The Gun Runner's Daughter (21 page)

Still crouching, she paused for breath. Looking up, and down the hallway. She was very frightened, she knew. But, she thought, only a fool would expect to be calm.

The thought was some comfort. She began to look at the first page of each manila file as she leafed clumsily through them. There were letters of incorporation for each entity in the sprawling
Rosenthal Equities. There were letters of reference, some bearing the letterhead of U.S. government agencies, some military, and many Israeli. There were personal letters, on the stationery of
figures like John Singlaub, Amiram Nir, Ahmed Omshei, Robert Gates, David Kimche, Earl Brian—many, many such names. There were six end-user certificates from six countries, some filled out
for a wide variety of matériel, some simply signed, and some blank. And then there were documents with no letterhead at all, some in files containing photographs and accompanied by notes
from her father, others containing notarized and witnessed documents.

Another pause for breath. She concentrated her attention on these last documents. Most of them detailed small weapons sales, largely to substate entities, which she assumed made them illegal.
Some of them included the use to which the weapons had been put. Each was referenced by departments of governments, U.S. or Israeli. Where possible, her father appeared to have obtained signatures
from the participants as well as what lawyers called “memorialization” in the form of photographs. Where this had evidently not been possible, there were his own handwritten
accounts.

Allison nodded to herself. If MBAs were ever taught the covert arms business, Alley thought, they would learn to keep such records. Clearly, however, he had not yet had the chance to assemble
the paperwork on his Bosnian dealings: nothing in the safe referred to them. That meant that there was no clue as to Nicky’s death in there.

The thought, casually come, made a sudden nausea rise in her again. Once she had spent long afternoons playing with her grandparents. Now she was a person looking for a clue to a murder. She
breathed deeply, three times, four times. Then she went back again through the documents with a slow, mechanical movement. However it happened, she thought with sudden impatience, this is who I now
am.

This time, halfway through, her eye was caught by a Hebrew document.

Reading, she saw it was the transcript of an interview.

The interviewer was Nicholson Dymitryck, the interviewee Dov Peleg.

The subject was her father, and Greg Eastbrook.

Pictures, clearly taken with a surreptitious camera, for they were at floor level, showed the two in a small restaurant.

For a long moment she did nothing. Then, peering closely at the photographs, she saw that Nicky was no younger than he had appeared to her in person. If she could trust the photographs.

What had Nicky been talking to Dov Peleg about Greg Eastbrook for? Scared now, she leafed through the transcript. It ended, and she reached for the next pile of documents, held separate by a
rubber band.

Behind it was another transcript, this one in English, and other photographs.

And then the memory came.

Martha had tickets to Patti Smith at the Beacon, they had come home late, seventeen-year-old girls crossing the Brooklyn Bridge in a taxi, stoned. She had left Martha on Monroe
Place and wandered down the Heights among the lights of the brownstones. The brief glimpses of ornate interiors, many housing her classmates. Her heels echoing loud and long in the deserted,
late-winter streets.

Rounding the corner from Hicks Street to Grace Court, she’d seen that outside her house was a limousine, engine running, parked illegally. There were two men on the street, and one spoke
into a radio as she approached. Then, having received a response in an earpiece, he wished her good night. The front door was opened for her by a third man in a dark blue suit, and in the hallway
her father was emerging from the living room, shutting the massive door behind him.

“Essie,
manishma? Aich haiya ha concert? Tov meaod.
Listen”—leaning down to her—“business tonight, doll, I know it’s late. Straight up to bed now,
okay? No noise, no nonsense. Keep Pauly up there. We’ll talk tomorrow.” And with a kiss he was gone and she was climbing the stairs, nearly wincing, in her stoned state, under the
scrutiny of the blue-suited man, the presence of all these strangers in her house, each bringing on his coat the cold air of winter.

She’d climbed up the steps to the second floor, her father’s bedroom and his office; the third floor, her room and Pauly’s room; and then to the attic, where, she knew, was
Bennie Friedman, and he was, with Dov Peleg, young Israeli men she had known for years, hunched around a reel-to-reel tape recorder and a video monitor, on which the living room played in black and
white. None of this was strange: business as usual in her father’s house. Nor was she interested in what they were doing: during these taping sessions, she often sat chatting with Dov, on
whom she’d had a schoolgirl crush for years.

