“How did it go?”
“They’re cutting me no slack at all. I have a feeling this is going to be bare-knuckle boxing all the way.”
“What else is new?” Fiona said, with a little resignation in her voice. “Since when have you ever taken the easy road? That would be too obvious…too routine.”
“Soon,” Will said, trying to be reassuring, “I’ll be home. Then it will be back to life as usual. I’m looking forward to that so much.”
“ ‘Usual,’ ” Fiona said, as if almost to herself. “That’s not who you are. I’m beginning to wonder…did God make you that way? Or is it something else…always the steep, stony, climb for you…always the rough road. Is it something you’ve picked for yourself? Some need. Some hidden drive. Pushing you on. Never content.”
After a moment’s silence she added, “But you know…I love you so much. Sorry, I’m just rambling on here, I guess.”
“No. I want you to be honest with me. Always. Listen—please pray for me—and for this case,” Will said with a special urgency in his voice that Fiona detected. “And Gilead.”
“You sound worried.”
“Not just that. You know I’ve always assumed I could handle anything. Sounds awfully arrogant, doesn’t it? And it probably is. I think you’re right. Something is always pushing me on. Frankly, I always felt that—given enough time and energy—I could handle any case that came along, no matter how complex. But now…this is different.”
“What do you mean?”
“This whole thing seems so beyond me, darling. Simple as that. I’m doing everything right. I’m preparing for the fight—just as I’ve done for the last thirty years. But I’ve never been quite so aware…so acutely aware…of my total weakness. You’ve always called my cases ‘David against Goliath.’ Good description. But this one…it’s more like an ant versus Goliath.”
“Grasshoppers,” Fiona commented quietly.
“What?”
“Grasshoppers. Remember? The Israelite spies are sent by the Lord to check out the land of Canaan before they enter, after crossing the wilderness. They came back saying there were giants in the land, and they felt like little tiny grasshoppers in the shadow of their enemy. It took a man like Joshua to lead them in and claim victory.”
Will smiled. “Maybe I should read up on it again. Thank you, dear. You’re right. I have to keep a spiritual perspective on this…You know, speaking of spies, I talked to Jack Hornby earlier today. He wants to do an article on Caleb Marlowe.”
“I wonder where he is,” Fiona said. “You’ve always thought he’d survived that attack in Mexico haven’t you?”
“Yes. That postcard I got later…unsigned…I’ve always had that feeling…”
“You know, we also got another blast from the past,” Fiona added. “A note from Tex Rhoady.”
“Tex? What do you know—how’s he doing? I’ve haven’t heard from him in a couple of years, ever since he left his little airplane service in Georgia and went back to Texas. What’s he up to?”
“He’s finally gotten married.”
“No kidding. That’s great.”
“And he says he’s running some kind of aircraft business…experimental helicopters…it didn’t make a lot of sense to me.”
“I’ll have to get back in touch with him when this is all over.”
“So, are you going to be able to come home for a few days…before you get too close to trial?”
Will’s uncomfortable silence told Fiona the whole story.
“You’re feeling pressed to stay over there, straight through till trial…aren’t you?” she asked.
“I’m afraid so. I’ve already called Tiny and told him to join me here.”
Fiona didn’t fully succeed in hiding her disappointment. Will wanted to elaborate, to explain how this time it would be the last of this kind of case. But he didn’t try. He was convinced it was so, that Gilead Amahn’s prosecution represented a last chapter in his life. But how could he convince his wife of that? Mere words wouldn’t do. He would simply have to make it happen. This would be the end of something for him, a consummation, the last act…of that he felt unshakably certain, though he did not exactly know why.
After his call to Fiona, Will telephoned Nigel Newhouse. He had e-mailed the English barrister and very candidly revealed his concern that he might be stretched beyond his limits in mounting Gilead’s defense alone. Back at the office, Todd Furgeson was totally occupied in handling Jacki’s work while she was out on maternity leave, not to mention Will’s other caseload. Will had assigned research, e-mail communication, and Internet information-gathering to Jeff Holden. But beyond that, the novice lawyer had little he could do to assist Will at this point.
