The Gun Runner's Daughter (19 page)

“So?”

“So think about it. We’ve got a prosecution of a man who was clearly sanctioned in his crime. I mean, I accept that it’s a valid legal process to try your father, but
let’s be honest: if Dymitryck hadn’t brought the Bosnian sales to public attention, your dad would have been doing his business with tacit government approval. Right?”

Nodding slowly, she agreed. “So what?”

“Now, not only is that all true, but now the guy responsible for the prosecution even starting has been killed, but they don’t want to admit there’s any connection.”

Again, she nodded, waiting.

But Dee was done. “There’s something wrong here, Alley. These guys better be damn smart to be sure it doesn’t blow up in their faces.”

“They’re smart.”

“Oh yeah? Have you been reading the papers the past two years?”

“Of course.”

“Then what the hell makes you think they’re so smart?” His voice was rising now, and Alley recognized that she was hearing something that had been thought out clearly, but
never before articulated.

“There’s something wrong. The prosecution of your father—it’s too vindictive, for one thing. And it’s too aggressive. People who are . . . sure of themselves,
they’re not this aggressive. You know? It’s like they’re trying to rush the thing through while they can.”

“Is it midterm?”

“The elections? That’s what my father says. They need good press on this before the elections. They’re afraid of losing Congress.”

“You don’t believe it?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I mean, I’m sure Clinton wants to come off like he’s the Bosnian embargo’s biggest champion, and all that crap. And I’m
sure these guys are scared as hell at the prospect of a Republican Congress. But that’s not enough to justify this charade. Can I ask you something?”

“Um-hmm.” Their faces were inches apart.

“What do you think that guy from the
NAR
was looking for?”

That was not what she had been expecting. She turned away, showing him her neck.

“I don’t know.”

But then, as if honesty demanded it, she spoke again. “I took a look at the
NAR
last week at the NYU library. You know their biggest concern?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Iraq. The arming of Iraq, before the Gulf War. They say there were extensive CIA-supported operations to sell arms and technology to Hussein. They say the Iraqi tilt was coordinated out
of the NSC by Greg Eastbrook. You believe that?”

This interested him, clearly. She watched him think, and then answer in a considered voice. The voice, she thought, of his profession.

“Yes. I mean, sales to Hussein were commonplace. Everyone was doing it: Germany, Switzerland, Belgium. Dozens of American companies.
U.S. v. Teledyne
is a big precedent, so
I’ve looked at it. But the relevant issues are pretty straightforward.”

“What was it about?”

“Well, Teledyne was an American company, indicted on charges of supplying zirconium for the manufacture of cluster bombs to a Chilean company. Carlos Cardoen. He then sold the bombs, as
well as a considerable array of armaments—helicopters to chemical warfare components—to Iraq. The U.S. indicted him, too, but he was abroad.”

Alley watched with considerable interest now. “Sounds pretty familiar, doesn’t it?”

“Oh yeah. It’s a very relevant precedent. Teledyne’s prosecution was a real surprise too. It was a real surprise that Teledyne or Cardoen was targeted. And then, theirs was the
first time your father’s defense was attempted.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning the defense that an illegal arms sale was part of a covert U.S. government program. Teledyne—and Cardoen—documented CIA and embassy knowledge of the entire operation.
And they had valid end-user documents—nearly valid, anyway. So the defense was that they were unprosecutable in that they had received a nod from the administration.”

“Did it come to trial?”

Dee shook his head. “No. Teledyne settled. They paid out nearly twenty million on that charge alone. I would have wanted to see it come to trial. Shelby Highsmith was on the bench, and
pretrial rulings said pretty clearly that tacit government approval did not excuse illegal activity. There was considerable plausible deniability on the part of Commerce, anyway, who approved the
export licenses. It would have gone to the Supreme Court, no question. I would have wanted to see it tried. In fact, I’d go further: if the government had really wanted to see the
constitutional issues addressed, it would never have accepted the plea.”

