Never Again

by Harvey A. Schwartz

  “I’m sorry,” Levi said. “I’ll tell you everything, but, look, this isn’t a good time to be using the telephone. We have to be careful. Things are going on—well, things are about to happen—and we need to talk.”

  They sat on the living room sofa. Levi told Reuben everything from the past twenty-four hours and everything that was about to happen. He spoke without personal commentary. He wanted to see her reaction before letting her know his feelings about Goldhersh’s plans.

  When he finished, Levi asked, “So, what do you think?”

  “Another bomb,” she said flatly.

  Reuben stood and walked through the house to the porch overlooking the ocean. She leaned forward against the railing, her arms crossed in front of her chest, staring at the water. Levi trailed behind her and stood silently, watching her back, waiting for her to speak first.

  “Chaim, I know I am responsible for terrible things,” she said, speaking gently. “While I’ve been by myself I dared to think about all those poor people in Damascus, all those people who died, and I thought that I am responsible for their deaths and how could my heart, my soul, carry that burden.

  “To tell you the truth, I even thought about taking my own life. I thought I could fill my pockets with stones from the shore over there and jump into the water from that rock, jump in from that rock right there.” She pointed at a boulder at the water’s edge. “I could take one step and sink and all this would be over.”

  Levi opened his arms. He wanted so much to comfort her, to protect her from her demons. She shook her head and continued speaking, strength in her voice this time.

  “Obviously, I didn’t do that. I’ve come to appreciate that I did what had to be done. Not for me. Not for revenge. For Israel. There will come a time, God willing, when there will be another Israel, when Jews will have our land again as our home. And if history is any guide, in that time Israel will have enemies who will swear to drive us into the ocean if they cannot annihilate us first. It has always been that way. Somebody has always sworn to wipe us from the earth.

  “I came to understand why the plans were made in the first place. Because when that next time comes, those enemies are going to remember one word, and that word will be Damascus. And maybe when they remember that word, just maybe they’ll hesitate. And if they do hesitate, if they do step back and another million or more Jews live who they would have killed, well, then those Jews will have lived because of what I did. That was why the plan was made. That is why I followed it.

  “So, Chaim, I accept what I did. I can live with it. I’m not a monster. I’m not evil. Shit, Chaim, I’m still just Debbie Reuben from Long Island, just grown up a bit, right? Can you understand that?”

  Levi put his arms around her, squeezed her tightly, then lifted her feet from the porch floor and carried her into the house, down the hallway, and into the bedroom, where he placed her gently on the queen-sized bed. He slid on top of her, lowering his mouth over hers, slowly letting his entire weight rest on her, anchoring her, holding her, shielding her from the demons of her past and the demons soon to come.

  For now, right now, let’s not talk at all, he thought, reaching down to open the buttons on her blouse.

  They fell asleep in one another’s arms, thoughts of atom bombs and C4 explosive, of FBI agents and detention camps, absent for the day. For the moment, at least.

  CHAPTER 39

  Ben Shapiro put off visiting Howie Mandelbaum at the Charles Street Jail to deliver the unpleasant news of his meeting with District Attorney Patrick McDonough. It was looking as if Mandelbaum was going to be the only person to face state criminal charges for the Coast Guard deaths. Shapiro had hoped to get the charges dropped, even if it meant Mandelbaum would be shipped to the detention camp on Cape Cod. At least there he would be treated the same as the other detainees.

  How bad could that be, Shapiro thought. After all, in the long run they were certain to be found to be nothing but refugees from war, from persecution. This country took such people in every day.

  But that was not to be. Instead, Mandelbaum was going to be indicted under state law for murder or conspiracy to commit murder or some such criminal charge, as if he were some gangbanger picked up on the streets. As a result, Shapiro had no choice but to treat this like every other criminal case—build his facts, file some motions, and either plead his client out if he could work a deal or roll the dice in front of a jury. In any event, the wheels of Massachusetts justice turned slowly, and Mandelbaum was facing at least six months behind bars before anything was likely to happen in court.

