Never Again

by Harvey A. Schwartz

  He turned and gestured to his daughter to come to him. She gently held him by the elbow and they walked back to his seat.

  Catherine Quaid turned toward Sarah Goldberg, Ben Shapiro and Judy Katz.

  “I’m supposed to speak next,” she said. “How in the world do I follow that?”

  She paused.

  “My husband is going to be very, very pissed.”

  CHAPTER 56

  The grassy area around the Washington Monument was empty. The National Park Service closed all museums and memorials around the Mall as a security precaution for the duration of the march. Casual tourists were scared away.

  Four National Park Service police officers were stationed at the base of the monument. They heard the rumble of the loudspeakers a mile away across the length of the mall. The words were too garbled to understand.

  The FBI video camera mounted on the observation platform at the top of the monument operated remotely from the FBI headquarters building blocks away. Beside it was a television news camera, also remotely operated. Both cameras had long zoom lenses able to focus on any face on the speaker’s platform.

  The park service officers shivered as a cool breeze blowing off the Potomac River stirred the grass around them. They’d been there since before sunrise. Cold. Bored. Nothing happened. Nobody approached the monument.

  The head of the small detail looked up as a National Park Service van negotiated the maze of barrier walls surrounding the monument, coming to a stop directly in front of two steel bollards blocking the drive. The van’s horn beeped. Without a second thought, he told one of the other officers, who stood just outside a small guard kiosk, to hit the button.

  The steel bollards lowered into the ground on hydraulic pistons, just as the environmental protection plan for the Washington monument posted online said they would. Finding that website revealed to the three young men the way to get close to the monument.

  The van drove over the tops of the bollards, coming to a stop just feet from the white marble wall of the Washington Monument. The driver’s window rolled down. A paper tray with Starbucks coffee cups was handed out. The detail head walked briskly to the van.

  “Boss felt sorry for you guys,” the driver said. “Said to send you some coffee. Got these, too.” He indicated two paper sacks filled with pastries.

  “I’ll carry these to the guys.” The officer walked from the van without looking back, a broad smile on his face.

  “Cops and donuts, you were right about that,” Gimel said to Aleph.

  “Let’s get lined up,” Aleph said nervously. “Show me the map again.”

  Bet handed him a printout of the National Mall from the National Park Service website. Aleph glanced at the map, then looked around outside the van, orienting himself.

  “Okay,” he said. “That’s the White House straight ahead across all that grass.” He looked to the right, out the passenger window. “And there’s the Mall that way.”

  “Yeah,” said Gimel, “and it’s wide open, no people around, for a good long way.” They could see the mass of people on the far end of the Mall, and could make out the raised speakers’platform beyond the crowd, almost at the Capitol.

  “Move up a little more,” Bet said to Aleph, behind the driver’s wheel. “We want to be in the middle of that side facing the Mall. Get my door right up against the side.”

  The van inched forward, scraping against the marble wall of the Washington Monument.

  The windows on both doors were rolled down. The sound of the speaker’s voice rumbled across the Mall, as did the cheers of the crowd.

  Gimel reached back into the storage area behind the seat. He removed three small squares of unpainted plywood, six inches on a side. Screwed to the top of each square was an ordinary doorbell button. Electrical wires ran from each doorbell button around a set of bolts next to the button. The wires were attached to a battery and trailed through the van to the model rocket engines buried in the C4. Each of the three buttons would trigger the explosives. Even if two men lost their courage, so long as any one of them pressed and held his button, the three steel drums feet behind them would explode simultaneously.

  The three men exchanged looks. Gimel, glancing past Bet and out the driver’s window, noticed one of the police officers staring at the van, then saw him begin walking quickly toward them, shouting something.

  They heard the loudest roar yet from the crowd, loud enough so that even the police officer stopped to look toward the mass of people. Aleph jabbed at the radio in the van, turning the power on. It was still tuned to the all-news station carrying live coverage from the march.

  “Wait just one moment,” Aleph said. “I want to hear what has them so excited.”

  The three men sat side by side in the front seat of the van. Their plywood squares in their laps. Fingers hovering over the buttons, waiting to press them at the exact same instant. As they’d planned. Nobody was to jump the gun.

  “The greatest terrorist of them all is God, the Lord,” the voice said over the radio’s speakers. The three men sat as if mesmerized. They listened in silence as the man, they did not know who he was, held them with the logic of his words.

  The officer’s handgun was now in his right hand as he shouted for the men to get out of the van. They ignored him, entranced by the words coming from the radio.

  “Was it speeches or marches or email campaigns that changed Pharaoh’s heart, that forced him to free the Children of Israel from bondage?” the voice asked. “No. It was terror, acts of terror more terrible than the world has seen since. God used this terror to save the Jewish people long ago. If God could take such actions to save his people then, can’t we take such actions to save his people today?”

  The police officer was stunned that the three men were ignoring him. “Get out of the van now,” he shouted. “Get out right now or I’ll shoot.”

  He saw the driver turn his head slowly to look at him, then turn his head toward the two passengers.

  “I’ll count down from three,” Aleph said. “Three. Two. One. Now.”

  Three thumbs descended on the buttons.