Tonight, however, was different. Dov, whispering, ushered her in with a smile: “How are you, love? Shh, big business tonight. Come see your dad tell the White House to go to
hell.”

On the monitor, filmed from an angle above, she saw her father, Michael Levi, and another man at quarter profile from their scalps. The other man was in uniform. Next to each sat a crystal rocks
glass and a cigar. And her father was speaking.

“Greg, you’re backing me into a corner. You know that.”

The uniformed man looked slowly around the room before answering, and Allison glimpsed his face: outsized, handsome, confident. When he spoke, it was with a light Western drawl.

“Ron, the president sees Iraq as our best bet in the region. You know that. Saddam’s no idiot. He’s not going to use American supplies against Israel.”

“He’s used chemicals on the Kurds.”

A shrug. “Kurds aren’t Jews. Halabja isn’t Tel Aviv.”

Her father drew on his drink. When he spoke again, his tone was still pleasant, conversational, his syllables agreeably clipped with his faint tinge of a Brooklyn accent. “I don’t
think you’d like this to be exposed, Greg. I don’t think you’d like the
New York Times
to publish that a senior naval officer assigned to the NSC staff is facilitating the
sale of chemical-ready warheads to Iraq.”

The other answered in the same conversational tone. “Ron, forgive me, no one’s going to listen to accusations from you.”

Her father nodded now, as if Eastbrook had just confirmed something he’d long suspected. It was, Allison thought, like a tennis game, the three of them in the taping room turning their
heads in unison to follow serve and volley. “If we can’t stop you, we’ll have to stop the suppliers.”

And now the other laughed. “Why? There’s plenty to go around here. You know what’ll happen if Hussein gets out of hand? My president will bomb him into the Middle Ages. Then
fortunes’ll be made resupplying him. Christ sake, Ron, you’re killing the golden goose.”

But her father wasn’t amused.

“You’re making a serious mistake, Greg. This isn’t about money.”

“Oh, come off it. Don’t get all Zionist on me, okay?”

With a nod, her father stood up.

“Colonel Eastbrook, I’m speaking now as the direct representative of Prime Minister Shamir. And I am telling you that Mr. Shamir will not stand by while Jews are gassed by Iraqi
chemicals. If the United States will not interdict the supply of Iraq, Israel will, and we will do it by any means necessary. Have I made myself clear?”

“Yes, Mr. Rosenthal. You have.” As if tiredly, Eastbrook unfolded himself from his chair and turned to the door. Then he turned, and only now, for the first time, did his tone
change. “You tell Shamir to do what he has to. But be damn sure that it stays away from me. You hear?”

That was all she remembered, except that when the meeting ended there was soft applause in the little dark room around her, and then Dov pushed her to the door:

“
Yalla
, sleep now. They’ll be gone in ten minutes. Your father is a wizard.”

Then she was in bed, in the dark of her room, as far below doors closed, and the cars drew off, and, after a long time, she heard Pauly pad to her bedroom, always at a run, and then a long time
later her father’s quiet step mounting the carpeted stair.

Perhaps this precise memory seems implausibly detailed. The only part of it, however, that she’d had to recall had been the parts that occurred to her alone. As for what
had happened between her father and Colonel Eastbrook, that was transcribed word for word on the transcript before her, accompanied by more photographic memorializations, which, to Alley, were just
another memory aid: a dozen precisely focused black-and-white photographs of Eastbrook in the Grace Court living room, and—in case her memory was still missing details—a videocassette
that she could consult later.

Briefly, a movement of regret went through her chest. This is what Nicky had been looking for. He was looking for a videotape that Dov Peleg had told him about in a café, weeks before Dov
died.

Dov had been disavowed, completely, during Iran-contra: she knew that because it had been in the Israeli papers.

So, embittered, he had given an interview to a reporter.

Telling him about a video he had made, years before, of a meeting between Ronald Rosenthal, Michael Levi, and Greg Eastbrook.

