“I can’t tell you any more about his medical history because of the confidentiality rules. I’m sure you understand,” Arthur said.
“What I need to know isn’t medical. It’s more social,” Abe said, ignoring a package of stale cookies.
“Social?”
“Could you tell me which of the doctors took care of him? I’m told Savage remained friendly with those who he believed saved his life.”
Arthur chuckled. “He hated his doctors.”
Abe had been taking notes, but upon hearing this he stopped. The pen dangled in the air as he waited for Arthur to continue.
“He believed we didn’t do such a great job. And I can’t blame him. He nearly died after we stabilized him.”
Abe was disappointed. He wasn’t sure what he’d been looking for, but he knew this wasn’t it.
Arthur swirled the coffee around in his cup. “You should talk to Elizabeth Mitchell. She’s a first responder emergency-room nurse. Earned her stripes in a combat unit. You’ll like her. Great gal and a real beauty to boot.”
Arthur winked at Abe, but Abe brushed off the implication. “I’m not interested in anything other than info about Savage, thank you.”
Arthur was brave and reached for a cookie. “You should talk to her. Savage credits her with saving his life.” He spit out his bite of cookie. “These are terrible. I miss American cookies.”
“How did she save Savage’s life, when the doctors couldn’t?”
“Secret weapon.”
“What do you mean?”
Artie replied, “She has a prayer group. They pray over people. Rub holy sand on their wounds. Do interventions. The hospital looks the other way, and she only brings her people in for cases that are beyond medical help. And sometimes it works. Psychosomatic, placebo. Who knows!”
“Do Jews believe in that crap?” Abe wondered.
“Some do, but Mitchell’s not Jewish. She’s a born-again Christian.”
Abe shook his head. This didn’t fit with what Rendi insisted about Savage. Abe always kept an open mind when working on a case, explored every possibility, no matter how extreme. But he hadn’t really expected to find anything incriminating or suspicious about Dennis. Though Abe wasn’t as close to him as Rendi was, they’d spent ample time together in Cambridge, debating political issues, discussing their favorite sports teams, and trading war stories about their jobs. Abe considered Dennis a friend, and he was growing more and more uneasy as Artie spoke.
Not to mention that he dreaded having to relay Artie’s tale to Rendi. She was already annoyed at Abe for poking into Dennis’s past; this news would definitely upset her. His wife had always been protective of her friends, Dennis especially.
Arthur saw that his friend was processing the story. “I know it sounds crazy. Just talk to her.”
Abe drummed his pen against the legal pad in front of him. “Savage is an atheist. Why would he let people pray over him?” he asked, almost wishing that Artie wouldn’t have an answer to his question.
“Savage was an atheist. He came into the hospital as a dying atheist. He left as a born-again evangelical Christian.”
Abe dropped his pen. “I really wish you hadn’t told me that,” he said, thinking about his wife.
“Not many people know about this. He was very secretive. Concerned that it could affect his clearance or something. Swore everyone to secrecy. But I know that he went straight from here to the Kinneret. You know, what the Christians refer to as the Sea of Galilee. They baptized him right where Jesus was baptized. The whole schmear.”
Abe was dumbstruck. There was another side to Dennis Savage, a side he was positive that his wife didn’t know. As he sat there, he wondered what else they didn’t know about their good friend Denny and his friends.
XLII
Elizabeth Mitchell
ABE LEFT THE HOSPITAL CAFETERIA and went to Pal-Watch, where he filled Habash and Emma in on what he had learned. Abe was surprised to find them in different offices. He’d expected the two to be working together, but there was a noticeable strain between them. He wondered what had happened to the blooming romance but decided it was a mystery best solved by Rendi. Besides, there were more important issues at hand—namely, Dennis Savage and Artie’s information about his conversion.
Rendi was incredulous. “There’s no way Dennis Savage is an evangelical Christian. We’re talking about a man who thinks ‘God bless you’ is offensive!” She was so irritated that she couldn’t sit still.
