David glanced at the jurors. Across the gulf of experience and culture, Bob Clair seemed to scrutinize the witness with a muted horror, as if looking at the Arab terrorist of America’s nightmares. “How did Hassan respond?” Sharpe asked.
“At first Iyad was quiet. Then he said that God would give me what I sought.”
“Did he say how that might happen?”
“Not then. But the next time we met, he asked me to his apartment, for dinner.” Jefar sat back, speaking in the monotone of a man narrating into a tape recorder. “I expected there would be others. But Iyad was alone. He showed me pictures he had taken of the Jewish security wall and the barriers the IDF had built around Birzeit. When I expressed my anger, he sat down, looked me in the eye, and asked if I was ready to consider martyrdom.”
“What did you say?”
At the neck of Jefar’s open shirt, his throat seemed to twitch. “That I was.”
Sharpe paused, intent on her witness. “Did Hassan then say what he meant?”
“He said that Muhammad Nasir had assigned him to carry out a special task, and wished for me to join. But that this involved performing my final service.”
“How did you respond?”
Jefar, David saw, seemed to look everywhere but toward Hana. “I was scared,” he said. “But I was also proud. I had asked Muhammad Nasir for this favor once before. So to Iyad, I said, ‘Tell me what Muhammad asks.’ ”
As Sharpe nodded her encouragement, David saw Ardelle Washington bite her lip. “And what did Hassan say?” Sharpe asked.
Jefar swallowed, then looked directly at the prosecutor. “It had been decided that revenge on the IDF was not enough. We would show our resolve by cutting off the head of the Jewish serpent, the Zionist who had emptied my sister’s womb.”
David felt his skin grow cold. Beside him, Hana drew a breath. “And did you agree?” Sharpe asked.
“At first, I was filled with wonder. ‘How is this possible?’ I asked Iyad. He answered that Muhammad had assured him that the plan was carefully laid out, but that its details would be hidden, even from him. Each step would be revealed to us just before we took it.”
“Did Hassan say how the plans would be revealed?”
“There would be the tightest operational security. I was not to speak to Muhammad Nasir, or even visit Jenin. All instructions would come to Iyad alone. He would pass them to me.”
“Did Hassan say who would pass him the instructions?”
As though in a trance, Jefar merely nodded.
“We need an audible response, Mr. Jefar.”
“We needed someone close at hand,” Jefar said slowly, “who could also travel to America. Someone whose allegiance to Al Aqsa was not known.”
“Did Hassan tell you who that was?”
“In Mexico, I asked him. Iyad hesitated, then swore me to secrecy.” Jefar looked down. “It was a professor at Birzeit, he said. A woman named Hana Arif.”
Though she should not have been surprised, Hana appeared stunned, and David saw her skin turning pale. “Did you know Professor Arif?” Sharpe asked Jefar.
“On sight, yes. But only that.”
“And do you see her now?”
Hassan blinked. Then, as he had not done before, he looked directly at Hana, pointing as he did so. In a parched voice, Jefar said, “That is her.”
On the other side of David, Angel Garriques gripped his pencil with the fingers of both hands. Taylor still regarded the witness. “Mr. Jefar has hours to go yet,” she said to Sharpe. “We’ll recess for ten minutes.”
As Taylor left the bench, Hana turned to David. “For Jefar, this is the truth.”
David nodded. Turning, he saw Saeb Khalid, shoulders slumped, staring at the floor.
For the next hour of testimony, Sharpe led the witness through each fateful move toward the assassination: the assassins’ departure from Ramallah; their circuitous route to Mexico; their illegal crossing into the United States; their acquisition of new identities; the long drive to San Francisco. Then, step by step, the days spent using and disposing of cell phones; the acquisition of the van; the container filled with the tools of assassination, including a map showing the route of the motorcade. Jefar recited this in a sepulchral tone—except for the moment when they opened the container, when Jefar’s face and voice expressed a kind of wonder. Each step, David noticed, seemed to draw the jury deeper into the world of the two assassins; each step was preceded by a cell phone call, involving Hassan alone, after which Hassan referred to his caller as “she” or “her.” And each reference caused one juror or another to glance at Hana.