Then Dov had been killed. Quickly, she leafed back through Dov’s interview with Nicky. And her eye caught on her name.

“There was me, Bennie Friedman. Ron’s daughter, Esther, came in for a minute. She saw the whole thing.”

And so Nicky Dymitryck had come to Martha’s Vineyard to find the only other witness of the meeting. Hoping to find a way to make her tell.

Wonder was passing through her. How gratified Nicky must have been to discover her forgery and embezzlement. Now he had found a way to force her to help him. It was, in fact, the only chance
he’d ever have to get the tape Dov had told him about, and he knew it. A coincidence? Not quite: he’d hoped for a crime of some sort when he’d had Stan Diamond send in his rental
check. That was the only coincidence: that Diamond should have been a tenant.

It was a good plan Nicky had had, to capitalize on that coincidence. So good that only his death, probably, could have stopped it.

Allison’s breath was coming in sharp gasps now, her hands trembling. Without looking any further through these papers, she bundled them back into their plastic holder and put them aside.
Then, with a big effort, she forced herself to leaf through the rest of the safe’s papers, trying to read the minimum possible, nearly wincing with disgust. She caught the words
Iran,
Promis, Honeywell, Casey, Kashani
, and many other words and names familiar to her from the papers. But she did not read them and when, by the bottom of the pile, she had not encountered
anything else relating to Iraq, she replaced all the papers, save those in the Iraq file she had put aside, in the safe with the gun and the currency, swung the door closed, and spun the lock.

She should not, she knew, be surprised. She knew more than enough of her father’s business not to be surprised by the grim reality of the proofs before her. Yet this was different than the
clueless half-truths of newspapers. Many of these documents she had just seen had been direct copies of classified intelligence reports, Israeli and American. Many of these documents would never
again be seen outside of the highest security apparatuses in those governments. And seeing the black, blurred type of the photocopies had breached the wall of doubt she had so long held in
place.

Carrying the Iraqi file, she walked slowly back to the dining room, and fumbled the file into her backpack. Her movements, she found, were hurried, clumsy, and for a moment she felt a new kind
of fear, as if she were being chased, a fear reminiscent of childhood. Perhaps, she thought suddenly, all fears were reminiscent of childhood, fairy-tale terrors. That thought made this fear easier
to handle.

But how brilliant Nicky was! In the dining room she stopped, suddenly appreciating the enormity of his intelligence. Someone like Eastbrook, she knew, was virtually impossible to pursue, for
whatever his crimes may be, any government—Republican or Democratic—preferred ignoring those crimes to the national security risks of their revelation. What she had, now, in her
backpack was probably the only thing in the world that could stop Eastbrook’s senatorial campaign, and there was not now, nor had there ever been, another way for Nicky to get it except from
her.

With that realization came another. A slower and much more shocking one.

Crouching on the floor by her backpack, she slowly examined it.

And slowly, step by step, she saw that what she had just found in her father’s safe could, used properly, not only stop Eastbrook. It could also assure her father’s conviction.

Had Nicky known that, too?

But that was not all. For now, more slowly, came the third realization, and it was the most shocking of all.

Nothing ever means one thing, Allison knew that. Every meaning is always double, and only the slightest shift in perspective is required to go from a simple truth to its opposite.

These documents, in one context, ruined Eastbrook and convicted her father.

But in another context, they meant something else altogether, something so astounding that for minutes, squatting on the dining room floor, she did not even know where she was.

Minutes during which she suddenly understood what else could be done with those documents. Minutes in which she suddenly understood, perfectly, as if it had been whispered into her ear, not now
but every day since her father had been arrested, what else could be done with these documents.

It was impossible. And yet, she knew, it was also perfect. Meeting Dee again, after ten years, and falling in love. As if they had never parted, but always been secretly, surreptitiously
together. Nicky arriving, looking not for anything about her father, but for something—this thing—about Eastbrook’s role in the covert arming of Iraq. And then the embezzlement of
her father’s property. If she had planned it, she could not have thought it out better. Briefly, she wondered if this is what they taught in the CIA: to take advantage of chance, to string
chance events into an unexpected meaning, and so alter the course of politics. It was perfect.