Abe knew that his wife had complete confidence in Dennis, but Arthur had no reason to lie. He was political, but not scheming. He was one of the most honest men Abe knew, which was why he hadn’t become a lawyer, Abe always joked.
Emma, whose theories had been dismissed too many times for her liking during this investigation, immediately—and victoriously—set to proving that Dennis had connections with TNT. “Think about it, Daddy. He’s saved by Israeli Christian extremists. They could have put him in touch with TNT, which also has a bunch of religious extremists. I checked it out. One of the surgeons at that hospital is a JDL member. I can’t establish that they ever met, but it’s a lead.”
“Okay, TNT goes back on the ‘Could Have Done It’ list, but I’m still skeptical,” Abe said.
Habash quickly threw together a dossier on Elizabeth Mitchell. Her family had been in Israel for over a hundred years. They were part of the original “German colony” of Christians who had moved to the Holy Land for religious reasons in the mid–nineteenth century. They had run Christian schools, missions, and medical clinics. They called themselves Christian Zionists and were fiercely patriotic to the Jewish state in which they lived as a religious minority. “We are the ‘Jews’ of the Jewish nation,” Elizabeth was quoted in one newspaper article about Christians living in Israel. “Jews have lived as productive minorities in the Christian nations for centuries, so now we are living as a productive religious minority in the Jewish nation. We love Israel. And we love the land of the Bible, where Jesus walked.”
There was personal information about her, too: She was fastidious and extremely neat. She was also tough as nails. As Arthur had told Abe, she had served as a combat nurse in the Israel Defense Forces and had risked her life on several occasions to get wounded soldiers out of harm’s way. And recently she’d made news when several of the nurses at Hadassah Medical Center had quit over a fear of biological terrorism—suicide martyrs were infecting themselves with the AIDS and mad cow viruses and targeting hospital workers for exposure. Elizabeth had spoken out against the nurses who quit, and she ended up recruiting a new staff, mostly women from the former Soviet Union.
Habash found nothing to suggest that Elizabeth was anything other than what she seemed: a pro-Israel evangelical Christian.
So Abe went to talk to her. He asked Rendi to accompany him, but she flatly refused. She announced that if he wanted to waste his time running down a dead-end lead, he could go ahead and do it without her.
One thing Arthur hadn’t exaggerated about was Elizabeth Mitchell. When she walked out of the emergency room at midnight, she looked to Abe like a model in a television commercial about the perfect hospital in which to have cosmetic surgery. She was tall, lithe, and radiant, with long blond hair and deep blue eyes. Although she’d been through a typical rough day—several automobile accidents, a domestic stabbing, a number of sports injuries—she looked exactly as she must have looked when she’d arrived at the emergency room twelve hours earlier. Not a hair out of place, not a sign of perspiration, not even a stain on her neatly starched nurse’s uniform.
Artie had set up the meeting, so Elizabeth was looking for Abe.
“Ms. Mitchell, over here. I’m Abe. Can we talk?” he inquired, walking toward her.
Elizabeth smiled broadly and reached out a manicured hand. “Hello, Mr. Ringel. Dr. Eidelman texted me about you. He said you were interested in talking about my prayer group. What can I do for you?”
“This will only take a f
ew minutes. Can we have a drink?”
“I don’t drink alcohol. How about some tea? The cafeteria is open all night.”
As they walked to the cafeteria, Abe wondered who this smart, beautiful, and determined woman really was. Try as he had over the years, Abe could never get inside the minds of smart religious fundamentalists. It seemed such a contradiction. To him, intelligence meant questioning, doubting, changing, challenging—thinking. Justice Antonin Scalia, whom Abe knew casually, had once described himself as “a fool for Christ.” Scalia was no fool for anyone, Abe thought. How could he totally suspend his critical faculties when it came to religion? How could this woman—this smart nurse—believe in faith healing, in prayer as cure? He was dying to ask her, but he had a different agenda that night. He had to find out everything he could about her patient, Dennis Savage.
When the two of them were sitting at the exact same table Abe had occupied with Artie the day before, Elizabeth said, “Nice job defending that terrorist, Mr. Ringel. I thought for sure he did it, but you changed my mind.”
