The Gun Runner's Daughter

by Neil Gordon

  Of course, Dee had said to Alley when he told her about this conversation, Walsh had had to make hard decisions too about which cases could be made in court, and which had to be overlooked. There were no statutory arms violations charges brought in the Walsh prosecutions, even though arms export violations were discussed before Congress and broadcast throughout the world. Walsh didn’t even try, going for lesser charges of lying to Congress and even extraneous charges—North’s security fence, for example—instead, where the case could be made.

  But this, Dee felt, was different. This, Dee felt, as he considered the case before him, was something different indeed. Dymitryck’s investigation of Rosenthal, and his death, showed that there were forces swirling behind this trial that were being deliberately kept unacknowledged. And as for the people who were trying to keep them that way, Dee was no longer sure they knew what they were doing.

  It was, Allison thought, watching him sitting in her living room, on the morning of the biggest day of his life, a bit heartrending.

  She was to blame for the dissolution of all Dee’s certainty. As if she had infected her lover with a disease that had long plagued her, as couples used willingly to share incurable cases of syphilis.

  Dee remained silent, his face showing excitement, stage fright, as it should, but also a sense of dread, which it should not. She rose now, walked into the kitchen for another cup of coffee, and drank it, half sitting against the kitchen table, watching her lover in the living room through the small arch of the kitchen door. Then, her arms crossed, she spoke matter-of-factly, as if continuing, uninterrupted, the conversation of the night before.

  “I think you are making way too much of this.”

  He didn’t reply, and she went on.

  “What my grandfather would have called a ‘matzoh pudding.’ ”

  Now he spoke, without looking at her.

  “Your grandfather ever try a defendant whose guilt he doubted in a case he thought was politically motivated for employers he thought were concealing relevant evidence?”

  Nodding, she answered in a neutral tone.

  “Why don’t you go do your job and see how it pans out.”

  “You mean, go do what I’m told.”

  “The people who prepared this case weren’t idiots.”

  “That’s not the point, Alley.”

  “You’re overreacting,” she observed after a short silence, although she knew he wasn’t.

  He replied without emotion. “You know I’m not. Alley, everything I know about what’s really at stake here, I either found out for myself or learned from you.”

  She waited now. The moment of commitment was coming. With a distant pang of regret, she wished she could put it off.

  She tried again. “No one has shown any proof my father was following orders. They have a State’s witness, Dee. They have a crime. He has no standing in this government; the defense has only his word that he was directed by a government source.”

  “So what? We both know that’s just a cover-up. Dymitryck was killed precisely because he was looking underneath that.”

  “May have been. May have been. We don’t know who killed him. That’s not evidence. And besides, Dymitryck is—was—partisan.”

  “Partisan is exactly what this thing isn’t, Alley. I’m about to be sacrificed to a cover-up, and you know it. It’s just like Iran-contra—not even the Democrats on the committee wanted to see Reagan impeached. Now they don’t want to stir up anything about the Iraqi tilt. They’ll let me lose the fucking case before they do that.”

  That was supposed to be unanswerable, and indeed, Allison paused. Now the decision was directly before her, more baldly stated than ever before. When at length she spoke, it was quietly and with courage. “Then win the case. That’ll surprise them.”

  He answered with a withering look, then an apologetic one, then by putting his head between his hands. For a moment, there was silence, and had Dee looked up, he would have seen Alley watching him with the cool green light of her eyes.

  “When’s Levi on the stand?”

  “First thing after opening statements. Maybe this afternoon.” Dee’s voice came from inside his hands.

  “Start by asking him about Carlos Cardoen.”

  He didn’t look up, but his neck stiffened. Another moment of silence, this time a very long one. Then Alley went on in the same quietly happy voice, and what she was saying came straight out of the safe in Borough Park.

  “Ask about my father’s trip in 1985 to Chile. Ask what h e was doing there?”

  “Alley,” Dee interrupted. “What in God’s name are you talking about?”

