Escape

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  The thought made her want to cry. That morning, she had told her father the truth about Jamal and what she intended to do. He hadn't tried to argue with her until she asked him to take their son and go visit a friend who lived in Chicago. "I need to be here to protect you," he said.

  "You cannot protect me, father. My fate is in the hands of Allah now." Mahmoud Juma stood silently for a minute. "Have you spoken to her again?"

  They both knew who he meant. Hazrat Fatemeh Masumeh, the Aalimah. "Yes, now please make arrangements for your trip," she said.

  Marie Smith asked her a question. "You said you had something you wanted to give us?"

  "Yes." Miriam reached into her bag and removed a large mustard-colored mailing envelope, which she handed to Jaxon.

  Jaxon looked inside and then back at Miriam. "Have you looked at it?"

  Miriam nodded. She started to speak but the words got caught in her mouth. She passed a hand over her eyes and wiped the tears away.

  "What is it?" Lucy asked.

  Miriam sighed. "It is the last will and testament of the murderer Muhammad Jamal Khalifa.... May Allah have mercy on his soul ... he was my husband."

  24

  Just after noon on Wednesday, the first day of the Jessica Campbell murder trial, Butch Karp stood inside the area cordoned off by the police in front of the Criminal Courts building watching the circus that had come to town. A mob of tourists gathered to snap photographs of the competing circles of protesters and gawkers on display for the latest "Trial of the Century." Meanwhile, street vendors were hawking "Free Jessica, Jail God" Tshirts and "God's Calling" caps.

  Out in front of his newsstand, Dirty Warren was capitalizing on the spectacle, too. "Get your... fu-fu-fuck it... Special Edition New York ... oh boy oh boy shit crap ... Post," he shouted. "Eight-page blowout on the Campbell Kid Killings trial ... eat me whoop whoop ... with shocking, never seen before, photographs!"

  Most of the photos were nothing more than mugshots of Jessica's family. But some lowlife—Marlene suspected an employee at the coroner's or sheriff's office—had supplied two more grisly photographs, one of the inside of the Volvo, and another of the children's bodies lying on a white sheet next to the footlocker. The photographs were blurry, apparently taken quickly with a cell-phone camera, and details were hard to distinguish, but still...

  The National Organization of Feminists protesters kept trying to set up someplace where they could get away from Edward Treacher. But every time they moved their signs, Treacher got down from his milk crate, calmly picked it up, and followed them to the next spot.

  Obviously the protesters were upset with him, but it wasn't clear whether Treacher was trying to irritate them more or merely thought he was one of them. "ACQUITTING THE GUILTY AND CONDEMNING THE INNOCENT—THE LORD DETESTS THEM BOTH!" he shouted above the women's requests that he quit stalking them. "That's Proverbs 17:15 folks. Say, can you spare something for the hungry?"

  One of the women from NOF reached up to hand Treacher several dollars and pointed across the street, where she evidently thought he might want to move. But he just pocketed the money and continued to preach.

  The woman then stomped over to a nearby police officer and angrily gestured at Treacher. But the officer just shrugged and said something—Karp imagined it was the usual "free country, free speech" reply, which when translated meant "don't bother me with piddly crap"—and looked away.

  The woman marched back to her group, where she made a series of rude hand gestures toward the officer and Treacher. Then, as if playing a game of musical chairs, the group suddenly picked up their signs, ran to the other side of the cordoned area, and began to reassemble.

  Treacher stopped shouting and gazed after them, swaying on top of his crate as if blown about by the non-existent wind. Sighing, he stepped down, stooped for his crate, and shuffled over to the group. They saw him coming and formed into a tight circle, like a herd of buffalo protecting itself from a wolf. Smiling at his new "friends," he placed his crate back on the ground and stepped up with his arms raised above his head.

  "WHEN JUSTICE IS DONE," he shouted, then paused for a moment to nod to the protesters, who glared back at him. "IT BRINGS JOY TO THE RIGHTEOUS BUT TERROR TO EVILDOERS!"

