Never Again

by Harvey A. Schwartz

  “Deport America’s Jews to Africa,” President Quaid said to himself, testing the concept. “It would solve our problem, for sure.”

  “Lots of problems,” Harrison said.

  CHAPTER 62

  Judy Katz drove her battered green Honda Civic up to the gatehouse at Camp Edwards, wondering if she would be turned around and headed home within minutes. The guard at the camp gate didn’t know what to do when she flashed her Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers registration card and said she was an attorney representing detainees and she intended to meet with her clients.

  It took almost an hour for a sergeant in a Humvee to drive up. He told her to park her car in a lot next to the gatehouse, then had her sit in the Humvee’s front seat.

  Katz spent another forty-five minutes in a wooden chair outside a door marked Commander. Eventually, the door opened and a soldier ushered her in. An officer sat behind a wooden desk. Two men stood with their backs against a wall. One wore a uniform, the other jeans and a T-shirt.

  “Major Ted Dancer, ma’am. You’ve thrown us for something of a loop here. Nobody told us you’d be coming down, you see, and, well, as you can imagine, we’re not much used to lawyers coming to visit our guests. In fact, you’re the first one. It’s a total surprise that such a thing could even happen.”

  He smiled smugly at the young woman sitting demurely, knees together, in front of his desk, like a student called to the principal’s office for a chat.

  “Save the bullshit for somebody else, Major,” she said. “Ted Dancer? You’re the same Ted Dancer who was adjutant commander at Guantanamo, right? The same Guantanamo that played host to what, about two hundred lawyers visiting their clients, right? So, get me an escort and a room and take me to my clients. Now, if you please.”

  “Lieutenant, escort the young lady around, would you please?” he said, then looked Katz directly in the eyes while he continued speaking to the soldier. “Listen to the rules first and make sure she complies. If she doesn’t go along with these rules, drive her to the gate.”

  The man stood at attention and saluted, a smile on his face. The major glanced at a paper on his desk and then spoke to Katz.

  “First, you don’t get to speak with anybody, no detainees—not until somebody who outranks me tells me that you do. Understand?” he barked at her as if he were her drill instructor. He guessed correctly that she’d never done time in uniform, at least not since Girl Scouts.

  “Next, we’ll give you a drive around so you can see that people are being cared for humanely. We’ll show you the dining hall, a barracks, the recreation area. You can look into the school, hell, sit in on a class if you want. We’re treating these people pretty damn good if you ask me. I don’t mind showing that off a bit.

  “Finally, we’ve got a high-security section, Camp Echo. Troublemakers in every group of people, you know. You won’t be going anywhere near there. Now, if you agree with all that, we’ll give you the tour. If you don’t agree, we’ll show you the gate. Your choice, ma’am. What’ll it be?”

  Katz realized she had no bargaining chips. She did what lawyers do reflexively.

  “I’ll go to court,” she said. “I’ll get an order from a judge ordering you to let me meet with my clients.”

  “I’m sure you will, ma’am,” Maj. Dancer replied, confident that for today, at least, he held all the cards. “And when you do, I’ll do whatever I am ordered to do. But for today, what’s your choice? My way or the gate?”

  She knew she’d lost this round. Katz stood, hoisted her briefcase strap on one shoulder, her laptop strap on the other.

  “Let’s start the tour, for today,” she said.

  The uniformed man sprang from standing at attention and raced for the office door, holding it open for her. Before she could leave the office, however, the other man, the one in jeans, cleared his throat loudly.

  “Major, what we discussed?” he said.

  “Right. Forgot,” Maj. Dancer said. Looking at Katz, he said, “Ma’am, no electronic devices, cell phones, cameras, cell phones with cameras, tape recorders or”—he looked at the black nylon bag with Katz’s laptop computer—“computers. Security, you know. Captain Howard here will take all that from you for safekeeping.” He nodded to the man in jeans. “And of course you’ll be searched, thoroughly. We’ll try to find a female to do the search, if we can.”

  Katz looked at the man skeptically, then handed over her computer and, reaching in her briefcase, extracted a cell phone.

  “Want to check my shoes for hidden cameras?” she asked the man.

  “Already did, ma’am, already did. Passed with flying colors,” he said with a grin. He reached for her bag and phone and took them from her. Katz and the uniformed soldier left the room.

  “Good thinking there,” Major Dancer said to the man after the door closed. “You Echoes do have your tricks, don’t you? So what’s your plan for that?”

  “First thing, I’ll do a mirror image of the hard drive,” he said. “Whatever’s on the computer will be captured in the image. Then I’ll download the memory from the phone. Should give us every number she’s dialed and every number that called her, at least in the last few months—depends on how much memory the phone has.”

  “Nothing like having a good lawyer around,” Maj. Dancer laughed. “And a good interrogator, too, I suppose. Take care of her things, now.”

  The interrogator carried Katz’s phone and computer to the Echo office, located behind the internal razor wire enclosure at Camp Echo. He linked Katz’s laptop to a powerful HP server and started the mirroring of her hard drive, creating an identical copy of every keystroke on the laptop.

  Just as he was finishing, and before he could work on her cell phone, the telephone on his desk rang.

