Never Again

by Harvey A. Schwartz

  “They’ll work,” he said. “The C4 will explode. But you’ve got one extremely serious problem.” He moved his gaze from Goldhersh to the three eager young men clinging to each word coming from a real member of the IDF.

  “There is no timer,” Levi continued. “You press this button”—he gestured at the Electron Launch Controller, with its red button labeled LAUNCH—“and the C4 explodes. Whoever presses the button will be blown to small pieces before his finger gets off that box.”

  Goldhersh spoke first, seeing each of the men nod. “We appreciate that quite well. These three heroes appreciate that. How many millions of Jews have already been killed, by that bomb, by the Arabs, by disease or starvation or torture in those camps? What are three more deaths if they are in a good cause?” He turned toward the young men. “Do you agree?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you think only Arabs have the courage to kill themselves?”

  “It is God’s will.”

  Levi said nothing but walked off by himself into the darkness inside the empty building. After a few moments, he called out.

  “Abram, can I speak with you for a minute?”

  Goldhersh joined Levi. They stood in the dim light, barely able to see each other as more than a shape.

  “Abram, I take it you are serious about this, about setting off that explosive?” Levi asked. “Three drums of C4, Abram, that’s like a bomb from a B-52. That will kill an awful lot of people, a lot of Americans. Are you really planning on doing that, Abram? That is a serious action.”

  “Aren’t these serious times?” Goldhersh answered. “Has any time been more serious for the Jewish people? An atomic bomb has killed Jews, who knows how many Jews. Once again, Jews are put into camps, camps in the Holy Land and now camps even right here in America. Camps, Levi, camps. Does that sound familiar? Do you remember what happens to Jews in camps, Levi? I do. Those boys do.”

  “But, Abram, bombs?” Levi asked. “Terror. Killing more people. Will that accomplish anything?”

  “I need an Israeli to ask me whether terror works,” Goldhersh laughed. “Were you sick the day they taught Israeli history in school? You remember the Haganah? The Irgun? The Stern Gang? They were the so-called terrorists who drove the British from Palestine and let us create our own nation. They were called terrorists. They set off bombs. They killed people. And they won. Terror worked.”

  “But Jews have been on the receiving end of more terror than we’ve dished out over the years,” Levi answered.

  “That we have. That we have,” Goldhersh said. “Black September. The Munich Olympics. The Intifadah and all those public bombings, buses, cafes, shopping centers, flaming kites, for God’s sake. But you know what, Levi? You know what? Those bombs worked, too. Do you think that coward Sharon would have handed over the West Bank to the Palestinians, that he would have dragged our own settlers out of Gaza, if it hadn’t been for all those bombs they set off? I don’t think so. Why do you think I got all this stuff in the first place? It was to give to the settlers so they could set off bombs of their own.

  “Terror works, Levi. History proves that. Look what crashing those planes into the World Trade Center did to the United States. Everything changed that day. Nineteen men willing to die changed everything.”

  Levi’s thoughts wandered to the wine cellar under the house where Debra Reuben was at that very moment. He considered for a fleeting second whether to tell Goldhersh what was in that cellar. Not yet, he decided, and not without talking it over with Debra first. It’s the government’s bomb, and she is the government.

  “So, where are you going to use that stuff, Abram?” Levi asked. “What’s the plan?”

  “Come with me,” Goldhersh said, taking Levi by the elbow. They walked to a far corner, near an overhead garage door leading outside. A large object was covered with a blue plastic tarp. Goldhersh took one corner of the plastic and pulled. Under the tarp was a white Chevrolet van with the words National Park Service painted on the side.

  “Young Aleph and Bet paid a visit to Acadia National Park last week,” Goldhersh said. “Actually, it was more of a shopping trip. They brought this back. Do you suppose our product will fit in the back of that van?”

  “Of course it will,” Levi said. “But I don’t understand. You are going to blow up Acadia National Park. What will that do, kill a few bears?”

  “No, my friend,” Goldhersh said. “Wrong national park. Wrong place. Wrong message. We want to get the attention of the government, the United States government. Well, where is that government? And what park service is in charge of all the parks there? We’re going to have our own march on Washington this weekend, Levi.”

  CHAPTER 34

  After six nights of sleeping alone, Shapiro found the bedroom door ajar. He’d undressed in the dark and climbed into bed as quietly as he could, not knowing if his wife was really sleeping or just pretending. In either case, they spent the night back to back, the gap between their spines either three inches or two feet. It did not matter, Shapiro realized. It might as well have been a brick wall—possibly permanent.

  Sally pretended to sleep, her mind racing. Just as Shapiro could not understand his wife’s rejection of him, she could not understand how a man who had not been inside a synagogue in ten years, a man who knew maybe six words of Yiddish, a man who laughed at her when she’d suggested they vacation in Israel rather than go on a bicycle trip in Scotland, as he planned, how that man all of a sudden became the Head Jew leading a crusade.

  After so many years of marriage, they now seemed so wrong for each other. Thinking back to her college years, she wondered whether her friends were right when they warned her he was too different, that it could not work in the long run. Sally remembered how popular she’d been in college until she became inseparable from Ben Shapiro. How different my life would have been if I’d never met him, if I’d ended up with somebody more like me . . . I never signed up to be a Jew. Or to have my son treated like a Jew.