Abe was surprised at both the topic she chose and her willingness to admit a changed opinion. In his experience, devout religious fundamentalists were usually quite stubborn about their ideas. That’s why he rarely picked them for juries. “Do you change your mind easily?”
“Depends on what we’re talking about,” she said softly.
Abe’s first impression of her was that she was extremely secure and confident. She was also very warm. As they sat, nurses, doctors, orderlies all filed past them with their food, and she said hello to almost all of them. She had a way about her.
“When I’m working the emergency room, I change my mind all the time, as new data emerges. I’m a big fan of Bayesian theory.”
Again, she surprised Abe. Thomas Bayes was an eighteenth-century mathematician and logician who was the personification of the skeptic, always changing as the facts changed. He had devised a mathematical approach—still used today—to deal with shifting probabilities.
“So am I,” Abe responded. “Bayes is the patron saint of defense lawyers, because we always deal in probabilities—probable cause, reasonable doubt.”
“He was also a Presbyterian minister,” Elizabeth noted with a smile. “I don’t use Bayes only in the emergency room. I also bring him to church with me,” she said, tearing open a sugar packet and pouring the contents into her tea.
It was an opening, and Abe tried to sail through it. “You think about religion scientifically and skeptically?”
“Yes. I don’t believe in living a dichotomous life the way some of my friends do. You know, scientist by day, religious fundamentalist by night. For me, the same kind of reason by which I live life from Monday to Friday at work has to operate on Sunday as well.”
“Artie told me you were a Christian fundamentalist.”
“Maybe by Dr. Eidelman’s lights, because I believe in a God who answers prayers, who heals, who cures. But I’m no fundamentalist, if by that you mean someone who accepts religion on faith alone and does not subject it to the same intellectual standards as science.”
“What scientific evidence do you have for faith healing?” Abe asked gently, without appearing to be challenging.
Elizabeth tilted her head. “I’ve seen it work—along with medicine, of course. I’m no Christian Scientist. I believe in medicine. I practice it.” She gestured around her to the hospital. “But medicine alone sometimes fails. When it doesn’t seem to be working by itself, I add a little prayer. Never as a substitute. God forbid. But only as a supplement. Can’t hurt, can it?”
Abe couldn’t help thinking of the old Jewish joke about the Yiddish theater star who collapsed on the stage. A doctor from the audience worked on him and after a few minutes declared, “It’s no use. He’s gone.” From the audience came a shout with a thick Yiddish accent: “Gib ’im an enema!” The doctor replied, “You don’t understand, he’s dead. It won’t help,” to which the audience member shouted back, “It couldn’t hoit!” Abe asked her, “No, it can’t hurt if it’s done in addition. But how can you be sure the prayer is helping?”
“I can’t be sure. That’s where Bayes and probability theory come in. But I’ve seen cases that have no medical explanation.”
“Like Denny Savage?”
Elizabeth now straightened in her chair. Artie hadn’t mentioned that Abe was interested in Dennis. “Yes, like Denny Savage. Why?”
It was Abe’s turn to be charming. “I’m investigating something, and he’s a friend. I know that your prayer group saved his life, and I wanted to know how.”
Elizabeth appraised him with her eyes, taking his measure. He could tell that she didn’t entirely believe him. At last she began to speak. “The bullet severed his femoral artery. He nearly bled to death several times. I’ve seen wounds like that on the battlefield. High mortality. Particularly high in terrorist attacks, because the bomb makers are now using rat poison, which is a blood thinner.”
“How did you stop the bleeding?” Abe wondered.
“We kept giving him the blood-clotting medicine, and we also prayed. At first neither worked. Because he was a bleeder and an atheist. Bad combination.”
“How did you get the prayer to work?”
“You mean how did we get the prayer and medicine to work together?”
“Yeah, together.”
“It was a tough sell. We had to persuade him to open his heart and mind to the possibilities of prayer—of God.”
“But he was a fervent atheist?”
“He was also a fervent believer in life.”
“No atheists in foxholes?”
