Exile: a novel (77 page)

“How long have you been familiar with the number?”

“Since Hana bought the cell phone, as she said.”

“And you also had access to her office.”

“The same access as anyone,” Saeb answered with a shrug.

“So, in theory, you could have taken the paper from her office.”

“True,” Saeb said mildly. “And also paper she used at home, to spare you the trouble of asking that.”

“Thank you. So I assume that, also in theory, you could have typed her telephone number on the paper and given it to Iyad Hassan.”

Saeb gave him a tolerant smile. “In theory, yes. That’s one of the problems with this piece of evidence. Anyone could have ginned it up.”

In the areas he could anticipate, David perceived, Saeb would prove to be an adroit witness, adopting the role of David’s partner in a common effort to raise doubts on his wife’s behalf. In the same pleasant tone, David asked, “You also had access to Hana’s phone itself, did you not?”

Saeb nodded. “In the sense that we live together. I recall borrowing it on one or two occasions when my own phone needed recharging. Munira did the same, I believe. As Hana noted, our daughter sometimes loses things.”

This, too, was clever—anticipating David, Saeb was trying to create an alternative user of Hana’s cell phone. “Are you suggesting,” David inquired, “that on June 15 Munira took an early morning call from Iyad Hassan?”

“I suggest nothing. I don’t know
what
that telephone call is about— who received it, or who placed it.”

“But again, in theory, you could have removed the cell phone from Hana’s purse while she was sleeping, gone into the bathroom, taken a call from Hassan, and left the phone on long enough to create the impression of a conversation.”

Saeb looked at the ceiling with an air of bewilderment, as though trying to follow the convolutions of David Wolfe’s imagination. “I suppose I
could
have,” he conceded in an agreeable tone. “Where I get lost is why I would do such an insidious but clumsy thing. Let alone to Hana.”

During the first moments of questioning, David had not moved from his post beside the defense table. “Why indeed? By the way, you also brought your own cell phone to San Francisco, right?”

“Yes.”

“And that cell phone, like Hana’s, had international cell phone service and the 972 country code used by Israel and the Occupied Territories.”

“Yes.”

“And you turned that cell phone over to the FBI when Hana was arrested, true?”

“True.” Saeb conjured a weary smile. “I had to get a new one at my own expense. Your FBI does not issue replacements.”

David paused, hands on hips. “Prior to the time that the FBI impounded your phone, did you have another cell phone in your possession?”

Saeb’s eyes narrowed slightly. But he did not seem perturbed; the FBI had asked him the same question. “Not that I recall,” he answered. “At least in San Francisco.”

“You don’t recall having a phone with the 415 area code for San Francisco?”

Saeb spread his hands, his expression as matter-of-fact as his tone. “No.”

On the bench, Taylor leaned forward, drawn by the spectacle of a witness perched on the edge of a trap. “Can you think of any reason,” David asked, “for you to use a cell phone in San Francisco with service that did not allow you to call home?”

Saeb shook his head, still appearing perplexed. “No. None.”

His answers, David noted, were becoming less expansive. “So you didn’t buy such a phone while you were here, for cash?”

“No.” Saeb allowed a note of annoyance to creep into his voice. “Like any experienced traveler, I do not stuff my wallet with cash. For that reason alone, I would not buy a cell phone in this fashion.”

This, David believed, was true: this cell phone, like those planted for Hassan, had been bought by someone else. For the moment, Saeb could feel safe; only he knew where he had discarded the cell phone, and no one could ever trace it to him. “So just to nail this down,” David said, “you’re absolutely confident that, while in San Francisco, you never possessed a cell phone with the number (415) 669-3666?”

Saeb could give only one answer. “That is not a number I recognize,” he said brusquely. “Nor do your prior questions spur even a glimmer of recollection.”

For the first time, David stepped forward. “While you were in San Francisco, Dr. Khalid, did Munira ever borrow your cell phone?”

Ever so slightly, Saeb blanched, a moment that passed so quickly that had David not been looking, he might have missed it altogether. “I can’t recall.”

Moving a step closer to Saeb, David felt Sharpe and the jury watching—the prosecutor knowing, and the jury sensing, that the dynamic between witness and interrogator was changing. “Let me be more specific,” David said evenly. “On the day before the assassination of Amos Ben-Aron, did you become angry with Munira because you found her with a cell phone she had taken from the pocket of your coat?”

