Never Again

by Harvey A. Schwartz

  Quaid turned to his chief of staff. “Bob, I think it would be best for all of us if you would decide that your presence is needed elsewhere. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it has to be.”

  Brown stood, looked at Quaid, shook his head in disbelief and walked from the room. The door swung shut.

  Catherine walked to the door without looking at Quaid. It slammed behind her, loud enough to startle the Marine guard.

  “Now let’s do what has to be done, Mr. President,” Farrell slowly said.

  “Okay,” Quaid replied. “But this better be worth it. I’m paying an awfully heavy price for following your advice.”

  The five men met in the family quarter of the White House: the majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate, and President Quaid. No staff. No record was kept of meetings in the family quarters, unlike in the Oval Office, where every visit was tape-recorded for history. Their conversation was unofficial, off the record, not for repetition outside the room.

  “The problem,” Sen. Farrell began, “as we well know, is that the real minority in this country is those of us not identified with any minority. Add up all the blacks, Latinos, and Asians and collectively they outnumber ordinary white folks in this country. Throw in the whites who identify with some ethnic or religious minority and you’ve got a small group of what would be called traditional Americans. Now, Mr. President, I’m not saying there’s anything particularly wrong about this, but, well, it sure is an eye-opener when you think about it.”

  “And it has potentially unpleasant implications for the current situation,” House Majority Leader Frent Gastly added. “I don’t see that we’ve got much of a choice on this Jewish refugee business. We can’t make exceptions for these Jews. We do that and every city in the country will be up in flames.”

  “And don’t forget the oil problem. It could be a damn cold winter in New Hampshire,” said Senator Wayne Giddings, the conservative New Hampshire Republican majority leader. Giddings’state had shivered through a winter that saw oil prices nearly double. He wasn’t about to go through another such winter, with even higher oil prices caused by an Arab oil boycott. One more winter like the last one and his free-market preachings would ring on cold ears.

  Congressman Gastly joined in.

  “I’ve been speaking with some leaders of my evangelical base,” he said. “They’ve been stronger backers of Israel than even most Jews. Second Coming and all that. Every person I spoke with, half a dozen or so, made just the opposite choice our Jewish citizens seem to be making. When Israelis start killing Americans, especially American military, especially in America, well, American Christians are putting the America first, to coin a phrase. American Jews seem to put Jew first, American second. The born-againers are waving their flags and turning their backs on Israel.”

  “It’s more than just these two ships, Mr. President,” Sen. Farrell said. “We let these people in and the doors are flung open. There are how many million Jews left in Israel? They damn well all need someplace to go—those that are still alive, those that are allowed to leave. We aren’t going to send in troops to get their country back—need I say that Iraq word, sir—and we just can’t take them all in here.”

  “We’ve got to find every damn person who came on those ships and boot them out, turn them over to somebody, anybody but us. But that’s only half of it,” Giddings continued, locking eyes with the president. “A crime has been committed, hell, five thousand crimes. What made thousands of Americans do what they did, kill ten coastguardsmen, sink two ships, hide all those escapees? Who knows? Whatever made them do it, they’re criminals, too. Criminals who have to be arrested. Tried. Punished. There’s no getting around that, sir.”

  “I hear what you are saying. I see the inevitability of what we have to do,” Quaid said. He shook his head. “Damn, but it feels wrong. Look, my wife and my oldest friend are barely speaking to me over this. They know what I’m going to decide and they don’t like it. Don’t like it is putting it mildly. I’m having some pretty chilly nights myself, gentlemen.”

  They all smiled.

  The First Lady had announced she was going to visit their daughter at Harvard, and while she was in Massachusetts she might attend a fundraiser for Israeli refugees.

  Quaid walked to a window. The illuminated spike of the Washington Monument drew his eyes toward the sky, where the first stars were becoming visible. There’ll surely never be a Quaid Monument, he thought. I’ll be lucky to escape as a historical footnote. Damn those Jews and Arabs, all of them.