“Actually, I’ve seen atheists in foxholes. But Savage wanted so badly to live. He knew he was dying. I showed him the data I had compiled on the effectiveness of prayer and medicine working in tandem. He was skeptical in the beginning, but my data shook him. I appealed to his rational, his scientific side. It was a tough sell. Ultimately he opened his mind. He trusted me. He knew I wasn’t interested in converting him solely for religious reasons. I wanted to save his life. Saving his soul was a natural consequence of saving his life,” Elizabeth said, showing her first sign of emotion. She smiled shyly at Abe, reached for her tea, and crossed her arms in front of her chest.
Abe changed his tone from one of questioner to one of friend. “You healed him, converted him, and befriended him all at once. Quite an accomplishment.”
“Yes, it was an accomplishment,” she said proudly.
She went on to tell him more about Dennis. She was hesitant at first, apparently because of medical confidentiality and her promise of secrecy, but Abe was his friend and she was proud of her work with Dennis.
Abe was astounded by her story. Dennis’s wound wasn’t healing, even with prayer and medicine. So the leader of Elizabeth’s church prepared some sand from al-Eizariya, the biblical town where Lazarus lived. Elizabeth sterilized the sand and applied it to Denny’s wound, and shortly after that the bleeding stopped. When Dennis recovered, he demanded that Elizabeth introduce him to her leader, though he was an ascetic who lived simply and preferred minimal interaction with people. But Dennis got his way and eventually not only met him but moved in with him for several weeks. Elizabeth claimed that Dennis emerged from this time a changed man, that he became a believer and was committed to their church and at total peace with himself.
“Does the church have any connection to TNT or other Jewish extremists?” Abe asked.
“Not that I know of. We’re not pacifists. We believe in our country’s right to defend itself. But not in terrorism. That was not the way of Jesus, and it’s not our way.”
Abe thanked Elizabeth and left the hospital. He was fascinated by this smart, unusual woman, but his mind focused on what she’d told him about Dennis Savage. Something didn’t click. A Secret Service agent. A convert to a religion whose leader lived like a hermit. The “tells” that Rendi had picked up.
Something was missing from the story. But what? The
more Abe thought about it, the more he wondered why Dennis had been so interested in Faisal’s innocence—why he’d offered help to Abe’s legal team whenever Abe had asked for it. Abe wasn’t convinced it was entirely because of his affection for Rendi. American intelligence had a strong interest in Faisal’s trial and Abe’s tactics. Abe had focused, during the trial, on what he could learn from Dennis. He did not focus on what Dennis was learning from him. It was a two-way street, and now Abe began to think hard about what Dennis had learned and why he needed that information.
Abe was anxious to get back to Rendi and share what he’d learned about her old friend, though he knew it would be difficult for her to accept. Maybe, if she could set aside her loyalty to Dennis, she could put it all together. Maybe she could figure out whom—if anyone—he was covering for, whom he was protecting.
XLIII
The Family Connection
NO WAY that could happen. Certainly not without me knowing.” This was Rendi’s obstinate response to Abe once he’d filled her in on his conversation with Nurse Elizabeth Mitchell.
Abe had returned from his meeting to find Rendi and Emma relaxing in the hotel suite. He ruined the quiet, happy scene with his news. While Emma booted up her laptop and researched Elizabeth’s prayer group, Abe tried to make headway with his wife. “Rendi—”
“He’s not an evangelical Christian. There’s no way.” She twisted her ring roughly. “Can you imagine me becoming a Hasidic Jew? Even if some Hasid saved my life? No way, no how.”
“There’re two accounts of this now, Rendi,” Abe argued.
“I don’t care if you find a hundred stories about Dennis converting. I know it’s not true. I know it.”
“How? How can you know for sure?” Abe demanded.
“I just do. He tells me everything. Especially personal stuff that he makes me promise not to tell anyone.”
“Even me?”
“Even you, Abe. Personal stuff. He confides in me. Has for years. There is absolutely no way what Artie and this nurse are telling you is for real. If this happened, if, then he was infiltrating their group. That’s it.”
The Trials of Zion Page 21