  “Echo office,” he said tersely.

  “Lieutenant Williams here, sir,” the voice on the phone said. “Major Dancer said I should let you know. This lawyer woman. Seems like she’s had enough. She’s pretty pissed at being given the celebrity tour. She’s pulling the plug. Wants her stuff back. Major said to get it all back to HQ now, sir.”

  “Thanks for the call. Tell the major I’m on my way.”

  The interrogator disconnected the cable from the laptop to the server, checking to make sure the download had completed. Before shutting the power off on Katz’s computer, however, he walked to the office door and looked down the empty hallway.

  Returning to the desk, he pressed the keyboard button marked Eject on the laptop and waited for the compact disc drive door to open and the disc carrier to slowly slide out.

  The man then walked to a rust-colored canvas barn jacket hanging from a peg on the wall. He reached into one of the pockets and withdrew an unmarked, gold-colored compact disc, which he placed carefully on the disc carrier on Katz’s computer. He pressed the Eject button once again and watched as the carrier withdrew into the computer, taking the CD with it.

  CHAPTER 63

  “That’s me. Oh my God, that’s my picture. Turn up the sound,” Debra Reuben shrieked, pointing at the small television.

  Shapiro was closest and jabbed at the volume button.

  “Debra Reuben,” the voice on the television said, “the highest-ranking surviving member of the Israeli government, is believed to have secretly entered the United States more than a month ago and conducted a covert rendezvous with the special forces team that smuggled an Israeli nuclear bomb into this country.

  “President Quaid directed Attorney General Harrison to spare no effort to locate Reuben. The FBI announced that capturing Debra Reuben shares top priority with its efforts to locate the Israeli nuclear weapon. Hundreds of agents were reassigned to locating the woman. Find Reuben and you’ll find the bomb, President Quaid is reported to have told the attorney general.”

  The television image shifted to a bullet-riddled windshield of an automobile, a man slumped forward against the steering wheel.

  “Reuben is believed to have met along the coast of Mai
ne with Lt. Chaim Levi, the Israeli special forces genius who captained the stolen sailing vessel used to sneak the bomb past a Coast Guard cordon. Levi was shot dead by police while attempting to run a security roadblock in New Hampshire.”

  “Turn that thing off,” Reuben screamed. “I can’t look at that picture of Chaim.”

  Nobody spoke.

  Sarah rose from her chair and stood behind Reuben, bending forward to place her arms around the immobile woman.

  “I’m so sorry, Debbie,” Sarah said. “For everything, for Chaim, and now that they have that picture of you.”

  Sarah looked at the others, still seated around the table.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “Debra, you can’t go outside, not at all. Is that understood?” Shapiro was frightened. The FBI was looking for her, now, in addition to him.

  All eyes focused on Abram Goldhersh. He sat, shaking his head.

  “Use it or lose, that’s all I have to say. We use it or we lose it, damn soon, too. They’re closing in on us.” He walked to the living room.

  Sarah followed her husband out of the kitchen. She stopped in the doorway.

  “We need to talk. Talk more. Talk enough to reach a decision,” she said. “My husband, in his own stubborn way, makes a convincing argument.”

  Shapiro and Reuben sat on either end of the living room sofa, Sarah on the recliner. Abram Goldhersh stood, facing the others. He spoke as if he were delivering a lecture.

  “I say the time has come. We either dump the thing in the ocean, which in my mind would be a sin, a sin to God, a betrayal of Israel and of every Jew on the face of the planet, but that’s my opinion.”

  “In your humble opinion, that is,” Shapiro interrupted. “Sorry. Go on, Abram.”

  “We either dump it in the ocean or we use it in whatever way we all decide is best for the Jewish people. That’s what I say. No more waiting. That time has ended.”

  “Can’t we threaten to use it, Abram? We don’t really want to kill people, do we?” Sarah said, sadness in her voice. “I say we threaten to use it unless the United States frees Israel, or . . . or something.”

  “That’s a little vague, Sarah,” Reuben said. “I think we need to make a specific demand, something they can do right away and then, well, we’ll make another demand, and then another.”

  “This is a bomb, Debra,” Shapiro said, “not a magic wand. We’ll be lucky if this works once. I’m skeptical that Quaid will give in to a threat, even a real one like this. I think the man has lost his sense of reality. There’s something missing from him.”

  “Yeah, like a sense of right and wrong,” Sarah said. “And to believe I voted for the man.”

  The debate dragged on past midnight. Eventually, though, a consensus was reached. Something had to be done, but they would not use the bomb without fair warning.

  They would make a demand first that would be most likely to persuade the United States to support the reestablishment of the State of Israel.

  They argued about the demand until they reached agreement. Next, they discussed how to deliver their demand. Their decision on that was to use the simplest method.

  “We mail a letter to the president. Mail it from far away. Wear gloves when we touch anything. Remember after 9/11 there were all those anthrax letters? They never found out who mailed them. They can’t trace mail.”

  “My cousin Maurice, in Seattle. He can drop it in a mailbox,” Abram said.

  “We’ll send it to him by FedEx. Now, what do we say in the letter?”