  “Look,” Quaid said, turning to face the two Republican leaders. “If I do this, if I round those people up and prosecute them, I want your complete support. I’m not going to hang myself on the line for every liberal to take shots at if I’ve got to worry about being kicked in the butt by the Republicans. I’ll do this, but only if you sign on all the way. Otherwise, hell, otherwise I don’t know what I’ll do, but I’m not going to have to duck for cover from both the left and the right on this one. Do I have your words on that? No half-hearted support, either. I want you right there in front of the cameras with me when this gets announced.”

  “We’ve discussed this with our folks already,” Sen. Giddings said. “You arrest those people, try them, send the illegals back where they came from and throw the book at everybody involved in killing those ten Coasties, and we’ll stand side by side with you. If ever there was an issue that actually did rise above politics—and I’ll admit I haven’t seen one yet—this could be it.”

  “Same goes for me,” Gastly said. “My people are behind you on this one. You won’t have to watch your back. We’ll protect you there. Just do it firmly and quickly. Don’t get cold feet halfway through.”

  “Well, I hope God and history will forgive me, but I’ll do what has to be done,” Quaid said softly. “May Catherine forgive me, too. I’ll speak with the attorney general first thing tomorrow morning. She won’t like doing this, but I’m not giving her any choice.”

  Attorney General Maryellen McQueeney, “the Queen” to friends and enemies, had an uncomfortable feeling when she was summoned to the White House for an early morning meeting with the president the next day. He’d been right. She didn’t like what she heard from him. She asked for more time, a week or so, to study options.

  “You have no options, Queen,” Quaid told her. “This decision has been made. You are going to implement it. There may be a high price to pay for what we’re about to do. I’m willing to pay that price. You won’t have to. This is my decision, not yours, and people are going to know that. Your job is to do your job. I suggest you fly to Boston and tell your people what they are going to do. I want this kept quiet until you have all those people in custody, then I’ll make the announcement myself.”

  The attorney general nodded, looking grim.

  “One other thing. I don’t want some Jewish Assistant US Attorney in Boston deciding his loyalty is to other Jews and not to the United States. This will work if we do it quickly, with surprise, with no advance warnings. I don’t want this to turn into a months-long nationwide manhunt. I want it over with, quickly and cleanly. Be careful who is on the case and who is off the case. Keep it subtle, but let’s not be stupid on this one.”

  “Mr. President,” the attorney general said. “I most respectfully disagree with what you are asking me to do. Please, let’s give this a bit more thought before we start down a road without knowing where it will end. Please, sir, don’t ask me to do this thing.”

  “I’m not asking you to do anything,” Quaid huffed. “I am telling you to do this. I am ordering you to do this. And you will do this. You will not resign, at least not until this is over. You will do this. I will have your support and your loyalty. Do you understand me?”

  McQueeney stepped back. She had never seen the president like this. She had been a judge on the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California and had been drawn to Lawrence Quaid because of his unflinching ethical record. She had felt li
ke a colleague to Quaid—until now.

  “Yes, sir,” McQueeney said with a faux salute. “I’ll follow orders. I won’t publicly disagree with you. I won’t embarrass you. And when the job is done, you can look for a new attorney general.”

  She walked to the door, reached for the doorknob, then turned to face Quaid.

  “Mr. President, I’m not the first good soldier to agree to follow orders to round up Jews. I hope history is more kind to you and me than it was the last time this happened. Good day, sir.”

  McQueeney was on a plane and in her Boston office that afternoon. It was unusual for the attorney general to visit a field office. If the Queen wanted to speak with her subordinates, they were usually summoned to Washington. She ordered the staff assembled and wasted no time getting to the point.