Saeb’s eyes widened. With a certain savage pleasure, David watched a series of realizations flash through his antagonist’s mind: that Munira had betrayed him to David; that his previous answers, far from being safe, might be demonstrably false; that David meant to expose him on the witness stand. And then he took the only escape route he could find, the one David had left open to him. His brows knit, Saeb impersonated a witness
straining to remember. “I seem to recall that something like this happened. But so much has happened to us, and there have been so many shocks. When your wife is on trial for murder, such incidents as you describe recede in memory.”

David nodded. “Do you remember taking your cell phone back from Munira?”

Saeb touched his temples. “Perhaps. But this is very vague.”

“What cell phone would that have been, Dr. Khalid?”

Saeb flinched. At this moment, Sharpe could have objected—there was arguably no foundation for David’s question. But Sharpe was silent; perhaps she was certain, as was David, that Taylor meant for him to have all the leeway he required. Slowly, Saeb said, “You are asking me to speculate about what is, at most, a vestigial recollection. But it could have only been the cell phone confiscated by the FBI.” He paused, then seemingly chose to take a gamble. “If Munira used it, that would no doubt show up on the phone itself, or on our phone records. But I seem to recall Munira saying she had not used it.”

David smiled, his eyes fixed on Saeb. “Did you believe her?”

The question jolted Saeb more visibly than any other; he seemed to shrink back on the stand, his frame twisting slightly. David could imagine his thoughts: years ago Hana had deceived him, and now, perhaps, so had Munira. “Of course,” Saeb answered, his voice hollow. “We raised our daughter to be truthful.”

“Kids,” David said softly. “You just never know. Suppose I told you that Munira called her friend Yasmin Al-Shanty on the phone she took from you, and that Yasmin called her back. If the telephone used by Munira is
not
the one confiscated from you by the FBI, how would you explain that?”

Saeb stared at him. “I can’t.”

“Then let me ask the question in another way. How would you explain it if the cell phone used by Munira had the number (415) 669-3666?”

In the jury box, Bob Clair leaned forward against the railing as though he did not wish to miss even the slightest change in expression. “I can’t answer these hypotheticals,” Saeb parried. “Your questions are phrased so as to disguise the truth beneath a smokescreen of assumptions—”

“Not assumptions,” David cut in. “Facts. Yasmin’s mother can identify cell phone records showing calls to and from Yasmin involving the number (415) 669-3666. It’s also a fact that (415) 669-3666 is the cell phone number used to call Iyad Hassan ten minutes before the assassination of Amos Ben-Aron. My question is why that phone was in the pocket of your coat one day before Hassan blew up Ben-Aron.”

Saeb glanced around the courtroom, and then his eyes lit on Hana. “Perhaps the telephone was Hana’s, not mine.”

“How gallant,” David said coldly. “Are you now suggesting that Hana stole it from your coat pocket?”

“
I don’t know,
Mr. Wolfe. I no longer know what to think.”

David stood straighter. “On the morning of the assassination, Dr. Khalid, did you receive a telephone call informing you that the route of Ben-Aron’s motorcade had changed?”

“No.”

“Did you call Iyad Hassan to tell him that the route had changed?”

“Of course not,” Saeb shot back. “I was with Munira. It was Hana who was alone.”

This was true, and it deepened David’s dilemma: if Munira was Saeb’s alibi for the day of the assassination, only testimony from Munira could refute this. Saeb sat straighter, as though sensing that at least in this area, David had no angle of attack. Gazing at the witness with an unimpressed half smile, David asked, “So you know absolutely nothing about who planned the assassination, how it was executed, or who helped carry it out.”

“That’s correct,” Saeb answered firmly.

“And you had no reason whatsoever to try to bring about a prosecution that could result in Hana’s execution or imprisonment.”

For an instant, Saeb glanced toward Hana, then responded with a mixture of scorn and bemusement. “This is the stuff of fantasies. Disagreements about child raising are no basis for your baroque attempt to slander me in the interests of my wife.

