Exile: a novel (12 page)

“And I already know you. Better than Saeb Khalid ever will.”

“Do you? David, how can you?”

Laying his curled finger against the warm skin of Hana’s throat, David could feel the soft, insistent beating of her pulse. “Tell me this, Hana. Will you ever want Saeb the way you want me?”

After a moment, Hana closed her eyes. Her only answer, David found, was when she touched him, wanting to make love again.

Now, standing with Carole in her living room, David tried to purge the image from his mind.

Tense, Ibrahim waited for the traffic light to change, permitting Iyad to drive out of the parking lot and take the wide street marked “19th Avenue” to wherever the woman had directed him.

Between them lay their map and a list of numbers written down by Iyad as he had listened on his cell phone. To Ibrahim they were indecipherable, as were the means by which they would kill their enemy.

Why was the street so empty, he wondered, and then he heard the distant wail of sirens pierce the silence.

Involuntarily, Ibrahim flinched—they must be coming for him and Iyad, he felt certain. Iyad’s fingers tightened on the wheel. As the sirens squealed, moving closer, Ibrahim hunched in his seat.

A bank of policemen on motorcycles suddenly filled the empty street, cruising in tight formation. Flanked by more officers, a black limousine passed, the first of a procession of identical limousines with tinted windows, like the opaque glasses of a blind man. On their aerials flew the blue-and-white flag of Israel.

“Seven limousines so far,” Iyad murmured. “Bulletproof, reinforced with armor.”

Three more followed. Only the eighth had clear glass windows. Through the motorcycles, Ibrahim spotted a man with the profile of a hawk, staring straight ahead.

Him.

The last car swept by, followed by more policemen on motorcycles.

Ibrahim watched the motorcade recede with a sense of awe. Even the slow fade of the sirens seemed to diminish him.

How could they accomplish this? he wondered in despair. And who, besides God, would be able to design a plan that would succeed?

As a budding politician, David had learned how to work a room, combining his good looks and easy smile with a quick wit that helped establish a rapport. But the flinty charisma that distinguished Amos Ben-Aron made David feel synthetic. He was strikingly fit for a man of sixty-five—small and wiry, with piercing blue eyes, a bald head, and skin drawn tight across his sharp features. Though he seldom smiled, his eyes locked with those of whomever he met, signaling his complete attention and, on occasion, glinting with a somewhat wintry humor. He had the look of a leader: sufficient to himself, used to being listened to and obeyed. He did not seem like an easy man to defy.

David said as much to Danny Neyer, Ben-Aron’s young spokesman, as they watched the prime minister meet wealthy Jewish influentials of varying political inclinations. “Yes,” Neyer said, with an ironic smile. “From the outside you would think that Amos Ben-Aron never knows doubt. But up close he’s a man beset on all sides, who believes that he can never bring about peace if he betrays a moment’s weakness or uncertainty. It wears on him.”

David was struck by the contrast between the prime minister’s burdens as a leader and the more trivial necessity of engaging Carole’s guests. At the moment, Ben-Aron was gently detaching from Dorothy Kushner, a woman in her early fifties whose bright blond hair, too smooth skin, and bottomless social avidity betrayed the anxiety of a former beauty who feared that something terribly important might happen without her. Then, as though Neyer’s purpose had been to mark David for his boss, Ben-Aron began
wending toward their spot near the windows, a subtle minuet in which the prime minister was interrupted, but never diverted, from his apparent mission of meeting David Wolfe, a guest’s courtesy to his hostess.

Finally they were face-to-face. At close range Ben-Aron looked older, his pale skin like parchment. But David experienced his force at once, the sense that—though Carole’s living room was filled with those vying for a private word—David had his complete attention. “So,” he said, shaking David’s hand with a quick, firm grip. “I understand you’ve an interest in entering politics.”

David smiled. “Would you advise me to?”

Ben-Aron’s eyes glinted with arid humor. “That depends on what you want to accomplish. I wouldn’t recommend it merely as an exercise. Though there are those who thrive on it.

“Your President Clinton was one such man. Do you remember the famous White House handshake between Prime Minister Rabin and Arafat, when the world thought all things were possible?”