Toward the end of this litany, Sharpe introduced Prosecution Exhibit 62, handing it to David before passing it to the jury. Silent, Hana stared at a slip of paper bearing her own cell phone number.
When Sharpe gave it to Jefar, she asked, “Can you identify Exhibit Sixty-two?”
“Yes. Hassan brought it with him to San Francisco. I saw him throw it in a waste can at the last motel.”
“Did he tell you what the number represents?”
“It was the international cell phone number of Professor Arif.”
Angel Garriques stirred. “Perfect for NSA surveillance,” he whispered to David. “Who’d be that stupid?”
Hana kept watching the witness, awaiting his account of the assassination.
This was not long in coming. Though terse, Jefar’s account of the plot’s last few hours exerted its own spell; as the witness spoke, David envisioned the assassins dressing in their police uniforms before dawn; driving to an empty lot south of Market Street; pulling the motorcycles from the van as dawn broke; biding time for several hours until, their faces concealed by helmets and goggles, they took up their stations near Market and Tenth, nervously awaiting the motorcade that would mean their own deaths. Iyad Hassan, Jefar recalled, had begun praying under his breath in Arabic. To Jefar, he had murmured, “It is just as she promised.”
Then Hassan’s cell phone had rung. “As Iyad listened,” Jefar told Sharpe, “he became upset. ‘That was her,’ he told me. ‘They’ve changed the Zionist’s route.’ ”
Bob Clair, David saw, listened to this with a look of curiosity. “What happened then?” Sharpe asked.
“We must go, Iyad said—quickly. So I followed him to Fourth Street.”
“Did he keep the cell phone with him?”
“No. He threw it in a trash barrel.”
“When you reached Fourth Street, what did you do?”
Jefar inhaled, his eyes half shut. “We went a little way down the block, and waited. After a minute or so, the first limousine turned the corner.”
Sharpe moved closer, her quiet tone underscoring the moment. “Did you have a plan, Mr. Jefar?”
“We were to join the motorcade alongside the Zionist’s limousine. Iyad would be the first to drive into its rear door and detonate. I was to follow.” Jefar’s voice was husky. “Even if Iyad failed, I’d blow the Zionist straight to hell.”
“Did you follow these instructions?” Sharpe asked.
Jefar’s answer held a touch of shame. “We joined the motorcade, but when I saw the Zionist’s face, I could not stand to wait.”
“What did you do?”
“I pushed the switch.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing. Then Iyad turned his motorcycle into the Zionist’s limousine . . .”
“And then?”
Jefar looked down. “Everything exploded,” he said softly. “Even the air itself.”
Sharpe stepped closer still. “Did you expect to die?”
“At the moment I pushed the switch.” Pausing, Jefar summoned a kind of dignity. “I did not expect to be here. I do not wish to be here now.”
There would be more questions, David knew—the moment when Jefar found himself alive; his recuperation; his dealings with the government. But the rest did not much matter. Jefar had made Sharpe’s case.
8
As a prosecutor, Dav
id Wolfe had been well known for relentless, even ruthless, cross-examinations; in one case the defendant, a stock promoter who had bilked retirees out of pension money, had asked for a recess in order to vomit. But a half day of watching Ibrahim Jefar, combined with the incendiary crime with which Hana stood accused, had confirmed David in a different strategy: a patient attempt to probe any holes in Jefar’s account. At its core was the troubling sense that Jefar had told the truth, and that the liar—if there was one—was Iyad Hassan.
On the witness stand, Jefar looked wary and diminished. Approaching him, David stopped a comfortable distance away, hands in his pockets. The manner he chose was factual, dispassionate.
“As I understand it, Mr. Jefar, you never met Hana Arif.”
Jefar gave a quick bob of the head. “That’s true.”
“You never spoke to her about assassinating Amos Ben-Aron.”
“No.”
