The Gun Runner's Daughter (40 page)
Read The Gun Runner's Daughter Online
Authors: Neil Gordon
“Yes.”
“Will you come with me?”
She turned in his arm now, and leaned her head up to face him squarely.
“Yes.”
And as she lied, she felt entirely, intensely, alive. More alive than she could ever remember feeling before.
“It’s weird not to know the future.”
“Then everyone’s weird.”
“Nonsense. You know your future.”
“Do I? What is it?”
“You go back to the
NAR.
You write a book. In twenty years Nicky Dymitryck’ll sound like I. F. Stone.”
“Right. And you?”
She laughed softly, cherishing his voice. “In twenty years, Allison Rosenthal’ll sound like Robert Vesco.”
He said nothing.
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to tease.”
“When can I know?”
“Soon.”
“When?”
She paused. “Don’t ask me how I know this.”
“Okay.”
“The prosecution’ll call for a directed conviction late this week.”
“How do you know?”
5.
On Tuesday, the eighth of November, Oliver North was defeated in Virginia, and Gregory Eastbrook was elected in California. When the results were in, Jay called Nicky.
“He’s in.”
Nicky, in his living room, turned off the TV.
“I know.”
“Sorry to hear you sounding so broke up.”
“A few more days, Jay.”
That afternoon, in New York, Allison Rosenthal called Martha Ohlinger at work from a pay phone in Columbus Circle. When the switchboard finally connected them, she said:
“Martha.”
“Hey, baby. What’s going on?”
“Nothing. I need a favor.”
“Anything.”
“Can I come up and use a typewriter?”
“Sure, Alley. Come on up.”
Upstairs, Martha took her into a busy office looking out over Sixty-fourth Street. A blond man who needed a haircut sat at a messy white desk, smoking and poring over a manuscript. After Martha
introduced them he stepped out, as if by arrangement, and Alley sat down at his IBM. While Martha waited, she withdrew from her bag the FedEx slip with Dee’s signature, and, reading from a
scrap of paper, typed Nicky’s address at the
NAR
into the correct boxes of the form.
6.
On November 9th, under direct examination by the prosecution, a surprised Michael Levi told the story of a late-night meeting in Ronald Rosenthal’s house between Mr.
Rosenthal and a member of the National Security Council staff called Colonel Eastbrook.
“Mr. Levi, what was the point of the meeting?”
“Ron told Eastbrook that the state of Israel would put even its relationship with the United States in jeopardy to stop Cardoen.”
Stein, rising. “Your Honor, this is the fourth time Mr. Dennis has posed questions for which the witness is clearly unprepared. What is the source of his evidence?”
Dee: “Your honor, the witness has just given yet another example of the defendant’s willingness to oppose U.S. government interests.”
“Overruled, Mr. Stein, it’s relevant.”
“I wish particularly to enter an exception at this point, Your Honor.”
“Noted, Mr. Stein.”
Allison hurried home after court. Without removing her coat, she crossed her apartment, passing through the kitchen and into the little back bathroom, where she removed her
package from under the pedestal sink. At her desk, standing, she unwrapped the material she had taken from her father’s safe and packed it carefully into a FedEx box. Then she placed the
FedEx slip, addressed to Nicholson Dymitryck in Los Angeles, preprinted with the U.S. attorney’s return address, and holding Dee Dennis’s signature in the lower right-hand corner, and
put it into the FedEx box’s plastic envelope. Then she ran to her bedroom to change. Emerging in bicycle tights and a sweater, she put the box into a saddlebag and shouldered her bicycle out
the door. Outside, in the falling evening, she sprinted on her bicycle, right downtown to the FedEx office at the World Trade Center, where she dropped the package addressed to Nicky at the
NAR
in the outside box.
Late that night, Dee asleep in her bed, she called Nicky from the phone on Hudson Street.
“Your FedEx left this morning. You’ll get it tomorrow.”
“What do I do?”
“Is Diamond’s lawyer ready?”
“Yes. Her name’s Gillian Morreale. She’ll file for an interstate warrant at the same time. She has a friend in Giuliani’s office. You should see the police tomorrow
afternoon.”
