Exile: a novel

by Richard North Patterson

  “That’s not fair,” David interrupted in a low voice. “This isn’t you, Carole.”

  She sat down, imploring now. “Then tell me, please, what about me isn’t enough for you? I feel like you’ve seen your long-lost love, and now you’re looking at what you’ve had to settle for—me.”

  “I didn’t go looking for this.”

  “No. She came looking for you. And Amos Ben-Aron.” Carole’s voice rose. “I’m afraid for you, too—that she’ll destroy you. You’ll be like the walking dead.”

  Sitting beside her, he put his arms around her. “I still want our life . . .”

  She pulled away. “Then it can’t include Hana Arif, or the life we’ll lead will be the one she’ll leave you with. No politics. No community to call your own. No sense of who you are, or what limits that imposes. David Wolfe, the wandering Jew.” Her voice filled with anguish. “Does what happened to my father mean nothing to you? Do you even have a conscience?”

  David felt the pain cut through him. “I have a conscience. Like it or not, it’s telling me I’m not just some Jewish prototype to be plugged into a slot.”

  “I have a conscience, too,” Carole shot back. “And the deepest part of it remembers seeing the best hope of Israel blown into a thousand bloody pieces. By this woman you’re defending.” Tears sprang to Carole’s eyes. “You can’t love me and do this for her. You can’t even love yourself.”

  Abruptly, she turned away, face in her hands. David reached for her. “We’ve both said way too much, Carole. We need time to work this out.”

  “There won’t be anything left to work on.” Carole turned to him, eyes still moist, voice drained of all emotion. “I love you, David, more than you can ever love me. I thought that I could live with that. But now I know way too much. Please, at least let me keep my dignity.”

  Heartsick, David watched her leave, taking the life they had made with her.

  In the white room, David sat across from Hana. It was strange—he felt as lost as she must. Softly, she said, “I thought I might never see you again.”

  “So did I.”

  Hana hesitated. “And your fiancée? How does she feel?”

  “What makes you ask?”

  “Two nights ago, when you gave all the reasons you could not help me, her name never passed your lips. Even then, I couldn’t help but notice the omission.”

  David sat back. “Carole’s not germane to this discussion.”

  Hana gave him a probing look. “I think perhaps she is. Do you love her?”

  “Yes.” Despite his deep instinct of reserve, David felt the sudden need to talk. “She’s very smart and very warm. I trust her. Sometimes I think she cares more about what happens in my day than in hers.”

  Stopping himself, David felt a fresh wave of remorse—he was still speaking in the present tense of someone he had lost, barely aware that he had lost her, unable to grasp how changed his life would be. Hana studied his face, as if seeing him anew. “And before Carole, you never wished to marry?”

  “No. I kept wanting to feel more than I was able to.”

  For a time, Hana was silent. In a tentative voice, she asked, “Did I do that to you? Did I truly hurt you that much?”

  David felt a flash of anger—at her, and at himself. “Enough of this, Hana. I’m your lawyer now. You’ll have to be content with that.”

  Hana looked away. When she looked back at him, her voice was clear. “I have asked too much of you, I realize now. I was scared, and had no one but you to trust.” She paused, then finished quietly: “Quit the case, David. They can appoint another lawyer.”

  “Not another like me, I’m afraid—not without money. No one I tried wants this.”

  Hana mustered a slight shrug. “All that the system requires is a lawyer good enough to lose without becoming an embarrassment. We learned that much at Harvard. And I heard you the other night, well enough. You don’t believe you can win.”

  David looked into her eyes. “Did you do this, Hana?”

  For a long moment, she gazed back at him in silence. “Part of me,” she said at last, “would like to tell you yes. Then, at least, you could just walk out of here, perhaps retrieve the life I sense you’re losing. But no, David, I did not conspire to assassinate Amos Ben-Aron.”

  Once more, David reflected, he was in danger of losing himself with Hana Arif—this time, as her lawyer. He thought of Ben-Aron’s last seconds of life, and all that he was giving up to help the woman who might have killed him.

  “Then let’s talk about the arraignment,” David said.

