Asylum City (23 page)

Watching Arami exit his office without answering his questions, Itai was equally frustrated. If Arami didn't talk, Gabriel would be convicted of manslaughter, maybe even murder, and Michal's real killer would never be caught.

He had to go outside his comfort zone, he thought to himself, passing his hand gently over his painful ribs. He'd tried his usual sober approach, but it hadn't worked. He had to start screaming at the top of his lungs so everyone would know what he'd found out.

A plan began taking shape in Itai's mind. Ironically, he was considering exactly the kind of action Michal was always pushing for.

GABRIEL
kept his eyes focused on the lawyer's lips, which were moving rapidly. It was the third or fourth time they'd met. It was always the same. The lawyer rattled on and he sat in silence.

The lawyer was angry with him, and he said so repeatedly. He wanted Gabriel to tell him what happened when he went to Michal's house. “I can't go to court with nothing. I'll make a fool of myself. You're being charged with murder. I don't want to look like a clown. Do you understand?” he said again and again, waving an accusing finger in Gabriel's face.

Gabriel didn't pay much attention to what the lawyer was saying about the Israeli justice system. The only thing that mattered to him was that Liddie was safe. Arami promised to let him know the moment she was released, but several days had gone by and he hadn't heard from him. That made him nervous. It made him suspicious of Arami. It made him wonder if he hadn't sacrificed himself for nothing. But then Itai came yesterday and told him that Liddie had been released, and Gabriel was sorry for all the bad thoughts he had had. Itai said Arami tried to visit him a few times but they wouldn't let him in.

Knowing that Liddie was safe filled Gabriel with joy. What he was doing had a reason and a purpose. He wanted to hear more and more about his sister, how she was, where she'd been all this time, what they did to her. From the window in his cell he could see it was raining. Was she warm enough? Did she have the right clothes? Why did he hear coughing on the phone? Itai didn't say much. He kept pressuring him to talk. If Gabriel told him what happened, he'd tell him about Liddie, he said. He couldn't do it. Itai already knew too much.

The lawyer treated him as if he were backward. He spoke slowly in a loud voice, emphasizing each word. He kept asking him if he understood. That had always been a sign for Gabriel. He was wary of Israelis who talked to him like the lawyer did. That's why he trusted Michal and Itai. They spoke to him like he was an adult, a real person. The little policewoman spoke to him like that, too.

Gabriel wanted Itai to represent him, but he said he couldn't, that he didn't have experience in criminal cases. Gabriel didn't care. Anybody was better than the lawyer he had now.

Prison wasn't easy for him. Having a bed to himself and regular meals wasn't enough. He felt stifled. He had no room to move around.

Eritrea was all open spaces. Sometimes he went days without seeing another human being. He had all the fresh air and sunshine he could ever want. Gabriel missed the wide expanses of his home, the sense of freedom, the feeling of being surrounded by the majesty of nature and being able to breathe it all in. In Tel Aviv there were buildings everywhere, high towers that reached the sky and made him dizzy. There was no quiet, no privacy, only smoke, people, and cars everywhere he went. Too many people, too many cars.

Everything was smaller in prison. Closed off. He sat in a corner of his cell, not moving, drawing pictures in his head because they wouldn't give him paper and pencils. His feet longed to run like they used to; his lungs yearned for fresh air. But his feet had nowhere to go and all he breathed in was the stench and congestion.

They were eight in the cell. The others were all Israelis. Most of the time they ignored him, except when they cursed him or ordered him around like a slave. The tall smelly one with the tattoo on his head beat him up once. He kicked him, punched him in the face. The others didn't interfere. He'd learned from Rafik in Sinai that it was best not to react, not to show him that it hurt. In the end, he'd stop. It wasn't much fun to kick an inanimate object. The tall smelly one stopped, too.