  Shapiro had made one more effort to talk with Sally earlier that evening, leading to a discussion that ended after five minutes with her swearing at him for the first time in perhaps a decade, after he’d asked her to join him in going to Washington for the huge march.

  “No, absolutely not. There is only one fucking Jew in this family,” she shouted, leaping to her feet. “And it certainly is not me, and neither is it Adam.”

  She thundered up the stairs and slammed the bedroom door. He’d been surprised to find it ajar later.

  Shapiro’s problems at home mirrored his problems with the two cases dominating his work life. The good news was that by the time Shapiro located Aaron Hocksberg, still his only client from among the local Jews arrested at their homes the night of the roundup, Hocksberg had been taken before a federal magistrate, charged with harboring fugitives and released on his own recognizance. All that happened before Shapiro could even meet with his client. The chief judge decided it took less resources for the six federal magistrates, who handled such minor criminal matters as arraignments of arrested persons, to be shuttled from county jail to county jail than it did to transport all the defendants to the federal courthouse.

  US Attorney Anderson’s press conference, announcing that all of those arrested would be charged with harboring fugitives and in return for guilty pleas his office would request fines and suspended jail sentences, went a long way toward defusing what had the potential to be an explosive situation in Massachusetts.

  Attorney General McQueeney’s judgment on that issue proved correct. Despite early threats from defense attorneys to fight every arrest, it appeared that all those charged would escape jail sentences and would have to pay a not-too-significant fine. Samuel Cohn, a senior partner at Goldman Sachs, immediately wrote a million-dollar check to the United States Treasury to pay all the fines.

  “These people are heroes,” Cohn said. “Given the opportunity, I would have done just what they did. Doing the right thing shouldn’t cost them
a penny.”

  Shapiro was not so lucky with his other client, the one charged with state criminal violations. Howie Mandelbaum remained the only person from the two ships taken into custody by state law enforcement officials rather than the feds. Patrick McDonough, Suffolk County district attorney, was infuriated that the US Attorney had wimped out.

  McDonough was a proud son of South Boston. He could smell the waterfront from his boyhood home. The idea that foreign forces sank military vessels, even if they were just Coast Guard, and killed military people, including that poor girl, within sight of his own mother’s living room window drove McDonough nearly crazy. He didn’t care what the feds were doing. He had one Jew in his custody and he intended to throw the book at the young man.

  Shapiro returned to his office from a meeting with McDonough gravely concerned for his client. He had assured Mandelbaum’s father, who seemed to have something technical to do with stock trading in New York as far as Shapiro could quickly determine, that the feds would take over all the cases and the state charges were likely to be dropped.

  Now he’d have to call the senior Mandelbaum and admit he’d been wrong. The only plan Shapiro could come up with was to slow the criminal process and hope public opinion would ease and McDonough would back down.

  The Camp Edwards detainees were the third hot potato Shapiro was juggling. He’d enthusiastically volunteered to head the legal defense committee for those detainees, a decision he was beginning to regret. The defense committee was being coordinated through the ADL, the Anti-Defamation League. Dozens of lawyers—not all of them Jewish, Shapiro was pleased to see—volunteered to represent individual detainees. The ADL set up what they hoped was a secure extranet website to coordinate the cases that were soon to be filed. The website included a list server that allowed each participating attorney to send and receive confidential emails. Guantanamo defense attorneys had used a similar arrangement.

  Shapiro’s inbox was flooded with back-and-forth emails among lawyers on the defense team and new lawyers joining up, it seemed, by the hour. It would be a full-time job just reading all the email. One stood out, though, with a subject header in all capital letters saying EVERYBODY READ THIS ONE.

  It was from Shapiro’s client, Aaron Hocksberg. He was incensed by the arrests in general and by his arrest in particular. The partners in his primarily Jewish law firm voted to devote a don’t-worry-about-the-budget effort to representing detainees. The email contained a draft of a petition for a writ of habeas corpus that the firm prepared as a model for all the cases. It was twenty-five pages long.

  This is good, Shapiro thought, this is very good. I wouldn’t want to guess how many associates have been awake for the past couple of nights pounding this out.

  The petition traced the history of the writ of habeas corpus back past the founding of the United States and through English history. It referred to a case brought in 1627 by Englishmen jailed by King Charles I. The king locked them up without charge for failing to assist England’s war against France and Spain. The prisoners sought writs of habeas corpus, arguing that without specific charges, they should not be imprisoned. The king’s attorney general replied that the Crown’s interest in protecting the realm justified suspending the ordinary judicial process. The king prevailed, but there was such outrage that Parliament responded with the Petition of Right in 1628, which prohibited imprisonment without formal charges. The petition said that Parliament next passed the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679, which required the government to bring formal criminal charges against any person held in custody within three months of his arrest, bringing to an end the process of arresting people and holding them indefinitely without criminal charges.

  That’s what they are doing with our detainees, Shapiro thought.