  “This decision regarding the Jewish refugees comes direct from the president,” she told the assembled attorneys. “I won’t say I played no role in the decision, but it was apparent to me that the president’s mind is made up. Some of you are not going to be pleased by this decision, but I am sure you will each do your jobs. Or if you feel you can’t do your job, then resign effective immediately. There are no other options, no other choices. There will be no free passes on this one.”

  Still, it was not as simple as that. Arresting Israeli soldiers, or even all the Israeli civilians from the ships, was something she could live with. More difficult was the decision about who should be arrested from the thousands of local families who sheltered these people.

  McQueeney did not want the US citizens arrested, she told the Boston staff. Her preference was to issue summonses ordering these people to appear in court at a later time, a time she hoped could be postponed enough so some new crisis would draw the public’s attention and she would not have to prosecute generally law-abiding citizens, prosperous citizens, for doing what she felt in her heart she would have done had she been in their shoes.

  She decided to modify the president’s order. Only one adult member of every household that harbored refugees would be taken into custody. Each household would decide who would take responsibility and who would stay behind.

  “And no children, no teenagers,” she told her subordinates. “Not even if they want to go, not even if they ask to go.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Judy Katz broke her widowed grandmother’s heart every day, torturing the woman who raised her after her parents were killed in an automobile accident when she was six years old. Judy barely remembered her parents and knew little of their history, how they’d met, why they’d married. She retained no memory of her life with them. Her grandmother rarely spoke about her dead son and daughter-in-law, and never spoke about her own husband, who Judy only knew had died long before she’d been born. Judy had no family besides her grandmother—no cousins, no uncles or aunts.

  They’d lived in an old woman’s apartment in which fresh air was prohibited and the sofa was covered in plastic except when company was present, in the same Queens, New York, neighborhood where her grandmother moved on her arrival in the US after the war.

  The only hint about her family history came once when Judy was watching Schindler’s List on HBO, pretending to be able to sip Manischewitz concord wine, a slightly alcoholic grape juice. Halfway through the movie, with Judy in tears, her grandmother turned toward her and, in a voice as casual as if she were discussing chicken breasts going on sale tomorrow, said, “I was there, you know.”

  A stunned Judy Katz listened to her grandmother describe how she had lived in Warsaw, Poland. When the Germans invaded, all the Jews were imprisoned behind walls, the Warsaw Ghetto. The greater shocker was that Judy’s father had been born there, in the midst of the ghetto. Her grandfather, who she learned for the first time had been a tailor, smuggled his wife and newborn son out through sewer lines that led under the walls. Once his wife and son were outside the ghetto, the tailor had returned—returned to fight the Nazis. They killed him. No other family member survived the war.

  Her grandmother never mentioned that history again, waving her hands and poofing at “history-schmistory.” It never left Judy, though. I am a child of death and destruction, the offspring of tyranny and war, she thought.

  Her grandmother was less lyrical. She was devastated that her granddaughter was thirty-one years old and not married, not even seeing anybody “serious.”

  But that wasn’t the biggest disappointment. After putting her granddaughter through Amherst College, then Boston College Law School—“A Catholic law school,” her grandmother would say. “What kind of law can nuns and priests teach?”—Judy clerked for a federal judge and then was hired as an Assistant US Attorney in Boston. She was assigned to the organized crime strike force and was eventually tapped to head it. Katz had a knack for chasing and prosecuting bad guys. Even more surprising to the five-foot-four-inch attorney was the almost sexual thrill she felt locking eyes with the third-generation Boston Irish and Italian hoodlums as they stood silently before the magistrate judge at their arraignments.

  She prosecuted them for criminal conspiracy, loansharking and mail fraud. She also enjoyed mixing with the similarly third-generation Boston Irish and Italian FBI and DEA agents she worked with and then hung out with several nights each week. “No husband material here,” she often joked.

  Katz heard about the attorney general’s visit and was shocked that she was excluded. As she was stewing, a colleague stuck his head into her office.

  “We’re having lunch today, Judy,” Bob Shaw, head of the Antitrust Division, told her. “You can’t say no. You can’t ask why. Just meet me at the Sultan’s at noon. Bye.”

