Exile: a novel (23 page)

Startled, David asked, “What’s your basis for
that
request?”

Vallis produced a document from a manila folder and slid it across the table. “A subpoena from the federal grand jury.”

The subpoena, David saw at once, called for fingerprints from Hana as well as Saeb. “I want to see the United States attorney,” he demanded. “Right now.”

Marnie Sharpe sat behind her desk, arms folded. “
You
know that sub-poena’s valid.”

“What I
don’t
know,” David snapped, “is something you’re obligated to tell me under the rules of the Department of Justice: whether one of my clients, or both, was a target of your investigation at the time you invited them here.”

“I told you,” Sharpe said imperturbably, “both are ‘persons of interest.’ Whether one or both is a ‘target’ has yet to be determined.”

“Bullshit. I just sat through two hours of interrogation. Any first-year lawyer would know you’re sitting on something very specific, and using it
to try and nail one or both of them. Which makes at least one of them a target.” David made no effort to conceal his outrage. “You’re walking close to the line, Marnie—in fact, I think you’ve crossed it. If you’d been straight with me, I might have thought a lot harder before I agreed to bring Khalid in. And now I’m not at all sure I’ll allow you to interview his wife.”

“You’re not a virgin, David—far from it. The line between people we’re looking at and the ones we think we may indict is often imprecise, and changes from moment to moment.” Sharpe steepled her fingertips. “I’m not prepared to say that Hana Arif is a target in the assassination of Amos Ben-Aron. But there are questions we want her to answer. It’s her choice, and yours, as to whether she cooperates.”

In silence, David considered her. Beneath Sharpe’s apparent coolness, he felt sure, was a prosecutor even more desperate for an indictment than he had imagined: she had chosen to dissemble, short-circuiting her obligation of candor to a witness in jeopardy in the hopes of a swift break-through. “I’ll discuss it with Ms. Arif,” he said at last, “in light of your assurances. And my assessment of their value.”

“And Munira Khalid?”

“Is their daughter, not mine. I only know what I’d do.”

Sharpe stood, signaling the end of their meeting. “Then let me know about Hana Arif—soon. This won’t keep.”

Saeb and Hana were waiting at David’s office. Saeb’s stare at David was an accusation without words; Hana’s eyes were filled with doubt and worry. Saeb’s fingertips bore the stains of an FBI inkpad.

David looked from Saeb to Hana, still absorbing that the truth might be far worse than he knew. “Sharpe misled me,” he said. “I don’t like the feel of this—all the questions about cell phones and computer use, the finger-prints. They couldn’t get that warrant without showing at least some basis for it. They’ve got something specific, maybe from Ibrahim Jefar, maybe elsewhere. But we’ve got a lot of thinking to do, and little time to do it.”

Saeb held up his hand. “First, Munira. I won’t have her abused by your gestapo.”

David glanced at Hana. “I understand,” he said to Saeb, “and I don’t want to risk putting Munira in the middle of something where she’s terrified, or feels responsible if this goes badly for one or both of you. All I can say on the other side is that the more they ask Munira, the more we learn about what they might ask Hana.”

“No,” Saeb snapped. “That’s like the parable of the four blind men
groping at different parts of an elephant. You can tell us this elephant is a wall, if you wish, or a rope. But not at Munira’s expense.”

David ignored the not-so-veiled insult. “Hana?” he asked.

Hana looked down. “I am worried. I would like to know what they are thinking. But Munira must come first.”

“So I tell Sharpe no?”

“Not just no,” Saeb said. “Tell her to go fuck herself.”

David raised his eyebrows at Hana. Slowly, she nodded. “You may quote my husband, and say it comes from me.”

David tried to read her face—in a few brief hours, the specter of her possible complicity had become real, casting a new and unflattering light on his decision to represent her. The fear that had crept into her eyes could be fear of the unknown, or an awareness of guilt. “Do
you
wish to meet with them, Hana? Sharpe intimates that you’re not a target. I think you may be.”

Hana looked at him steadily. “If you think that, then refusing them can only make this worse.”

David shrugged. “Only if you’re innocent.”

A trace of hurt surfaced in her eyes. “I
am
innocent, David.”