Would Newhouse consider joining the defense team at this late hour, with the trial date only ten days away? The barrister said he would carefully consider it and get back to Will within forty-eight hours.
There was also Will’s concern about a working space before and during the trial. Larry Lancer, the director of the Holy Land Institute for the Word, had a couple offices next door to the institute. He had kindly offered them to Will and anyone else helping with Gilead’s defense. As promised, the institute had been paying all of the bills for the defense, which by now had become staggeringly high. Lancer had simply indicated they had a “private benefactor” who was funding it all. Will didn’t pry.
Within twenty-four hours of Will’s filing his pretrial disclosures, the Palestinian prosecutor filed a raft of written objections, motions, and responses. One of them—not surprisingly to Will—had to do with the name of the second-to-last witness Will had typed into his pretrial statement, the one he’d added in the middle of the night in his hotel room. After Mira had had a chance to read it over she called Will, also bringing it up.
“I was very surprised when I read your witness list,” she said. “A very surprising witness name—”
“You mean the line where I added the name of Mr. Meir, the Mossad agent?”
“No, not that,” Mira said. “The name before that.”
“Oh. Yes.” He understood her interest and the public prosecutor’s interest, not to mention the media’s laser-beam attention to the name. He had already received thirteen calls from the foreign press since filing his papers and could tell that the hotel’s front desk was becoming exasperated. He had returned none of the calls.
“I must say, I truly admire your courage,” his fellow attorney said with a titter. “I really do. To name the man who is at this moment negotiating a peace plan here in Jerusalem—Foreign Secretary Warren Mullburn—that is truly extraordinary!”
“I’ll take that as a compliment, I guess…” Will said, laughing a little himself. “And, thanks, Mira, for setting up my conference with Gilead. By the way, I’ve secured a location for a temporary office. It’s the space next to the Holy Land Institute for the Word. They’re letting me use it for the case. So starting tomorrow, I’ll move my files in there.”
“I’d love to hear your thinking on Mullburn…and on that Mossad agent,” Mira replied. “Maybe I could help you prepare for those witnesses.”
After the conversation, Will checked the time. It was getting late. He would try to get four, maybe five hours of sleep. And then, tomorrow, he would meet with Gilead, move into the temporary office, and begin the final march—the last ten days of preparation before the trial.
He would be thorough, all-consumed, and focused. He would try to ignore the fact that now, at his age, the grueling process of trial preparation and sleepless nights was not as easy as it had once been. But one thing above all he would try to push out of his mind.
He would try to avoid the catastrophic distraction that kept occupying his inner moral sense. The lingering idea that threatened to tie him in knots.
The thought that his defense of Gilead Amahn, if unsuccessful, would result in Gilead’s execution.
54
THE LARGEST ROOM IN THE ORIENT HOUSE had been converted
into a fully functioning courtroom for the Gilead Amahn trial. Its interior had been transformed into a blandly modern space—with rows of Scandinavian-style blond wood tables, each with a computer fixed within its top, one computer screen for each seat. Each seat had a set of earphones, which were wireless and could be clipped to a belt buckle.
There were bomb-proof and soundproof panels on all the walls. At the front of the room, the high judicial bench had three red leather chairs behind it. But the bench was separated from the rest of the room by a clear, floor-to-ceiling bulletproof shield.
Off to the side was an enclosed booth, about twice the size of a telephone booth, where the witnesses would be protected during their questioning.
At the rear of the room, a one-way viewing window stretched across the entire wall. Behind it, unseen to the occupants of the courtroom, there was a bank of interpreters, who would translate the proceedings into English, Arabic, French, and Korean.
Will Chambers was at the right counsel table, at the end closest to the table of the public prosecutor. At the other end of the right table, Mira Ashwan, defense amicus curiae, was seated.
And between Will and Mira was Nigel Newhouse. The human-rights barrister had graciously cleared his schedule and agreed to appear as co-counsel. Then between Will and Nigel there was one empty chair, for the accused.
