Never Again

by Harvey A. Schwartz

  CHAPTER 49

  Debra Reuben missed the quiet house on the water in Brooklin even before she left it. She did not expect to return. Ever. Her greatest concern was how she would get in touch with Levi to warn him not to return either. She would have to depend on Abram to reach Levi.

  She’d packed what little she had into a suitcase she’d found in the basement, feeling badly about taking clothing from the anonymous owner of the house. I’ll get it back to her somehow, she said to herself.

  Reuben had made up her mind about what to do with the object in the wine cellar. She feared that if she left it in the basement, it would be found before she could return to collect it. She mentally kicked herself for using the library computer. The FBI agents were certain to return and discover that somebody in sleepy Brooklin had an interest in handling atomic bombs. There could not be many new people in town besides herself and Levi. The FBI will soon be on the doorstep with a warrant, she thought. And handcuffs.

  She looked at the plastic-wrapped cylinder in the wine cellar. Maybe I should let them have the damn thing, she thought. What a relief it would be to just walk away from it. But she couldn’t. The bomb belonged to Israel, which, when reconstituted, might someday need it. If only there was someone she trusted to hand it over to.

  Rueben knew she could no longer hide the weapon from Sarah, which also meant that Abram was certain to learn about it. Reuben was disturbed at the thought of Abram Goldhersh and his organization getting the bomb, but she could see no alternative.

  She sat on the front porch, waiting for Sarah to arrive, hoping the car that came up the driveway would be Sarah and not the black SUV. While she waited, she sat in a rocking chair and looked at the calm water, an occasional lobster boat roaring by.

  I’m going to miss this house so much, she thought. Then she smiled. This is where Chaim and I fell in love. Someday I’ll tell my grandchildren how their grandfather sailed me across the ocean and we lived in a cottage by the sea.

  The sound of a car in the gravel driveway woke her with a start. Heart beating furiously, she leaned her head around the end of the porch to glance at the driveway. Sarah’s car, she smiled.

  Reuben took one step toward her friend, then froze. The THWAKA-THWAKA-THWAKA of a helicopter drowned out any greeting she could have shouted. FBI, she thought, looking up at the helicopter flying slowly along the shore, seemingly straight toward her. Same one that’s been going back and forth all week.

  The sound of the machine faded. Sarah got out of her car and spotted Reuben coming around the edge of the house from the porch.

  “So, Debra, what is this big emergency? I have a speech to write, you know.” Her words were angrier than her tone, however, especially when she saw the relief on her friend’s face.

  “FBI,” Reuben blurted out. “The FBI knows we’re here, or will know any minute. I have to get away. I have to tell Chaim not to come back here. You have to help me, please.”

  “FBI? They can’t know about you. Believe me, if they knew you were here, you’d be wearing handcuffs by now,” Goldberg said. “How could they know about you?”

  “We can talk more in the car,” Reuben said. “I promise I’ll tell you absolutely everything, no secrets, no more secrets. For right now, though, I have something that is going to be difficult for you to hear. Sarah, you know I was in the government, a cabinet minister, over there?” Reuben gestured roughly toward the ocean.

  “Of course, culture minister,” Sarah said. “Abram said it was a joke, but I was proud of my D-Phi-E sister.”

  “It was sort of a joke, I know that,” Reuben said. “Until the end, that is. As it turned out, as far as anyone knew, I was the last of the government to survive. That was only luck because I happened to be out in the desert instead of in Tel Aviv for the prime minister’s birthday party.”

  Reuben paused, then placed both hands on the other woman’s shoulders. She squeezed lightly, as if she did not want Sarah to run away when she heard what Reuben was about to say, or maybe just to provide comfort to her friend.

  “Sarah, Damascus, the bomb dropped on Damascus,” she said slowly. “The bombs were stored at a place, a place in the desert. I was there. I was the only one left to make the decision.”

  Sarah’s eyes opened wide. “No, Debbie, no, don’t tell me,” she whispered.