  Even though Shapiro had visited scores of incarcerated clients, he was stunned by the change in Mandelbaum’s appearance from the last time he saw him. All hints of cockiness were gone. Mandelbaum did not walk, but shambled, as if his feet were held together by invisible chains. He looked at the floor, unwilling to make eye contact with anybody—with the guards on either side who brought him to the interview room, or even with Shapiro when the two sat facing each other.

  “Howie, what happened to you?” Shapiro asked softly. He’d left their last meeting with a sour feeling about this client. The lack of enthusiasm he felt when he arrived at the jail vanished and his heart went out to the young man, who continued to stare at the floor as if his head were too heavy to lift.

  “Are you all right, Howie? Speak to me. Do you remember me, Howie? I’m Ben Shapiro, your lawyer.”

  The young man continued to look at the floor as he spoke softly, almost too softly for Shapiro to hear him.

  “You’ve got to get me out of this place. Please, please get me out of this place. They’ll kill me if I stay here. Get me out. Can you please get me out?” He began quietly crying. Shapiro reached out and placed his hand under the young man’s chin, then lifted his face until they were eye to eye with one another.

  “What happened, Howie?” Shapiro asked.

  “They raped me. Lots of them. Lots of times. And the guards just turned their backs.” His sobs grew louder, convulsing his shoulders. “Mr. Shapiro, please help me. They keep talking about Jew this and Jew that, about Jews killing Americans and about setting up camps, camps like the Nazis did. They talk about finishing the job this time. It’s hell, Mr. Shapiro. It’s goddamn fucking holy-shit hell here.”

  Mandelbaum wrapped his arms around his chest and rocked in his chair, sobbing louder now, all restraint gone. Shapiro reached out to touch the young man’s shoulder. Mandelbaum flinched back from that touch, then looked up at Shapiro, eyes flat. Dead. Cold.

  “There’s a bunch of them and the guards unlock their cells and unlock my cell and whenever they want they come into my cell. In the middle of the day. The middle of the night. They hold me down. They rape me. They stuff underwear in my mouth so I can’t scream. They hold my arms and . . . and, oh God, Mr. Shapiro, I’ve stopped fighting them because I can’t stop them and I just let them do it to me now because I can’t stop them.”

  Mandelbaum’s head dropped to the wooden arm of the chair. He lifted his head and slammed it down on the wood surface, his forehead striking with a thud. He lifted his head again and slammed it down, harder. Then again. Shapiro leaped forward and grabbed the young man’s head between his hands. Mandelbaum’s forehead was red. The skin mangled. Blood oozing.

  Shapiro reached into his back pocket, removed a handkerchief and pressed it against the man’s forehead. He reached for the man’s right hand and brought it, lifeless by now, to the handkerchief.

  “Stop that,” Shapiro shouted. “Here, hold that, hold that. Get control. We don’t have a whole lot of time.”

  The shouting, or perhaps the stern tone of Shapiro’s voice, focused the young man’s attention. He looked up, still holding the bloody handkerchief to his forehead.

  “I’m sorry. I know you’re trying to help me. I apologize,” he said. “I can’t take any more of this.” He sighed deeply. “Okay. What’s happening with the case? How much longer do I have to stay here?”

  “I’m
afraid I don’t have very good news for you, Howie,” Shapiro said. “I met with the district attorney and got absolutely nowhere. We’re going to have to treat this like a criminal case. I’ll speak with witnesses and collect evidence and we’ll probably be going to trial. I don’t see much choice.”

  “That’s okay, Mr. Shapiro. I don’t mind going to trial. I didn’t do anything, not a thing except push my way onto that boat and then jump in the water when somebody said jump. That’s good news. Great. We’ll have a trial. Let’s go. Can we do it before the end of the week? I’ll have to hold out for just a few more days, right?”

  Shapiro saw hope brighten the young man’s face like a searchlight finding its target. The man’s back straightened in the chair. His head lifted.