  11

  To David, the morning of Hana’s arraignment felt jumbled and disorienting, a blur in which he struggled to suspend his disbelief.

  He climbed the steps of the federal building through a gauntlet of minicams and reporters, keeping his eyes straight ahead, ignoring their shouted queries about why he had chosen to defend Hana Arif, the cacophony of angry demonstrators—more pro-Israeli than Palestinian—screened off by a wall of U.S. marshals. The only mercy was that Hana would not face them: the marshal’s office was bringing her up in an internal elevator from the garage, the end of a trip in which her truck was convoyed by motorcycles and police cars and media, helicopters overhead, an eerie echo of the motorcade for Amos Ben-Aron.

  David entered the cavernous marble lobby. A relative oasis of civility, its access to the upper floors, the venue of the federal courts, was controlled by metal detectors and security guards. When David took his place at the end of a line of reporters shuffling through security, a woman from Channel 5 tried to question him; a U.S. marshal, recognizing David from his days as a federal prosecutor, whisked him through security and into an empty elevator. By the time he arrived on the nineteenth floor, David understood, more clearly than before, that he was no longer David Wolfe as he defined himself—he was the lawyer who, inexplicably, had chosen to defend a terrorist.

  More reporters waited for him to exit the elevator. Had the choice been David’s, Saeb and Munira would have been with him; as David had argued to Saeb, this would remind those reading the paper or watching film clips that Hana had a husband and daughter. But Saeb had demanded that David arrange their private entry through the garage, sparing Munira the attentions of “a pack of media jackals” ; wasn’t it enough, Saeb had inquired acidly, that David insisted that she watch her own mother being charged with murder?

  And so, brushing off questions with a synthetic smile, David hurried down the tiled hallway, the reporters’ footsteps clattering behind him. He entered the airy but sterile courtroom of the judge who—assuming Hana was not deported—would either accept her plea of guilty or preside over a trial most jurists would gladly avoid.

  The courtroom was full, lined with marshals along the walls and at the end of the aisle bisecting five rows of lacquered wooden benches. In the first row, Saeb and Munira sat between two more marshals. “Don’t make her cover,” David had implored. “I want Americans to look at her and imagine their own daughter.” To which Saeb had responded tersely, “She is not their daughter.” The girl David saw now wore a loose-fitting black dress that concealed all but her hands and head, covered in a black scarf. But no dress could conceal the girl’s desire to disappear; no head scarf could obscure her fear.

  David went to them, giving Saeb a swift, sharp glance, returned in kind, then inclined his head toward Munira. The hollow of her eyes was smudged with the soot of sleeplessness. “Is my mother coming?” she asked.

  David nodded. “Soon. I’ve arranged for you to see her, after the hearing. At least for a few minutes.”

  Silent, Munira tried to absorb the fact that any contact with her mother would be doled out at the sufferance of strangers. Despite his own anxiety, David felt desperately sorry for her; while the legal process was second nature to him, it must be as alien and confusing to Munira as the events for which her mother now stood accused. Remembering her fright at the Blue Angels, her belated shame at having clung to him, David found himself
helpless to reassure her in Saeb’s presence. “We’ll talk later,” he told father and daughter, and went to the well of the courtroom.

  By the prosecution table, Marnie Sharpe and her red-haired deputy, Paul MacInnis—a dedicated career prosecutor who could no more imagine defending Hana Arif than wearing a tutu to court—huddled with Victor Vallis and a slight, balding man whom David did not recognize. When David approached, Sharpe interrupted their conference with a brisk nod in his direction. “Unbelievable, David. I’d no idea you were such an idealist.”

  Her voice carried a tinge of paranoia—that David could only be acting from some concealed motive she had yet to ferret out. When David merely shrugged, his own nerves too jangled for witticism, Sharpe turned, touching the stranger’s shoulder, and said, “This is Avi Hertz, David. Among other things, Avi’s representing the government of Israel as an observer.”

  What the “other things” were, David could only guess. As they shook hands, David asked politely, “Are you from your attorney general’s office?”