  “I ordered them to put the bomb in that plane,” Reuben said. “They didn’t want to do it. I made them do it. I ordered them to do it. I shook that pilot’s hand. I watched him take off. I did it. Me.”

  Sarah stepped back, paused for thirty seconds, thinking, then held her arms wide and reached out for Reuben, who walked into her friend’s comforting embrace. They hugged for several minutes, neither speaking, Sarah repeating quietly, “Poor Debbie, my poor Debbie.”

  Reuben pushed herself away from her friend.

  “There’s something else,” she said. “Sarah, there’s another bomb.”

  “Another bomb? But only Damascus was bombed. I don’t understand.”

  “Actually,” Reuben said, “that is something else entirely, for another time. No, there was another bomb there in the desert, on the ground, a smaller bomb. We didn’t put it in any plane. We didn’t know what to do with it. But we couldn’t let the Arabs get it. So I took it with me.”

  “Took it where, Debbie?”

  Reuben pointed behind her at the house.

  “No, Debbie, no.”

  “We brought it here, Chaim and I, in the boat, the one we had to sink,” she said. “We had to sink it because Chaim thought the radiation in the boat might be detected. He thinks these helicopters might be looking for it now, although we don’t know why they would be looking. It’s in the house, in the basement, the wine cellar.”

  “What are you going to do with it?” Sarah asked.

  “I’m taking it with me,” Reuben said. “It’s heavy, but you and I can lift it. We’ll put it in your car and we’ll take it away, and I don’t really know what we’ll do with it, but it can’t stay here. I can’t leave it here, Sarah.”

  Goldberg struggled to speak, finally saying, “You want to put an atom bomb in my car—my new Volvo?” She turned on her heels and walked quickly away from her friend to stand beside her car. She turned back to face Reuben, anger in her voice. “Leave it. Get rid of it. Give the damn thing to the FBI. What do you care?”

  “Don’t you think I’ve thought that too, Sarah?” Reuben said softly. “I hate that thing. For all I know, the radiation from it is killing me, and killing Chaim. But, Sarah, as horrible as it might be, it isn’t mine to toss away. It doesn’t belong to me.”

  “It certainly seems to be in your possession, doesn’t it?” Sarah snapped.

  “Not possession, Sarah, custody,” Reuben answered. “I’m just its custodian. It belongs to the State of Israel. And Israel might need it someday. I know this isn’t an easy decision. Sarah, I’ve lived with what I did—with . . . with Damascus, since the moment that jet took off. I wish I did not have responsibility for that thing in the basement. But I have no choice. We have no choice. Don’t you see that? I had responsibility for the first one and I did what I had to do with it. I have this one now, and I have to do with it what is required of me. This is no time for weakness, Sarah. Please help me carry the bomb to the car.”

  Goldberg was quiet for several minutes, pacing away from Reuben. When she returned she said, “I understand what you are saying. Let’s get it and let’s find a place for it. Abram will know what to do with it.”

  “That’s something I’m concerned about,” Reuben replied. “But we can talk about that in the car.”

  The two women retrieved the device from the wine cellar. It was still tightly wrapped in the plastic that covered it while it was in the water tank on the sailboat. They secured it in the back of the Volvo and eased along the gravel driveway, nervous and silent.

  They stayed off the main highways on the three-hour drive to the Portland suburb where the Goldberg-Goldhershes lived.
Reuben felt a tinge of envy when she saw her former roommate’s comfortable house, her memory flashing on her own tiny apartment in Jerusalem’s Old City. Looking out to the fenced-in back yard, Reuben noticed the swimming pool, its dark-green leaf cover floating over the water’s surface. She turned to her friend.

  “I know the place for that thing,” she said. The two women lugged the bomb to the pool, rolled back the cover over the deep end and dropped the plastic-wrapped package into the water, watching it settle to the bottom of the pool, covered by eight feet of water. They rolled the cover back over the surface, hiding what was beneath.

  “Chaim was worried that the bomb could be detected from above,” Reuben explained. “That’s why he kept it in the wine cellar. I think eight feet of water should block any radiation. Let’s hope so.”

