“So, Debra, what is this big emergency? I have a speech to write, you know.” Her words were angrier than her tone, however, especially when she saw the relief on her friend’s face.
“FBI,” Reuben blurted out. “The FBI knows we’re here, or will know any minute. I have to get away. I have to tell Chaim not to come back here. You have to help me, please.”
“FBI? They can’t know about you. Believe me, if they knew you were here, you’d be wearing handcuffs by now,” Goldberg said. “How could they know about you?”
“We can talk more in the car,” Reuben said. “I promise I’ll tell you absolutely everything, no secrets, no more secrets. For right now, though, I have something that is going to be difficult for you to hear. Sarah, you know I was in the government, a cabinet minister, over there?” Reuben gestured roughly toward the ocean.
“Of course, culture minister,” Sarah said. “Abram said it was a joke, but I was proud of my D-Phi-E sister.”
“It was sort of a joke, I know that,” Reuben said. “Until the end, that is. As it turned out, as far as anyone knew, I was the last of the government to survive. That was only luck because I happened to be out in the desert instead of in Tel Aviv for the prime minister’s birthday party.”
Reuben paused, then placed both hands on the other woman’s shoulders. She squeezed lightly, as if she did not want Sarah to run away when she heard what Reuben was about to say, or maybe just to provide comfort to her friend.
“Sarah, Damascus, the bomb dropped on Damascus,” she said slowly. “The bombs were stored at a place, a place in the desert. I was there. I was the only one left to make the decision.”
Sarah’s eyes opened wide. “No, Debbie, no, don’t tell me,” she whispered.
“I ordered them to put the bomb in that plane,” Reuben said. “They didn’t want to do it. I made them do it. I ordered them to do it. I shook that pilot’s hand. I watched him take off. I did it. Me.”
Sarah stepped back, paused for thirty seconds, thinking, then held her arms wide and reached out for Reuben, who walked into her friend’s comforting embrace. They hugged for several minutes, neither speaking, Sarah repeating quietly, “Poor Debbie, my poor Debbie.”
Reuben pushed herself away from her friend.
“There’s something else,” she said. “Sarah, there’s another bomb.”
“Another bomb? But only Damascus was bombed. I don’t understand.”
“Actually,” Reuben said, “that is something else entirely, for another time. No, there was another bomb there in the desert, on the ground, a smaller bomb. We didn’t put it in any plane. We didn’t know what to do with it. But we couldn’t let the Arabs get it. So I took it with me.”
“Took it where, Debbie?”
Reuben pointed behind her at the house.
“No, Debbie, no.”
“We brought it here, Chaim and I, in the boat, the one we had to sink,” she said. “We had to sink it because Chaim thought the radiation in the boat might be detected. He thinks these helicopters might be looking for it now, although we don’t know why they would be looking. It’s in the house, in the basement, the wine cellar.”
“What are you going to do with it?” Sarah asked.
“I’m taking it with me,” Reuben said. “It’s heavy, but you and I can lift it. We’ll put it in your car and we’ll take it away, and I don’t really know what we’ll do with it, but it can’t stay here. I can’t leave it here, Sarah.”
Goldberg struggled to speak, finally saying, “You want to put an atom bomb in my car—my new Volvo?” She turned on her heels and walked quickly away from her friend to stand beside her car. She turned back to face Reuben, anger in her voice. “Leave it. Get rid of it. Give the damn thing to the FBI. What do you care?”
“Don’t you think I’ve thought that too, Sarah?” Reuben said softly. “I hate that thing. For all I know, the radiation from it is killing me, and killing Chaim. But, Sarah, as horrible as it might be, it isn’t mine to toss away. It doesn’t belong to me.”
“It certainly seems to be in your possession, doesn’t it?” Sarah snapped.
“Not possession, Sarah, custody,” Reuben answered. “I’m just its custodian. It belongs to the State of Israel. And Israel might need it someday. I know this isn’t an easy decision. Sarah, I’ve lived with what I did—with… with Damascus, since the moment that jet took off. I wish I did not have responsibility for that thing in the basement. But I have no choice. We have no choice. Don’t you see that? I had responsibility for the first one and I did what I had to do with it. I have this one now, and I have to do with it what is required of me. This is no time for weakness, Sarah. Please help me carry the bomb to the car.”
Goldberg was quiet for several minutes, pacing away from Reuben. When she returned she said, “I understand what you are saying. Let’s get it and let’s find a place for it. Abram will know what to do with it.”
“That’s something I’m concerned about,” Reuben replied. “But we can talk about that in the car.”
The two women retrieved the device from the wine cellar. It was still tightly wrapped in the plastic that covered it while it was in the water tank on the sailboat. They secured it in the back of the Volvo and eased along the gravel driveway, nervous and silent.
They stayed off the main highways on the three-hour drive to the Portland suburb where the Goldberg-Goldhershes lived. Reuben felt a tinge of envy when she saw her former roommate’s comfortable house, her memory flashing on her own tiny apartment in Jerusalem’s Old City. Looking out to the fenced-in back yard, Reuben noticed the swimming pool, its dark-green leaf cover floating over the water’s surface. She turned to her friend.
“I know the place for that thing,” she said. The two women lugged the bomb to the pool, rolled back the cover over the deep end and dropped the plastic-wrapped package into the water, watching it settle to the bottom of the pool, covered by eight feet of water. They rolled the cover back over the surface, hiding what was beneath.
“Chaim was worried that the bomb could be detected from above,” Reuben explained. “That’s why he kept it in the wine cellar. I think eight feet of water should block any radiation. Let’s hope so.”
“Sure, let’s hope you and I don’t glow in the dark, too,” Sarah said. “I can’t wait for Abram to get home. He decided to go to that meeting in Boston. He’ll bring Levi back here afterwards, he said.”
“That’s fantastic,” Reuben exclaimed, not making any attempt to hide her excitement. She smiled at her friend. “Let me tell you about me and Chaim. It’s pretty wonderful, you know.”
CHAPTER 50
Levi listened to the news on the car radio as he drove south on the Maine Turnpike, heading for his meeting in Boston.
“More than three hundred people were killed less than ten minutes ago in two synchronized bombings in shopping malls outside of Boston.” The announcer struggled to remain calm. “Most of those killed were women and children, hundreds more were wounded, many of them seriously.
“Survivors report the suicide bombers appeared to be Orthodox Jews who wrapped themselves in Israeli flags before detonating their bombs in what was an apparent protest of this country’s decision not to intervene in the Middle East.
“A White House spokesman said the president’s thoughts and prayers go out to those families who lost loved ones and those survivors who are clinging to life. The president promised to spare no resources to hunt down and apprehend the persons responsible for this cowardly action. Congressional leaders from both parties offered their support to the president in fighting what they characterized as today’s new war on terrorism, a war that appears to have its primary battlefield on American soil for the first time since the Civil War.”