The Keeper

by George C. Chesbro

  Jade was grateful to Jack Trex. She knew she owed him a great deal, and this only heightened the alarm and tension she felt rising in her as she walked down the floating dock in the Cairn Marina toward where Trex was waiting for her beside his trawler, which was tied up at the end of the dock. She had immediately recognized the thing caught in his net for what it was.

  “Hi, boss,” she said, forcing a smile as she came up to the trim man with the thinning, shoulder-length dark hair, ruddy complexion and dark eyes.

  Trex nodded. “Good morning, Jade. Thanks for coming around on your day off.”

  “If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be in Cairn to come around. You may always consider me on call.” She paused and feigned casual curiosity as she pointed to the rotting carcass in the net at the back of his trawler. “Some pretty strange things come out of the Hudson, don’t they? Maybe that’s a GE executive. Hope you found some shad while you were out there.”

  “Certainly not enough to brag about. I had to come in early because that damn thing got fouled in my nets and I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. You have any idea what it is?”

  “No,” Jade lied.

  She estimated that the decaying carcass of the sea lion had been in the water perhaps three weeks, but no more than a month, which meant that Operation Jolly Roger was not at all the ancient history it should have been. Even more troubling, she could see from where she was standing that the identification markings on the mine strapped to the animal’s back had been deliberately obliterated, probably with acid. She did not at all like the implications of what she was looking at, and her mind raced as she tried to identify the options open to her and what she could do to protect Jack Trex while at the same time protecting herself, her family and her job.

  Trex grunted, then wrinkled his nose and stepped back as the wind shifted and carried the odor of the rotting flesh in their direction. “It almost looks like something that could belong to the military, doesn’t it, with that steel box strapped to its back? That looks like some kind of mine. But what would the Navy be doing releasing a booby trapped fish into the Hudson River, for Christ’s sake?”

  “I have no idea, Jack,” Jade replied softly, her thoughts still racing.

  She knew she was going to have to make a decision quickly, and a great deal could depend on her making the correct one. She felt numb. No good was going to come from the fisherman’s catch, and she had to find a way to minimize the danger to both of them without possibly endangering boaters’ lives.

  “The reason I asked you to come around and look at it is because I want my riverkeeper’s advice. I’ve got a notion I should just take the boat back out, cut the thing loose from the nets and just dump it. I’m not sure I want to risk getting involved with the people who set it loose. But that box strapped to its back makes me nervous. Even if I weight the damn carcass down before I dump it, there’s no guarantee it won’t eventually work free and float back up to the surface where some boat could run into it. What do you think I should do?”

  Jade very much wanted to tell her employer to follow his initial instinct to simply take the carcass out to the deep channel and dump it; reporting his catch was sure to cost him precious time he could not afford at this time of year, and could cause him a great many other difficulties. But she dared not tell him to do this. She was fairly confident that the mine was a dummy, attached to the creature’s back during an illegal practice run for a top secret weapons system that had officially been cancelled four years before, but she could not be absolutely certain that was the case. The obliterated markings further complicated matters. She could disarm the mine if it was live, but she could not afford to let people in Cairn know she had that kind of expertise, and doing so could lead to all sorts of questions she was not permitted to answer. But if the magnetic mine were indeed live, and if its dead host was dumped back into the river before being separated from it, the explosive device would eventually present a very serious hazard, not only to pleasure craft but also to the great, steel-hulled barges and tankers that plied the deep channel.

  She did not have the option of telling Jack Trex what the purpose of the thing was, for Operation Jolly Roger, during its relatively brief official existence, had been highly classified. Even if she were not under a personal obligation to honor the terms of her agreement with the Navy not to discuss details of her military career, she would still be legally obligated not to disclose classified information; she could not only lose her pension and benefits, but also be sent to prison if she disclosed to Trex or the police what the fisherman had brought up in his nets.

  “Jade?”

  “It definitely looks suspicious,” Jade said in a flat tone, dropping her gaze to the weathered boards at her feet. “You’d better notify the Coast Guard. This is their jurisdiction.”

  “Okay. That’s what I thought I should do, but I just needed to hear it from someone who knew what they were talking about. Thanks again for driving over.”

  “Don’t be silly.” Jade paused, carefully considering what she might say to warn the fisherman, then continued, “Jack?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Tell the Coast Guard that you’re a professional fisherman and that every hour your boat is out of commission now during the shad run costs you money. Tell them you want this thing off your boat as soon as possible, like this afternoon, so you can go back out on the river in the morning. You’ve done your duty as a citizen; tell them that if somebody doesn’t show up to take it off your hands, then you are going to dump it. Sometimes the bureaucracy needs a little goosing to get it working at the proper pace.”

  “Don’t I know that. You think the Coast Guard will tell me what this thing is?”

  “Somehow I doubt it,” Jade replied evenly as she turned to head back up the dock. “Let me know what happens.”

  iii

  Jade felt anxious and agitated as she drove back along the river road toward her home, and she knew she was going to continue to feel that way until Jack Trex called to let her know that the Coast Guard had removed the carcass and its steel appendage.