Perhaps only David heard the vibrato in her tone, a plea deeper and more intimate than that of a client. At the corner of his vision, David saw her husband glance quickly from his wife to him.

“Then you and I have work to do,” David said to Hana. “Alone.”

“Why didn’t you watch it?” David asked.

Hana clasped her hands in front of her, drawing her shoulders in; to David, she looked smaller, more disheartened. “Many reasons. Perhaps the greatest was that I did not want to be with Saeb.”

“Why not?”

“Because I knew what I would hear from him—the hopelessness, the hatred.” She looked into David’s eyes. “I do not blame him. But such words have been the subtext of my life. That day I could not bear it.”

David studied her, unsmiling. “That day, of all days. So why not take Munira with you?”

“To avoid a quarrel. Saeb would have insisted that she stay. Not to hear Ben-Aron but Saeb himself, to serve as audience for his loathing of the Jews.”

David did not comment. For another twenty minutes, he tried to pick apart this hour of her life, movement by movement. At the end, he said, “Everything I’ve asked you, the FBI will ask. If what you’ve told me includes a single lie, they will know it.”

The skin over Hana’s cheekbones flushed. “When you knew me, David, did you think I was a liar?”

“I
knew
you were. If nothing else, you lied to Saeb.”

Hana did not respond. After a moment, she sat straighter, her voice
brittle and resolved. “All right. I am ready for these people.” She did not ask again for David’s belief, or even for his sympathy.

An hour later, Kornbluth set a tape recorder on the table in front of her, then switched it on. Vallis’s legal admonitions, though rote, now sounded ominous: that they were agents of the FBI; that Hana’s statements could be used against her in a court of law; that falsehoods could be the basis for a criminal charge of perjury. Did Hana understand this?

“Yes,” she said without emotion. “I am a graduate of Harvard Law School.”

Vallis watched her face. “Do you advocate violence against the State of Israel?”

“No.”

“Have you ever done so?”

Hana placed a finger to her lips. “I suppose I may have said such things, when I was younger. Sometimes I may have felt them. But I truly cannot recall.”

The agent took a second tape recorder from beneath the table. “What’s
this
?” David asked.

Vallis pushed a button. From the tape recorder emerged a thin but angry voice: “If we are terrorists, it is because we must be. Perhaps killing is all the Jews have left us.”

David felt a coldness on his skin. The voice was Saeb’s; the words, he recalled, were spoken at Harvard, on the night David first met Hana Arif.

“Do you recognize those words, Ms. Khalid?”

“Yes. They are my husband’s, many years ago.”

She seemed calm enough, David thought. But he was not—the tape had resurrected the past, underscoring the tenuousness of David’s position now. “Do you agree with that statement?” Vallis asked her.

“Then, or now?”

“At any time.”

Hana’s voice was uninflected. “Then, perhaps. Not now. I am tired of killing.”

Vallis placed a picture in front of her: a bearded man, clearly Arab, whose dark, intense eyes stared from a face so thin it could have belonged to an ascetic or a vagrant. “Do you recognize this man?”

“Yes.”

“From where?”

A hint of sour amusement played on Hana’s lips. “The first page of the
New York Times.
I believe that is Iyad Hassan, who no longer resembles his picture.”

She was angry, David realized—perhaps at having been the subject of surveillance, perhaps at David himself. “Have you ever met Iyad Hassan?”

“As a professor, I meet many people. I have no specific memory of meeting this one.”

David turned to watch her.
You’re being too chilly,
he tried to convey without words;
remember your reasons for being here.
As though hearing his admonition, Hana’s expression softened a bit.

“You are certain you’ve never met Mr. Hassan?” Kornbluth prodded.

“Not certain, no. All that I can tell you is that I have no memory of meeting him.”

“At any time?”

“At any time.”

“What about cell phone conversations. Did you ever speak to Mr. Hassan by cell phone?”

“Not that I recall. I don’t know why I would have.”

“Specifically, while in San Francisco,
this
month, did you ever speak to Hassan?”

Hana raised her eyebrows, glancing at David. “In San Francisco?” she asked in an incredulous tone. “No, definitely not. That I would remember.” Hana’s voice became cool. “I do not know this man. All that I’m saying, in an effort to be precise, is that I can’t swear that I’ve never met him.”

