An Innocent Bystander Read online

  Copyright © 2019 by Julie Salamon

  Cover design by Lucy Kim

  Cover photograph ©Andrew Brooks / Gallery Stock

  Author photograh by Sara Krulwich

  Cover © Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104

  littlebrown.com

  facebook.com/littlebrownandcompany

  twitter.com/littlebrown

  First United States Edition: June 2019

  Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to hachettespeakersbureau.com or call (866) 376-6591.

  ISBN 978-0-316-43309-9

  E3-20190429-DA-NF-ORI

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Principal Characters

  Epigraph

  Part One: The Achille Lauro Prologue

  1: A Week Earlier…

  2: The Ones Waiting Back Home

  3: Big Guns

  4: The Nightmare

  5: Lies, Then Heartbreak

  6: Cowboys and Terrorists

  7: Fulminations

  8: Machinations

  9: Corpora Delicti

  Part Two: Reckonings 10: Ilsa’s Wedding

  11: Trials

  12: Presenting… The Death of Klinghoffer

  13: Finding Their Place in the Story

  14: Sidelined by History

  15: The Optimist

  16: Operation Legacy

  Coda

  Acknowledgments

  Discover More

  Notes and Sources

  Bibliography

  About the Author

  Also by Julie Salamon

  To my family, as always, with love

  Explore book giveaways, sneak peeks, deals, and more.

  Tap here to learn more.

  Principal Characters

  Leon Klinghoffer

  Leon Klinghoffer, New York entrepreneur

  Marilyn Klinghoffer, human resources director; Leon’s wife

  Lisa Klinghoffer, older daughter of Marilyn and Leon

  Ilsa Klinghoffer, younger daughter of Marilyn and Leon

  Jerry Arbittier, Lisa’s husband

  Paul Dworin, Ilsa’s husband

  Letty Simon, family friend who handled public relations

  Charlotte Spiegel, Klinghoffer friend and fellow passenger on the Achille Lauro

  Maura Spiegel, professor; Charlotte’s daughter

  Seymour Meskin, family friend and fellow passenger on the Achille Lauro

  Abraham Foxman, national director of Anti-Defamation League, 1987–2015

  Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, 1984–1988; prime minister of Israel, 1996–1999 and 2009–

  Abu al-Abbas

  Abu al-Abbas, commander of the Palestinian Liberation Front

  Samia Costandi, professor; first wife of Abu al-Abbas

  Reem al-Nimer, heiress and revolutionary; second wife of Abu al-Abbas

  Khaled Abbas, first son of Samia Costandi and Abu al-Abbas

  Omar Abbas, second son of Samia Costandi and Abu al-Abbas

  Loaye al-Ghadban, first son of Reem al-Nimer and Mohammad al-Ghadban

  Reef Ghadban, second son of Reem al-Nimer and Mohammad al-Ghadban

  Ali Abbas, son of Reem al-Nimer and Abu al-Abbas

  Bassam al-Ashker, the youngest hijacker

  Majid al-Molqi, leader of the four hijackers

  Ahmad Maruf “Omar” al-Assadi, hijacker

  Abdellatif Ibrahim Fataier, hijacker the passengers nicknamed Rambo

  Monzer al-Kassar, international arms dealer; old friend of Abu al-Abbas

  Yasser Arafat, chairman, Palestine Liberation Organization

  Alex Odeh

  Alex Odeh, West Coast regional director, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, 1983–1985

  Norma Odeh, Alex’s wife

  Helena Odeh, oldest daughter of Alex and Norma

  James Abourezk, United States senator (South Dakota), 1973–1979; founder of American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, 1980

  Meir Kahane, founder, Jewish Defense League, 1968

  Irv Rubin, head of Jewish Defense League, 1985

  U.S. Government

  Ronald Reagan, president, 1981–1989

  George Shultz, secretary of state, 1982–1989

  Caspar Weinberger, secretary of defense, 1982–1987

  Oliver North, chair, White House counterterrorism task force, 1985–1986

  Carl Stiner, major general; commanding general of Joint Special Operations, 1984–1987