“Sure.”

“I was present,” Ben-Aron continued with the practiced air of a politician proffering an inside story, “and there was so much more to that handshake than the mere fact that Rabin could not bring himself to smile. When Yitzhak came to the White House, Clinton took him aside and told him he’d have to shake hands with Arafat. This was to be expected. But for Rabin, Arafat was a murderer, a terrorist, and a practiced liar—which pretty well summed up his talents. Finally, Yitzhak growled, ‘I’ll shake the bastard’s hand. But I refuse to let him kiss me.’

“Clinton was a genius,” Ben-Aron continued with a smile. “Before the ceremony he actually practiced standing between the two adversaries, holding them far enough apart so that Arafat could grasp Yitzhak’s hand but would have to lunge to kiss him. The onlookers applauding the historic handshake never suspected that your president was practicing jujitsu. Or,” he finished wryly, “perhaps it was
Jew
-jitsu.”

David laughed. “I didn’t know the story. But it’s been a while since I thought that peace would be nearly as easy as that handshake looked.”

“You didn’t trust Arafat either?”

David shook his head. “It was more than that,” he said seriously. “I knew some Palestinians in law school, including one who turned up on television this afternoon. His grievances go very deep—not just his parents’ flight in 1948, but their deaths at Sabra and Shatila. Both of which he never forgot, and mentioned again today.”

Ben-Aron studied him with sharpened interest. “Sabra and Shatila,” he
said in a lower voice, “was a tragedy, both complex and brutally simple. I should know—I was there. As I’m sure your friend was also at pains to mention.”

“Yes. He was.”

Ben-Aron’s chest seemed to rise and fall in an involuntary sigh. “Before Sabra and Shatila, Lebanon was a base for PLO terror attacks against Israel. And Arafat was resolved to turn West Beirut into what Stalingrad was for the Russians in World War II—a place where his fighters could wage a war of attrition. So Sharon determined to pulverize every PLO stronghold from the air.

“At least three hundred people died, many of them civilians. But Sharon got what he wanted: Arafat agreed to leave for Tunis.” Pausing, Ben-Aron grimaced. “For some of us it was enough. For others, it was not— there were at least two hundred armed PLO at Sabra and Shatila, and this was our chance to kill them before they left.

“On a pragmatic basis, I could not disagree—Arafat’s men might someday kill us if we did not kill them. But the bombing had hurt our international reputation and Lebanon was conveniently torn by Christian-Muslim strife. So it was decided to ally with the Christian militia, the Phalange.

“I was a colonel then, on the general staff. I knew what the Phalangists were—they would kiss your wife’s hand, then cut her throat. And they were inflamed by the murder of their leader, Gemayel.” The movement of Ben-Aron’s shoulders implied his resignation. “To this day I don’t know whether Sharon and the others were certain what would happen. But for my part, I warned my superiors that these murderers would slaughter Palestinians without discrimination.”

Now Ben-Aron spoke so quietly that David strained to hear, though his gaze remained unflinching. “They did not listen. When it was done, I entered the camp. And I found children who had been scalped, men who had been castrated, women who had been raped before their throats were slit. Among the survivors were children with arms or legs gone, others with their minds gone. If I cannot forget this, how could your Palestinian?

“But what he forgets is the response to this horror in Israel. Four hundred thousand people took to the streets to demand a public inquiry. Our Prime Minister Begin tried to counter this horror by invoking the one million children sent to the ovens by Nazis, as though unleashing the Phalange had spared us another Holocaust. But the public would not rest until he gave them their inquiry.

“Though Sharon and the others were reprimanded, some still call it a whitewash. But what country, besides Israel, has faced such threats to its
survival and yet worked so hard to preserve the rule of law? And what country has faced more hatred and demonization by our enemies, more stereotyping as murderers and racists?”

“I know that,” David said. “All too well.”

