“Forget that,” he said. “Look, I’m going out in secret, quietly, making no fuss. Nobody in this country has ever heard of me. You’re different. Don’t forget who you are. You were on TV, here and there. You were in the government. You have a face people don’t forget. You’re beautiful.”
Chaim thinks I’m beautiful.
“What will you do when they point you out, Debra?”
Reuben frowned.
“Actually, Sarah is on the steering committee for the march. She’s going to be speaking. She asked me to think about speaking. I’m a representative, maybe the only representative, of the government of Israel, you know.” Reuben pictured herself addressing a crowd of a million Jews gathered in Washington.
“You’ll be in handcuffs before you say three words,” he said. “When they hold Israel responsible for Damascus, who do you think they’ll arrest first?”
Her face paled. “Nobody knows I did that,” she whispered. “Nobody but you, and me.” She stepped to Levi, throwing her arms around him, clutching him tightly, dropping her head to his shoulder. He held her for several minutes, softly rubbing her hair, holding her tightly against his chest. Her breathing deepened, then slowed, as she absorbed his strength, flowing from his body to hers. This man has enough strength for the two of us, she hoped.
Levi gently pushed her away.
“Debra, they don’t have to know they picked the right person. They’ll take whoever they can get. Do you think you can stand up, identify yourself and then walk away? That won’t happen.”
“They won’t know it was me,” she whispered. “And we had the right to defend ourselves. We didn’t drop the first bomb. People will understand. We were defending our country. Who could hold Israel, or me, responsible for that?”
“Shall we start a list?” Levi said. “Maybe a billion or so Muslims who believe that taking your head off buys them a ticket to paradise. Maybe the United Nations. Or how about the World Court? Feel like standing trial in Brussels for murdering a hundred thousand people in Damascus? Or maybe even your own United States. Remember what you told me about five-dollar-a-gallon gasoline? Think turning you over for trial in Syria might buy a few million barrels of oil?”
He placed his hands on her shoulders. Looking her full in the face, he continued.
“The name of the game for you is invisible. Low profile is too high. Your days of giving speeches are over. You made that decision months ago.”
Reuben was stunned. She’d never truly comprehended the global implications of her role in the Damascus bombing. She’d considered it her personal demon, the tormentor who would never let her forget what she had done. She’d punished herself. She hadn’t considered that other people, millions of people, would want to join in. She broke into tears, quietly at first. Louder and louder until she lost all control as she struggled for breath.
“The best hope we have is finding somebody who can give us new identities, and maybe new faces to go with them,” Levi said. “So, no Washington? No speeches? You’ll watch it on TV, okay? And I’ll be back soon. I promise.”
A car pulled into the driveway, a Honda Accord sedan. A man in his early twenties behind the wheel. A yarmulke on his head. He remained in the car as Levi walked up to the driver’s door. The window rolled down.
“And your name is?” Levi asked.
“Gimel,” the man answered. “Shalom. Get in the car.”
Debra Reuben let the curtain fall back over the kitchen window as she watched the car drive away. Be careful, Chaim, she thought. She poured Bacardi over three ice cubes in a tall glass. She’d stopped adding Coke.
Gimel headed south down the Maine coast toward Portland, Maine’s largest city. Neither spoke for the first two hours. Finally, as the car drove through Freeport and Levi craned his neck to stare at the complex of buildings that made up the retail store for L.L.Bean, which even he’d heard about in Israel, Gimel could no longer contain himself.
“I hear you’re IDF,” he said excitedly. “From Eretz Yisrael.”
Levi nodded but said nothing.
“Abram said you’re going to train us, teach us,” the young man continued. “That’s why I’m taking you there. We must do something; we just have to. And we have to do it soon.”
The young man turned his head to look at Levi.
“I’m willing to give my life for Israel,” he said.
“Keep your eyes on the road,” Levi barked. “How much longer until we’re there, wherever there is?”
“I’m sorry,” Gimel said. “I know. Don’t talk. Silence. I can keep secrets, military secrets. We’re almost there, maybe another half hour.”
The remainder of the drive passed in silence until the car left the highway and drove through a waterfront industrial area with aging brick warehouse buildings set back from the water. They stopped in front of a brick building no different from dozens of others along the docks. The two men entered an unmarked door.
Inside was a small office with a single desk. The desktop was empty. No papers. No lamp. Not even a telephone. There was no chair behind the desk. Abram Goldhersh sat on the desk, eating a sub sandwich, his beard smeared with tuna and mayonnaise.
“Ah, Levi, welcome to the world headquarters of Maccabee Trading Corporation,” he said. Turning to the young man, he asked, “No problems getting here, right? Nobody following you?”
“No problems,” Gimel replied. “Are the others here?”
“They’re inside, with the equipment,” Goldhersh said. “Come on, Levi, let me show you our product line, this business of mine.”
The three men entered the cavernous interior of the building. Dim light seeped through dirt-encrusted windows high on one wall. The space was gloomy, chilly, damp. A bare bulb illuminated two men sitting in folding chairs next to three metal drums, the size of fifty-five-gallon oil drums.
The two men appeared to be in their early twenties. As with Gimel, both wore small yarmulkes on their heads. Except for that indicator, they were dressed as indescribably as most members of their generation—jeans baggy enough to conceal a brick in their pockets, shirts that looked as if they were purchased for a dollar at the Salvation Army store hanging outside their pants. They stood when Goldhersh and Levi approached. Goldhersh spoke first.
“This is the man I told you about,” he said. “He can be trusted.” He turned to Levi. “This is Aleph.” Goldhersh gestured toward one man, who nodded silently. “And this is Bet.”
Levi nodded.
“This”—Goldhersh pointed toward the three steel drums—“is what I was telling you about. What I managed to obtain and was prepared to ship off to Israel. I take it you know what this is, right?”
Levi walked to the drums and inspected writing stenciled on the outside.
KAI ZE QIEN GO INDUSTRIAL CO., LIMITED, Jinan City, Shandong, China 250000.
CAUTION.
MilSpec: MIL-C-45010A
HSE Serial number: 32-A-68450
RDX content: 91 ± 1%
Polyisobutylene plasticiser: 9 ± 1%
Moisture: 0.1% max
Velocity of Detonation: 8092 ± 26 m/s
Density: 1.63 g/cm3
Colour: Nominally white
TNT equivalence: 118%
Chemical marking for detection: Marked
Shelf life: At least 10 years under good conditions.
The top of one barrel was pushed partially to the side. Levi lifted the electric light, held it over the drum and looked inside. He whistled quietly.
“You could do damage with this,” he said to Goldhersh. “Of course, without detonators, it’s just modeling clay.”
To demonstrate, he reached into the barrel and scooped out a handful of light-gray material the consistency of putty. He molded it between his hands like a snowball, something he’d heard of but never actually seen.