“I know that, but I want to be there to watch you fly into the sky.”
Reuben was all business. “You’re sure you can get pulled into the air, or whatever?” she asked Shapiro.
“No problem. I called them yesterday, the glider club there. Their towplane flies every day and they said weekdays are dead slow this time of year. They’ll welcome my tow fee.”
“And flying to Washington, that’s something you can do from the middle of Maryland? I still don’t understand how the glider plane works. What if the wind stops blowing?” Reuben asked.
“I’ve been through this,” Shapiro said, slightly annoyed. “From five thousand feet, where he’ll drop me off, I could fall asleep in the cockpit and the plane would land on the White House lawn. I’ve flown this plane hundreds of miles in one flight. This is nothing.”
Sarah looked over her shoulder at the three people at the table, then glanced at the kitchen door. “Has Judy been down yet?” she asked. “I haven’t heard her.”
Abram shot to his feet. “I’m going to check on her,” he said. “Why isn’t she here with us?”
They listened to Abram clomp up the stairs to the guest room. His footsteps running down the stairs made the house rattle.
He stood in the doorway, his face flushed.
“She’s gone,” he said flatly. “I’ll check the driveway. Her car.”
He stamped to the front door. A minute later he returned, hands waving in the air.
“Car’s gone,” he shouted. “She knows everything. She’s a government agent. I knew it. I told you we had to watch her. They’ll be here any minute. Go. Now. We have to go now.”
He locked eyes with his wife.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said, his voice suddenly calm. “I promise, Sarah.”
Sarah fought against tears. Oh my God, this is really happening.
Abram grabbed Shapiro’s elbow, pulling him toward the front door. The man was frantic, barely in control.
“Go. Now. Now. No time. They’ll come for us.”
Shapiro allowed himself to be dragged to the front door. He stopped there, letting Reuben and Sarah catch up. Both gave him quick hugs, hardly holding him at all. Afraid of touching a ghost.
Reuben, however, whispered in his ear. “Don’t worry about Judy,” she said softly. “She told me she felt so sad she wouldn’t be here to say goodbye. She couldn’t watch you leave, she said, knowing it would be the last time. She… she said to let you know she loves you, Ben, and that she respects you so much. Ben, we each have a role to play, each of us, including Judy.”
She stepped back from him. Her face clouded as she searched for words. “Ben, sometimes good people have to do horrible things. I know that. Better than anybody alive today I know that. I still think of myself as a good person, even after what I had to do.”
She struggled against tears, then threw her arms around Shapiro again, this time holding him tightly. She whispered into his ear so softly only he could hear. “It will be a blessing not to have to live after what you are about to do. A sweet blessing, Ben. Take that thought with you. From me.”
Shapiro sat in the driver’s seat of the SUV, where Abram was waiting. He started the engine and drove from the driveway. The glider in its trailer was behind him. As was his entire life.
Shapiro and Goldhersh made random, futile efforts at conversation as the car drove south toward Maryland. Goldhersh navigated, running his finger over the fistful of maps they’d gathered, charting a course that took them through a hundred downtowns, avoiding interstates and toll plazas.
Shapiro grunted in reply to directions. His only conversation was the continuous one inside his head. During the hours of silence he heard a barely audible murmuring from the large man in the passenger seat, snatches of what sounded like Hebrew, in the singsong of Jewish prayers.
Only after they’d crossed into Maryland, just after midnight, were the two men able to touch on the purpose of their trip.
“I would change places with you if I could. You know that, don’t you?” Goldhersh said. It was easier, safer, speaking in the dark, speaking without having to look at the other person.
“I know that.” Shapiro almost laughed. “If we could change places, I’d probably let you. I’ve pictured myself doing many things with my life, but never anything like this. If there were another option, I’d take it; I’d try anything before this.”
Goldhersh waved his hands in the air, interrupting. His hours of silent prayer had placed him in an Old Testament state of mind. “Times come that call for drastic action, Ben. A time for Samson to destroy the temple. A time for God to flood the earth. A time to slay the tyrant,” Abram said, passion in his voice, sounding the biblical prophet he resembled.
“I know, I know, we’ve been through this,” Shapiro said. “It’s just that, well, that I’m a rational man about to commit what the whole world will know is an irrational act, an act of a madman, a monster.” He thought he’d convinced himself, intellectually, analytically that he was making the right decision. He was surprised at the doubt he heard himself expressing.
Am I afraid? he thought. He smiled to himself in the dark. Damn straight I’m scared. I’m about to kill myself.
“Ben, Israel is depending on you.”
“Don’t worry, Abram. I won’t back out. I made my decision. We all made a decision. It’s the right decision. I know that. Fight evil. Do right. If not now, when. Use it or lose it. Shit. A stitch in time saves nine. I know.”
The glider club’s website said it began tow operations at ten in the morning. They would arrive well before then. They found an all-night truck stop at which they could pull between large semitrailers. They had three hours to spend there and did not want their unusual trailer, with the airplane’s tail jutting up at the rear, to attract attention.
The truck stop neon flashed Breakfast All Day Always Open.
Goldhersh was surprised that Shapiro ate only two slices of rye toast. No butter. He looked at the lawyer quizzically as the waitress walked away after taking their orders.
“Not to make light of it, but that isn’t much of a last meal,” the huge man said.
“Can’t eat before flying,” Shapiro replied. “You know on an airliner when the pilot comes on and warns that things could get bumpy? That’s the kind of turbulence gliders need to stay in the air. It gets awfully bouncy in my little airplane.”
He saw the skeptical expression on the other man’s face.
“Abram, I’m not getting cold feet.”
Goldhersh didn’t answer.
Shapiro finished his toast and two cups of coffee. Goldhersh called the waitress over every half hour to order more food for himself, and more coffee, to justify their three-hour sojourn in the vinyl booth.
Finally, Shapiro looked at his watch and gestured for the waitress. She totaled the bill and dropped it on the table.
“Sure you boys don’t want to wait around for lunch, now?” she said with a grin.
Goldhersh reached for the check, only to have Shapiro drop two twenty-dollar bills on the table.
“My treat,” he said with a smile. “I’ve always been such a cheapskate of a tipper. Last chance to make it up.”
He tossed another twenty on the table and stood.
In ten miles they reached a neatly painted white sign that said Mid-Maryland Soaring Society. The airfield was a wide grass strip with a sheet-metal hanger next to a small wood building. A high-winged single engine airplane, a tail-dragger with two wheels under the wings and a small wheel resting under the tail, the towplane, sat next to the building.