Tiny Heftland was seated in the audience section, fidgeting nervously.
Samir Zayed, the prosecutor, was flanked by two legal assistants and also had three clerks and two investigators seated in the row behind the his table.
The press was relegated to a separate viewing room down the hall, where they viewed the proceeding by closed-circuit TV. The lawyers were prohibited from giving interviews to the media during the course of the trial.
About twenty minutes after the scheduled opening of the trial, the three judges, all wearing scarlet robes with white, frilly ascots, entered the room from a side door and took their red leather seats behind the shield.
In the center was Saad Mustafa, acting as president, or chief judge, of the tribunal. The Palestinian lawyer was almost entirely bald, but with black bushy eyebrows above wire-rimmed glasses. His manner was animated and friendly. He proceeded to introduce the other two judges.
To Mustafa’s left was Alain Verdexler from Belgium. He was in his late sixties, pale, with thinning sandy-white hair, worn slightly long. He had a courtly, almost bored, expression.
On the other side of the chief judge was Lee Kwong-ju, the South Korean. In his fifties, small, with a round, smooth face and dark-rimmed glasses, he nodded pleasantly when introduced, and his eyes studied the courtroom intensely, though his face was expressionless.
Zayed rose and entered his appearance. Will followed, introducing both himself and Newhouse as his co-counsel. Mira Ashwan was last to stand and introduce herself.
Zayed then stood up and raised numerous objections to the defense list of witnesses, in particular to the “obscenely absurd listing of Foreign Secretary Warren Mullburn,” as well as to their proffer of legal defenses and to the addition of Nigel Newhouse as additional counsel. Judge Mustafa indicated he would handle all of the objections at the time of the defense case…except for the objection having to do with Newhouse.
“Barrister Newhouse,” Mustafa said, “you withdrew once before as the attorney for the accused. Now you return—just at the final moment. The time of trial. I am concerned that the conflict of interest that prompted you to withdraw previously might still exist—who knows? Perhaps you are doing your client more damage than good…”
Newhouse gestured for an opportunity to rebut the judge’s insinuations, but Mustafa ignored him and plowed ahead.
“But I will allow you to continue as co-counsel for the accused. As long as your presence does not hinder or delay these proceedings, or cause confusion or prejudice. Do you understand?”
Newhouse explained that he did.
At that point four armed Palestinian guards brought in Gilead Amahn through a side security door. He was dressed in street clothes, which now hung a little on his frame and shuffled slowly, because his ankles were manacled and his wrists were handcuffed. One guard removed the restraints, and Gilead took the seat next to Will, who patted his back reassuringly as he sat down.
Then Zayed approached the lectern to give his opening argument, immediately turning toward the left of the judge’s bench, where the eye of the closed-circuit TV camera was located.
His opening was fierce, rambling, and filled with hyperbole. Gilead was a “devilish monster of epic proportions, a beast of hatred and violence.” The prosecutor forecasted that they would prove he was at the very place of the crime, giving the symbolic order to destroy the “Noble Sanctuary” of Islam—that he was a known associate of the Knights of the Temple Mount cult group, and an insider of their terror-planning committee made up of Louis Lorraine, Yossin Ali Khalid, and Scott Magnit. Even more, he pointed out, swinging his arms athletically around him as he looked into the camera, the accused, that “vile murderer” Hassan Gilead Amahn, was the group’s spiritual “messiah”—the supposed reincarnation of the Caliph al-Hakim. “Having posed as the resurrected person of the last and greatest Caliph,” Zayed went on, “he possessed great spiritual power to further deceive and inflame his followers—the deluded Knights of the Temple Mount.”
Now Will was getting the picture. This was no opening statement. It was the public prosecutor’s most creative press conference yet. Barred from giving official interviews to the media, he was delivering it to them instead via closed-circuit TV from the courtroom of the tribunal itself.