  “Yes.” Hertz’s somewhat elfin expression was countered by blue-gray eyes as cool as those of an actuary calculating David’s lifespan. “For the moment.”

  Shin Bet, David guessed, or perhaps Mossad. “I may have some requests of the Israeli government,” David told him. “Should I bring them to you?”

  Hertz’s face showed no surprise, and his tone was neither welcoming nor defensive. “By all means,” he answered. “Ms. Sharpe knows how to reach me.”

  Before David could respond, Hertz glanced swiftly toward the raised bench from which Judge Taylor would preside. But instead of the judge, Hana emerged through the rear door to the courtroom, another U.S. marshal at her side.

  It was her first appearance in public—at David’s request, the marshal’s office had allowed her to wear a blouse and simple, flowing skirt. She paused, searching out her husband and daughter. Her focus was on Munira, her small smile intended to assure the girl that her mother was unafraid. Only after a glance at Saeb, far more sober and opaque, did she take in the crowded courtroom and, finally, David himself.

  The marshals shepherded her to the defense table. When David moved to her side, she did not look at him. “I am sorry,” she murmured.

  “For what?”

  Head bowed, Hana did not answer. “All rise,” the judge’s courtroom deputy called out. The spectators stirred to their feet, and Judge Caitlin Taylor strode briskly to the bench.

  Drawn by lot from among fourteen eligible judges, Taylor was new to the court, and David had never appeared before her. Her early reputation was in keeping with her appearance: slender and patrician, Taylor had long brunette hair and a pale, sculpted face accented by wire-rimmed glasses that lent her an air of scholarly precision. A former corporate litigator with a keen mind and a decisive manner, she was nonetheless a mystery. She had little background in criminal cases, and there was little to suggest how she would bear up under worldwide scrutiny—“the judge in the murder trial of Hana Arif,” her obituary might well begin—or how she might react to the complex strategy unfolding in David’s mind.

  Taylor’s performance would be a question of character as much as intellect. Notorious cases, David knew well, magnified a judge’s strengths and weaknesses, exposing arrogance, vanity, or indecisiveness, rewarding cool-headedness, prudence, and a steady internal compass. The one thing that David now knew was that Caitlin Taylor intended to take charge from the outset: eschewing the usual procedures—arraignment before a magistrate— the judge had chosen to preside herself.

  “You may be seated,” Judge Taylor began in a calm, clear voice. “The matter before us is The United States of America versus Hana Arif. Will counsel please enter their appearances.”

  Standing, Sharpe did so, introducing Paul MacInnis. When David said simply, “David Wolfe for defendant Hana Arif,” Judge Taylor raised her eyebrows—no stranger to politics, she seemed as puzzled by his presence as Sharpe was, though in a more neutral way.

  “Before we proceed,” Sharpe interjected, “may I be heard on the subject of Mr. Wolfe’s role in these proceedings?”

  Seemingly as surprised as David, the judge turned back to Sharpe, her expression instantly alert. “You may.”

  Sharpe spoke with staccato swiftness, to David a sign of nerves. “When the assassination occurred, your honor, Mr. Wolfe was standing at the corner of Market Street and Fourth. Not only did he witness the suicide bombing at the heart of this case, but he gave a statement to the FBI.” With a brief glance at David, Sharpe continued: “For that reason he may be a percipient witness at any trial, and disqualified from serving as counsel to Ms. Arif.”

  As the judge turned to him, David was buffeted by conflicting emotions—the certainty that Sharpe desired to be rid of him; the unwelcome but deeply tempting thought that she might have handed him the exit from his dilemma that he could not bring himself to take; the uncomfortable sensation that his far deeper connection, to Hana herself, might somehow be discovered. He was acutely aware of Hana watching his reaction. “Mr. Wolfe?” the judge prodded. “Do you wish to withdraw? Or, put another way, should you?”

  David tried to distill his thoughts. “Your Honor, Ms. Sharpe has at least a hundred other witnesses, an alleged confession by Ibrahim Jefar, and, I suspect, a videotape of the assassination itself. Is she suggesting that she needs my help to prove that Amos Ben-Aron was killed?”

