The Gun Runner's Daughter

by Neil Gordon

  All the while knowing that to explain the processes occurring to her as luck was grossly to evade the question.

  That day, she went down to Bob Stein’s offices, where a secretary had arranged the complete documentation of her father’s trial, including the prosecution’s disclosure, in a little office off Bob’s. She thanked the secretary, accepted a cup of coffee, and started reading. She was there when Stein arrived in his office at eleven, there when he left at seven. And on Saturday morning, dawn found Allison Rosenthal in her father’s lawyer’s office, watching through the sealed window down to the river, in a rumpled business suit, drinking cold coffee from the afternoon before.

  She couldn’t blame Bob for his pessimism, not altogether. He, after all, did not know what she knew: he did not know Dee, did not know of his steadily shrinking confidence in the government’s case. From Stein’s point of view, she saw, whatever doubts Dee might harbor about the prosecution’s chances of success, there were very many reasons to expect it to succeed. The reasons for this were less in the facts than in Stein’s handwritten marginal notes.

  For where Dee saw a central moral weakness in his prosecution, Stein saw another, possibly more serious one, in his defense. What Stein saw was that no matter how skilled his defense, no matter how careful his jury selection, no matter how thorough his P.R. and spin control, there was a fact that cut through all the complex legal issues of the case.

  That fact stemmed from his inability to document the Clinton administration’s direction of Rosenthal’s Bosnian sale. And without that, when the day was done there was a rich Jew on trial, a very rich Jew, and one who, unlike any of the defendants in the Walsh prosecutions, was absolutely out of the running for any executive pardon. What Stein saw, and was right to see, was that even with the many and varied weaknesses in the U.S. attorney’s case, when the jury went out, they would convict a very rich Jew.

  As for the weaknesses in the prosecution’s case, Alley, with her privileged view of her father’s files from Borough Park, found to the contrary that the government knew a very great deal indeed about the Falcon Corporation. Not, of course, the truth, but a sufficiently plausible version of it to convict.

  She considered this bleak prospect until, carrying his Wall Street Journal and stopping in his tracks with surprise, Bob Stein entered his office and found her there, precisely where he had left her the evening before.

  She crossed to the couch and sat, rubbing her eyes with the heel of her hands while he lowered himself into his chair and regarded her curiously.

  “You find what you need?”

  She yawned, stretching her arms above her. “Umhmm. They have a good case.”

  Bob nodded, waiting, while her gaze abstracted, marshaling thought, and then came to focus on him again. “This is what I need you to do. Try to establish a distance between what Michael Levi knows and what the prosecution knows. Every chance you get.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “I mean, look for the limits. Is there a discrepancy? Do they only know what Levi told them as State’s witness, or are there corroborating sources? And what’s the source of Levi’s evidence? Insist on the sources.”

  Her authority, to judge from Stein’s response, had grown—backed up now by the gravity of her exhaustion. They paused while a secretary brought in coffee on a silver tray, and when she had gone, Stein shrugged.

  “Why?”

  She looked at him for a moment, as if in warning, then continued. “Also, the prosecuting lawyer, he’ll have rehearsed Levi’s testimony, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then badger him. Make the jury think he’s leading the witness.”

  “Alley. I attack their lawyer, the media’s going to be on my ass tout de suite. ”

  “I know. That’s good. Who’s their true prosecutor?”

  “Some hotshot kid, Ed Dennis’s son. They’re giving him the exposure on it, seeing they figure he can’t lose.”

  “He any good?”

  “Don’t know. So far he’s just following orders.”

  Allison nodded. “Well, make him look bad.” Now she rose to get her coffee from his desk, then leaned against the window while she drank it, looking out. “One last thing. I need daily transcripts of the trial. Can you do that?”

  “Yeah.” Bob nodded, as if having abdicated all responsibility for himself. “How do you want it?”

  “You have a computer geek here? Good.” She crossed the room now to her backpack, and took out a computer disk. “Just tell him this is my PGP key and Net address. Tell him to go via penet-fi, okay? That makes it anonymous. He can send it once a day.”

