“Yeah, like a sense of right and wrong,” Sarah said. “And to believe I voted for the man.”
The debate dragged on past midnight. Eventually, though, a consensus was reached. Something had to be done, but they would not use the bomb without fair warning.
They would make a demand first that would be most likely to persuade the United States to support the reestablishment of the State of Israel.
They argued about the demand until they reached agreement. Next, they discussed how to deliver their demand. Their decision on that was to use the simplest method.
“We mail a letter to the president. Mail it from far away. Wear gloves when we touch anything. Remember after 9/11 there were all those anthrax letters? They never found out who mailed them. They can’t trace mail.”
“My cousin Maurice, in Seattle. He can drop it in a mailbox,” Abram said.
“We’ll send it to him by FedEx. Now, what do we say in the letter?”
The final version of the note, printed in block letters on the elderly HP 1200 laser printer attached to Abram’s computer, was simple and straightforward.
We are the people who have the bomb. This is a real threat. You will close every camp. Every person will be released by noon Friday. There will be no repercussions against any person held at the camps. You hold almost 500,000 innocent Jews. That is the population of St. Louis. If you do not comply with this demand, St. Louis will be destroyed by midnight Friday.
How do you know we are telling the truth? The name of the sailboat that brought the bomb into this country was Swift. You kept it secret for a reason. This is the reason.
President Quaid gripped the plastic-wrapped sheet of paper in his hand, holding it away from his chest as if the paper itself were radioactive rather than just its message.
“Do we know this is the real thing?” he asked, looking around the table at the same team that met after Levi’s death. The president knew this group would not have been called together if the FBI had any doubt about the authenticity of the letter.
“We purposely kept the name of the sailboat confidential,” Attorney General Harrison said. “I hadn’t realized before, but it’s standard operating procedure to keep secret information that only a perpetrator would know. To tell you the truth, sir, even I didn’t know the name of the boat until I saw those photographs. I doubt if you did either, sir.”
“It never mattered to me,” President Quaid said. He scratched at his forehead. People around the table looked aside. The falling hair was noticeable. Even more than the falling hair, the dark rings under his eyes evidenced the sleepless, lonely nights he’d been suffering for weeks.
“Where do we go from here?” He looked around the table, daring somebody to speak.
“As I see it, sir, we have two choices,” General Paterson said. “We either give them what they want, set everybody loose, or we evacuate St. Louis and try our damnedest to catch them.”
“NO FUCKING WAY.” The president’s shout stunned every person sitting at the long table.
Carol Cabot turned and whispered in Quaid’s ear, patting his left hand gently. She gestured to an aide standing against the wall. The young man poured a glass of water and placed it in front of the president. Cabot again whispered to him and he obediently sipped the water.
“Sorry about that,” President Quaid said. “Let me make something clear. I don’t give in to threats. Never have. Never will. We will not give these people what they want. I don’t want to hear one more word about giving in. Won’t happen. Is that clear to everybody here? Damned Israelis never negotiated with terrorists. We won’t either.”
He looked around the table and was met with grim nods.
“Number two, we will not evacuate St. Louis. There have been enough evacuations already. Makes us look weak, turning and running away every time somebody threatens to pop us one in the nose. Americans don’t run. We fight. No more running. So, where does that leave us? I’ll entertain suggestions.”
Quaid sat back in his chair and turned his head briefly to look at Carol Cabot. She stared at him in admiration and clapped her hands lightly together.
“Well, sir, we can keep them out of St. Louis, for a while at least,” Gen. Cruz, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. “We can ring the city with troops so tight that a snail couldn’t crawl through. We can provide enough air cover that no plane will get anywhere near the city. We can keep that up for as long as you say so, sir, for what it’s worth. But you know, sir, there would be nothing to stop them from sending another note, this time for Philadelphia or Detroit. We can only button down so many cities, sir.”
“I understand that, General,” Quaid said, not especially pleased with the response he’d received. “Make it happen. I want nothing to get into that city that we don’t want in, on the ground, in the air or on water. St. Louis is on the water, isn’t it?”
“The Mississippi River, Mr. President,” Harrison said.
“I know that, Harrison. Keep the damned boats away, too.”
He looked around the table.
“Am I understood?”
Without a word, everybody nodded.
“We need to teach these people a lesson. As you said, General, they can do this again and again. We’ve got to give them a reason not to do that.”
He turned to Attorney General Harrison sitting directly across from him.
“You seem to know all about St. Louis. I assume there are Jews living there, right?”
“I assume so sir,” he said. “I’m under the impression there are Jews pretty much everywhere in the country, sir.”
“I share that assumption,” Quid said. “Okay. Arrest them—every damned one of them. Take them to a camp. Today. I want it done today. They give us another letter about another city, we’ll lock those Jews up, too. It shouldn’t take long for them to get our point, now should it?”
Again, he glared around the room.
“Any questions?” Nobody responded.
As people began to rise from their chairs, Quaid said, “Harrison. One last thing. When you ship them south, no buses, no fucking Greyhounds. Send them by train. In freight cars.”
CHAPTER 64
The roundup of the 60,000 Jews living in St. Louis did not go smoothly. President Quaid’s insistence that it begin immediately limited the advance planning. Warnings about soldiers arresting Jews spread instantly over the Internet and cell phones, triggering a mass exodus from the city before roadblocks could be fully set up or airports, bus and train stations shut down.
Television news and website videos showed Americans who looked as ordinary as everyone’s neighbors being placed in trucks and buses, to be driven to train stations. Breathless broadcasts showed cars being checked at roadblocks, and the occasional attempt to speed away stopped by hails of bullets.
The four people huddling in the house in Portland were despondent. They sat in the living room, Abram punching at the TV to switch from one news report to another, searching for some word of the carefully written demand letter and the reasons for the government’s actions.
Finally, he threw the remote across the room and turned to face the others.
“So much for demands,” he said. “I’ve said it before. I’ll say it one more time. Use it or lose it. I’m not ready to lose it. God gave us this thing for a reason. The time has come.”
Suddenly, there was pounding at the front door and a muffled voice shouting, “Let me in, let me in.”
Sarah screamed. Debra Reuben rose and stared toward the front door, ready to meet whatever was on the other side. Ready to accept whatever punishment was coming to her.