  “Shut up. Listen. Stein says my father wouldn’t have gone ahead with the Bosnian sale without U.S. approval. Stein says my father’s a puppet for an administration contravention of the embargo. But you ask Michael Levi, bless his heart, what my father was doing in Chile, and listen to what he tells you.”

  “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, you do. Think. Carlos Cardoen was building cluster bombs and chemical weapons for Iraq. We know that because Teledyne was a supplier—zirconium, remember? He was selling them up to the day before the Gulf War. Only, Israel didn’t like that. They liked arming Iran, ’cause they’d been doing it since they trained SAVAK for the Shah, and they liked Iran to keep Iraq fighting, and anyway they never had wanted to give up the revenue stream. But they didn’t like arming Iraq. That wasn’t about money, it was about blood. They thought Hussein could turn his Scuds from Teheran to Tel Aviv, and it turned out they were right. My father went down to Chile as Israel’s direct representative to buy Cardoen off, then, when that didn’t work, threatened him.”

  Watching, listening with intense attention, Dee considered. Then he nodded.

  “Okay. This has nothing to do with my case.”

  “Listen to me, Dee. Cardoen was indicted by a grand jury in 1991, along with Teledyne. Pretrial, his lawyers proved U.S. government support for his arming. Proved. No one even denies it. The Iraqi tilt is documented. Right?”

  “Right. It didn’t have any bearing, though.”

  “Doesn’t matter. What matters is my dad, in Chile as a special envoy of the Israeli prime minister, pursued absolutely the opposite policy. Tried to buy Cardoen, then threatened to shut him down. He did it in direct contradiction of the U.S. government. And he did more.”

  Beginning to understand, Dee nodded. Alley went on.

  “So fuck Bob Stein and his claim that my dad was directed by someone in the administration, ’cause when he doesn’t like what the administration does, he goes his own way. And you can prove it.”

  Now Dee focused on her again. “How can I prove it?”

  “You ask Mike Levi, under oath, what I tell you to.”

  As if simply unable to comprehend what she was saying, Dee stared at her, the processes of his mind, complex, confused, transparent on his face. “That’s new evidence.”

  “So what? It’s not exculpatory on the charges you’re prosecuting, there’s no obligation to disclose. Levi’s taking an immunity bath in that court. You bring an illegality up, he’ll admit to it. Why not? And he doesn’t care if it implicates someone else: he can’t, he’s afraid of jeopardizing his immunity. You know how State’s witnesses are, they have no pride—they’re not allowed to. He’s not going to perjure himself for my father.”

  In the face of Dee’s amazement, she smiled suddenly.

  “Feeling better now?”

  3.

  Dee nearly blurted his next words. “Why are you telling me this?”

  Leaning against the kitchen table, her worn flannel nightdress hanging round on her naked shoulders, she showed him in profile her face, her breasts under her nightdress, her stomach. “I’ve been thinking about this, Dee, and I don’t want a lecture from you. You understand?”

  “No. I mean yes. I understand you don’t want a lecture. I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

 
; “Then listen. There are two people on trial here. Whichever loses is exiled from home. One’s my dad. Two’s you.”

  Dee nodded comprehension, then shook his head.

  “I see. You can’t do it. I can’t do it. He’s your father.”

  “And you’re an asshole.”

  Silence. And now Alley intensified her tone.

  “I told you I don’t want a lecture. My father’s fine. You think he’s in trouble? Look at this.” Rising suddenly, she stepped to the desk and pulled out an envelope containing perhaps a dozen of her father’s international bank account checks.

  “This bullshit means nothing to him. He owns half of Israel. By the time his appeals are finished, he’ll be a Knesset member, totally unextraditable. All they want from him, anyway, is a fine. You said so yourself: only an exchange of assets is at stake. You, you have to come out of it in one piece. I need you.”

  Dee’s reply was unexpected. He rose, crossed to where she sat in her wooden desk chair, knelt, and put his face against her stomach. She felt his lips through the nightdress, and let a hand fall to his hair. Like this, they rested for a moment. When he rose, straightening his hair, he said:

  “I’m not going to use it.”