  “Sure, let’s hope you and I don’t glow in the dark, too,” Sarah said. “I can’t wait for Abram to get home. He decided to go to that meeting in Boston. He’ll bring Levi back here afterwards, he said.”

  “That’s fantastic,” Reuben exclaimed, not making any attempt to hide her excitement. She smiled at her friend. “Let me tell you about me and Chaim. It’s pretty wonderful, you know.”

  CHAPTER 50

  Levi listened to the news on the car radio as he drove south on the Maine Turnpike, heading for his meeting in Boston.

  “More than three hundred people were killed less than ten minutes ago in two synchronized bombings in shopping malls outside of Boston.” The announcer struggled to remain calm. “Most of those killed were women and children, hundreds more were wounded, many of them seriously.

  “Survivors report the suicide bombers appeared to be Orthodox Jews who wrapped themselves in Israeli flags before detonating their bombs in what was an apparent protest of this country’s decision not to intervene in the Middle East.

  “A White House spokesman said the president’s thoughts and prayers go out to those families who lost loved ones and those survivors who are clinging to life. The president promised to spare no resources to hunt down and apprehend the persons responsible for this cowardly action. Congressional leaders from both parties offered their support to the president in fighting what they characterized as today’s new war on terrorism, a war that appears to have its primary battlefield on American soil for the first time since the Civil War.”

  Levi wondered whether somebody beat Abram to the punch. He wanted nothing more than to turn around and return to Reuben. Despite what lurked in their basement in Brooklin, he felt safely hidden away in that house.

  He drove no more than the speed limit. Debra had told him he would not be stopped by police so long as he didn’t exceed the speed limit by more than ten miles an hour. Using miles per hour rather than kilometers added to his paranoia. Another oddity was the concept of paying a toll to travel a road. Israel had only once such road and the toll was automated. Here, he had to stop at a tollbooth.

  Levi collected his ticket from the machine at the booth when he entered the Maine Turnpike, not quite sure what he was supposed to do with it. He did not see any way of paying any money when he got onto the highway, so he took the ticket, tossed it into the back seat and drove on.

  When he reached the toll plaza at the southern terminus of the Maine Turnpike, shortly before the New Hampshire border, Levi stopped and handed a twenty-dollar bill to the collector, assuming that would cover whatever he owed. Instead, the man asked for his ticket, then, seeing Levi’s confused expression, explained that he needed the ticket Levi received when he entered the highway. Levi rummaged in the back seat until he found it, as cars behind him honked their horns.

  The toll collector took the ticket and the twenty-dollar bill and handed Levi his change, adding a “Welcome to America, you Canuck.” Levi had no idea what a Canuck was, but he assumed it was not a friendly greeting.

  He told himself he’d have to do better at the next toll plaza, wherever that might be. It came sooner than he’d expected. Five miles after crossing from Maine into New Hampshire a large green signed warned Hampton Tolls Autos $2.00 One Mile. Seconds later the traffic came to an abrupt halt and stretched onward around a bend in the road.

  Levi spent twenty minutes inching forward the final mile to the toll plaza. He was baffled by signs over some lanes declaring EZPass ONLY and changed lanes to avoid them, staying to the far right, edging forward between two large trucks in front and behind him. A white wooden lift gate swung down to block his exit from the booth.

  Levi looked up at the toll collector, not noticing the white metal can with a glass front screwed to the wall above the collector’s head, pointed over the man’s shoulder toward the open driver’s window of cars entering the tollbooth.

  He handed the man two one-dollar bills. The man thanked him and turned to look at the truck behind Levi.

  The gate remained down. The toll collector stepped on the gate button with his right foot to lift it. It stayed down.

  “Dang,” the elderly man said. “That’s never happened before. Sorry about this.”

  “No problem,” Levi said, waiting patiently, somewhat pleased that even in America machines malfunctioned. Levi leaned forward to adjust the radio. He’d lost the Portland, Maine, station he’d been listening to and didn’t know whether he was close enough to Boston to receive a station from there, but he enjoyed the country music he’d been listening to as an alternative to the news.