  The final version of the note, printed in block letters on the elderly HP 1200 laser printer attached to Abram’s computer, was simple and straightforward.

  We are the people who have the bomb. This is a real threat. You will close every camp. Every person will be released by noon Friday. There will be no repercussions against any person held at the camps. You hold almost 500,000 innocent Jews. That is the population of St. Louis. If you do not comply with this demand, St. Louis will be destroyed by midnight Friday.

  How do you know we are telling the truth? The name of the sailboat that brought the bomb into this country was Swift. You kept it secret for a reason. This is the reason.

  President Quaid gripped the plastic-wrapped sheet of paper in his hand, holding it away from his chest as if the paper itself were radioactive rather than just its message.

  “Do we know this is the real thing?” he asked, looking around the table at the same team that met after Levi’s death. The president knew this group would not have been called together if the FBI had any doubt about the authenticity of the letter.

  “We purposely kept the name of the sailboat confidential,” Attorney General Harrison said. “I hadn’t realized before, but it’s standard operating procedure to keep secret information that only a perpetrator would know. To tell you the truth, sir, even I didn’t know the name of the boat until I saw those photographs. I doubt if you did either, sir.”

  “It never mattered to me,” President Quaid said. He scratched at his forehead. People around the table looked aside. The falling hair was noticeable. Even more than the falling hair, the dark rings under his eyes evidenced the sleepless, lonely nights he’d been suffering for weeks.

  “Where do we go from here?” He looked around the table, daring somebody to speak.

  “As I see it, sir, we have two choices,” General Paterson said. “We either give them what they want, set everybody loose, or we evacuate St. Louis and try our damnedest to catch them.”

  “NO FUCKING WAY.” The president’s shout stunned every person sitting at the long table.

  Carol Cabot turned and whispered in Quaid’s ear, patting his left hand gently. She gestured to an aide standing against the wall. The young man poured a glass of water and placed it in front of the president. Cabot again whispered to him and he obediently sipped the water.

  “Sorry about that,” President Quaid said. “Let me make something clear. I don’t give in to threats. Never have. Never will. We will not give these people what they want. I don’t want to hear one more word about giving in. Won’t happen. Is that clear to everybody here? Damned Israelis never negotiated with terrorists. We won’t either.”

  He looked around the table and was met with grim nods.

  “Number two, we will not evacuate St. Louis. There have been enough evacuations already. Makes us look weak, turning and running away every time somebody threatens to pop us one in the nose. Americans don’t run. We fight. No more running. So, where does that leave us? I’ll entertain suggestions.”

  Quaid sat back in his chair and turned his head briefly to look at Carol Cabot. She stared at him in admiration and clapped her hands lightly together.

  “Well, sir, we can keep them out of St. Louis, for a while at least,” Gen. Cruz, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. “We can ring the city with troops so tight that a snail couldn’t crawl through. We can provide enough air cover that no plane will get anywhere near the city. We can keep that up for as long as you say so, sir, for what it’s worth. But you know, sir, there would be nothing to stop them from sending another note, this time for Philadelphia or Detroit. We can only button down so many cities, sir.”

  “I understand that, General,” Quaid said, not especially pleased with the response he’d received. “Make it happen. I want nothing to get into that city that we don’t want in, on the ground, in the air or on water. St. Louis is on the water, isn’t it?”

  “The Mississippi River, Mr. President,” Harrison said.

  “I know that, Harrison. Keep the damned boats away, too.”

  He looked around the table.

  “Am I understood?”

  Without a word, everybody nodded.

  “We need to teach these people a lesson. As you said, General, they can do this again and again. We’ve got to give them a reason not to do that.”

  He turned to Attorney General Harrison sitting directly across from him.

  “You seem to know all
about St. Louis. I assume there are Jews living there, right?”

  “I assume so sir,” he said. “I’m under the impression there are Jews pretty much everywhere in the country, sir.”

  “I share that assumption,” Quid said. “Okay. Arrest them—every damned one of them. Take them to a camp. Today. I want it done today. They give us another letter about another city, we’ll lock those Jews up, too. It shouldn’t take long for them to get our point, now should it?”

  Again, he glared around the room.

  “Any questions?” Nobody responded.

  As people began to rise from their chairs, Quaid said, “Harrison. One last thing. When you ship them south, no buses, no fucking Greyhounds. Send them by train. In freight cars.”

  CHAPTER 64

  The roundup of the 60,000 Jews living in St. Louis did not go smoothly. President Quaid’s insistence that it begin immediately limited the advance planning. Warnings about soldiers arresting Jews spread instantly over the Internet and cell phones, triggering a mass exodus from the city before roadblocks could be fully set up or airports, bus and train stations shut down.

  Television news and website videos showed Americans who looked as ordinary as everyone’s neighbors being placed in trucks and buses, to be driven to train stations. Breathless broadcasts showed cars being checked at roadblocks, and the occasional attempt to speed away stopped by hails of bullets.

  The four people huddling in the house in Portland were despondent. They sat in the living room, Abram punching at the TV to switch from one news report to another, searching for some word of the carefully written demand letter and the reasons for the government’s actions.