  “Use it.”

  He crossed back to his briefcase, his expression altered to tenderness. Dee moved, Alley thought, was the person she had fallen in love with. Shrugging on his overcoat, he said:

  “What’s your source?”

  “His personal papers.”

  “I could never introduce them without provenance.”

  Feeling slightly desperate, she spoke urgently. “You don’t need to introduce them. Just ask Levi about the Israeli Iran-contra chronology Israel prepared for the joint committee. It’s printed everywhere in the world, Dee. It showed my dad down there in Chile: they had to give that to prove that he wasn’t in a Ghorbanifar meeting, and no one asked any questions about it. U.S. v. Teledyne makes Chile directly relevant. Levi’ll explain everything. I told you, he’s not going to perjure himself for the man he’s already turned State’s evidence on.”

  Overcoat on, he stared at her. “I’m not going to use it.”

  “I want you to use it.” It came out with unexpected force, and he looked up at her, analytically, for a long second. Then he looked at his watch, and swore.

  “I’m fucking late.”

  “You got plenty of time. It’s seven A.M.”

  “No, I don’t. I got a FedEx to drop off. And I’m due for breakfast in the office in fifteen minutes. Shit.” He opened his case, suddenly, clumsily, and pulled out a FedEx envelope and a letter, then reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and withdrew a pen.

  And Alley suddenly felt her heart pound in her chest.

  As if she could hear a precise, mechanical click as another piece of the puzzle fell into place.

  A feeling, she thought over the pounding in her chest, that was growing oddly familiar.

  Before she could think, she said: “Leave it for me. I’ll take it across town on my way to court.”

  “Would you? Thanks. Let me address it.”

  “No, Dee.” She crossed the room in a few quick steps and took the paperwork from him. “Let me address it, you get going. Just sign the slip.”

  “Okay, thanks. The address is on the letter.” He signed quickly, replaced his pen, closed his briefcase, and rose. From his height, in his suit, he regarded the woman before him, in a nightdress. But whatever words were in his mind were clearly too much to say now. He kissed her, then turned to the door. Then he turned again.

  A moment later, he emerged onto Jane Street, carrying his case, and stepped away down the street with the briefest of glances up to her window.

  Alone in the apartment, Allison’s heart slowed gradually. She leaned down for the FedEx slip on the couch, and held it under the light. The return address, preprinted by Federal Express, was from David Treat Dennis at the U.S. attorney’s World Trade Center office. His signature sat at the bottom of the form.

  It was amazing the speed with which it had come to her. Now, she thought, she could fill in a fresh form at the FedEx office. She’d go at lunch from court, when the trial recessed.

  The result? She had a clean, undated FedEx form preprinted with the U.S. attorney’s address on it, and with Dee’s verifiable signature.

  And, should someone need them, his fingerprints.

  Smiling, suddenly, in disbelief, her hand still on her forehead, now, in the empty apartment, she spoke out loud: “Jesus.”

  It had been an exciting morning.

  4.

  Dee’s state of shock carried him through the taxi ride from the West Village right down to his office, like a cheerful companion encouraging him in his hour of nervousness. A welcome companion, he thought, but a very strange one.

  The information she had just given him was like a talisman, and the magic energy that it held was the proof of her love. It moved him profoundly, and continued to move him through the breakfast meeting, a last review of the jury makeup by cards held in a polished wooden holder, showing the twelve jurors by seat and the four alternates.

  The two senior attorneys, Daniel Edelson and Beth Callahan, with whom he would sit at the prosecution’s table, were impeccably groomed and animated by an air of suppressed excitement. After the short meeting the three lawyers, together with the four paralegals who would sit behind them in the benches, crossed town by car. In front of the courthouse, from the window, he counted uplinks from NY1, WPIX, WOR, the three networks, and the BBC. Stage fright surfaced strongly at the sight, and he was grateful to be able to follow his well-groomed elders through the gauntlet of television and still cameras and up the stairs into the federal courthouse.

