“Are any of you going to let your president down? Are you willing to do whatever it takes?” Dancer shouted.
Shouts of “Hoo-ahhh, hoo-ahhh, USA, USA” filled the room.
Interrogation was as old as warfare. The Army had a ninety-seven-page interrogation manual and confirmed that the use of torture was prohibited by the Geneva Convention.
President Quaid didn’t want to violate the Geneva Convention. But he wanted to come right up to the legal line. Attorney General McQueeney’s advice was not what the president wanted to hear.
“America does not use torture, Mr. President,” she told him. “That’s the law. That’s our history. That’s what we stand for. You permit torture and you violate the law. It’s as simple as that.”
“Come on, Queen,” President Quaid retorted angrily. “After New York goes up in a radioactive cloud you want me to tell the American people that we could have stopped it from happening but we didn’t want to hurt any of the bad guys?”
The attorney general refused to back down.
“I’ve been offering my resignation for a month now, Mr. President,” she said.
“I know, Queen, and I’ve been refusing it, but maybe it’s time for that after all.”
“Say the word, and you have my head on a plate, so to speak,” she answered.
Carol Cabot, the president’s legal counsel, increasingly filled the shoes left vacant by Bob Brown, the former chief of staff. She sided with the congressional leaders urging the president to do whatever it took to protect the nation.
“You have all the power in the world,” she’d told the president. “Go ahead and wield it. I’ll cover you with the right paper. My job is to protect you, and you can trust me to do that, sir.”
Quaid reached Cabot by telephone at her home.
“Carol, sorry to call you this late, but I’ve made a decision and I want you to make it happen, tomorrow, first thing,” he said. “The Queen’s been offering to resign and I’ve been balking at it. Wrong time for that and all. Well, first thing tomorrow you call her and tell her to get her resignation to me, in writing. I want her resignation on my desk by nine, effective immediately. Second thing, those presidential findings and directives you talked about. Do it. I want them by the end of the day tomorrow. Any questions?”
“Well, sir, there is one thing. Who will run the shop at Justice starting tomorrow with the Queen out before a new AG is in?”
“I thought about that, Carol. I like that deputy over there, Harrison. We’ll name him interim attorney general for now and decide later whether to send his name to the Senate for the permanent position. Make that happen, too.”
CHAPTER 38
Debra Reuben ran to the kitchen window when she heard a car crunch the gravel driveway. The Honda Accord stopped. Levi got out, waving to the driver. Reuben ran to the front door, shoved it open and stopped, catching her breath, ready to scold Levi for not calling. Instead, she opened her arms wide. He walked into her embrace, and as she tilted her head back he placed his lips on hers. They kissed, deeply and long. Neither wanted to be the first to let go. For the minutes they held one another, neither thought of atom bombs, past, present or future.
“I was so worried,” Rueben whispered, her lips an inch from his ear. Then she released him, placing her hand on his chest and pushing, not too hard but neither too lightly. “Why didn’t you call? Do you have any idea how scared I was? What if you’d been arrested?”
“I’m sorry,” Levi said. “I’ll tell you everything, but, look, this isn’t a good time to be using the telephone. We have to be careful. Things are going on—well, things are about to happen—and we need to talk.”
They sat on the living room sofa. Levi told Reuben everything from the past twenty-four hours and everything that was about to happen. He spoke without personal commentary. He wanted to see her reaction before letting her know his feelings about Goldhersh’s plans.
When he finished, Levi asked, “So, what do you think?”
“Another bomb,” she said flatly.
Reuben stood and walked through the house to the porch overlooking the ocean. She leaned forward against the railing, her arms crossed in front of her chest, staring at the water. Levi trailed behind her and stood silently, watching her back, waiting for her to speak first.
“Chaim, I know I am responsible for terrible things,” she said, speaking gently. “While I’ve been by myself I dared to think about all those poor people in Damascus, all those people who died, and I thought that I am responsible for their deaths and how could my heart, my soul, carry that burden.
“To tell you the truth, I even thought about taking my own life. I thought I could fill my pockets with stones from the shore over there and jump into the water from that rock, jump in from that rock right there.” She pointed at a boulder at the water’s edge. “I could take one step and sink and all this would be over.”
Levi opened his arms. He wanted so much to comfort her, to protect her from her demons. She shook her head and continued speaking, strength in her voice this time.
“Obviously, I didn’t do that. I’ve come to appreciate that I did what had to be done. Not for me. Not for revenge. For Israel. There will come a time, God willing, when there will be another Israel, when Jews will have our land again as our home. And if history is any guide, in that time Israel will have enemies who will swear to drive us into the ocean if they cannot annihilate us first. It has always been that way. Somebody has always sworn to wipe us from the earth.
“I came to understand why the plans were made in the first place. Because when that next time comes, those enemies are going to remember one word, and that word will be Damascus. And maybe when they remember that word, just maybe they’ll hesitate. And if they do hesitate, if they do step back and another million or more Jews live who they would have killed, well, then those Jews will have lived because of what I did. That was why the plan was made. That is why I followed it.
“So, Chaim, I accept what I did. I can live with it. I’m not a monster. I’m not evil. Shit, Chaim, I’m still just Debbie Reuben from Long Island, just grown up a bit, right? Can you understand that?”
Levi put his arms around her, squeezed her tightly, then lifted her feet from the porch floor and carried her into the house, down the hallway, and into the bedroom, where he placed her gently on the queen-sized bed. He slid on top of her, lowering his mouth over hers, slowly letting his entire weight rest on her, anchoring her, holding her, shielding her from the demons of her past and the demons soon to come.
For now, right now, let’s not talk at all, he thought, reaching down to open the buttons on her blouse.
They fell asleep in one another’s arms, thoughts of atom bombs and C4 explosive, of FBI agents and detention camps, absent for the day. For the moment, at least.
CHAPTER 39
Ben Shapiro put off visiting Howie Mandelbaum at the Charles Street Jail to deliver the unpleasant news of his meeting with District Attorney Patrick McDonough. It was looking as if Mandelbaum was going to be the only person to face state criminal charges for the Coast Guard deaths. Shapiro had hoped to get the charges dropped, even if it meant Mandelbaum would be shipped to the detention camp on Cape Cod. At least there he would be treated the same as the other detainees.
How bad could that be, Shapiro thought. After all, in the long run they were certain to be found to be nothing but refugees from war, from persecution. This country took such people in every day.