  The woman who had talked to the police officer fluttered her hands at Treacher and then gave up. She organized the protesters into a circle and handed them picket signs and cardboard megaphones. She then pulled a bullhorn out of a backpack and began trying to outshout Treacher.

  "Justice for Jessica Campbell," she yelled, waving her hand like an orchestra conductor to encourage her supporters, who replied in quasiunison, "Justice for Jessica!"

  Several of the placards were directed at Karp. He'd been called a lot of names in thirty years of public service; now, there were signs labeling him a Nazi, and he was reminded of Sobelman's recollections of Sobibor: "There is one thing no one can do to you unless you let them. They cannot take your soul, and in the end, we did not let them take ours."

  By the late summer of 1943, more than 250,000 people had been murdered at Sobibor, their bodies burned and buried. But it became apparent that the Nazis were stepping up their operations.

  Those prisoners who had so far been spared to work as laborers knew that the end was coming and so, led by a man named Leon Feldhendler, some of them planned to escape rather than wait for death. The idea gained momentum in mid-September when a trainload of Soviet prisoners of war, most of them Jews, arrived at the camp for disposal.

  Among them was a young Jew still wearing his Red Army lieutenant's uniform. His name was Alexander "Sasha" Pechorsky, and the escape committee soon put him in command, with Feldhendler as his deputy.

  On the morning of October 14, only a small percentage of the prisoners in the camp knew what was about to happen; they did not want to take the chance that spies mixed in with the camp population, or cowards who might be willing to sell out their fellow prisoners for a piece of bread or a few more days of living, would find out. The day progressed with business as usual—the brutish Ukrainian guards manned the towers with their machine guns or herded, kicked, and pummeled prisoners bound for the gas chamber.

  A little before noon, the eleven SS guards in the camp were called to the workshops. When they arrived, the prisoners killed them. According to plan, electricity and telephone lines were cut and rifles were taken from the armory, all without the Ukrainian guards being aware that anything was amiss.

  When the Ukrainians ordered the prisoners to line up for roll call, the prisoners killed them with axes. Only then did the guards in the towers realize what was happening, and they opened fire. The prisoners with rifles returned fire, killing several.

  Inside the fences, prisoners ran and dodged to avoid being struck by bullets, as well as to escape. Those in the know, including the Soviet prisoners of war, broke for the gate and fences. Those who made it through the gate ran for the nearby woods. Others got through a fence only to run into a minefield, where many were soon killed or maimed; those who followed after them, stepping over and sometimes on their fallen comrades, were luckier, as the mines had already been tripped.

  "There were 600 of us in the camp that day," Sobelman told Karp's class. "About 150 were killed by the guards or the mines. Three hundred of us escaped; those who didn't were shot the following day when the SS returned."

  The Germans and their thugs pursued the escapees relentlessly. Not only were they worried that the Jews would join with the partisans fighting a guerrilla war from the forests, they wanted to prevent them from telling the outside world about the exterminations at Sobibor. Already the German high command and government officials were concerned about what would happen if they lost the war and were held accountable for war crimes.

  "I escaped with Pechorsky," Sobelman said. "We numbered about 75. But we broke into smaller groups to avoid detection. Myself and a handful of comrades wandered the Parczew forest northwest of Sobibor for weeks. We were lucky and met up with Yehiel Gry
nszpan's Jewish partisans, who welcomed us like heroes, though it was hard to feel we deserved the accolades with so many of our friends and families dead. I think today the psychologists call this 'survivor's guilt,' and believe me, it would last all the rest of our lives."

  In the week following the escape, 100 of the 300 escapees were recaptured or killed. "Two hundred of us survived to tell the story," Sobelman recalled. "But of them, only about fifty survived the war. Even after the day of liberation, some were killed, including Feldhendler, by right-wing Polish National Army troops, who were actively hunting down Jews. You see, it was not just Germans or Nazis, or their servants, who murdered Jews."

  "Didn't the Germans know that what they were doing was wrong?" Zak asked.

