“This language is awfully broad, sir,” Sen. Farrell cautioned. He handed the paper back to the president.
“With all due respect, I don’t see any limitations in there. It pretty much says you can do anything anywhere to anybody. Am I missing something here, sir?”
“No, Grant, you’ve nailed it right on the nose. This is what I want. This is what Congress gave W. Bush to fight terrorism. The bombing of those two malls was certainly a terrorist act. Nobody is going to deny that.”
Quaid gave the two legislators a somber stare. “From what my people tell me, the timing of the bombings, that degree of coordination, was the work of some big organization, probably even a government. And those bombs were damn sophisticated, they tell me. A government did this. No, my people tell me that the Jews have taken a card from the Palestinians with this suicide bombing. And you know what that means, gentlemen. You both know what happens next, right?”
“Uh, tell us, sir,” Sen. Giddings said.
“More suicide bombings, that’s what happens next, goddammit,” Quaid huffed. “At least we hope that’s all that happens next. It isn’t shopping-mall bombs that keep me awake at night. There’s that other thing floating around, too.”
“The nuclear thing, sir?” Sen. Giddings asked. “I was briefed on that, just me and four other senators, including, of course, my Democratic brother here. But there’s been nothing for three days. Nothing except rumors.”
“Sounds like we didn’t appreciate how lucky we were to be facing Muslim terrorists,” Sen. Giddings said. “Despite years of trying, they never pulled off anything like this. And here the Israelis manage to get a bomb into this country three months after they get bombed themselves.” He paused.
“So, what do you have in mind?” Sen. Farrell said.
“This nation is under attack—attack from forces of a foreign state right in our homeland. For obvious reasons, we can’t attack the homeland of the nation that is attacking us. There is no Afghanistan, no Iraq for us to clean out in this war. This time the enemy is among us. That’s who is attacking us. This enemy among us. That’s who I intend to protect the American people from.”
The president continued, his voice rising in volume, speed, pitch.
“It’s not what’s happened so far that’s keeping me awake at night; it’s what is going to happen any day now—any day now. Do you understand that? More bombings for sure. More Americans killed. They don’t have to smuggle any more soldiers into the country. They have millions of them here right now. Millions. I don’t know if I can trust any Jew right now—not one.”
The two senators sat stunned.
“Give me that resolution. Bush got it. I want it. I am going to sign that legislation tomorrow.”
CHAPTER 48
Hocksberg asked Ben Shapiro to come along to a meeting with Rabbi Garfinkle. Representatives of Jewish organizations from across the country were crowded into the office space when Shapiro and Hocksberg arrived. Rabbi Garfinkle was speaking. Shapiro had never met the man. He’d expected to see an old man with a beard, a stooped back and dark suit.
Instead, the man standing in front of the group of forty or so organizers wore jeans and a corduroy shirt. Brown hair covered his ears and he spoke with a hint of a Southern drawl, but not enough to disguise the serious tone of his voice.
“I just returned from a meeting with a representative from the White House,” he said. “Wilson Harrison, the new attorney general.”
“Acting attorney general,” a voice shouted from a corner of the room. “I know him from law school. He was a jerk then. He’s worse now, from what I hear.”
Rabbi Garfinkle continued, unperturbed.
“I can’t say he was the most pleasant person I’ve ever dealt with. He was quite emphatic in what he said.” The rabbi paused to collect his thoughts. “He said the president wants the march called off. It is too dangerous, he said, too dangerous for a million people to gather in the city at this time.”
“What he fears is a million Jews,” another voice called out. “That’s what he doesn’t want to see.”
“Please, let me continue,” the rabbi said. “Mr. Harrison did not come right out and say it, but he hinted the government has received information about a plot against the marchers, that somebody, he didn’t say who, was planning on doing something horrible if the march goes forward.”
“What did he say exactly, Rabbi?” a woman in the middle of the room asked.
“He said a national security agency—that’s how he described it—a national security agency obtained information that an anti-Jewish organization planned on letting loose some sort of biological agent in the middle of the crowd tomorrow, Friday. That’s all he said, except to say that the president was concerned for our safety and that the president begged us to call the march off. So, what do we do?”
“That’s a load of bullshit, pardon my Yiddish, Rabbi.” A man in the back of the room gently pushed his way forward to stand next to Rabbi Garfinkle.
“Sam Lowenstein. New York. I’m with what used to be the ILGWU.” He looked around the room. “That’s the International Ladies’Garment Workers’Union, for those of you who were born yesterday.”
He smiled.
“We used to be a big-time union. In your grandmother’s time. I don’t believe one word from that asshole of an attorney general, or from his boss, the former great close friend of Israel, President Quaid. They’re scared shitless of having a million Yids camped out in front of the White House, that’s what this is all about. And they don’t have the political balls to ban us. So they’re making up this fairy tale to scare us. They want us to tuck our tails between our legs and go home. Then they’ll call us cowards. No way. I’m staying, and so are my people.”
Rabbi Garfinkle looked around the room. “Anybody else?” he asked.
A tall woman in a conservatively cut, expensive-looking suit raised her hand.
“May I speak?” she said. “My name is Shirley Zarick. I am the chairman of the Hadassah Chapter for the Jewish Community Federation of Sonoma County; that’s near San Francisco, of course.
“I agree with everything the gentleman from New York said, although I might not have put it quite so colorfully. And, as an aside, Mr. Lowenstein, my mother, may she rest in peace, carried her ILGWU card until the day she died. She sang ‘Look for the Union Label’to my children when she put them to bed. I agree one hundred percent. They are trying to scare us. Show us proof of this threat. Give us some evidence. If they can’t do that, then shame on them for telling lies. That’s what I have to say.”
“Anybody else?” the rabbi asked.
A man wearing a suit and tie, standing near the doorway, spoke.
“Dan Glickstein. Feldman, Brownstein, Rabinowitz and Stern. We’re the law firm that donated this office space. What I want to say is that my partner, Sol Rabinowitz, works pretty much full time as a congressional liaison—you’d call him a lobbyist, I suppose. I had breakfast with Sol this morning. He said the Hill is buzzing with a resolution that Quaid is rushing through the House and Senate today.
“Sol tells me that Quaid is trying to pull a Bush 9/11, that’s what it is. Sol says his people tell him they just took the war powers bill passed after 9/11 and changed the dates but nothing else. They’re gonna give the president the power to do whatever he wants, no limits, just like Bush got.
“Remember what we got the last time they did that? War in Afghanistan. Everything that happened with Iraq. Syria. Yemen. That concentration camp at Guantanamo. Torture. Secret wiretaps. The damn Patriot Act. Sol tells me it’s going to be the same thing all over again. But this time it’s not because of the Muslims. This time their tails are on fire because of us. Jews, Jewish bombs, Jewish soldiers, the—pardon the expression—the full megillah. I tell you, this is what scares the daylights out of me, not some made-up story about unnamed anti-Semitic biological weapons.”