  Though her expression did not change, the angle of Judge Taylor’s look toward Sharpe suggested challenge. “Of course not,” Sharpe answered with asperity. “But this is a case of international importance, with many unanswered questions. Our investigation is ongoing and wide-ranging. No one knows what detail may prove to be important, or who can give it to us.”

  Sharpe was perilously close, David thought, to a subject he doubted she wished to touch on but that might well account for Avi Hertz’s presence—the assassin’s apparent foreknowledge that the motorcade would change its route. “What is at issue here,” David responded, “is not the fact of three deaths but who planned them, and whether—in reality—Ms. Arif played any role at all. About this, I have no more personal knowledge than Ms. Sharpe.

  “Meanwhile, Ms. Arif is entitled to counsel of her choice. Nothing that the prosecution suggests is sufficient to deprive her of that choice.”

  Judge Taylor steepled her fingers, resting their tips against her chin. “I agree,” she said after a moment. “If you decide to list Mr. Wolfe as a witness, Ms. Sharpe, get back to me with reasons transcending ‘barely plausible.’ Until then, I’m allowing him to proceed as counsel.” Turning to Hana she said, “Ms. Arif, do you understand the nature of the charges against you?”

  Hana stood straighter. “I do.”

  “And do you, indeed, wish Mr. Wolfe to represent you?”

  Hana seemed to hesitate. “Yes,” she said more quietly. “I do.”

  For a moment, the judge studied her. “All right,” she said to David. “Your client is charged, among other things, with violating 18 USC 1116, murder of a foreign official in the United States. Do you require a reading of the indictment?”

  “We do not, Your Honor.”

  “Is the defendant prepared to enter a plea?”

  “To each count of the indictment,” David answered, “Ms. Arif pleads not guilty.”

  There was a stirring behind them, the incipient excitement of the media at a story to come, a trial to report, with its promise of drama and surprises. Feeling his own misgivings, David saw Hana briefly close her eyes.

  “Very well,” the judge said calmly. “Do you wish to be heard on the subject of bail, Mr. Wolfe?”

  “We do,” David replied. “Until these proceedings end, Mr. Arif ’s husband and daughter have no passports. They are not going anywhere, and Ms. Arif desires to be with them.” David turned, nodding toward Munira. “Ms. Arif ’s daughter is twelve years old. Seeing her mother arrested was traumatic enough; living without her is far worse. Given that Ms. Arif n
o longer has a passport, and that her family is being detained, there’s no need for the government to separate them.”

  “Ms. Sharpe?”

  “The assassins,” Sharpe said dryly, “did not require passports to enter the United States. This defendant does not require one to leave it. And her motive to ignore the niceties of our immigration laws is obvious.

  “As the indictment spells out, she has been named by Mr. Jefar as the director of a plot to assassinate Amos Ben-Aron planned by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, of which the incidental victims were two men with families—one American, one Israeli—and the ultimate victim the prospect for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.” Now Sharpe spoke with greater confidence, hitting her stride as she framed her case for the media. “Our century is young yet. But it is fair to say that this is the most notorious murder this nation has suffered since the assassination of President Kennedy, representing a conspiracy the dimensions of which are not yet known. Further, we believe that Ms. Arif holds the key to exposing unknown others—perhaps many others—responsible for this heinous act.

  “The United States cannot acquiesce to bail for a defendant with so much potential information to give, and so many reasons to escape— especially where we may seek the death penalty. With all respect, Your Honor, bail would be unprecedented.”

  “I agree,” the judge said promptly. “Ms. Arif ’s request for bail is denied.”

  Next to him, David saw Hana deflate, her shoulders sagging under the weight of days and nights without Munira, the invocation of a sentence that would separate them forever. Glancing at Munira, David now wished that she had not come. “The court will hold its first pretrial hearing in thirty days,” Taylor continued. “At this time, I will expect the defense to address its need for discovery from the government, and to hear both counsels on the subject of a trial date.”

  “Your Honor,” David said, “may I respectfully suggest that the court hold that hearing outside the presence of the media or the public.”