She was silent for a while. Then she said, carefully, avoiding using Nicky Dymitryck’s name: “If the
NAR
was interested in Greg Eastbrook, why would they come after my
dad?”

“I don’t know. Think your dad was involved with Iraq?”

“I don’t know.” She paused. Then: “You ever hear of the Doctrine of the Periphery?”

“Uh-uh.”

“It was Ben-Gurion’s. It says Israel has to arm a periphery of allies surrounding its enemies. Iran, Turkey. Maybe it includes Iraq.”

Dee shook his head. “Not after Iran-contra. Don’t forget where I’ve been working the past five years, Alley. I know all about this stuff. Israel was a historic supplier of the
Shah, and they went on arming Iran covertly after the revolution, partly to help them in the war against Iraq. Hussein dumped Scuds on Tel Aviv in the Gulf War. He’d have had the nerve to put
chemicals in those warheads, he’d have slaughtered thousands of Jews, just like he slaughtered thousands of Kurds—only, someone would have given a damn about Jews getting killed. They
say Cardoen was supplying him with FAE technology. Fuel air explosive. Bombs that spread a cloud of gaseous fuel, then ignite. One blast can be miles wide—cover a city like Tel
Aviv.”

“Yeah, and then they have a nuclear response on their hands. No question, Dee.”

“Right, right. Nonetheless. I don’t see Israel turning a blind eye to sales to Iraq.”

“Um-hmm. The Doctrine of the Periphery’s always been pretty profitable, though. I wouldn’t think ideology would get in the way of money. I mean, the governing principle of that
kind of commerce is arm them, then bomb them before they can use the weapons, but after they’ve paid. It’s win-win: you make money arming them, you make money bombing them, then you
make money arming them again. Right?”

“Uh-huh,” Dee agreed. Then: “You know, there was a journalist killed in that one, too. Jonathan Moyle, a Brit, investigating Cardoen’s helicopter production. Sedated,
then hung by the neck in a Chilean hotel.”

Silence again, as they thought, each alone. When Alley spoke again, it was hesitantly.

“Dee. If there’s no trial precedent for my dad’s technique, then he might win?”

He turned away, and when he spoke, it was with a different kind of passion.

“No. Not if the prosecution’s handled right.”

She heard doubt in his voice. “Will it be?”

“But that’s my point. That’s what I’m scared about. It’s that”—he turned away, as if unwilling to go on and unable to stop—”that
they’ve screwed up so much. Vince Foster. Whitewater. The health-care bill. It’s as if they’re willing to . . . stick their necks out too damn far. For a principle. Like some kind
of damn social activists. And they don’t understand. They aren’t masters of their own party, never mind ready to go out and fight. We’ve just had a twelve-year administration move
out. They’re fucking beginners.”

She was quiet, thinking, for a long time, so long that he asked her what it was. And she answered, hesitantly: “They
were
beginners, you mean. Two years ago, when they hatched this
thing. The problem is, if they really don’t have the will for this prosecution, they’re not going to come out and say that. They’re going to let you say it for them. By
losing.”

Before her eyes, he turned his face to the ceiling, then shook his head.

“I don’t believe it. They’re still the government of the United States. It’s my own father, Alley.”

But even as he said it, Alley was hearing something else.

She was hearing doubt that had come from her, and that was not going away but, to the contrary, was growing with each night of talk.

It was, she thought guiltily, unfair, what she was doing to Dee.

To the man she loved.

Comparisons, Allison knew, should never be made between people.

Especially between a living person trying to find his best way through real quandaries and a dead one, frozen forever in his idealism.

Dee was taller, stronger, handsomer, and in every way more successful than the man she had met at the Ritz.

And still, watching Dee, that fall, trying to find a middle ground through the manifold and, often, contradictory demands of the people around him, Allison could not help wondering what Nicky
would have done.

4.

The evening after this last conversation with Allison, Dee Dennis had finished work early, at 7:30. Finished his assigned work, at least. But he did not go to Alley. Instead, he
left his office in his shirtsleeves, and went down the interior stairs to the library.

