“And, now, again.
“We teach that because what has happened before can and most likely will happen again, and if it does, when it does, we must prepare for it. We must resist it, using the lessons of our people’s history.
“Lawrence Quaid, over and over politicians have forced us to make the same choice you want to force upon us. Are you a Jew or are you an American? We have been asked to choose, sir, are you a Jew or are you a Spaniard. Are you a Jew or are you an Englishman? Are you a Jew or are you a Russian? Or a Pole. Or a Turk, or an Egyptian, or, Mr. President, are you a Jew or are you a good German?
“Mr. President, if you ask that question you will receive the same answer every tyrant throughout history has received. Mr. President, I am an American and I love this country. I am so proud to be an American. But I can give up being an American if I am forced to do so—reluctantly, sadly, but that can be taken from me.
“I will never, I can never, stop being a Jew. And as a Jew, I will say to you the two words you have heard spoken so frequently in recent weeks.”
He raised both hands in the air.
“Lawrence Quaid, never again, never again, never again.”
The chant echoed from the Capitol building as the crowd’s frenzy increased and continued for five full minutes, five minutes of those two words repeated over and over and over. The speaker finally raised his hands and the exhausted crowd settled into silence.
“Mr. President. Never again will Jews march meekly to camps, to anybody’s camps, even your camps, Mr. President.
“Never again will Jews stand by and watch our homeland, the homeland promised to us by God Almighty, be snatched away from us. Never again, Mr. President.
“And if you can’t accept that, Mr. President, well, all I can say is…”
He walked around the microphone and stood on the front edge of the podium, raising both hands over his head.
“Never again, never again, never again, never again.”
For fifteen minutes the crowd chanted.
Never again! Never again! Never again!
Sarah Goldberg, sitting next to Ben Shapiro at the far left end of the podium, leaned close to him and whispered, “I guess I was right about my speech about peace and love and reconciliation being out of place.”
“If this is how the show begins,” Shapiro replied, “I can hardly wait to see where we go from here.”
Quaid turned from the television monitor carrying live coverage of the march. He walked to the window and looked out across the Ellipse to the Washington Monument.
“This is not going well,” he said to Acting Attorney General Harrison and Carol Cabot, his legal counsel. Gen. Paterson, his homeland security director, sat on a sofa in front of the television.
“How the hell can they say I’m another Hitler?” Quaid said. “This is about protecting the country from a nuclear attack. Can’t they see that? I tell the country we’ve been invaded, that there is an atom bomb floating around somewhere in New England, and these people call me a Hitler? They’re going too far, too far. I won’t tolerate this.”
“I agree, Mr. President,” said Gen. Paterson. “Free speech sucks, sir.”
Harrison nodded. “Those yellow stars were a brilliant move. You’ve got to hand it to whoever came up with that, and so fast. Brilliant,” he said.
“What’s the status of those troops, the Virginia guardsmen?” Quaid asked.
“They’re all set, Mr. President,” Gen. Paterson said, “sitting in their trucks, can be at the Mall in fifteen minutes. One thing though, Mr. President—they’ve got riot gear, shields, helmets, armor, even gas, and they’ve got their firearms.”
“Hold them off for now,” the Quaid said. “Only a Hitler would send armed troops against his own people in his nation’s capital, right?”
“They’re waiting for your command, sir. You and nobody else,” the general said. “It will be your call whether to send them in.”
“Let’s move them a bit closer. Get them into the city but back from the Mall. Keep them in their trucks for now. Maybe we can get through this weekend without giving anything more to complain about. We’ll wait and see what happens.”
CHAPTER 55
Sarah Goldberg was tentatively scheduled to speak at four, but she was told she might be bumped over to the next day if the speeches ran late the first day. She sat in a gallery of more than seventy seats on the large platform. Ben Shapiro sat next to her.
By noon, after the first four speakers each doubled or tripled his ten-minute quota, Shapiro was getting stiff from sitting. He was pleased when Judy Katz snuck up onto the platform and sat in an empty seat next to him and Sarah.
“Stay up here with us,” Sarah told Katz. “We’re off on the side anyway, and this is where all the empty seats are. Nobody will care.”
“Sure,” Katz said, moving her wooden chair a bit closer to Shapiro’s. “At least I’m out of the sun.”
After a few minutes, Judy snuck her hand onto Shapiro’s leg, where she let it lie softly. He placed his hand on top of hers. She turned to him and smiled, then looked back toward the speaker.
Katz, Shapiro and Goldberg were distracted when a tall woman in a wide hat, wearing sunglasses and accompanied by two extremely large men wearing nearly identical dark suits and sunglasses, walked up the steps at the end of the platform and moved along the row of occupied seats, stopping at the vacant one next to Sarah.
“Is that seat available?” the woman asked quietly.
“Yes, it’s been empty all day,” Sarah answered, turning to look at the woman. There was something familiar about her, despite the sunglasses and hat, which drooped to cover much of her face. The two men stood behind her on either side of her chair.
She’s somebody important, Sarah thought. An actress maybe. Trying to be as subtle as possible, she elbowed Shapiro, sitting to her right, and nodded to indicate the woman. Shapiro leaned forward to look at her. He nudged Katz, to his right, and pointed toward the woman.
“Holy shit,” Katz said. “You’re Mrs. Quaid, aren’t you? Catherine, Catherine Quaid. The First Lady.”
The woman smiled. “As a matter of fact, I am. All of those things,” she said. “I volunteered to address the attendees and my offer was graciously accepted. I’m supposed to be speaking shortly.”
Sarah was stunned to find herself sitting next to the First Lady. She didn’t know what to say, fumbled for words and finally blurted out, “Does your husband know you’re here?”
Catherine Quaid smiled again, this time more enthusiastically. “Why does everybody ask me that? No, I didn’t feel it necessary to obtain his permission. I’m hoping it will come as a complete surprise to him.” She swiveled her head to speak to one of the men behind her. “It will be a surprise to him, won’t it be, Joe?”
“I expect you’ll get his attention, ma’am,” her bodyguard said flatly.
They sat quietly for a moment as the First Lady listened to the speaker, deep in thought. She turned to Sarah.
“These yellow stars,” she asked, “are they for all the speakers? May I have one, too?”
“I don’t think there’s anything formal about the speakers wearing these,” Shapiro said, indicating the yellow star pinned to his shirt. “Lots of people in the crowd seem to have them on. You do understand the significance of these stars, don’t you?” he asked quietly.
She nodded. “I most certainly do. I’m not ignorant of Holocaust history, you know. In fact, when I heard my husband’s speech last night, on television—alone in my bedroom, by the way—the first thought I had when he talked about issuing special Americards to Jewish citizens was that the Nazis did something just like that.”