“You don’t even know whether, in fact, she’s affiliated with Al Aqsa.”
The witness shifted his weight. “I only know that from Iyad Hassan.”
“And it’s also true that Hassan is the sole reason you believe that Muhammad Nasir, the former leader of Al Aqsa, wanted you to assassinate Amos Ben-Aron.”
A defensive look crept into Jefar’s eyes. “That is true.”
David paused. “If I told you that Muhammad Nasir claimed that he was not involved in this assassination, and that he asserted that Hana Arif was not a member of Al Aqsa, whom would you believe?”
“Objection.” A barely controlled anger jackknifed Sharpe from her chair. “There is no foundation for that question, nor can there be. Muhammad Nasir is dead.”
“Nasir wasn’t dead when I met with him,” David told Taylor swiftly. “I’m probing the basis for the witness’s accusation against Ms. Arif.”
“With a groundless and unprovable hypothetical—”
“Enough,” Taylor snapped. “Both of you. Please approach the bench.”
They did so. “All right,” Taylor said to Sharpe in a lower voice. “Make your point here. Though I think I know what it is.”
“I’m sure you do, Your Honor. In his last few days of questioning, Mr. Wolfe has effectively told the jury that three supposed witnesses have been murdered. This last question is based on Mr. Wolfe’s self-serving account of a dead terrorist’s self-serving statement. It’s not only utterly unprovable, it’s hearsay—”
“So is Jefar’s entire testimony against Hana Arif,” David interrupted.
“Mr. Wolfe,” the judge said sharply. “We both know what you’re up to. You posed an inappropriate question, to which Ms. Sharpe was bound to object, and then followed up with a gratuitous statement couched as argument. Do it again and you’re looking at a mistrial.”
David bowed his head, feigning a penitence he did not feel. “It’s up to you,” the judge told Sharpe. “I’ll be happy to instruct the jury to ignore Mr. Wolfe’s statements about Muhammad Nasir.”
Sharpe shot David a look of spite. “Thank you, Your Honor. But I’m afraid that repetition will only serve his strategy.”
“All right,” Taylor said to David. “No more of this.”
“Thank you, Your Honor.” Satisfied, David returned to his station in front of the witness. “Let’s turn to the assassination plan itself,” he said to Jefar. “Did you discuss that plan with anyone but Hassan?”
Jefar seemed to hunch, becoming smaller. “Iyad told me not to—that this was Muhammad’s order. So I told no one.”
“Do you know whether Hassan lied about that?”
Jefar blinked. “I believed him...”
“Why?”
“Because he told me.”
“To summarize, then, all you ever knew about the plan to kill Ben-Aron was what Iyad Hassan told you.”
Jefar fidgeted with his shirt collar. “That is right.”
David tilted his head. “This morning, you testified about a prior conversation with Muhammad Nasir in which you asked to become a martyr. Did you tell him specifically what you wanted?”
“That I wanted to die as a bomber in the bastard country called Israel.”
“And how did Muhammad Nasir respond?”
Across the courtroom, David saw Sharpe stir, instinctively nettled by the reference to Nasir. But this question, unlike that to which she had objected, was rooted in Jefar’s own testimony. And its impact on the witness was so palpable—discomfort and bewilderment—that David knew at once that what Nasir had told him about admonishing Jefar was true. The witness rubbed both temples with his fingertips, as though to ward off a headache. “What Muhammad told me,” he finally answered, “was that it was better to kill the IDF soldiers occupying our land than Jewish civilians in the land that they thought was theirs. And that it was more useful for me to live as long as I could.”
“Am I correct in understanding that Nasir—and also Al Aqsa—was willing to accept an independent Palestine living in peace with Israel?”
“Under certain conditions—an end to settlements, fair borders, recognition of the great injustice done our refugees.”
“Isn’t that what Ben-Aron wanted?”
“So he said,” Jefar answered bitterly. “But my sister could not hear him.”
“And Iyad Hassan,” David prodded softly, “knew all about your sister before you ever told him.”
