“You will follow me the whole way,” Levi said. “I’ll be in the sailboat going about six knots. This boat can do six knots while it’s still tied to the dock. The hardest thing for you will be going slow enough so you stay behind me. Steering is easy, just like a car. Here, give it a try.”
“First, you’ve got to tell me how fast is a knot. This whole adventure will be a lot easier if you talk in English.”
“I get it. Keep it simple,” Levi said. “Assume a knot is the same as one mile an hour. So we’re going to be zooming around at just about a fast walk. Does that make you feel better?”
“Actually, it does. That’s pretty slow,” Abram replied. “I can handle that—a fast walk? I can do that.”
It was not quite like driving a car, at least unless the car was driving down a road a hundred yards wide and negotiating a slalom course from one side to the other. After a while, however, Abram learned that a little turn on the wheel went a long way toward turning the boat.
“What about navigation?” he asked, looking blankly at the bank of electronic instruments behind the steering wheel.
“Don’t worry about it,” Levi said. “I’ll be right in front of you. I’ll do all the navigating. All you have to do is follow me. If you get lost, I’ll show you how to call me on the radio, but I’d rather not use that. We’re on a mission, remember. A secret, quiet mission. I expect that people around here listen to the marine radio for entertainment. I don’t want anybody wondering why we’re going on a pleasure cruise in the middle of the night.”
Once Levi was satisfied that Abram could point the powerboat in the direction he wanted it to go and could control the engine speed, he had him take the boat up the long, thin body of water on which the Lowensteins’house was located, the same Eggemoggin Reach he’d sailed down when he and Reuben arrived a week and a half earlier.
“I’ll take over here,” he said as the boat approached the Lowensteins’dock. Levi steered the boat next to the dock, quickly reversing the engines to drive the rear portion of the boat lightly against the float. He jumped out and secured the mooring lines to the float.
Reuben walked down the dock from the house when she saw the motorboat arrive. She carried a backpack.
“I’ve got a thermos of Starbucks for you, and a couple of tuna sandwiches, and a bag of chocolate chip cookies,” she said.
“Chocolate chip cookies. How American I’m becoming,” Levi said, laughing. “Thank you, Debra. I appreciate your thoughtfulness in making this for us.”
Reuben had difficulty believing that the present person who called himself Chaim Levi was the same surly sailor she’d spent two months with cramped on that sailboat, which was tied on the opposite side of the dock from the powerboat.
Maybe he’s a nicer person when he’s on land, she thought. Or maybe it was Victoria’s Secret. Reuben, after months of grubbiness on the boat, was working her way through the collection and enjoying it thoroughly. Apparently, so was Levi.
Tonight, though, the two men were going to get rid of the sailboat. Levi saw the boat as his last link with Israel. He planned on sinking it to the bottom of nearby Penobscot Bay. While Abram fiddled with the motorboat, Reuben took Levi aside. She handed him something from her pants pocket, two gold-colored metal tags on a linked chain.
“My dog tags,” he said. “So you’ve had them all along. I wondered where they’d gone. Why give them to me now?”
“Lt. Levi of the Israel Defense Forces, I thought since you were getting rid of our boat, maybe you’d also want to get rid of this,” she said. “I don’t see them being much good to you here. Maybe they’d better go down with the ship.”
“Thank you, Debra,” he said. “I appreciate that. Of course, you’re right.”
He looked at the glittering gold objects in his palm.
“I’ll miss this, but you’re right.” He put the dog tags in his pocket. “I’m going to turn off all the navigation lights,” Levi explained to Goldhersh. “I’m hanging this one little light from the back railing. It’s not too bright, but you should be able to keep it in sight. Stay close, not too close, but close enough so you can see the light. If you get lost, if you lose sight of me, just stop. I’ll circle back and find you. I’ll be going as fast as this sailboat can motor, which means you’ll be using one engine and not getting it much above an idle. Got all that?”
“Yes sir, Captain. I’m on your tail the whole way.” Abram tried to hide the nervousness in his voice. It would soon be fully dark on a moonless night. He could not believe he was about to be out on the ocean in this darkness, all by himself in a boat he could barely control.
Levi climbed into the motorboat, fiddled with the controls, and one of the two large outboards roared to life.
“She’s all yours. Stay close to me.”
Levi leaped from the motorboat to the dock, untied the docking lines and pushed the boat from the float. He then walked quickly to the sailboat, where the diesel engine was idling. He’d plotted his course fifteen miles out to the middle of nearby Penobscot Bay, where the chart showed a depth of 135 feet. The course took him from one lighted buoy to the next and the GPS showed exactly where the pair of boats was.
Two and a half hours later, Levi waved to Goldhersh to cut his engine. The powerboat drifted up next to the sailboat and Levi tossed a line from his vessel around a cleat on the powerboat, tying the two boats side by side.
“Now we play Titanic,” he said to Goldhersh.
With Goldhersh standing by in the Boston Whaler tied to the sailboat’s side, Levi went into the forward head, the boat’s bathroom, and moved a device called a seacock lever to the open position. He’d removed the rubber hose from the seacock to the boat’s toilet. Moving the lever let off a geyser of freezing seawater. He watched the water shoot four feet toward the cabin ceiling. He backed out and climbed up to the cockpit. In a few minutes he looked into the cabin and saw the wooden floorboards begin to lift and float out of position.
Levi fought an urge to wade forward through the icy water and close the seacock, regretting how he was paying back this beautiful vessel, this wonderful work of craftsmanship that safely carried him and Reuben from a world of troubles to this peaceful corner of the world. Then he realized what could happen to them should this boat be discovered and traced back across the ocean.
As the boat settled lower into the water, Levi climbed across to the Boston Whaler. He reached for the rope tying the two boats together, then paused.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “I almost forgot something.”
Levi climbed back onto the sailboat and stepped down into the cabin. The water was already above his bare feet and ankles. His eyes settled on the navigation table, where he’d spent so many hours in the transatlantic voyage. He reached in his pocket and carefully placed the dog tags in the center of the tabletop. He stood, saluted, and quickly climbed up and back to the motorboat.
He watched the boat slowly sink below the ocean surface.
“Let’s go home,” Levi said as he started the second outboard and pushed the twin throttles forward.
As the sailboat settled toward the ocean bottom, at a depth of fifty feet, a glass vial on the automatic inflation system of the life raft jammed into the forward compartment burst, as it was designed to do. The inflation valve on the compressed air cylinder was triggered. The raft instantly inflated, filling the forward cabin. The additional buoyancy was enough to stop the boat’s descent and slowly return it to the surface, masts waving in the air.