  Sitting twenty yards away were FBI agents in SUVs. Earlier in the week, agents hooked up surveillance cameras into each tollbooth. Every face passing through to pay a toll was run through a computer with facial recognition software. Levi’s photo had been scanned into the computer.

  Just as Levi raised his head from the radio to see whether the gate had lifted, two black SUVs came dashing from both ends of the toll plaza, blocking his exit.

  Levi reacted instinctively. He slid the gear selector into reverse and pressed the accelerator to the floor before he could turn to look back. His head slammed against the headrest as his rear bumper rammed into the front of the truck three feet behind him.

  The doors in both SUVs flew open and men streamed from the vehicles, each with a handgun out, leaving the doors wide open, running to surround Levi’s car.

  “Put both hands out the window,” one man barked at Levi, pointing his gun straight in through the open driver’s window. Levi stared into the gun barrel and slowly took his hands from the steering wheel and held them outside the window. A pair of steel handcuffs snapped around his wrists.

  “Now get out of the vehicle, slowly and carefully,” the man said, his gun never wavering from Levi’s face. “Where’s your driver’s license, buddy?”

  “I must have left it home,” Levi said, using his best American accent. “I do that all the time.”

  “Yeah, right,” the man said, calling out to another man who was looking into Levi’s car. “This guy says he left his license home.”

  The agents searched Levi’s vehicle car.

  Another agent walked up to Levi and removed a sheet of paper from his jacket pocket. He gazed at the paper for a moment, then stared at Levi’s face.

  “What do you think?” he asked one of the other agents. “I can’t tell shit, but the computer sure shouted at us. I think it’s him, I really do. Same eyes, nose. Yeah, I’d put money on it being a match.”

  “One way to find out,” the other agent said, turning to Levi. “Hey, buddy, your name Chaim?” He pronounced it like “tame,” but with a ch sound. “Chaim Levi, right?”

  They know my name. Levi was stunned. But only for a moment. He shook his head.

  “What kind of name is that?” he asked. “Never heard of that guy, whoever he is.”

  “Then what’s your name?” the man asked dubiously.

  Levi pondered for no more than two seconds. A name, quick, he thought. Okay. He and Reuben had spent hour after hour watching television.

  “My name,” he said, “is Homer, Homer Simpson.”

  “Yea
h, right, asshole,” the questioner replied. “Don’t you move an eyebrow. Just stand there.”

  Another SUV replaced the truck behind Levi’s car, blocking it from leaving the tollbooth in that direction. A man leaped from the passenger seat carrying a metal box, a small object that looked like a microphone attached to it by a thick cable.

  The man waved the object around inside Levi’s trunk, watching a dial on the metal box. He did the same under the car’s hood and shook his head.

  The man then opened the rear passenger door and leaned into the car, again moving the object over the car’s interior. He quickly pulled back.

  “Holy shit,” he shouted. “I got a hell of a hot reading on something in there.”

  “Try again,” Levi’s questioner said. “I don’t want any mistakes.”

  The man hesitated.

  “I don’t know, boss,” he said. “Something in there is damn radioactive. I don’t know if I should be in there without protective gear.”

  “No time for that,” the man in charge said. He looked around the tollbooth and focused on a broom with a long wooden handle. He tossed the broom to the man with the box. “Here, use this. Whatever it is, poke it out with this thing.”

  The man with the box turned the broom around, holding it by the end with the straw, pointing the wooden handle into the car’s rear seat like a sword.

  “Open the other rear door,” he said. “Do it.”

  The man pointing his gun at Levi lowered it for the first time and walked to the rear driver’s-side door, flinging the door open and leaping back. The man with the broom poked it inside the back seat, moving the wooden handle from side to side like a hockey stick.

  “Got it,” he shouted.

  Two bright-orange rubber gloves fell from the car’s rear seat and landed on the pavement with a flop. Levi groaned, remembering that he’d used those gloves to handle the bomb.

  Israeli soldiers were trained to avoid capture at all costs. Israelis taken into custody by their Arab enemies were unlikely to be treated in conformance with the Geneva Convention.