“Good. Tomorrow’s Thursday. If you see my name in the paper Friday morning, then you can open the package. Otherwise, wait till you see it. Chances are, it’ll be tomorrow
though. Okay?”
“Okay.”
A long silence. Then Nicky: “When will I speak to you again?”
Standing at the phone, watching the traffic stream south. She had hoped to avoid this. At last, she spoke slowly.
“I doubt you’ll want to.”
He answered immediately. “I’ll want to.”
“Nicky.”
“Yes.”
“I warn you to think the worst of me. Don’t say I didn’t.”
“I won’t. I won’t say that. And I will want to see you.”
“Nicky.” The word, now, was like a breath, a long exhalation.
“Yes.”
“If you change your mind, I’ll understand.”
When they hung up, Alley paused in thought for a long time. Then she went back home. She had to go through her apartment with a microscope, now, removing everything she didn’t want the
police to find. Such as the uncashed checks from her father. Then she had to go out to La Guardia Airport. She needed to know what the airport bar looked like. The plan was vague in her mind, but
she knew it had to happen at La Guardia, and she knew that she’d need to call on Drew—Peretz—again for help.
Still, she didn’t move. La Guardia, that trip was needed only to figure out how to escape. And suddenly, a vast exhaustion swept across her. Escape: the thought was nearly irrelevant.
Los Angeles.
1.
On November 10th, a Thursday evening at eight o’clock, Nicky Dymitryck stood smoking in his office, watching the fax print a page.
Outside, night had fallen, and against its black canvas Nicky showed in an attitude of concentration, a tableau in which it could be plainly seen that the material being faxed was from a
newspaper, the small type smudgy and irregular.
Still, it was legible enough to recognize from the headline and dateline that what was being faxed to Nicky was an article from the front page of the
New York Times,
Friday morning
edition, just back from the printers in New York and being faxed by a friend of Nicky’s straight from the newsroom. When the first page dropped out of the roller, Nicky picked it up and read
the headline from page B1, Metro Section.
DAUGHTER OF RONALD ROSENTHAL
ARRESTED FOR WIRE FRAUD
And underneath, the subhead:
Charge Is Fraudulent Rental of Father’s Vacation Property
The article led with:
NEW YORK, Nov. 10—Esther Rosenthal, daughter of Ronald Rosenthal, the American representative for the Israeli arms dealer Falcon Corporation and a
central figure in the Iran-contra hearings, was arrested in her Greenwich Village home this morning. The charge was interstate wire fraud, stemming from an investigation mounted by one of her
alleged victims, Stanley Diamond, founder of Organic Communications. Ms. Rosenthal, who is known by the first name Allison, was served with an interstate warrant originating in the Massachusetts
State Attorney’s office at 8:30 this morning, and currently awaits ruling on the Massachusetts State Attorney’s extradition request at the Manhattan Women’s Detention Unit. The
ruling is expected
Nicky pulled the second page from the fax, page B7, he noticed, and continued to read
to be handed down tomorrow morning.
Ms. Rosenthal is the only surviving child of Ronald Rosenthal, a figure who gained national attention when he was named as key supplier of arms to Iran as the Israeli liaison to Oliver North.
Currently, Mr. Rosenthal is in the national eye due to his trial in absentia by the U.S. Attorney in New York for what Emily Harden, in the
New Yorker,
called “the most shameless
practice of arms export violation since Edwin Wilson did business with Libya.”
In Boston, the State Attorney for Massachusetts announced his intention to prosecute Ms. Rosenthal for “the fraudulent lease of her father’s Martha’s Vineyard property to an
unknown number of tenants, in full awareness that the property was shortly to be held under federal escrow pending seizure.” The exact number of the renters of the property is still unknown,
although informed sources place it at “eighteen and counting.”