  The explosion sent steel shards from the van’s thin walls flying in all directions. The three men in the front seat were blown into bloody scraps. The police officer, kneeling on one knee, was decapitated by a spray of flying glass from the van’s windshield.

  The location of the detonation was on the side of the Washington Monument facing the Mall. The blast tore a deep gash into the base of the monument, leaving only the wall on the side farthest from the explosion site to support the 90,000 tons of the tower.

  The monument wavered, leaning precariously toward the nearest building, the National Holocaust Memorial. That motion slowed as the tower ever so gradually twisted left, leaning sideways toward the center of the grass-covered Mall, and, when it was precisely aligned with the Capitol, crashed in one long piece to the ground, lying down the center of the Mall, pointing an accusing finger directly at the home of the US Congress.

  The ground shook with a deep basso rumble as the structure hit the ground and bounced thirty feet into the air before landing a second time with a softer thud between the National Holocaust Memorial and the National Museum of American History.

  A rising dust cloud and the boom froze everyone on the podium. The man standing behind Catherine Quaid shoved Sarah Goldberg, seated next to the First Lady, and stepped between Catherine Quaid and Goldberg. His gun was in his right hand.

  The other man, Joe Bergantina, leaped in front of Mrs. Quaid, placed his hands on her shoulders and pushed her facedown to the floor of the platform. He knelt over her while he scanned from side to side, looking for threats.

  The Mall erupted with shouts and screams from the crowd. Some people dropped to the grass, thinking a bomb had detonated. Others ran.

  Rabbi Garfinkle stood in the middle of the platform. Motionless. Shocked. He walked to the microphone and appealed for calm. His voice could not be heard over the hysteria
below.

  The White House shook as a rumbling sound rose through the floor. The doors to the Oval Office flew open. Secret Service agents rushed in, surrounded the president and ushered him rapidly out the door, lifted off his feet by the nearest men in the ring formed around him.

  The people remaining in the Oval Office ran to the window and watched the toppled Washington Monument settle under a cloud of dust. Gen. Paterson walked quickly to the telephone on the president’s desk.

  “This is General Paterson,” he said. “I am speaking with the full authority of President Quaid. Send in the troops. Take everybody they find on the Mall into custody. Hold everyone.”

  Attorney General Harrison stood at the window, staring into the chaos.

  “This changes everything,” he said. “Everything.”

  Within minutes, Virginia guardsmen entered the fray of confused and frightened Jews.

  The two Secret Service agents rushed Catherine Quaid off the platform to a limousine parked on the grass.

  A group of soldiers formed a ring around the speakers’platform, not allowing anybody to exit. A dozen SUVs stopped near the platform. Men in dark suits ran up the steps to the platform and approached Rabbi Garfinkle.

  “Mr. Harrison,” the rabbi said. “You realize, of course, that we had absolutely nothing to do with that.”

  “I realize nothing at this point,” the attorney general said, “except that ten minutes ago I was standing in the Oval Office with the president and I was an eyewitness to the desecration of one of this country’s most sacred symbols. Five seconds after your speaker, a fellow rabbi, orders half a million Jews to go out and commit terrorist acts, five seconds, boom, down goes the Washington Monument. Everybody who is on this platform is coming along with my FBI agents here. Everybody else out there, well, they could have gone home last night, after the president’s talk. Those folks out there are the hard core of your movement.”

  Harrison looked at the microphone and turned to Rabbi Garfinkle.

  “I want you to get on that microphone and tell people to cooperate with the soldiers, to go along with them. Peacefully. No resistance. Order your people not to resist. We’ve got trucks and buses coming to take everybody away. It will be a while, so ask people to be patient. The trucks and buses will be here soon. Do you understand me, Rabbi?”

  “Mr. Attorney General,” the rabbi said, his voice shaking with rage. “Trucks? Buses? Don’t you have freight cars to take us Jews away? You want me to address these people? I am proud to do so.”

  He walked to the microphone and tapped it three times to make sure it was active. The tapping sound made people throughout the crowd turn their heads toward the platform.

  “The attorney general here wants me to order you all to go along peacefully with these soldiers,” Rabbi Garfinkle said, speaking slowly, loudly and clearly. He appreciated that this could be his most important, and possibly his final, sermon. “Trucks and buses will take you away, away to someplace where you will be detained. To a camp, perhaps.”

  His head swiveled to take in the entire crowd of hundreds of thousands of people. His words set off frenzied shouting.

  After several minutes, he raised his hands and asked for quiet.

  “I refuse to do that. History taught us what happens when Jews allow themselves to be herded by soldiers like sheep, driven off to camps in buses, or in trucks, or . . .” He turned to face Harrison, fuming. “Or in cattle cars. Don’t be sheep. Don’t make it easy for them to round up Jews. Resist. Fight back. Struggle. Never again, never again, say it now, join me, never again, never again.”

  The chant roared from the crowd.

  NEVER AGAIN, NEVER AGAIN, NEVER AGAIN.

  The soldiers walked into the crowd, plastic shields held before them, placing plastic handcuffs on everybody within reach. Some people struggled and were beaten to the grass by batons.