  The petition then crossed the Atlantic and emphasized that the only individual right included in the original United States Constitution, even before the Bill of Rights added the first ten amendments, was the right to petition a court for a writ of habeas corpus. The petition pointed out that all other individual rights, such as freedom of speech and religion and the right not to be deprived of life or property without due process of law, were all added later, starting with the Bill of Rights. The Founders felt that only the right to habeas corpus was vital enough to be included in the body of the original constitution.

  This is powerful legal argument, Shapiro thought. Fundamental to our rights as a free nation.

  Shapiro read the remainder of the petition, which read like a historical tour through colonial and Civil War America. He skipped to the bottom line, to the Relief Requested portion.

  Wherefore, the Petitioners demand that this Court declare that the Petitioners are being deprived of their liberty by the United States without Due Process of Law, without formal charges having been brought against them and in violation of their rights as protected by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Petitioners further demand that this Court issue preliminary and permanent injunctions prohibiting the United States from further holding said Petitioners in custody.

  I like that, Shapiro thought. That’s legalese for Moses’s message to the Pharaoh another time Jews were held in captivity without cause. Let my people go.

  The iCal reminder message beeped at Ben Shapiro. Lunch with JK, it said. Judy Katz. Shit, he thought. I’m late. Shapiro leaped from his desk, grabbed his suit jacket and jogged out the door. He arrived at the Sultan’s Palace right at noon.

  Shapiro scanned the people standing in line outside the door without recognizing anybody. As he moved forward to look inside the restaurant, he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned and felt a charge race through his body. Standing in front of him was a stunning young woman with long, full black hair swept back from her face and falling beyond her shoulders. Her dark eyes were clear and intelligent. Her coal-black suit was certainly businesslike, but it did little to hide her figure.

  “Ben Shapiro?” she asked.

  “That I am,” Shapiro answered. “I take it you are Judy. Nice to finally meet you. I’ve followed your exploits in the Globe. I’ve gotta tell you, I enjoy it when a young attorney kicks butt—especially, and I’m not being chauvinistic here but maybe a bit paternalistic for an old man like me, I enjoy it when a young woman attorney can kick butt in court in front of a jury. There’s nothing like that thrill when you know the jury is buying your act, right?”

  She gave him a puzzled look. “Are you this candid this quickly with everyone you meet?” she asked.

  “No, sorry, look, I apologize. One of those mornings so far, I guess. No, what I meant to say is that good trial lawyers are rare, and from all I’ve heard and read about you, you are a good trial lawyer.” He was surprised to feel the rush of a blush come to his face. “That was an awkward effort at a compliment, I suppose.”

  She smiled. “Compliment accepted then. I agree.” She leaned close to him. He smelled a fresh, outdoor smell from her hair, her skin perhaps. Not flowery—more like an absence of odors than any particular smell at all. She put her lips close to his right ear, glancing at the backs of the people in line in front of them. He heard her whisper, “I know what you mean. Hearing that word, guilty, from the jury foreman is as close as I’ve come to having an orgasm with my clothes on,” she said.

  “Never quite gone that far myself,” Shapiro said quickly, standing straight, pulling his head away from her.

  After five minutes they came to the head of the line and placed their orders, which they carried to a table on the second level. She glanced at Shapiro’s left hand, confirming that the gold band was a wedding ring. That was disappointing but not totally disqualifying.

  “So, wonderful as it is for us to meet, I assume there was a specific reason for this get-together,” Shapiro said as they finished their lunches.

  “Yes, there certainly is,” Katz said, businesslike and much less flirtatious. “I want to know whether you would be willing to bring a religious discrimination lawsuit a
gainst the United States Attorney.”

  Shapiro sat back in his chair, hand on his chin, looking closely at Katz to see whether she was joking.

  “I’m not afraid to sue anybody. I’ve certainly taken on bigger fish than Arnie Anderson,” he said calmly. “I assume you are the plaintiff.”

  She nodded.

  “And I assume you are Jewish.”

  She nodded again.

  “So you want to sue Arnie Anderson because he did something to you at work because you are Jewish? Is that what you are saying?”

  “That is precisely what I’m saying,” Katz said. “Let me tell you what happened.” She described the recent events to him, leaving out only her lunch with Bob Shaw, honoring her promise to keep that confidential. She owed him that much. Besides, it was a promise.

  She finished her recitation with a question, the question clients always ended their recitations with. “So,” she said, “do I have a case?”

  Shapiro respected her for not asking the other question clients always asked: “What’s it worth?” He paused to draw a deep breath, then let it out slowly.

  “Yes, technically you have a case. You were treated differently in the terms and conditions of your employment because of your religion. That violates Title VII, the federal employment discrimination statute. You’re a federal employee, so you have to jump through a few more procedural hoops than if you were a private employee, but you do have a valid, legitimate, even winnable claim.”

  She smiled. Relieved.

  “But, Judy, it isn’t a case I’d be interested in bringing. There is so much more going on that concerns me, concerns me as a lawyer but mostly concerns me as a Jew. You’re looking at probably five years of litigation. You have to go through the Justice Department human rights office first, then through the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission process, all before you, as a federal employee, get to first file suit in court. I think five years would be quick.