  She was fairly certain she understood how the Jolly Roger had gotten into the river. The sea lion had been “launched” for a test run from a holding tank, probably from a U.S. submarine or tender operating in one of the red zones in the Long Island Sound. Unbeknownst to its handlers, the animal must have been suffering from any one of a number of parasitic infections that can cause large sea mammals to lose their natural navigational skills. The creature had become disoriented and wandered through New York Harbor and up the river, where it had died. The question was why the mined sea lion had been set loose in the first place.

  Operation Jolly Roger had been a project exploring the feasibility of training various sea mammals, seals, sea lions and killer whales, to carry magnetic mines to the hulls of targeted vessels, where they would explode on contact. Rumors of such testing had circulated in the media for years, with various animal rights groups loudly protesting, and the Navy had always flatly denied engaging in any such activity. In the end Jolly Roger had been cancelled not because of bad publicity, but because of budgetary cutbacks, the impracticality of carrying around large aquariums aboard ships for any length of time, and the slowly dawning insight that trying to use unreliable sea mammals as living torpedoes in an age of laser-guided missiles was just a bit silly.

  But some people, obviously, still took the idea seriously, and those people were more than likely aboard a U.S. Navy vessel. It was always possible that the Pentagon had once again given Jolly Roger a green light, perhaps for very limited types of covert operations involving sabotage, but Jade seriously doubted it; she could not think of any such operation that a Navy SEAL could not perform better than a finned one. It was inconceivable to her that the Navy would reinitiate the program without Pentagon approval, for it would put all the personnel responsible, and ultimately even an admiral or two, at risk of courts martial. An ill-conceived program that killed sea mammals had it
self been killed but now Jolly Roger had apparently been resurrected, and Jade could not understand why.

  When she arrived home she was surprised to find her daughter waiting for her in the driveway. Fatima’s face, with its finely chiseled features, was clenched with worry, and her bright green eyes were clouded.

  “Hi, babe,” Jade said as she got out of her car and kissed the girl on the forehead. “What’s up?”

  “I need to talk to you, Mom.”

  “Of course.”

  “Alone, Mom. I tried to get Maxie to go out and play ball or something, but he’s afraid the other guys are going to pick on him again.” The girl paused and shook her head, then continued, “Maxie’s got real problems, Mom. He’s becoming a hermit. The kids at school push him around and call him names, like Jewboy one day and dirty Arab the next, and he just lets them get away with it. I don’t understand why he doesn’t just deck a couple of them. If I didn’t think it would only make matters worse, I’d punch them out. You’ve got to talk to him, Mom.”

  “I know Maxie has problems,” Jade said, averting her gaze so that Fatima could not see the worry in her own eyes. She took her daughter’s hand and started walking toward the back of the house. “Come on. Let’s take a walk by the river and talk about your problems.”

  They walked in silence across the back lawn, which merged with a sandy beach at the rear of Jade’s property, down to the river. From Albany to New York City the Hudson River was actually an estuary linked to the Atlantic Ocean, and the outgoing tide had exposed a two-mile stretch of shore. They headed north. Jade could feel the tension in her daughter and she wanted to probe it, but she thought it best to wait for Fatima to speak first.

  “Mom,” the girl said at last, looking out over the three-mile-wide expanse of the river toward the Westchester shore, “I’ve met a man, a very holy man, and I think he can change my life.”

  “You want your life changed so badly?”

  “Yes, Mom. I do.”

  The words, delivered with utter certainty and deep emotion, struck Jade in the heart like a physical blow, suddenly making her feel short of breath. But she concentrated on keeping her tone even as she asked, “Who is this man?”

  “His name is Yunis Dockowicz. He’s a Rebbe.”

  “You met Rabbi Dockowicz at schul?”

  “No. I heard about him at schul, and some of my friends took me to meet him. He and his followers came here from Israel a year ago. They’ve founded a community they call Hebron Nablus. It’s near Suffern.”

  “They’re Hasidim?”

  “They’re heredim—the God-fearing; they’re like Hasidim, but there are differences you wouldn’t understand. The Rebbe’s followers believe he’s the Mosiach. I talked to him for less than an hour, and … Mom, I know you’re going to say I’m crazy, but I think they’re right. I could feel in my heart that he’s the Son of God.”

  Jade abruptly stopped walked and took her hand from Fatima’s. She gripped her daughter’s elbow and turned her around so that they were facing each other. “Fatima, I can’t believe what I’m hearing!”

  “Mom, please just be quiet and listen!” The blood had drained from Fatima’s face, leaving her olive skin ashen. Her eyes were wide, filled with tears and painted with anguish. “There’s no easy way for me to say this, so I’m just going to have to come out and say it. I want to go to live in Hebron Nablus. Rebbe Dockowicz and his followers accept me as one of them, and he will arrange for me to go through a conversion and to the mikvah so that I’ll be accepted as a real Jew by everyone. I know that’s where I belong. It won’t cost you any money for me to go live there.”