  "Of course, they knew. And if I was a brilliant district attorney like Mr. Karp, I could prove it in court. You want evidence? Here's some. At the beginning of the genocide, they tried mass killings of Jews by having them shot down by regular German Army troops, but German officers complained that the face-to-face killing of unarmed civilians was having a severely negative psychological impact on their soldiers. So the Nazis decided to pursue more mechanical methods, such as the gas chambers at Sobibor and the other extermination camps, and use the sort of people who could handle the work of murder. So yes, they knew it was wrong, because their soldiers told them it was. But you want more evidence?"

  Three days after the revolt, the Nazis had tried to erase any evidence that the camp had even existed. The buildings were dismantled, the land ploughed up, and trees planted to disguise the site as a farm.

  "It was as if by doing so, they could deny that the evil they had done was real. Those at the top also realized that any witnesses left alive could implicate them. So even their own SS guards were sent to dangerous positions on the front lines where it was hoped that they would be killed. But some of them lived, and though they tried to hide, they were found by Nazi-hunters after the war, who heard what had happened from those of us who survived.

  "When you believe that what you are doing is right, you do not try to hide or deny it," he said. "Oh, they knew it was wrong, but they did it anyway."

  Karp turned away from the circus outside the Criminal Courts building and went inside. After a week of jury selection, opening statements were finally set to begin at 1:30 before Judge Tim Dermondy.

  When he got off the elevator, the first person he saw was Darla Milquetost poking her head out of the office door. "Oh there you are," she said. "Mr. Newbury just called and left a message. Shall I call him back for you?"

  "What'd he want?" Karp growled.

  "Oh, well," stammered Mrs. Milquetost, the hope for an imminent happy reunion fading from her face like a sunset. She picked up her notepad. "He was calling to remind you that the file for the Black Sea Cafe bombing is still in his office under the suspect's name, Stanislas Tomas Meyerhoff. He said to remind you that he's a minor, seventeen years old, and from Brooklyn. He believes that the arraignment is tomorrow, Wednesday, and that the Russian authorities should be contacted." She held the note out to Karp. "Shall I get that file from his office for you?"

  "No, Mrs. Milquetost," he replied, taking the note and crumpling it in his hand. "I'm quite sure that Mr. Newbury's replacement has it covered."

  Karp went into his office and shut the door. He walked over to his desk, picked up the telephone, and dialed. When it was answered he spoke quickly. "I believe the contents and visitors will be arriving in Brooklyn tomorrow. That's all I have." He listened to the reply and hung up without saying anything more just as Mrs. Milquetost called to say that Kenny Katz had arrived.

  They spent the next thirty minutes going over for the umpteenth time the outline for the case. When they were through, Karp's young colleague remained in his seat with his head down.

  "You okay with this case?" Karp asked. "I don't want you participating if you don't believe in it. If you have any qualms, I understand. I can try the case on my own if I need to."

  Katz looked up, surprised. "No way. I guess I was spacing and wondering what God thinks about everybody trying to pin all these murders on Him. 'God told me to kill Jews. God told me to kill Palestinians. God told me to kill my neighbors, my wife, my children.' I'm tired of it, and I'm pretty sure God is, too. I saw enough people killed in the name of Allah on 9/11 and in Afghanistan, and if I was God or Allah I'd be pretty fucking ticked off that they're saying it's what I want."

  The young man wandered over to the window. "You know, last night I was thinking about Campbell's statements to her husband about sending her children to God. I remembered this patrol I was on in Kabul. We were moving through an outdoor market and suddenly we see this kid walking down the middle of everybody, just staring at us sort of glassy-eyed. He was maybe fourteen, tops, probably younger, but he opened up his coat and showed us that he had a suicide vest on. Then he shouted, 'Allah-u-Akbar. God is great.' As if God had anything to do with what he was doing."

  "That's rough," Karp commiserated. "What'd you do?"

  "Me?" Kenny asked as if there was any question. "I shot him between the eyes before he could pull the cord."

  "Hard to imagine having to do something like that," Karp said quietly. "No problems," Kenny replied. "I did what I had to do. And eventually, I was able to come to terms with the fact that I wasn't the one who talked that kid into putting on a vest full of dynamite and nails, or told him that God wanted him to kill. But it took a while before I quit dreaming of that kid's face in my rifle sight.... I'm just tired of God getting the bad rap and sometimes wish He'd do something about it."

