese takeout, mostly.”

  “At least say this much,” Hana asked quietly. “Does Carole know what we were to each other?”

  “Yes,” David answered. “Does Saeb?”

  Hana looked down, then shook her head. “Never in words.”

  For a long minute, they shared a silence. Then Hana looked up at him. “I would like to see Munira, David. Without her father if I could. It has been too long.”

  Another moment passed, and then David nodded. “I’ll try to arrange it,” he told her.

  22

  In the face of our government’s allegations,” Larry King asked, “why do you believe so strongly in the innocence of Hana Arif?”

  For weeks, David had weighed the need to pressure the Israelis against the risk of antagonizing Judge Taylor. Now he sat in a semidarkened room at CNN’s San Francisco outpost, trying to project sincerity into the glass eye of a camera; on a TV monitor to one side, King’s mouth, by virtue of a three-second delay, had stopped moving even though his voice still sounded in David’s earpiece. “Ms. Arif passed a comprehensive lie detector test,” David answered. “She denied any knowledge of the Ben-Aron assassination,
the assassins, or the acts she’s accused of committing. The polygraph showed her answers to be truthful.

  “I took these results to Marnie Sharpe, the United States attorney, and offered to make Ms. Arif available for another examination, conducted by the FBI. Ms. Sharpe refused my offer.” David paused, then added firmly, “Hana Arif is being sacrificed on the altar of political expedience—quite literally, if she’s executed despite this new evidence that she’s been framed. And Americans, Israelis, and the world will still know nothing about the conspiracy to murder Amos Ben-Aron.”

  On the monitor, David’s mouth was still moving as King asked, “Do you have an opinion as to who could have planned such a horrific act?”

  David had prepared his answer with care. “At this time, Larry, I’m not free to tell you everything I know or suspect. But I believe that the prime minister’s death resulted from a deliberate leak to the assassins that his motorcade was changing routes. That’s why they were on Fourth Street, and that’s why they were able to kill him.

  “There’s no evidence I’m aware of that the leak came from the Secret Service or the San Francisco police.” For a moment, David hesitated. “That leaves the Israelis. Unfortunately, Israel has refused to share with the defense, or even the United States government, what its own investigation has uncovered.

  “In short, the United States is prosecuting Ms. Arif while ignoring that she’s passed a lie detector test, and Israel is refusing to address whether one of its own people may have helped murder its prime minister—”

  “Are you saying,” King interrupted, “that the Israelis and the Americans are perpetrating a cover-up?”