“What is your personal cell phone number?”

“972 (59) 696-0896.”

“Did you ever give that number to Mr. Hassan?”

David tensed; despite her denials, the questions suggested that the FBI had reason to believe she knew Hassan, and their precision was meant to establish grounds for perjury. “No,” Hana answered firmly.

“Again,” Vallis asked, “you’re very certain of that?”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever write down this cell phone number for anyone?”

Hana looked both cornered and bemused. “I believe not, no.”

“Not even for your husband or your daughter?”

“This is a new cell phone, bought perhaps a month ago. Saeb and Munira programmed the number on their phones. I had no need to write it out for them.”

David watched the tape spinning, recording Hana’s answers. Choosing
his words with care, Vallis asked, “Did you ever, at any time, print the number 972 (59) 696-0896 on your HP desktop at Birzeit?”

Hana stared at him as though trying to comprehend the question, its specificity apparently troubling her as much as it did David. “Do you mean did I print this number on a piece of paper, using the computer and printer in my office?”

“Yes.”

Hana turned her palms upward, a gesture of bewilderment. “Why would I do such a thing? My handwriting is clear enough.”

“Please answer the question. Did you ever print your cell phone number for anyone on a piece of paper, using the computer and printer in your office?”

“I did answer. I have no memory of doing that, and can’t imagine why I would.”

Someone
had done so, David was now sure. Were it Hana, her only motive would be to avoid writing it in her own hand, the one way she could deny having passed the paper on herself—assuming she had left no finger-prints. Now Kornbluth pursued this line of questioning. “Who else, besides your family, has that number?”

“Only a few friends and colleagues. Most of whose names and cell phone numbers, I believe, are programmed in my cell phone.”

“And you still have that cell phone?”

“Yes.”

“Did you use that phone in San Francisco?”

“Yes.”

“For what?”

“To call Saeb or Munira, if we were in different places.”

These questions, at least, were ones that David had prepared her for. As David had earlier, Vallis asked, “While in San Francisco, did you call anyone else?”

“Mr. Wolfe,” Hana said casually, “our friend from law school. Also restaurants and tour providers. I think I called a taxi company, to take Munira and me to the ferryboat. Those calls will show up on my cell phone records.” She thought for a moment, then added, “Also, I called my parents.”

“Where do they live?”

Briefly Hana compressed her lip. “At a refugee camp in Lebanon, Shatila.”

“What is your parents’ number?”

Hana recited it. Kornbluth glanced at Vallis, then asked, “During your
time in San Francisco, did you make or receive any telephone calls between midnight and four
a.m.
?”

“I did not, no.”

“Did your husband or Munira?”

“Were it to or from Saeb, such a call would have awakened me. As for Munira, she no longer has her own cell phone. She lost it, and we have yet to replace it.”

“Does Munira borrow
your
phone?”

“No. Munira lost hers here in San Francisco, where or how I do not know. I need one, and do not want for her to lose mine, as well.”

This time it was Vallis who glanced at Kornbluth, indicating his desire to intervene. “Are you familiar with the cell phone number (415) 669-3666?”

It was the identical question that Vallis had asked Saeb. “No,” Hana answered, just as she had answered David. “I am not familiar with that number. If it is one I called, or the number of someone who called me, I cannot place it.”

Vallis leaned forward. In a new tone, cold and clipped, he asked, “Did you ever discuss with anyone the assassination of Amos Ben-Aron?”

Hana sat straighter. “Before it happened, do you mean?”

“Yes.”

“If you mean that he might be killed, yes, I believe I’ve discussed that possibility.”

“With whom?”

“With friends, or colleagues at Birzeit. His murder has long been a matter of speculation.”

“Did you ever discuss with anyone the
means
by which Ben-Aron might be assassinated?”

“Means? Yes, in the sense that I thought he might be killed by his own people—the fanatic Orthodox, perhaps, or settlers who feared he’d ‘sell them out,’ in their twisted way of thinking.” Hana sat back, looking at both agents with an air of weariness. “Why don’t you just ask me if I know anything about the murder of Ben-Aron beyond what the public knows?”