  Stein nodded, holding the disk—clearly an unfamiliar object to him—by the edge. Then he rose and stepped around the desk, looking slightly embarrassed. “Is that all?”

  Allison nodded, moving toward the door, as if to avoid a handshake, and Bob, uncharacteristically meek, asked:

  “Anything else you can tell me?”

  She shook her head, once, decidedly, and then she was gone.

  Outside, leaving Bob’s office and walking uptown through the bright autumn sun rising in the cold morning air, Allison stopped on Broadway. Stopped and stood, in the middle of the sidewalk, for a long, hesitant moment. As if unsure of where to go. As if unsure of what to do next. And for a moment, her confidence wavered.

  True, she had come a long way. True, the pieces on this crazy chessboard had so arranged themselves magically.

  Still, there was a lot that had to happen—a lot over which she had no control, and for a moment, everything that had seemed so clear, everything that had seemed so magnificently arranged as an itinerary, felt instead a mad series of disconnected events.

  Then she shook off the thought. In her heart she knew, surely and absolutely, that that which had to happen, would happen, and when it did, she would recognize it. She had taken the golden scepter, and now, against the king’s highest law, she was going to speak. And if I perish, she thought suddenly, with a flush of determination, I perish.

  Recognizing the quote, she blushed, clear through the light skin under her blond hair.

  CHAPTER 12

  October 24, 1994.

  New York City.

  1.

  On Monday morning, October 24th—opening day of U.S. v. Ronald Rosenthal— Nicky Dymitryck arrived in New York and checked into the room at the Sherry-Netherland Jay had reserved for him under the name of Neal Cassady.

  Very funny, Nicky thought, after three days of traveling across the country, leaning weakly against the open doorway while the porter placed his bag on a stand. Dimly, against the skin of his face, he felt a cold sweat, and his hand trembled as he gave the porter his tip. The door closed and he made it to the bathroom just in time to throw up, painfully, the paroxysms burning the length of his belly’s dual scars: one the slim track of a scalpel from his splenectomy; one the jagged, evil flare of a knife. When he could, he staggered into the room, flipped on the television, and tuned it to NY1, just in time to see the scene outside the federal courthouse where Ronald Rosenthal was about to go on trial.

  Three TV uplink vans were there, and on the screen Nicky recognized the Israeli ambassador entering, a small group from the Coalition for a Code of Conduct, a number of government observers, and reporters from every newspaper he knew.

  Jesus, he thought to himself as he lay, willing his nausea down, weakness washing over him. Every fucking person in the world wants a piece of Ronald Rosenthal.

  His trip had started out well. After a month in bed at his father’s house in Malibu, attended by a private nurse and discreetly visited by Stan’s doctor, his health, always resilient, had seemed to have returned nearly completely. True, Dr. Bromberg had warned him against getting up: Nicky needed at least another month of recuperation, he said. In another month, however, Colonel Eastbrook would be Senator Eastbrook, and Nicky had convinced Jay to make the arrangements for him to go east.

  From Los Angeles he traveled to Men
docino in the back of a van, feeling fine. That night, he slept in Bill Cusimano’s Mendocino house, back to the rocky coast and front protected by armed guards not, Nicky suspected, hired specifically for the purpose of protecting him. A suspicion confirmed later that night when Bill took him through a trapdoor under the kitchen sink and showed him, surreally lit under grow lights and bathed in a soft fall of artificial rain, a massive sea of green: shiny fat marijuana plants, glistening with resins and almost ready to harvest.

  Here, he knew, was the source of the funds that had kept Mimi Luria on the run for so many years, then paid her legal expenses at Stockard, Dyson in Boston. And here, he realized, was a nearly perfect place for Bill’s small organization to find out if anyone was following Nicky: on these narrow, winding Mendocino roads, where nearly every house harbored a plant or two of exquisitely hybridized dope, no stranger passed unnoticed. Lying that night on a futon on the floor of Bill’s young son’s room, a cold northern sea rain pattering the window, Nicky hoped that tonight was not the night that the little operation was going to be raided.