“I’m sure you do. But now there is our presence in the West Bank, more hatred building every day.” To David’s surprise, the prime minister reached out to touch his arm. “When I was a young boy in Jerusalem, living under British rule, I idolized my father. One day, after the Irgun blew up the King David Hotel, he was stopped for questioning by British soldiers. Perhaps they thought my father was a terrorist—perhaps he
was
one, I do not know for sure. But I never forgot those soldiers slapping and humiliating my father. And from that day on, I hated the British.” To David, Ben-Aron looked suddenly weary, and somehow older. “Now I think of all the hatred since, so deeply planted, awaiting us all in the fullness of time. The moment for peace is swiftly passing.”

With that, Ben-Aron turned, standing straighter, ready to greet the next stranger.

Before David could begin circulating, Danny Neyer reappeared. “So what did you think?”

“That he’s remarkable.” Glancing about the room, David picked out several men, all young, whose faces he did not know. “And that you seem to have a lot of security.”

A shadow crossed Neyer’s face. “Not as much as at home. When I was at university, such a thing was unthinkable—Jew killing Jew. Then a right-wing Jew made Rabin pay for that famous handshake with his life.” Neyer contemplated his glass of soda water. “Now I’m feeling that it could happen to Ben-Aron.”

“Is that a real possibility?”

“More so every day, I think. He’s become a lightning rod—to the far right, he’s betrayed both the settlers and God’s plan for Israel.” Neyer paused, looking about them. “Between us, David, the Shin Bet—our FBI— says that as many as two hundred people very much want to kill him. Amos Ben-Aron has been to a restaurant only once since taking office, and not with friends or family. He’s too afraid some fanatic will take a loved one with him. So a night like this is as close to normal as he’s allowed.”

“Then I wish I’d taken less of his time.”

“If he hadn’t wished to talk, he wouldn’t have.” Neyer gave David the briefest smile. “From what little I could tell, he might even have liked you.”

The sign above the gate read “Safe Guard—the place to store what you can’t afford to lose.” From the ill-lit guardhouse emerged a young Chinese man in a security officer’s uniform.

Presenting his driver’s license, Iyad tersely spoke a number: “Thirty-four.” The guard went inside to consult a computer screen. Then he came back out, returned Iyad’s license, and waved the van inside with bored indifference.

No one else was there. Stepping from the van, Ibrahim saw rows of metal boxes the size of moving vans. The lowering dark made them look like steel sarcophagi.

With a flashlight, Iyad walked among the giant containers until he found the one with “34” painted on its door.

Across a metal handle was a giant padlock. Iyad fished the paper from his pocket. “Hold the flashlight,” he ordered. “And read these numbers aloud.”

As Ibrahim did this, Iyad carefully turned the dial on the padlock with each number, right, then left, then right again, until Ibrahim had recited the last number.

With one quick motion, Iyad jerked open the padlock. Then, glancing over his shoulder, he slowly pulled the handle. The door opened with a low metallic creak, and the flashlight in Ibrahim’s hand cut the darkness inside.

Ibrahim could scarcely comprehend what he was seeing. Wires coiled in one corner, wooden boxes without labels. Against the rear wall of the storage container leaned two motorcycles with the lettering “SFPD.”

Swiftly, Iyad motioned Ibrahim inside, closing the door behind them. Even with the weak light, Ibrahim felt entombed.

At his feet was a large suitcase. When Iyad flipped open its metal snaps, Ibrahim saw helmets, motorcycle boots, blue uniforms with gleaming silver badges. Above the pockets, stitched in gold, were the words “San Francisco Police Department.”

Who, Ibrahim wondered, could have managed this? Instead he murmured, “What’s in the boxes?”

With equal quiet, Iyad answered, “Plastique. They seem to have done well.”

Ibrahim could no longer repress his curiosity. “Who?” he asked.

Iyad shot him a sharp glance. “Strangers. It is not our business to know. No one will. I am sure the locker has been rented by a man who does not exist. Whoever came here left no fingerprints. And everything we see here has been bought with cash...”

“Even the police license plates?” Ibrahim inquired.

“Stolen, I assume. We will never know
that
either. And once we are finished, the U.S. authorities will never find this locker. All they will find is one dead end after the other.” Iyad gave him a belated look of impatience. “Must you play the child? Only children ask so many questions. It is enough for you to die with him.”

And with you,
Ibrahim thought, a moment of despair gripping his heart.