At one o’clock this afternoon, in a press conference held at his office, Robert Stein of Stein, Goldman & Driscoll announced his intention to represent Ms. Rosenthal. Mr. Stein, who
has represented Ronald Rosenthal for twenty years, both appeared with Mr. Rosenthal before the joint committee on Iran-contra, where he was credited for negotiating a blanket congressional immunity
for his client, and currently represents Mr. Rosenthal’s defense against federal charges. Esther Rosenthal, he announced, “would fight the extradition to Boston and, should that fail,
would enter a not-guilty plea in Massachusetts court.”
A source close to the State Attorney’s office in Boston however, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that Mr. Stein’s defense will need to be grounded in legal
technicality, as the evidence presented by Gillian Morreale of Stockard, Dyson, a prominent Boston legal firm, is “rock solid.”
Such an estimation is not unlikely: the resources behind Gillian Morreale are substantial. Ms. Morreale, who last year negotiated the surrender of Mimi Luria, the last Weatherman remaining at
large, and for twenty years on the FBI’s most-wanted list, told the
New York Times
that her investigation was undertaken in partnership with Jay Cohen, the editor of the
North
American Review.
Mr. Cohen became suspicious that Mr. Diamond was being defrauded during a casual conversation and put the services of his office at Mr. Diamond’s disposal for a preliminary investigation. When that investigation revealed evidence of fraud, Mr. Cohen said this afternoon by telephone, he put the matter before the attention of Ms.
Morreale.
Finished, without a pause Nicky picked up the telephone and dialed.
“Max. I got it. Did you send Jay a copy at his home? Thanks.”
Now he listened for a moment. Then: “All I can tell you is that what you want to do is get on the next plane for Los Angeles. Take the midnight plane. Be in Jay’s office at ten
tomorrow.”
He hung up, and, rereading the article, waited for Jay to call.
That day, Nicky had taken the trouble to drive into Westwood and have his hair cut. When he woke on Friday morning, he showered, washing his hair twice and conditioning it,
then blow-dried it and shaved, very carefully. He put on a thick swipe of deodorant under each arm, then walked in his underwear to his closet and dressed in a white shirt, a black English suit, a
powder-blue tie. He drank coffee and smoked in the kitchen, reading the
Los Angeles Times
’s version of Alley’s recent past. It, too, took the trouble to point out that her real
name was Esther, as if it were significant that she did not use that name. Finished, he put on a black cashmere overcoat, and left the house.
He arrived at the
NAR
at nine-thirty to find his usual parking place taken by a white Lincoln Continental, in which waited a uniformed driver. Nicky parked behind a bar on the street,
then walked back around the corner to the door and ran up the stairs. In the office, which someone had actually tidied, Jay sat behind his desk. Wooden chairs were arranged in front of him, and in
them sat the two lawyers who represented the
NAR;
Max Holtz, just a rrived from the
New York Times;
and two congressional aides, to Patty Murray and Carl Levin: the first on the
Senate Ethics Committee, the second on Senate Intelligence. An aide from Torricelli’s office was also present, although this was a courtesy, as Torricelli served in the House and Eastbrook
would serve in the Senate. Finally, an FBI technician from the state office was there, sitting uncomfortably in the armchair beside Jay.
Jay performed introductions and, at a nod from Nicky, turned on a video camera on a tripod next to his desk. He lifted, next to the camera, a sealed FedEx box with a return address of the U.S.
attorney’s office in New York and the signature of David Treat Dennis. He handed it to the FBI investigator, who examined it carefully, then rose to photograph it, front and back. The three
congressional aides performed their own examinations, then Jay’s lawyers repeated the photographing. While this ceremony took place, Nicky removed his coat and took his seat by the
window.
When they were done, the lawyers handed the box back to Jay, who in turn held it out to Nicky. Nicky stepped forward to the side of the desk and pulled the box’s tab. Inside were a short
stack of transcripts, some photographs, and a videocassette. He removed them by the edges and laid them on the desk to be photographed twice, front and back. He gathered them and, standing next to
the desk, read through the transcripts. Then, expressionless, he handed them to Jay, responding to Jay’s raised eyebrows with an affirmative nod. Jay read—or more properly,
devoured—the pages, and then looked up, his eyes shining, his black beard split by a boundless smile.