  From Mendocino to Denver, Nicky had driven in two days, high in the cab of a moving van, in the back of which five pounds of Cusimano’s bud was hidden in the household items of a San Francisco stockbroker, relocating to Denver. The van drove slowly, followed by two cars: business as usual for Cusimano’s well-oiled smoke operation. The driver, a lanky man of perhaps fifty, was unaware that he was carrying upward of two hundred thousand dollars worth of dope. He thought Nicky was a friend of the customer, needing a ride east. In any case, he was glad for the company.

  In Denver Nicky climbed down from the van and experienced the first pain in his belly. He checked into a Day’s Inn and waited for Jay to call. Here, examining himself in the mirror, he attributed his pallor to tiredness. No sooner, however, had he fallen asleep than Jay called and announced that he was virtually certain that Nicky’s departure from Los Angeles had gone unremarked, but that in his opinion Nicky should travel overland to New York.

  Nicky wasn’t interested in traveling overland; he was far too tired. When he hung up, he caught a cab to the airport and bought a ticket to Newark in the name of Don Hymans on a credit card supplied, along with a number of other pieces of ID, by Cusimano. Twelve hours later—after an evening sitting in the airport and a night in the plastic sanctity of an airplane, Nicky arrived at the Sherry-Netherland, exhausted, nauseous, the scars along his stomach throbbing. And no sooner was he alone in his room than he threw up.

  Now, feeling somewhat better, he watched Allison climbing the court steps in a charcoal-black dress suit on TV. Briefly, he considered where he was going to confront her. He knew she would be leaving the court at five, but he also knew where she lived, and that she collected her mail at a bar downstairs from her apartment: Gillian Morreale had gotten a New York process server in place, and he had in turn done the research.

  Outside, golden sunlight filled the well of the street, a crisp chill in the air that he could feel through the windowpanes, a chill that brought back in full force an awareness of where he was: on the East Coast in autumn. He slept for a time, waking with an image of Allison in his mind. She had been, in his dream, soundlessly cresting a small hill of grass and then, with a friendly wave, descending the other side, out of sight. Knowing that it was an image of anxiety did not diminish its influence. As he sat up, dizziness crossed his mind, and he had to lie down again. Finally, he managed to stand and light a cigarette.

  Smoking, he sat at the room’s little desk and unpacked from his briefcase the things he needed to prepare for that meeting. There were the relevant parts of his interview with Dov Peleg, which would show Allison that he knew what he was looking for. There was the legal documentation that, on his word, would be filed in Massachusetts court. This would show Allison that he knew how to get what he was looking for. And finally, there were the pictures he had taken at Ocean View farmhouse, in what seemed like another lifetime.

  Still, as Nicky moved himself heavily toward the shower—he seemed to be sweating an unusual amount—he wondered why he had the feeling that what was in front of him, as represented by these documentary tools of blackmail, was not really what he had come for.

  2.

  Earlier that day, while Nicky’s taxi had been pulling up to his hotel, Allison Rosenthal had been sitting at her desk before the window of her apartment.

  In front of her eyes was Jane Street, three stories down, deserted but for a lone man in a black knit cap walking a dog. Both dog and master’s mouths let puffs of steam out into the morning air, air that later would be warmed by the strong sun to the heat of another Indian summer day but which, this early morning, held far more anticipation of winter than reminiscence of warmth.

  Beyond apprehending the winter in the tableau, Allison, at her desk by the window, saw nothing of this.

  In her eyes was an image of the last days of summer on the island, the days shown in the set of photographs tacked to the wall above her desk: a wide stretch of yellow sand beach next to the luminous green sea, empty Atlantic coastline under the deep blue sky of summer, a lone gull hovering, about to dive, above a lazily curling wave.