Jefar looked down. “Yes.”
“Other than Hassan, do you have any reason to believe that Muhammad Nasir, your commander in Al Aqsa, had changed his mind about the effectiveness of suicide bombings?”
“No.”
“Or about whether you should become a martyr?”
“No.”
In the jury box, Bob Clair raised his eyebrows, as though making a mental note. From voir dire, David knew that Clair was a linear thinker— he liked things to make sense, and here they did not. Emboldened, David asked Jefar, “Is it possible that Iyad Hassan, knowing about your sister, exploited your hatred of Ben-Aron to enlist you in an assassination planned by people other than Al Aqsa?”
“Objection,” Sharpe called out. “This is yet another hypothetical question, lacking any foundation in the evidence.”
Holding up her hand for silence, Judge Taylor turned to David. “Mr. Wolfe?”
“The question’s not only legitimate,” David said firmly, “it goes to another critical aspect of this case: whether the origin of the plot as described by Ibrahim Jefar—and by the prosecutor—is fact or fiction.”
“I understand,” the judge replied. “Perhaps you can frame the question in some other way.”
“Thank you, Your Honor.” Turning back to Jefar, David asked, “Do you personally know who designed the assassination plan?”
“No.”
“So Hassan could have been working for anyone, right?”
Briefly, Jefar looked dazed, as though the last solace of his days and nights—that he had carried out a mission authorized by Muhammad Nasir—was being stolen from him. Quietly, he said, “I cannot know.”
“This morning you mentioned operational security—the need to keep all details secret. Yet Hassan told you that Hana Arif was his handler. Did you wonder why, in Ms. Arif ’s case, Hassan breached operational security?”
“I asked him this,” Jefar answered wearily. “Iyad expected us to die.”
This was the answer David had hoped for. “Did Hassan give you the name of anyone else involved?”
“Only Muhammad Nasir.” Abruptly, Jefar added, “About Hana Arif, surely Iyad told me the truth. He had her telephone number on a slip of paper.”
“How did you know it was Ms. Arif ’s number?”
Jefar hesitated. “Iyad told me. But this is true, correct? Iyad called her on that number.”
David placed his hands on his hips. “How do you know that, Mr.Jefar?”
Jefar glanced at Sharpe. “From the prosecutor. This was shown on Iyad’s cell phone, yes?”
David smiled. “Lawyers, as Ms. Sharpe has been at
pains to point out, aren’t witnesses. Based on your own personal knowledge, did Mr. Hassan call the cell phone number on that slip of paper?”
Jefar shrugged. “I cannot know.”
“And even if Hassan did call, you can’t know who—if anyone— answered.”
“No.”
“Do you know who gave Hassan the piece of paper?”
Jefar paused again. “Iyad said it was Professor Arif.”
“We’re back to Hassan again,” David said more harshly. “Do you know, Mr. Jefar, who gave Hassan the piece of paper with Ms. Arif ’s cell phone number?”
“No.”
“You also testified that, just before the assassination, Hassan threw his cell phone in a trash basket. Do you know why?”
“He always got rid of them, every day or two. He didn’t want our phone calls traced.”
“Twenty minutes from death? Given that Iyad Hassan was blown to pieces, what do you expect would have happened to his cell phone if he’d kept it with him?”
Jefar folded his arms. “Perhaps we would have been intercepted by the police. Who knew what would happen?”
It was an effective answer. David hesitated, then asked, “When Hassan threw the cell phone in the trash barrel, you were on Market Street, correct?”
“Yes.”
“And Market Street was lined with people who could have seen him do this.”
“I suppose so, yes.”
David paused. “That was the cell phone, was it not, on which Hassan had just received a call telling him that Ben-Aron’s route had changed.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know the number of the phone used to place that call?”
“No.” Jefar hesitated, then asked, “But wouldn’t Iyad’s cell phone also show that?”
“What exactly would it show?”
Jefar looked bewildered, as if he could not fathom how David could be so obtuse. “A cell phone number,” he answered.
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