  Laurence Neal, lieutenant commander; naval aviator, 1975–1995

  Nicholas A. Veliotes, ambassador to Egypt, 1984–1986

  Italy

  Bettino Craxi, prime minister, 1983–1987

  Antonio Badini, chief foreign affairs adviser to Prime Minister Craxi, 1983–1987

  Fulvio Martini, Italian Navy admiral; head of military security and intelligence, 1984–1991

  Gianfranco Pagano, defense attorney representing two of the Achille Lauro hijackers

  Luigi Carli, prosecutor

  Opera

  Peter Sellars, creator-director of The Death of Klinghoffer

  John Adams, composer

  Alice Goodman, librettist

  My friends, I must insist upon this rule. For it is only through the sharing of the personal that we can see each other for who we truly are.

  —J. T. Rogers, Oslo

  Part One

  The Achille Lauro

  October 7, 1985–October 22, 1985

  Prologue

  Beirut, October 14, 1985

  This was the moment that the Achille Lauro entered the consciousness of five-year-old Omar Abbas, younger son of Samia Costandi, first wife of Mohammed Zaidan, better known as Abu al-Abbas, commander of the Palestinian Liberation Front.

  The telephone in their apartment rang and Omar heard his grandmother say, “Hello, Nabeel, did you finish your PhD?” And then his mother, Samia, told him and his older brother, Khaled, to come say hello to Baba, their father, but to pretend he was their uncle, Samia’s brother, Nabeel. Omar could tell from his mother’s face that this was very serious.

  “Hello, Uncle Baba,” he said.

  The five-year-old’s failure at subterfuge would become part of family lore. For Samia, the call signaled that her ex-husband, Abu al-Abbas, was safe. For Omar, the conversation was merged into the mythology that would always surround his father, a towering figure who instilled in his sons a permanent sense of longing.

  The divorce had been modern, granting custody to Samia with visiting rights for their father. During the year Omar and Khaled lived with their mother in Beirut, close to their maternal grandparents, in Hamra, a lively neighborhood full of cafés where intellectuals and activists mingled to discuss
poetry and philosophy and politics amid the chaos of a decade’s ongoing sectarian violence. Samia taught English as a second language close by, at Beirut University College, her alma mater.

  Omar felt safe and protected, even though he knew there was a civil war and he remembered times when there would be explosions sounding like fireworks that meant his family had to hide in the stairwell with neighbors. His mom brought a blanket and snacks; for the kids, it was an indoor picnic, even though they knew the fireworks were bombs.

  Hearing Baba’s voice carried Omar’s imagination to happy summers in Tunisia, where he spent vacations with his older brother, Khaled. That’s when they saw their father and were taken care of by their Auntie Reem, their stepmother, who treated them even nicer than her own kids. Omar and Khaled considered Loaye and Reef, Reem’s sons from her first marriage, as brothers.

  Tunisia provided a haven for the Palestine Liberation Organization, which had been driven from Beirut in 1982, but for young Omar, it simply meant the hot chocolate Reem gave them at breakfast and a dog he loved, though it had so many fleas Auntie gave it away to a friend who had a farm. Tunisia meant watching cartoons on television when the three older boys left Omar, the youngest, behind. They told him he couldn’t come because they were going to help the dwarfs fight giants, battles in which they always claimed victory. In Tunisia Omar saw the way grown-ups spoke to his Baba, like his dad was a Jedi knight. Even the cracked dry soil of the garden produced watermelons from seeds planted by his father, another sign of his strength.

  In Omar’s eyes, Abu al-Abbas was a hero, like Robin Hood the fox in the animated Disney film he loved to watch, always having to hide from the sheriff. Tunisia was his Baba’s refuge, his Forest of Nottingham.