  She looked at this last image, on the wall above her desk, for a long time. She looked at it as if in it hung the key to a decision she was weighing, and in this respect, the image was telling. It was as if the picture captured not just Ocean View farmhouse, but also the most abstract of everything that was at stake in the decision before her. A place is never just a place, she thought, but the sum of what had been experienced there. In this place was everything that had ever mattered in her lifetime. To look at a picture of Ocean View farmhouse was to feel a direct sense of her entire identity. Nothing, she thought, is ever only itself. But was the abstraction hidden behind this picture worth what she was about to do? Was even the truth worth what she was about to do?

  A half hour passed with the even rise and fall of her breath, the radiator emitting gasps of steam that ended in an abrupt metallic clank. It lasted until 6:27 exactly. Then Allison rose, fetched a cup of coffee from the kitchen, and walked into the bedroom to wake Dee.

  While Dee showered, she returned to her desk. The calmness of meditation had flown. Her heart rate, she felt, was increasing. That was not surprising.

  Dee emerged from the shower, dressed in the bedroom, and came out again, his shoe heels sudden on the floor. She rose now, examining him, his hair moussed away from his face, his cheeks close-shaved, and his eyes showing their peculiarly aqueous blue. It struck her, suddenly, as a cold color.

  She straightened his tie, the heels of her bare feet lifting from the wooden floor, and then stepped two steps back, toes first. But instead of taking his briefcase and heading for the door, Dee sank onto the living room couch, Alley returned to sit sideways in her desk chair, facing him.

  Alley wondered if his heart, too, was pounding. But then, she thought, he had no idea what was about to happen to him.

  And that, although Dee perhaps could not see it on her face, was on her mind as she regarded him, expressionless, from her perch at her desk.

  And yet Dee, too, was experiencing fear: perhaps most justifiably of the three scared people. His was, after all, the largest stage on which to play—for the moment, in any case. And he was arguably the least prepared for this exposure of the three. Nicky and Alley, fighting for their lives, were only too sure of what they were doing. He, on the other hand, was about to commit himself publicly, irrevocably, and, incidentally, illegally. That he felt badly frightened was no surprise.

  It was funny, she thought—not for the first time—the degree to which Dee had become another person. He had started so sure of himself, so confident in his position as Ed Dennis’s brilliant son, being happily groomed to assume his position in the Beltway hierarchy. Now, after peering at the world through her eyes, nothing any longer felt sure to him.

  Watching him, she remembered how he had come back from a weekend at home, not two weeks ago, an
d told her about a conversation with his father. He had not told his father about Nicky Dymitryck, nor about his researches into the NAR ’s dual interests in Rosenthal and Eastbrook. He had, however, told his father that he thought Eastbrook had information relevant to the Rosenthal prosecution, and he was considering requesting permission to depose him.

  The iciness of his father’s smile, to hear Dee tell it, betrayed his concern more than did his voice.

  “Dee. You don’t want to be looking to Eastbrook.”

  “Why? Defense is going to.”

  “No, sir. Defense will not say a word about Eastbrook.”

  That gave Dee pause. Then, he said: “Dad. Eastbrook and Rosenthal have been involved in the same business since Laos. There’s not a serious piece of arms trade analysis that doesn’t mention the one within three pages of the other.”

  “The same’s true about a good half dozen other players.”

  “We’ve deposed them already.”

  Against his will he felt a glare of adolescence seeping into the water of his eye, as if he were not a thirty-year-old man but a child again who’d just been caught with a quarter-z of pot. And after watching him awhile, his father spoke, quietly.

  “Deedee, it takes security clearances you’ve never heard of to depose Eastbrook. Discovery of classified materials alone would hold up your trial for a minimum of five years, and you’d still get nothing. And you don’t need it. You can convict Rosenthal on what you have.”

  “That’s my point. I can convict, but it’s with half the truth.”

  Now his father stood and, standing, showed his back to his son. “White House counsel feels that this is a misdirection.”

  “Is he willing to put it in writing?” Dee spoke before he could stop himself.

  And indeed, now it was White House counsel who turned to his son.

  “You have no authority to pursue any further investigation. You have had a privileged conversation with White House staff. Now go and make your case.”