  Mrs. Milquetost buzzed in on the intercom. "Mr. Karp, the press is here and asking for a comment."

  "Tell them there will be no comment. And make them wait in the hall or the courtroom. That's where I'll be doing all the talking that I intend to do in this case." He gave his ADA a chance to collect himself, then asked, "You ready?"

  Katz gave him a wink. "As I'll ever be."

  A few minutes later, Karp opened the door to the reception area and caught Mrs. Milquetost in mid-gossip with a young female assistant district attorney. "I just wish they would get over themselves and make up," Milquetost was saying. "Who knows? Maybe V. T...."

  The receptionist looked up when he cleared his throat. She blushed as she tried desperately to cover her tracks. "I, uh ... um ... good luck in the trial."

  "Thank you," Karp said. He opened the door, which had the effect of setting off a half-dozen camera flashes and a jumble of voices all asking for him to say something pithy. The only reason he and Katz could move into the hall at all was because Gilbert Murrow held them all at bay in a semi-circle with commands of "stand back" and "give us some room." The aide then led the way to the elevators, occasionally using a stiff-arm worthy of a Heisman Trophy running back.

  Karp answered none of the questions yelled out to him, but he smiled and wished a "good morning" to those in the media horde he knew. When the elevator door opened, several members of the press stepped forward in an attempt to get on with the prosecution team, but Murrow pushed them back. "Sorry, we're full."

  In a demonstration of complete impartiality, he didn't let his girlfriend Stupenagel aboard either. "Sorry babe, join the rest of the vultures."

  "Yeah? Well, maybe we'll see who's sleeping with the pigeons when you get home tonight, buster," she yelled as the doors slid shut.

  "You're going to pay for that one," Karp told his aide, who pressed the button for the twelfth floor.

  "Just remember who took the bullet for you," Murrow replied sadly. Obviously, he'd had bigger plans than sleeping on the roof that evening. He perked up though when the doors slid open again to a whole new gaggle of journalists, all elbowing each other and shouting the same questions.

  The press followed Karp and Katz into the courtroom, scurrying like rats in a maze to find the few remaining seats in the pews on either side of the aisle. A shouting match ensued when the unlucky ones were told they would have to watch the trial on a m
onitor in another room. Those who had seats looked smug.

  A low buzz permeated the air of the courtroom, over a hundred people speaking quietly but excitedly to each other—a sort of white noise that increased in volume anytime someone of note, such as the prosecutors, entered.

  As Karp and Katz made their way to the prosecution table, Karp saw that the defendant and her lawyer were already seated at the defense table. Over the objection of her attorney, Linda Lewis, who never minded a little press, Karp had won a motion to have Jessica Campbell brought to the courtroom early to avoid the crush of reporters and the off-chance that some nut-job in the crowd would try to hurt her.

  Lewis had been busy filing last-minute motions, including one to have the case thrown out, and another to have witnesses excluded. One she had not filed was to allow Campbell to dress in civilian clothes for the trial instead of the jumpsuit worn by psychiatric patients at Bellevue. Normally, a defense attorney worried that jail garb would make their client look guilty in the eyes of the jurors, but Lewis wanted Campbell clearly identified as a psych patient.

  Another trick of the defense trade was to clean up the appearance of defendants. That's why murderers who'd previously dressed like Hell's Angels bikers appeared at trial in sweater vests and horn-rimmed glasses with their hair cut and looking like frat boys. For the same reason, a female defendant arrested in a bikini top and shorts exposing her butt cheeks would most likely be brought to court in a dress so conservative that she would look like a turn-of-the-twentieth-century missionary to Africa.

  Here again, Lewis had opted for a different strategy. Campbell's hair, which at a pre-trial hearing only a week before had been long and neatly trimmed, now looked like someone had hacked at it with a dull knife. She was pale as milk, which was to be somewhat expected, as she had spent nearly all of her time indoors, but the lack of color was emphasized by the dark circles under her eyes.