  “It doesn’t work quite like that, Howie,” Shapiro said softly. “You haven’t even been formally indicted yet. The DA has to put your case before the grand jury. I can guarantee they’ll indict you. Grand juries always indict. When I was in the DA’s office I used to brag that I could get the grand jury to indict a grilled cheese sandwich.

  “But that’s going to take a while. He’s got to get his witnesses lined up. This isn’t an ordinary case that goes in with one cop testifying. My guess is you won’t be indicted for another month or so. You’ll get arraigned before a judge and then the DA will have a while, several months at least, to get his case together. Nothing is happening right away, Howie.”

  “No, don’t say that, Mr. Shapiro,” the young man sobbed. “How long is this going to take?”

  “I can’t say exactly, Howie, but at least six months before trial, maybe twice as long if the DA gets a judge who’ll give him that much time. There’s nothing we can do about that. From what he told me when we got together, the DA isn’t much interested in a plea. It’s not like you could give him any information that he needs for another case, he said, since the feds grabbed up everybody else from those ships.”

  “This isn’t fair, Mr. Shapiro. I had nothing to do with anything. It isn’t fair. How come they aren’t going after the ones who did it, instead of me? This isn’t right, you know.”

  Shapiro looked up from the yellow legal pad on which he’d been making notes.

  “Howie, what do you mean about the ones who did it? Do you know who did it, who fired at the Coast Guard?”

  “Yeah, sure I do. It was the soldiers, the IDF guys. The guys and that one girl. She and I hung out together on the ship all the way over, sort of had a little thing going, you know.”

  “Are you telling me there were Israeli soldiers on the ships, that the soldiers were the ones who fired at the Coast Guard?”

  “Of course there were soldiers,” Mandelbaum said. “Everybody knew who they were. They pretty much organized things, set up the rotation for meals and work and cleanup assignments. They had their own space all the way at the front of the ship. They kept all their shit up there, you know, their army stuff. Nobody was allowed up there unless you were one of them.

  “Well, pretty much nobody. There wasn’t a whole shitload of privacy on that ship, you know. And when this girl, Dvora her name was, well when Dvora and I needed a little privacy she took me up there when all the others were out organizing stuff. Man, they had some heavy-duty shit there, you know, Uzis and grenades and these rocket things. They were ready for anything, man. I know who they all are, the soldiers. Once I started hanging with Dvora I spent a lot of time with the rest of them, too. Why, can this help me?”

  “Maybe, Howie. Let’s give this some thought. It at least gives us something to bargain with.” Shapiro hesitated. “Howie, how would you feel about identifying these soldiers if it meant they would be charged with pretty heavy crimes, maybe even crimes they could be executed for? Would you do that, Howie? I suppose what I mean is, could you do that?”

  For the first time in their meeting, the young man looked Shapiro in the eyes.

  “Mr. Shapiro, I’m going back to that stinking cell after you leave, and before you are out the front door one of those guys is going to be pumping his cock in my asshole and laughing his head off. And that’s if I’m lucky. If I have to spend the next six months here, I’ll be dead by the time I go to trial. Are you going to play some morality game on me because I don’t want to let that happen? Give me a break. They chose to fire at those boats. Nobody made them do it. If anybody has to pay the price for that, let it be them, not me.”

  “Well, I guess that’s pretty clear,” Shapiro said, rising to his feet. “Let me see what I can do.” He reached for the young man’s hand. Mandelbaum clung to Shapiro’s hand so long the lawyer thought he would have to pry his client’s fingers open. As Shapiro walked from the conference room, leaving Mandelbaum sitting in his chair, the young man stood, looked at Shapiro and spoke quietly.

  “Mr. Shapiro, I’m not a bad person, you know. When you walk out the front door of this building, think about what they’ll be doing to me tonight. I don’t deserve that, do I?”

  CHAPTER 40

  Chaim Levi and Debra Reuben awoke late. Both were exhausted, physically and emotionally, by their lovemaking. Reuben got out of bed first, showered, then went to the kitchen. Levi lay in bed, listening to the rattling of pots and plates and soon smelled onions being sautéed and heard a fork whirling around a bowl, scrambling eggs.