  The Sultan’s Palace was a Turkish restaurant across the footbridge from the courthouse. It was popular but a bit expensive for lunch. Nonetheless, there was always a line.

  Shaw was waiting for her.

  “So, what’s the occasion for this unexpected lunch?” Katz asked, walking up to him and taking a seat at a corner table.

  “Judy, my father is Jewish,” he said slowly and almost at a whisper. “Most people don’t know that. It’s not that I have anything to hide, but, well, he wasn’t around all that long and my mother was pretty serious about raising me as an Episcopalian and all and, well, I guess you’re the first one in the office I’ve ever mentioned that to.”

  “So, why the big confession now?” Katz asked.

  “I owe it to you. There was a meeting this morning.”

  “I know. I wasn’t invited,” she said. “Were you there?”

  “I was there. We were all there, all the department heads. And FBI, DEA. ATF. US Marshals. Even ICE. Even Jed. Jed was there.”

  Jed Delaney was deputy chief of the Organized Crime Strike Force. Katz was his boss.

  “Jed was there?” she whispered. “Why wasn’t I there? Bob, is something going on?”

  “Listen, Judy. Nobody can know I’m telling you this. Understand? I’m willing to do the right thing, but I don’t want to pay the price for the rest of my life for this. Okay? Agreed? I need a promise from you. Nobody ever knows. That means not even if you are under oath. Can you agree to that?”

  “Should I agree? You’re asking me to promise to lie under oath. I can’t agree to that, Bob. That’s too much to ask. I send people to prison for that, Bob. Bob,” she said slowly, almost in a whisper, leaning forward, close to him. “Bob, are they setting me up for something? Does this have anything to do with why I wasn’t at that meeting this morning? Holy shit, Bob, was I not invited because I’m under investigation? Is that why I wasn’t there, Bob?”

  Shaw put both elbows on the table, cupped his hands and spoke slowly.

  “You weren’t at the meeting—not because you’re under investigation, Judy. It’s because you’re a Jew . . . because you’re Jewish. That’s why . . . I’ve got to go. Judy, I’m sorry. It isn’t right and I couldn’t let it happen and not tell you. Don’t burn me, Judy. Please. I did this to help you. Don’t burn me now.”

  Shaw stood and wal
ked away between the crowded tables, not looking back at the frozen woman sitting alone, still leaning forward as if ready for a kiss, unable to move.

  CHAPTER 16

  The North Shore Jewish Council coordinated housing of the refugees and planning to relocate people around the country. Lists were drawn up—lists of refugees, lists of families housing them, lists of financial contributors. The database was kept in the office of the emergency coordinator at the Jewish Community Center of the North Shore, in Swampscott.

  The inevitable next step on the path from secrecy to media blitz took place. A press conference was called. Moishe Cohen, the emergency relief coordinator, was the chief executive officer of Winston Mills, one of Massachusetts’s last remaining textile manufacturers. Cohen stood before a bank of television cameras, reading from a prepared statement. He spoke with the barest trace of his childhood German accent. At his sides stood rabbis, a state senator, business leaders and the inevitable musician, the interim conductor of the Boston Pops, the first Jew to hold that position since the death of Arthur Fiedler.

  “First, and most importantly,” Cohen began, “let me fervently emphasize how seriously the entire community regrets the tragic loss of life that was unintentionally inflicted in this act of liberation. Those of us involved in the planning of this action share all Americans’shock and horror at this violence. We did not plan on using physical force and certainly never anticipated that such weapons would be used.”

  Cohen looked up at the row of television cameras directed at him.

  “We were told by certain professional persons who accompanied the passengers that the Coast Guard boats would be disabled and distracted. We did not anticipate the means they would use. For that, we apologize. We will offer financial compensation to the families of those who were lost, at the same time appreciating with all our hearts that money cannot make up for their tragic losses.”