  While this pandemonium was happening, Judy Katz grabbed Shapiro by the hand and shouted to Sarah Goldberg to stand next to her. Katz ran up to the nearest FBI agent, reaching into her jacket pocket as she approached him. She found her wallet and flipped it open to hold in front of the agent’s face.

  “Justice Department, Assistant US Attorney,” she shouted. “I’m with him.” She pointed at Attorney General Harrison.

  The agent nodded and looked at Shapiro and Goldberg.

  “They’re with me,” Katz said quickly. “Please help me. Get us out of here.”

  “Follow me,” he said, pushing people aside to make an opening for the three people following inches behind him.

  CHAPTER 57

  Two hours after the explosion, President Quaid spoke to the nation from the Oval Office. His message was unscripted.

  “I will be brief,” he said, looking straight at the camera. “I gave a warning last night. My warning was disregarded. A terrible act of cowardice has taken place not far from where I am sitting.”

  He gestured to his left and the camera swiveled to reveal a window and the park beyond it. A thirty-foot-tall stub was all that remained of the monument.

  “I was standing at that window and watched the Washington Monument, a symbol of our nation’s pride in its first president, tumble to the ground. I felt the blast on my own body.”

  The camera returned to President Quaid.

  “I am unharmed. The nation is safe. At my orders, federal agents and the military are arresting and detaining all persons suspected of being complicit in this act of terrorism.

  “It is no coincidence that nearly a half million Jewish protesters were near the monument and the National Mall when this brutal act of aggression occurred. They were being incited to act as terrorists by a rabbi minutes before the explosions occurred. These protestors are the hard-core element of what has become a Jewish uprising against our nation.

  “The bombing of the Washington Monument was an act of terrorism, an act of war. It is obvious to each of us who witnessed this event that it was carefully coordinated with the demonstration. So, by the authority vested in me by Congress, I have ordered these enemy combatants held by the military authorities. I repeat that. They will be held by military, not by civilian, authorities. They will be detained as other enemy combatants are detained. They will not be charged with civilian crimes. They will not be subject to the civilian criminal justice system.

  “Further, pursuant to the specific language of Section Nine of Article One of the United States Constitution, which states that the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it, I am declaring that the actions taken against the United States, including what happened today in the nation’s capital, constitute acts of rebellion. I am therefore suspending the right of all such persons in rebellion against this nation to petition in any court for a writ of habeas corpus. I am requesting that Congress immediately enact legislation confirming this suspension.

  “None of the people held in military custody as enemy combatants can run into court, seek out a liberal judge, and attempt to escape punishment. There will be no lawsuits and no lawyers. This is a military matter and it will be handled by the military as the military, and myself as commander in chief, determine to be in the best interest of the American people.”

  President Quaid leaned forward and glared into the camera.

  “Finally, this is far from the end. As I told you last night, our enemy holds weapons of mass destruction. We continue to search for these weapons. I promise we will find them. When we do, we will deal with the evil persons who threaten us from within our own borders with such cowardly weapons.”

  The camera zoomed closely into the president’s face.

  “We know who you are. You know that we know who you are. You cannot escape. We will capture you, as they used to say in the Old West, dead or alive. I don’t particularly care which. My fellow Americans. God bless the United States of America and all of her loyal citizens.”

  Abram Goldhersh and Rueben watched the
events unfold on a small TV in his bedroom, waiting for Sarah’s speech.

  The other TV was shattered in the living room from the night before when Goldhersh smashed it in rage over the president’s address. Now he sat on the edge of his bed stunned, knowing he was responsible in part for an act of terror that set in motion the arrests of tens of thousands of American Jews. He leaned forward and put his head in his hands. He sobbed.

  “Sarah. They’re taking my Sarah to a concentration camp,” the man wailed.

  Shapiro, Sarah Goldberg and Judy Katz struggled to walk rather than run as they negotiated the ten blocks to the Renaissance Hotel to retrieve Shapiro’s car. The only tense moment was when they started to cross K Street but darted back to the sidewalk as a parade of Army trucks, led and trailed by a phalanx of Humvees, shot down the street, sirens blaring. Shapiro and Sarah ducked into a doorway. Katz stood on the sidewalk, frozen, staring at the Army trucks, unable to move.

  They were afraid to go to the hotel room for their bags, concerned that since the room had been used as an office for march organizers, police might be waiting to nab anybody who showed up there. Shapiro’s heart pounded as he handed the hotel doorman the receipt for his car and asked for it to be brought to the front of the hotel. He hoped the five twenty-dollar bills he gave the doorman would smooth the process.

  The two women were at a coffee shop a block from the hotel. Shapiro told them there was no sense risking all three of them getting arrested when he retrieved his car. The car arrived with no problems, however, earning the valet a further twenty-dollar tip. Shapiro stopped quickly in front of the coffee shop and picked up the two women. Judy Katz sat in the front, next to Shapiro. Sarah Goldberg sat in the back seat.

  In a matter of minutes, they were on I-95 heading north toward Baltimore, riding in silence, hoping they were ahead of any roadblocks they expected would sprout on roads leaving the capital. Shapiro set the cruise control at nine miles an hour over the speed limit.