  Levi dressed quickly. By the time he got to the kitchen, Reuben was almost finished with Swiss-cheese-and-onion omelets, freshly toasted five-grain bread from the Blue Hill Cooperative market already on the table, and a pitcher of fresh-squeezed orange juice on the counter with two glasses next to it.

  “All of a sudden I feel extremely domestic,” she said when Levi walked into the kitchen. “I feel like cooking for you. Sit. I’m serving you today. Just for today.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Levi answered. “But after we eat, we need to talk. I didn’t tell you before, but Abram said he and Sarah would be coming up here tonight, after dinner, late. We need to make some decisions. Before they get here.”

  “Decisions about Abram’s bomb, you mean?” Reuben asked. “It sounds like he’s already made that decision, him and those three boys of his. I don’t think we could stop him if we wanted to.”

  “You’re probably right about that,” Levi said. “But, of course, he’s not the only one with a bomb.”

  Reuben looked at him quizzically. “You’re not going to play some macho game with Abram, are you? Like ‘my bomb’s bigger than your bomb’?”

  “As a matter of fact,” Levi said, “my bomb is a hell of a lot bigger than his bomb, not that size matters.” He smiled.

  Reuben had not reached the point where she could laugh at atom bomb jokes.

  “Of course size matters.” She saw his face drop. “There’s a hell of a difference between a van full of explosives and what’s in our cellar. The other thing is,” she said with a hint of menace, “we haven’t reached the community property stage when it comes to nuclear weapons. That’s still my bomb, not yours. I have final say over what happens to it, whether it gets sunk in the ocean or dropped on . . . on wherever. We are still in agreement on that, right?”

  “Yes, it’s your bomb, not mine,” Levi answered quickly. “But, to be perfectly accurate, it isn’t your bomb either. That bomb belongs to the State of Israel and it gets used, when it gets used, to protect the State of Israel. You agree to that, don’t you?”

  “Of course I know that, Lieutenant Levi. Remember which of us has more experience in using these things for the purposes of the State of Israel. Got it?”

  “Yes sir, Madam Cabinet Minister. Now that we’ve got these technical details cleared up, let’s talk about whether we tell Abram about our thing in the basement,” Levi said. “What do you think?”

  “To be honest, the sooner we get rid it, the better I’ll feel,” she said. “I did some research yesterday on the Internet.” She paused when she saw a scowl on Levi’s face. “At the library. I walked to the library and used the computer there, okay?”

  �
��Okay, just be careful.”

  “Do you have any idea whether we are frying our genes being so close to that thing for so long?” she asked. “Did they give you any training in the navy about how to handle radioactive stuff?”

  “No,” Levi said. “Remember, the government denied having nuclear weapons, even though everybody knew we had hundreds of them. Everybody knew it was a big lie that we had none.”

  “As it turned out, not such a big lie, just a little one,” Reuben said. “I found out at Dimona we only had a few bombs. The little lie was that we had none. The big lie was that we had hundreds. Anyway, I’ll feel better when we turn that thing over to somebody else. But, Chaim, I don’t think that somebody is Abram. He’s too ready to blow things up. I’d almost rather give it to Sarah; she’d march her feet off first and only use it after everything else failed.”

  “You can’t tell Sarah and expect her to keep it secret from her husband,” Levi said.

  “I know that. That’s why I think we should keep our secret a bit longer.”

  “I agree,” Levi said. “It’s only a secret until we tell somebody else. Once we let it loose, who knows what will happen? Let’s at least see what happens with Abram and his disciples this weekend.”

  Reuben was surprised at how much it pleased her to hear Levi speak about keeping secrets using almost the same words her father used. “It sounds as if it will be an interesting weekend in many ways.”

  “I would probably choose a different word,” Levi said. “But you and I will be glued to the TV all weekend, I expect.”

  Sarah and Abram arrived shortly after dinner. They stomped into the house without speaking. Sarah confronted Levi.

  “I can’t believe you aren’t going to stop him from this insanity,” Sarah shouted.