  Inside, the defense team had just arrived. Dee was conscious of shaking Bob Stein’s large, soft hand and looking, briefly, directly into his sharp eyes. Then he was in his seat and behind him he could hear the room filling slowly with people.

  There were many reporters, but even more observers. A strange entertainment, he thought with nervous detachment. He had a glimpse of Alley entering in a charcoal suit and sitting a row behind Bob’s team. Then, in front of him, a stenographer took her place, and fear, unexpected in its intensity, mounted. But there were still neither bailiffs nor a judge, and in the pause that followed the talisman which Alley had given him exerted again its strange power.

  What did it mean? To his surprise, he found that without his knowledge a corner of his mind had been following the ramifications of Alley’s strange betrayal of her father to its logical end. And that end was twofold.

  First, in legal terms, it altered the entire course of the prosecution. It meant that the questioning of Levi had to change dramatically, for one. Did he know how to do it? Like magic, Dee’s nighttime researches into the NAR ’s interest in Rosenthal came fluently to his mind: names, dates, locations. Even in his nervousness, he appreciated the irony that he should be using Dymitryck’s work to win this trial. It meant, in fact, that Stein’s key defense—the claim that Rosenthal was following government directions—could be dealt with on the very first day of trial. From there, it would be a rout.

  Second, in personal terms—and here Dee’s heart swelled—it meant that Alley was prepared, literally, to sacrifice her father for him. That was an astounding thought, all the more so in this state of heightened awareness under pressure.

  Time was running out. The bailiff entered and called all to rise, then Judge Thomas stepped behind the bench. Now he would instruct the jury. That could take a very variable amount of time. Then Dee would rise for opening statement, then Stein. After that, Levi would come in, and Dee would go to work.

  For the next ten minutes, Dee did not hear Judge Thomas.

  For the next ten minutes, Dee barely heard his thoughts.

  When he came to himself again, he found the judge was looking at him. And then he felt himself rising, as calm as he had ever been in his life.

  Head down, a thumb and f
orefinger pinching his lips, Dee Dennis paused for effect. When he looked up again, he spoke in a low tone. It was sufficient: the room was dead silent.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, during this trial, the defense is going to speak to you a lot about a certain portion of our government’s business. Specifically, you are going to learn about how our government regulates its contacts with other countries, and even more specifically, you are going to learn about how a certain class of arms transfers are made between our government and other governments. This class of arms transfers is usually referred to as covert, or gray-market. And the defense will claim that now, as in the Iran-contra affairs, the executive branch of our government directed Mr. Rosenthal’s activities.

  “That’s a strong argument, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s impossible to prove, and as such it’s also impossible to refute. Where we show you proof of guilt, the defense will claim that the proof of Mr. Rosenthal’s innocence is classified. Where we show you crime, the defense will talk about plausible deniability.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, if I could ask you one thing, it would be to not be fooled by this, this . . . confusion about covert activity. There are two things that I can tell you, from years of experience, are always true in the arms business. The first is that every person who makes an illegal arms deal pretends he has some CIA agent directing him; and the second is that every time an Israeli breaks the law selling arms, you can be sure that it’s in defense of the safety of Israel. But when it’s time to count the profits, don’t kid yourself that any of that money is going either to the U.S. taxpayer or to the Jewish people. It’s going into private, secret, numbered Swiss bank accounts, and the only people it’s helping are the individuals who broke the law to get it.

  “During the course of this trial I will show you in the clearest terms possible that not only has the Falcon Corporation historically operated in the world theater without any U.S. government direction, but that they have, again and again, specifically fought our government’s direction and acted precisely contrary to our interests. And I will do so in the perfect confidence that this jury will act on behalf of the citizens of the United States, whose membership in the United Nations specifically forbade the foreign military sales of which Ronald Rosenthal stands today accused. Thank you.”