Then Zayed proceeded with an even craftier tactic. He described, at great length, the history of the Druze religion. How it had begun from the mind of two preachers, a Persian Afghani and a Turk, who taught a “religion of infidels” based on the “lying belief and utter falsity that the ruler of the Fatimid Empire, Caliph al-Hakim, was the perfect manifestation of God in human form—that after al-Hakim mysteriously disappeared from Cairo in the year 1021, he would one day return, a thousand years later, and bring with him God’s Golden Age.”
The prosecutor pointed out how the Druze disciples had been driven out of Egypt as infidels by the “holy followers of Allah.” And, Zayed asked rhetorically, how can we blame the Muslims for that? After all, the Druze religion believes in reincarnation, and had merged Christian mysticism, Judaism, Islam, and Persian Zoroastrianism “into an unholy mix of lies and false ideas.” The Druze declare, he explained, that they are not of the Arabs, but are from a race of Persians, Turks, and Kurds, intermixed with the Christian Crusaders for whom, during the Middle Ages, they acted as guides in the Middle East.
“The Druze men fight in the Israeli army, the IDF, and are the enemies of the Arab nations. But after a thousand years, that false religion has given forth birth, finally, to a bastard beast of murder and mayhem—the subcult of the Knights of the Temple Mount.”
Will Chambers could not help but grudgingly admire the creative and seductive story the public prosecutor was spinning. It was polemical genius with public-relations charm. According to Zayed, the Knights further twisted the heresy of the Druze, linking themselves, historically, to the Templar Knights of the Crusader period. Then they used ancient Egyptian calendars and dating systems to construct a reincarnation date for the last Caliph that was a number of years prior to the full thousand years after 1021, as believed by the Druze. They predicted that the Caliph messiah would have to be Egyptian—which Gilead was—and be both from Cairo and then later reappear in Cairo—again those elements satisfied by Gilead—and have to match the religious upbringing of al-Hakim, who had a Shiite Muslim background and a Christian mother. In this latter regard, the prosecutor argued, Hassan Gilead Amahn fit the bill perfectly.
But the coup de grace was Zayed’s explanation of the motive of Gilead and the Knights for destroying the “Noble Sanctuary” structures. They had, he pointed out, selectively accepted the Gospel predictions of Je
sus, who said that the end would not come until the desecration had occurred within the Jewish Temple. But was that their real motive?
Zayed asked the question, but delivered another answer. That was their theological reason—but they harbored an even darker motive. The bombing of the mosques of the Muslims was, he submitted, a “bloodthirsty payback” for the perceived persecution of their Druze ancestors by Muslims over the last thousand years.
“This,” the prosecutor exclaimed in closing, “was actually an attack not just on our sacred site—nor against the Muslims slaughtered—blown to bits—while praying on their knees—it was an attack on Arabs and Muslims everywhere.”
Then he strode over to the defense table, pointed at Gilead Amahn, and declared, “Behold the man, this accused—who must pay for his blasphemous, murderous acts of violent hatred.”
Lastly, he turned to face the judges and add his final edict.
“He must pay with his life.”
55
“MAY IT PLEASE THIS TRIBUNAL,” Will Chambers said as he began his opening statement, “I will not promise you passion or rhetoric. I won’t try the ill-fated tactic of trying to inflame your judgment with personal attacks, violent epithets, or tales of genocide. You’ve heard enough of that from my opponent.
“I promise only proof, evidence, and facts. That ought to be enough, for that is the stuff of justice. And if this tribunal cannot find my client innocent on the basis of facts we will present—facts that are cold, hard, unmistakable, and that transcend politics, perhaps much to the embarrassment of some very powerful people—if this tribunal cannot judge on the basis of the clear evidence and ignore the geopolitical implications, then we have learned nothing in the thousand years since the wars that bloodied the streets of this city, the clash between the world’s three great religions as they struggled for control of Jerusalem…and the Temple Mount.”
Will stepped away from the lectern, adjusted his headset slightly, and continued, gazing directly into the eyes of the three members of the tribunal, who sat silently behind the shield.
The Last Judgment Page 26