So deeply, in fact, had Dee Dennis come to doubt the government’s case against Ronald Rosenthal that he had decided to ask some questions.

Tonight, Dee Dennis had decided, he was going to do a little research.

The U.S. attorney’s library, which also served as a conference room, was about the only room in the office suite that could rival a corporate law firm: lushly carpeted
chambers lined with oak shelves and containing a foldout wet bar. A few workstations running Nexis were available here, and one long table filled the center of the main room, while a suite of
smaller rooms to the side housed the bulk of the library in metal stacks.

Dee, at 7:30, found the library deserted. He started by consulting the small card catalog, then made his way to the stacks and emerged with the past five years of the quarterly
North American
Review
in his hands.

Immediately he saw that the arms trade was one of the foci of the journal: each issue included, in what Dee’s magazine friends called the front-of-book, a column called “Arms
Watch,” written by none other than Dymitryck. The hook, he saw quickly, was that much of the column contained material that no major newspaper would cover: innuendo, rumor, unsourced reports.
Clearly the
NAR
was daring one of the column’s subjects to sue; clearly—most of the names mentioned in the column, in and out of the government, were familiar to Dee—none
was going to, for the information, Dee could see, was very good.

Alley had spoken about Greg Eastbrook, and his name, indeed, was frequently present. Dee knew all about Eastbrook, the one major Iran-contra player Walsh had declined to prosecute: his role was
far too murky. Most people didn’t even know about his involvement, very behind-the-scenes support for his boss and fellow marine, Colonel North. But the
NAR
, clearly, had committed
itself to documenting that role: article after article, all Dymitryck’s, were devoted to him.

Dee considered this for a long time. And then, as if on cue, a recollection of last night’s conversation with Allison came to mind. Turning back to the stack of journals, drink in one hand
and cigar in his teeth, he saw immediately that, indeed, by far most of the recent issues were largely devoted to an examination of the U.S. role in arming Hussein prior to the invasion of
Kuwait.

With a sigh, Dee turned away. That explained nothing: no one had ever accused the Israelis of arming Iraq. And Rosenthal’s rise to fame, to the contrary, had been for his role in the
arming of Hussein’s mortal enemies in Iran.

Fine. Dee rose and returned to the window, standing with his drink, staring down at the harbor as if over a puzzle.

It made no sense. Dymitryck was interested in Greg Eastbrook, particularly in Eastbrook’s role in the U.S. tilt toward Iraq. Rosenthal was involved in exactly the other side of that fight.
Yet Dymitryck had come to search for something about Eastbrook in Rosenthal’s house. It made no sense.

He said as much to Alley, that night, lying in the darkness of her bedroom on Jane Street. He said as much, and she listened, and quietly they talked it over until, after midnight passed, Dee
fell into sleep.

This night, however, Alley stayed awake, listening to her lover breathe, thinking.

Iraq. Eastbrook. What did this have to do with her father?

Lying in bed, for a long time she let her mind play over the question. Her father had done business with Greg Eastbrook, she knew that: she had even met him. And his was the name that had so
infuriated her father the one time Pauly had used it.

Pauly had known a lot more about her father’s business than she had. It was as if, after her mother left, she had been tied to her father by their shared loss. But Pauly had been his
mother’s son, and he had taken every chance he could to learn about the things that the Falcon Corporation and Rosenthal Equities did, inside and outside the law. Pauly would have known. She
wished she could ask him.

Nicky would have known, also. And not for the first time, bitterly, she regretted his death.

When she calmed, somewhat, she turned her mind to the fact that there was one other way to learn, and as she thought that, her heart quickened to the point where she knew she would not be
sleeping for many hours yet, that night.

She rose, slipped on gym shorts and a T-shirt, and, quietly shutting the door to the living room, took her Canondale racing bike from the closet and began carefully to clean and oil it.

She was going, she knew without admitting it to herself, to take a bike ride the next day to Borough Park.