  The pain that had been squeezing Jade’s heart suddenly exploded into rage and confusion that caused her stomach to churn. “It won’t cost me any money?! Are you out of your fucking mind?!”

  Fatima jerked her head back as if she had been struck in the face. Her lower lip trembled, but she did not cry, and when she spoke her tone was soft and even. “You’re not in the Navy any more, Mother. Even if you were, you shouldn’t talk to me like I’m some sailor.”

  The fury in Jade was gone as quickly as it had come, and in its place was a cold and empty place filling with hurt and a growing sense of helplessness and desperation as she stared into the face of the daughter she loved so much. “I know that, Fatima,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  “I have to go and live there, Mom. I know it’s what God wants for me.”

  “So now you talk to God?”

  “In my heart, yes. God really does speak to those who believe in Him.”

  All of the emotions Jade was feeling suddenly congealed into bitterness, and out of the bitterness came words. “You sound like one of those early morning televangelists with a bad toupee. You’re being ridiculous, Fatima.”

  Once again tears welled in the girl’s eyes and rolled down her cheeks, but Fatima made no move to brush them away. “That’s all you can ever do when you don’t understand how someone feels, Mom: be sarcastic. You can’t understand.”

  “Why?” Jade snapped. “Because I’m not Jewish? You think your father would have understood your wanting to leave home and go to live in an Hasidic community?”

  “I don’t know,” Fatima replied softly, raising her chin slightly. “He might have. He was Jewish.”

  Jade sighed. “Your father was about as Jewish as I am, babe, and that’s not very Jewish.”

  “But he was born a Jew, forever linked to his people. You’re a Moslem, so you can’t understand how Jews feel about needing to be with others of their own faith.”

  “I’m no more Moslem than I am Jewish, Fatima. I’m just me. Got it?”

  “That’s precisely my problem, Mom,” the girl said in a small, quavering voice that suddenly cracked. She sobbed and put her hands to the sides of her head as tears continued to stream down her face. “You got a me, but I don’t. I can’t find my me.”

  The words, throbbing with naked hurt and need, startled Jade, and for a moment she felt light-headed. “Oh, babe,” she said, extending her arms and stepping toward her daughter. “Fatima, I’m so sorry to hear you say that.”

  “Don’t, Mom,” Fatima said, taking a step backward and wrapping her arms around her body. “I don’t need to be held; I need to be heard. There’s more I need to say, and you’ve got to listen, even if you can’t understand.”

  Now Jade felt tears welling in her own eyes, and she quickly blinked them away as she dropped her arms to her sides. “I’m listening, Fatima,” she said quietly.

  “You’re a loner, just like Dad was. All the two of you ever needed was each other, but it still never seemed to bother you that much when you separated for months at a time from him, and from Maxie and me. I’m different. I need to belong to something—to God, to a culture. I need to be with people who believe as I do.”

  “Fatima, you have two magnificent, very rich cultures as part of your heritage.”

  “But, alone, I don’t feel as if I belong to either. I feel like the Jew and Arab in me are at war with each other all the time. It makes me feel like two people, which is the same as feeling like nobody. I have to be a Jew, with other Jews. I know in my heart that’s the only thing that will make me feel whole.”

  “Nobody’s trying to stop you from being a Jew, Fatima, and you already spend most of your time with Jews when you’re not in school. You can undergo official conversion and go to mikvah, if that’s what you want, without traipsing off to this Hebron Nablus. But you already are a Jew, not only because of the genetic and cultural heritage from your father but also because you want to be a Jew, and you believe as a Jew. God surely knows you’re a Jew, so what more do you need?”

  Jade paused, hoping to see some softening in Fatima’s attitude toward her, but the girl remained standing stiffly, her arms wrapped around her, staring at the sand at her feet. Jade desperately wanted to be close to her daughter, and it pierced her heart to know that Fatima apparently wanted exactly the opposite. Still fighting back
tears, she continued, “And you’re a serious Jew, to boot. You get straight A’s in school, and then you go to schul four afternoons a week to study Torah and Hebrew and you get straight A’s there. Have I ever discouraged you? Have I ever even hinted that you shouldn’t be a Jew, or anything else you wanted to be?”

  The girl slowly shook her head. “It’s not enough, Mom. I can’t be happy here. I want everything in my life and everything around me to be as Jewish as I feel I am. That’s why I have to go and live in Hebron Nablus. It’s the only place where I can be happy and not feel torn apart.”

  Jade abruptly stepped forward, lifted her daughter’s chin and looked into her eyes. Her own eyes were dry now, and her sharper tone gave no indication of the continued ache in her heart. “Now you listen to me, Fatima. This is hard for me to say, so I guess I’m just going to have to come out and say it. You have a fine mind, stunning physical beauty, and a potentially bright future doing just about anything you want to do. For you to want to throw away that future, to invite the stunting of your intellect and the squashing of your soul by running off to live in some vacuum tube of a community, is way beyond stupid. God gave you a good brain, so God must surely want you to do more with it than worry about keeping a kosher home and taking ritual baths after your periods to keep all the men in town happy.”