“Am I sorry that Amos Ben-Aron is dead? In candor, not particularly. Am I sorry that Hana is charged for this crime? Very much. But I can no more explain that than anything else about this devious plot.”

Saeb was regaining confidence, David saw; the shock of Yasmin’s phone records was receding, replaced by the hope that this was David’s only weapon. Abruptly, David asked, “Do you have a heart condition, Professor Khalid?”

A brief glimmer of uncertainty passed through Saeb’s eyes. “Yes,” he answered. “My heart is congenitally weak. My condition also includes arrhythmia, which, under extreme conditions, could cause my heart to stop beating.”

“And what is the course of treatment?”

“I take medication. And, of course, I have a cardiologist.”

David saw the judge’s expectant glance and expressions of puzzlement on several of the jurors’ faces. “In Amman, Jordan?” David asked.

Saeb gave David a look of offended dignity that did not quite conceal his unease. “I fail to see why my cardiac misfortunes should be of interest to anyone but me. However, yes—I have visited several times in the last three years with a specialist in Amman, Dr. Abdullah Aziz.”

“How many times have you visited Dr. Aziz?”

“Several. I have not kept a running count.”

“If I said that there were five such visits in the last three years, would you dispute this?”

Saeb shrugged. “I can neither dispute it nor confirm it.”

“Can you tell me, at least, how long these appointments lasted?”

“I did not time them. Always with doctors, one waits.”

“But if I tell you that the medical records of these visits show that each trip to Amman shows a single visit to Dr. Aziz, you would have no reason to dispute this?”

Now Saeb looked distinctly guarded, as though recalculating the dangers he was facing. At the edge of his vision, David spotted Avi Hertz watching Saeb with a jeweler’s eye. “I’ve never seen my doctor’s records,” Saeb finally answered. “Frankly, I would have thought them confidential—”

“Did any of your appointments,” David interrupted, “last more than one day?”

Saeb hesitated. “I think not.”

“And yet your passport shows that your trips involved a minimum of three days in Jordan and, on one occasion, seven days away from the West Bank.”

Saeb summoned a condescending smile. “Which tells you what? Perhaps that it is pleasant to be free of Israeli occupation. It is the only upside of my medical condition.”

“So what do you do in Amman when you’re not visiting with Dr. Aziz?”

“What anyone would do. See the sights, eat in restaurants, wander and observe the people. Experience what it is to be in a place that, whatever its defects, is at least under the governance of Arabs.”

“Did you ever meet with representatives of any foreign government?”

“I met many people. I do not always remember to ask who their employers are.”

“Is that a yes, Dr. Khalid? Or a no?”

“Neither.” Saeb bristled slightly. “It is an ‘I don’t know’ and an ‘I don’t remember.’ Why don’t you just dismiss me, so you can testify yourself?”

“Oh, I’m sure there must be
some
question you can answer. For example, during one of your trips to Amman, did you travel to Tehran, the capital of Iran?”

Marnie Sharpe, David saw, leaned slightly forward at the question. “Yes,” Saeb said stiffly. “I did not know this was a crime.”

“What did you do while in Iran?”

“I was anxious to see life in an Islamic state, so different from life in a Jewish colony. I recall a pleasant dinner at the home of an Iranian professor.”

“While you were there, Professor Khalid, did you meet with any representatives of the Iranian government?”

“Not intentionally. Perhaps at the dinner. But I cannot recall.”

“Let’s be more specific, then. Did you meet with anyone employed by Iranian intelligence?”

Sharpe stirred, as though considering an objection, and then said nothing. “If I did,” Saeb said with an edge of scorn, “they did not announce their affiliation, any more than America’s intelligence agents have ‘CIA’ monogrammed on their shirt pockets. I cannot see what these questions have to do with the charges against my wife—”

“While you were in Tehran,” David cut in, “who paid for your hotel room?”

“I did, of course.”

“And during your trips to Amman, who paid your hotel bills at the Intercontinental?”

Once more, Saeb hesitated. “Again, I did.”

“How did you pay?”

Saeb turned to the judge, palms upraised, as if to ask whether he must answer such foolish questions. When Taylor’s expression did not change, Saeb turned back to David and said, “I really can’t remember.”

“If I told you that you paid each bill in cash, would you dispute that?”