  Back in Beirut, Omar understood that here his father had to be kept a secret—not easy for a little boy who wanted to brag about his important dad.

  One day in kindergarten the teacher went around the room asking the kids what their fathers did.

  Omar listened as Mahmoud said his father was a dentist and Sara said her dad was a doctor.

  What does your dad do, Omar?

  I can’t say.

  What do you mean, you can’t say?

  Omar knew he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone that his dad was a fighter, but he was bursting to say something. Everyone was looking at him. So, he made noises like a machine gun, pretending to hold an imaginary weapon in his hands.

  They didn’t understand. One kid thought the sputtering sounds indicated a jackhammer and asked him if his father was a “digger.”

  Omar felt compelled to try again.

  “My dad,” he said, “when Israelis see him, they say, ‘Catch that guy!’”

  1

  A Week Earlier…

  The Mediterranean Sea, October 7, 1985

  The Achille Lauro had a tendency to tilt toward disaster.

  A disturbing sign appeared at the very beginning, before the ship was even built. Known simply as Construction 214, the luxury vessel was going to be the pride of Rotterdam Lloyd, a major Dutch nautical line. The project began in 1939 but was delayed for years by Dutch workers resisting the German occupiers of Rotterdam during World War II. Finally launched in 1946, the ship was originally named for a martyr, the great-grandson of the company founder, Willem Ruys, who was taken hostage and killed by the Nazis in 1942. A few good years followed and then air travel sent the ocean liner business into a steep decline. In January 1965, the Willem Ruys was sold to Lauro Lines, a Neapolitan shipping company.

  The Italians replaced the name on the ship’s bow with Achille Lauro, after its new owner, a wealthy industrialist and political force in Naples. Nothing unusual about that, except there was something unseemly about replacing an homage to a victim of fascism with the name of a Mussolini supporter who remained committed to right-wing politics. Eight months after the exchange, in the midst of a major overhaul, the Achille Lauro experienced a massive explosion and fire. Once again, it survived.

  During the next twenty years, the Achille Lauro endured business troubles, fires, collisions, and a brush or two with war. In 1982, the ship’s namesake died at age ninety-five, leaving Lauro Lines heavily in debt; the company went bankrupt and the vessel was seized by creditors. Early in 1985, the Achille Lauro, repossessed by the Italian government, was leased for three years to Chandris Shipping Lines, a substantial Greek maritime company, which agreed to charter the ship for twenty cruises each year, all leaving from Genoa.

  Advertising was pitched at people who wanted to indulge in the fantasy of unattainable luxury at affordable prices. Once on board, passengers were handed a glossy brochure, decorated with photographs of sexy men and women, written in giddy prose.

  “Whilst at sea you will savour the delights of the gourmet’s table—with no less than six meals daily,” including a midnight buffet!

  “Your only problem—a happy one—will be to choose from the extravagant array of tempting dishes!”

  Captain Gerardo De Rosa was at the helm when the Achille Lauro left Genoa early Thursday evening, October 3, 1985. The ship docked in Naples the next day, and was then bound for ports in Egypt, Israel, Cyprus, and Greece, eleven days in all.

  De Rosa was well qualified. A graduate of the Nautical Institute in Piano di Sorrento, a municipality of Naples, he’d worked his way up through the ranks from cabin boy, gaining experience on freight ships for the Lauro Lines. Now, at age fifty-one, after more than thirty years at sea, he was on his eighteenth outing as a cruise ship commander.

  Captain De Rosa oversaw the complex technical and safety requirements of moving the massive vessel, which was 23,629 tons, 643 feet long (almost two soccer fields), and 82 feet high (eight stories). She was powered by eight diesel engines putting out 32,000 horsepower to twin propellers.

