“They have unlimited money behind them,” Katz had warned. “The bottom line is that these programs work. I know. We found bad guys based on leads from the NSA—bad guys we had no idea were even bad.”
Nonetheless, Shapiro called her cell phone the day after Katz left, worried whether she had arrived safely.
“Where are you calling from, Ben?” she asked. When he told her he was using the Goldberg’s phone she immediately hung up.
Her warning forced them to become electronically isolated. No email. No telephone. Not even any Internet browsing. The result was that this group of two men and three women was cut off from all contact with the greater Jewish community. Perhaps their isolation protected them from discovery, but it also left them with an operable nuclear weapon in their possession and nobody but themselves in a position to decide what to do with it.
Days passed. They watched news coverage of emergency evacuations of Akron, then San Diego, after what turned out to be false threats to detonate nuclear bombs. Dozens of people died in those frantic evacuations.
The government tried to calm the nation by reporting extensive efforts to locate the bomb—roadblocks, SWAT team raids on suspected Jewish terrorist cells, airborne radiation monitoring. Those reports may or may not have made the general public feel better. They terrified the four people huddled in the house in Portland.
“It’s only a matter of time before they find us,” Abram said after dinner one night. They were gathered in front of the tiny television brought down to the living room. CNN murmured in the background. “They’ll find us. Judy knows everything. She’ll talk, or they’ll capture her and make her talk.”
The others nodded. They’d discussed this. They all heard the same clock ticking. They all waited for the doors to be knocked down, for the SWAT team to storm the house.
“One phrase keeps running through my head,” Abram continued. “One of those 1950s sayings about the Cold War. You know what it is. I’ll tell you what it is. Use it or lose it. Get it? Use the bomb or lose the bomb. Back then it meant that America had to strike the Russians first because if the Russians hit us first, they’d wipe out our bombers and missiles on the ground.
“I stay awake at night picturing the SWAT team kicking in our doors and them carting off our bomb in a big truck. That’s what will happen soon. They’ll find it. They have ways. They’ll get more and more desperate. They have ways that they’ll be willing to use.”
No one doubted that.
“Use it or lose it,” Abram intoned. “We’d better use what we’ve got or we won’t have it anymore. We may be Israel’s last hope. Think about that, will you?”
Reuben nodded in agreement. Like the Maccabees, she thought, Israel’s first terrorists, we may be Israel’s last defenders. Abram is right; he’s so right. What choice do we really have? They killed Chaim. They killed Ben’s wife and son. They’ve locked up Judy’s nana. They want to kill us.
“I hear the same clock ticking,” she said. “I agree we can’t wait forever. I say we issue a threat, make a demand, do something. Something besides sitting here watching television, for God’s sake. At least let’s do that much.”
“Use it or lose it, Abram?” Shapiro asked, shaking his head in disbelief. “You sound like the Jewish Barry Goldwater, or was he Jewish? Are we going to kill thousands of people because of a slogan?”
Shapiro turned to Debra.
“Tell me, Debbie. Is that the same level of reasoning that went on in that bunker in the desert? Did you and the generals kill a hundred thousand Syrians, Syrians we now know were totally innocent, because you had to use your bomb or you feared you would lose it?”
Her eyes widened as her cheeks were drawn in. They could see Reuben struggling to hold her composure, not to answer his accusation with tears. She struggled, but lost. Instead of crying, Reuben stood and walked quickly from the room. The sound of her pouring something into a glass could be heard, followed by the clunk of ice cubes. Shapiro turned to face Abram.
“Make a threat? And if they call our bluff?” Shapiro asked. “What do we do if they call our bluff?”
Debra Reuben returned to the room, drink in hand.
“What bluff is that, Ben?” she asked.
CHAPTER 61
“Mr. President, I have some good news, sir,” Attorney General Harrison said. “I would like to come right over and show you something.”
“Be here in thirty minutes. The Saudi ambassador can cool his heels a bit. I’m getting awfully tired of his pep talks to stand firm about not intervening in the Middle East. Don’t give in to the terrorists, he tells me. Don’t be intimidated by threats, he says. As if his country’s threat to pull the plug on oil isn’t intimidation. I don’t dare tell him that it isn’t his oil that’s keeping our troops home. I just don’t know that I could persuade our boys and girls to board the planes to fly over there and get blown to pieces by one army or the other. American parents are not in the mood to let their children die defending Jews.”
“Yes, sir.” Harrison did not know how to respond. The president sounded as if he was badly in need of good news. “I’m on my way as we speak.”
Harrison stepped into the Oval Office without a word and placed a large manila folder on the president’s desk.
“Cut the guessing games,” President Quaid said wearily. “If you have something to show me, then show me, dammit.”
“Yes, sir.” Harrison removed a set of eight-by-ten photographs. The first photograph showed an attractive young woman wearing short white pants and boat shoes. Her thick Patagonia fleece sweater seemed out of place. She stood on a wooden dock. Dozens of sailboats were behind her, some sailing, most tied to moorings or at anchor.
“Okay, she’s a babe,” President Quaid said dryly. “Are you engaged? Congratulations. Now get back to work.”
“Uh, no, sir, no, I don’t know the woman.” He glanced at the photo. “Wouldn’t mind meeting her. But that’s not the point. Sir, this photo was taken six weeks ago. In Maine. Brooklin, Maine. A harbor where a magazine is published. The FBI flooded the area with agents after coming up with suspicious activity, Internet searches, at the local library.
“They can be awfully thorough, the FBI, sir. Turns out that boat magazine runs a boat school. People come for a week and do boat stuff. All very obscure. Not the way I’d want to spend my summer vacation, sir. Seems the agents got a list of everybody who attended the school that summer, then searched for personal websites for each of them. Lots of them had little postings about ‘How I Spent My Summer Vacation,’complete with photographs. This photograph was posted on one of those sites, sir.”
“Get to the point or send in somebody who can.”
“Yes, sir.” Harrison placed the photo on the desk. He removed a pen from his jacket pocket and pointed at a sailboat tied to a mooring float. It was to the right of the smiling woman’s shining blonde hair. A man and a woman were in a rubber dinghy, rowing away from the boat.
“See that sailboat, sir? The FBI identified it. It’s a kind of boat called a Hinckley Bermuda 40 yawl. Expensive boat. Supposed to be pretty nice, if you’re into boats.” Harrison removed another photo and placed it on the desk. “If you look closely at this photo, sir, you can read the boat’s name. It’s painted on the back of the boat.”