The lawyer said he wanted to help him; he could get him out if he talked. Gabriel didn't believe him, and he wouldn't say anything even if he did. The Israeli man gave Arami the money on condition that Gabriel took the blame for what happened to Michal. Before they told Arami to leave, his friend made him swear to uphold his side of the bargain. “If you tell the truth he'll kill Liddie and have us both deported, like Hagos. He's a very powerful man, I can tell,” Arami said.

Gabriel had to stay strong. He couldn't give in. His fate had been decided and he had to accept it.

FOR
a change, the lawyer looked happy today. He even smiled at Gabriel. The detective who interrogated him was off the case, he said. He'd met with her second in command, who was in charge now, and he said the State Attorney was open to cutting a deal.

The lawyer thought it was good news. They could use it to their advantage. “Something we can work with. Do you understand? Trust me, Gabriel,” he said with obvious self-satisfaction, “this is what I do. They'll offer twenty-five years and I'll counter with fifteen. In the end we'll agree on twenty. If you're a good boy, you'll be out in thirteen. Do you understand?”

Too many numbers. It was confusing.

“So what do you say?” the lawyer asked, leaning in, raising his voice, and emphasizing each word. “Should I say yes? I need your consent. I don't want to pressure you. Do you understand? It's a good deal. Thirteen years, fifteen at most, and you're out. Do you understand? You'll be able to start over.”

ANAT
was sitting in her office poring over the documents on her desk. The first time she'd read Michal's complaint against Yariv Ninio a few days ago, she hadn't given it much weight. The phrasing was overwrought and histrionic, and the allegations sounded over-the-top, like the claim that by concealing the Foreign Ministry's legal opinion from the court, Ninio “was signing the refugees' death warrant.” But the real problem wasn't the style, it was the content. Michal didn't have a shred of evidence to back up her claims. It was obvious to Anat that she'd never seen the alleged document she contended could have saved Hagos from deportation and subsequent death.

Still, what she'd learned from Dvora Gonen was causing Anat to reconsider her theory of the crime. Yariv Ninio wasn't the ideal candidate for the role of murderer. The motive was weak, no more than what seemed like a hysterical complaint to the Bar Association. But there was no denying that he was a white man with whom Michal was closely acquainted and he had a grudge against her. Anat had learned from experience not to judge a motive from her own perspective. She had to see it through the suspect's eyes. Something that seemed trivial to her could mean the world to somebody else. It could even be a motive for murder. She'd worked a case where a man killed his wife because of an argument over who was going to take out the garbage.

Anat aligned the papers neatly, put them through the hole punch, and filed them in a fresh binder.

She hadn't been planning to question Ninio. She'd gone to the State Attorney's Office to have a word with Galit Lavie, to let her know that it wasn't a slam dunk yet, that she shouldn't be in a rush to file charges against Gabriel. She didn't say much, just that there were still some questions that needed answers, but she was sure Lavie got the message.

If any of Anat's colleagues found out that she'd spoken to Lavie, they'd brand her a traitor. In theory, the police worked hand in hand with the prosecution, but reality was very different. There was a lot of tension between them. Lavie had a reputation for being nobody's fool. Anat hoped she could trust her.

During their conversation, Anat happened to mention Michal's complaint. She could see that it was the first the prosecutor had heard of it. When she pressed Lavie to tell her why she seemed so troubled by the information, she learned of Ninio's attempt to find out about the progress of the case from her intern. That set off another alarm in Anat's head. She decided to risk questioning him even though she hadn't prepared for the interview.

Now she was glad she'd followed her gut instinct. Ninio had confirmed her suspicions. She could tell he was putting on an act, making a supreme effort to appear unconcerned. Some of his answers even sounded rehearsed, as if he'd been expecting to be questioned by the cops. And the way he panicked when she noticed his bruises strengthened her conviction that he was worth a closer look.

Anat's first call when she got back to the station was to the Bar Association. Within half an hour, Ninio's official response to Michal's complaint was on her computer. The words “police investigation” could work wonders. People were willing to divulge a great deal to a police officer, even more than they had to, or ought to. In contrast to Michal Poleg, Anat wasn't met with silence or indifference.