  On a luxury liner, however, seafaring expertise was merely the baseline competency. The Achille Lauro was both tourist resort and cargo vessel because of the sheer amount of food, drink, and linens required to accommodate guests. A sampling of job descriptions for the 383-member staff and crew reflects these needs, a mix of quotidian and indulgent: engine room and deck hand, quartermaster, cabin boy, laundry worker and cook, as well as hairdresser, photographer, barber, hostess, barboy, and cocktail waitress.

  For the 673 passengers, the captain had an additional, picturesque part to play. He had to fulfill the romantic notion inherent in this kind of travel, one that required him to wear a tuxedo as comfortably as a uniform, to embrace the packaged glamour with an aura of sincerity and flirtatious good humor.

  Deeply tanned with large, expressive eyes and an engaging smile, Gerardo De Rosa was born to assume just such a role. Growing up in Gragnano, a hillside town in southern Italy advertised for its excellent pasta, De Rosa was such a charming, exuberant child his mother ironically dubbed him Tristone (Sad Sack), perhaps to ward off evil spirits. De Rosa appreciated the desire of passengers to briefly experience the fiction of a carefree childhood. He described the Achille Lauro as “this enormous plaything, this ‘Land of Toys’ where everything was imagined and reimagined continuously for comfort and for entertainment.”

  He claimed to enjoy watching and rewatching the ritual of discovery, as passengers explored the ship’s labyrinthine byways, coming upon the swimming pools (heated, both indoor and outdoor), massage spa, boutiques, movie theater, beauty parlor, gymnasium, and nightclubs, where dancers, magicians, and singers performed every evening. He liked being part of the fantasy. “A passenger expects from a cruise everything that he has ever dreamed of and even something more,” he would write, “not even he knows what, but we have to try to guess what it is, so that in the end the reality exceeds the expectation.”

  On Sunday evening, October 6, De Rosa prepared himself for the official onboard welcome ceremony, timed to allow passengers to settle in. The ship had already been in motion for three days, having made passage through the strong tidal currents of the Strait of Messina, the narrow strip of water separating Sicily an
d Calabria. They were now at open sea, heading across the Mediterranean toward Alexandria, Egypt, where passengers who chose could disembark the next morning for a day excursion by bus to Cairo and the Pyramids. They would reboard the ship that same evening at Port Said.

  The captain always tried to shake hands with each and every passenger. After the handshakes, he mingled some more in the ornate Salon Arazzi (Tapestry Hall) on the Promenade Deck, the second highest on the ship, where guests sipped cocktails at tables set with red tablecloths and napkins. De Rosa sought to wish everyone an enjoyable cruise, introduce his top officers, and then open up the dancing, with “The Drinking Song” from La Traviata. It was corny yet effective. De Rosa never deviated from the script, repeating the ritual in Italian, French, English, and Spanish. There were almost two hundred Austrians, seventy-eight Germans, seventy-one Americans, and twenty British; the rest were mainly from South America, Italy and other European countries, plus two Israelis.

  On this voyage, as always, De Rosa’s enjoyment was tempered by the weight of responsibility. He knew that in a group of hundreds of people, it took only one unhappy, rude, or belligerent person to create a multiplying effect of dissatisfaction.

  That evening he had been distracted briefly by one passenger moving through the receiving line, a middle-aged man with thick glasses and oddly showy clothes: shirt collar too big, an out-of-style necktie. De Rosa noticed this man had been watching him with unusual attention.

  The man grasped the captain’s outstretched hand in both of his, then turned the captain’s palm upward, and mumbled a few words. De Rosa could understand only one, the word “Allah.” In the moment, this didn’t strike the captain as unusual. They were moving toward Islamic countries. When he pulled his hand away, De Rosa saw the man had deposited a gift in his palm: a komboloi, a string of Greek worry beads. The captain interpreted the beads as a prayer object, like a rosary, or maybe an expression of affection and friendship. He slipped the beads in his coat pocket without much thought; he often received business cards or notes from people during this moment of introduction. Though he didn’t catch the man’s name, he would not forget their meeting.