She'd expected a long statement in convoluted legalese, but the document was short and simply phrased. Ninio denied Michal's allegations one by one and claimed to know nothing of any legal opinion composed by the Foreign Ministry.

Anat was disappointed. It looked as if Ninio was telling the truth: the complaint was little more than a nuisance, nothing to get upset about. Nevertheless, she decided to look deeper. If she wanted to develop a solid theory of the case, she had to tie off all the loose ends. The result of her call to the Bar Association wasn't enough for her to cross Yariv Ninio off the list of possible suspects.

Her next call was to the Foreign Ministry. She had to go through ten different people before finally reaching Dr. Yigal Shemesh on the African desk. It turned out Michal had been to see him. She went to his office to bawl him out for the Foreign Ministry's official stance on refugees, which held that deportation did not put them in harm's way. Dr. Shemesh admitted to Anat that he did indeed write the legal opinion Michal referred to in her complaint. So it wasn't a figment of her imagination. Still, he swore he never showed it to Michal or even acknowledged its existence in so many words, although he confessed he might have alluded to it indirectly.

“I've gotten into enough trouble over it already,” he said. The bitterness in his voice was unmistakable.

Anat found out that several months ago Dr. Shemesh had written a position paper arguing that the lives of migrants deported to Ethiopia were in danger. “All I did was repeat what the British Foreign Office has said, what you can find in UN reports. It was nothing new, certainly nothing revolutionary. Everybody knows it,” he said apologetically.

He told her he sent copies to the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Justice. At Anat's request, he e-mailed her a copy as well.

Despite Dr. Shemesh's efforts to minimize its importance, Anat immediately recognized the significance of his position paper. For the past few nights she'd been reading up on what people liked to call the “refugee problem.” From the court transcripts she read, she could see that the main battles were fought over the issue of a migrant's citizenship. Eritreans and Sudanese couldn't be deported. They were protected because of the situation in their countries and the risks they would be facing if they returned. In contrast, Ethiopians were subject to deportation.

Anat learned that Ethiopia and Eritrea weren't strangers to each other. They didn't merely share a border, either. It was only in 1993 that Eritrea declared its independence from Ethiopia after a thirty-year war. Consequently, some of the Eritreans in Israel used to be Ethiopian citizens, and they speak the language. The Ministry of the Interior took advantage of this fact, labeling them Ethiopian in order to deport them.

Dr. Shemesh's position paper could potentially seal up this crack in the legal wall by spelling out the threat to Eritrean migrants who were deported to Ethiopia. The paper could actually save a lot of lives. As Dr. Shemesh told Anat, everything in it had been published before by various bodies around the world. But this was the first legal opinion written in Hebrew on the official stationery of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, and that's what made it so important. The good doctor understood that himself.

The document had a further significance. If it was presented in court, it would put an end to the string of victories credited to Yariv Ninio, the golden boy of the Interior Ministry and people like Ehud Regev, who built their careers on stoking the flames of hate against Africans.

Anat's next task was to trace the document itself. She had to prove that Ninio had received it, despite his insistence to the contrary.

It took her less time than she anticipated to locate the right person in the Justice Ministry. Chen Shabtai in the International Affairs Department confirmed that she had, in fact, received it from the Foreign Ministry. “It's just a position paper,” she said, trying to downplay its importance.

“What did you do with it?” Anat asked.

“I passed it on to the relevant party.” Anat could almost hear Shabtai shrug her shoulders.

“Would that happen to be Yariv Ninio in the State Attorney's Office?”

After a pause, the government official stammered that she wasn't sure she should answer that question.

“This is a murder investigation,” Anat said sharply in a threatening tone. “You can tell me now or you can come to the station for a formal interview.”

“Yes, he's the one I sent it to,” Shabtai said. Any qualms she might have had about passing on this information were suddenly gone. It was the oldest trick in the book. It worked with everyone, even legal advisers.

“Are you certain he received it?”