Again Shapiro nodded to them.
“Yes, Your Honor,” each man said clearly, one after the other. The men remained standing silently.
O’Sullivan took a step backward as if struck by a sudden gale-force wind.
“Mr. Court Officer,” he intoned. “Take these men into custody. I have already called the Coast Guard to escort them back where they came from. And for God’s sake, be careful, be careful. Don’t let them escape again.”
When O’Sullivan turned his back to the courtroom, the court officer looked at Shapiro and shrugged. The three men filed out of the courtroom, meekly following the court officer.
When they were gone, O’Sullivan turned again to face Shapiro. “I would no sooner prohibit the forces of our government from taking any step necessary to safeguard our homeland than I would order the Lord to stop the flowers from blooming.
“Mr. Shapiro, you yourself should ponder long and deep what you were about to ask this court to do and what it would have meant to you had I not taken this matter from your hands. Ponder, Mr. Shapiro. This is no time for your kind of fish to swim against the tide.”
The judge pivoted so quickly that his black robe swirled around him. He walked straight to his chamber door, leaving the courtroom in silence until the reporters surrounded Shapiro, asking if he would appeal the decision that was apparently made before he’d spoken a word in defense of his clients.
Ben Shapiro struggled to maintain his composure. He’d won cases and he’d lost cases and he accepted that was how the law worked. What Shapiro could not accept was when prejudice conquered reason, when the law became a cudgel for beating people down rather than a scalpel for excising what was wrong.
What did the tzadik, the righteous man he yearned to be, do when his hands were tied, Shapiro had begun to ask himself. Shapiro had not found an alternative to the legal system, but he reluctantly suspected that such an alternative existed.
CHAPTER 7
The Spofford family joked that they had lived in poverty in this country for three generations. The first three. The succeeding five fluctuated between comfortable and wealthy.
Marrying a Jew was not quite the social suicide it would have been two or even one generation previously, especially since Sally Spofford had inherited a Bohemian reputation from Grandmother Bo Peep, a name earned at prep school when her girlfriends followed her like sheep. And Ben Shapiro wasn’t too Jewish. He looked almost British sometimes, dressed the right way. And he was a Boston lawyer. Not an ambulance chaser or divorce lawyer. Most of Sally’s family wasn’t quite sure what he did except get his name in the Boston Globe once in a while for representing a criminal. It was assumed those were charity cases he took to please a judge.
Sally was not especially charmed when she’d first met Ben. President H. W. Bush was gearing up to invade Iraq. Ben was against the war. They met when Sally almost stepped on him lying on the ground, blocking the entrance to the student union building at Wesleyan University. Sally was late for an interview for a summer position with publisher Houghton Mifflin and gingerly stepped on Shapiro’s chest to get by.
Raytheon Corp. was interviewing for summer interns too, prompting the anti-war student protest. When Sally emerged from the interview, Ben was being dragged away by campus police. Their next encounter was some days later. Sally was sitting by herself reading when Shapiro sat next to her.
“Are you going to apologize to the babies your new employer bombs?” he asked. “Or didn’t you get the job?”
“What in the world are you talking about? And who the hell are you?” Sally was used to boys trying to pick her up. Her long, straight blonde hair and athletic build burdened her through adolescence with the problem of which boys to go out with and which to turn down. “A book publisher burning babies?”
They’d spent the rest of the evening arguing, he trying to condense a complete history of America’s foreign policy toward developing nations, she defending this country as the freest and finest place on earth and why didn’t he leave if he felt America was so awful. They continued the argument over pizza at midnight and scrambled eggs in the morning.
They were married the September following graduation. She proofread historical novels at Houghton Mifflin in Boston while he attended Boston University Law School. He worked for a small general practice firm after graduation. It was two years before he earned as much as his secretary. He grabbed the opportunity to work for the district attorney’s office when a new, surprisingly liberal district attorney was elected. For the first time, he would be earning a salary at least at the bleacher level of the ballpark of what a lawyer was expected to earn.
It was four years before Sally’s Adventures of Ish the Fish series was published. Six books later, her income did not quite match his, but it was enough so that she was satisfied with herself and content with her life, except for one thing. Despite years of writing for children, it was not until she was forty-two years old herself, and long after she’d given up hope of having a child, that miraculously, or so it seemed, Adam was born.
They sold their city condo and bought a small house in a seaside town north of Boston, tucked at the end of a dead-end street, their backyard abutting a salt marsh divided by a tidal creek winding out to a beach and the sea. They agreed Adam would go to Hebrew school when he was older, that he would celebrate Christmas and Easter now and that they would worry about the problem later. Sally ate buttered bagels religiously on Sunday mornings, although she could never get used to the concept of having smoked fish for breakfast.
To her, Ben’s being Jewish was one more odd fact about their relationship. It didn’t hurt anything and it didn’t really make much difference. That was why she was so surprised to see him consumed by the tragic events in Israel. He was aroused by America’s initial openhearted reaction, and without even asking her he wrote a check in an amount far greater than she would have approved the night of the All-Star Fundraiser for Israel. After the Damascus bombing, she listened to him scream at the television as American hearts hardened and the tide of public opinion turned against Israel.
Is being Jewish keeping him from seeing the burned Syrian babies? she wondered.
Sitting on the floor in their living room, with Adam coloring dinosaurs nearby, she saw the fire from his college days rising again in her husband and knew she had long ago outgrown that kind of passion in herself.
“Turn off the TV,” she said hopefully.
“No, you go ahead,” Shapiro replied, without looking away from the television. “I want to watch CNN a bit more. Can you believe we aren’t sending troops? We invade every two-bit country on the planet. Why don’t we send troops when millions of Jews are dying? Where are the Marines when we need them? And those ships in Boston harbor. I’m going to lose that case. Why don’t we let those poor people come ashore?”
She carried a drowsy Adam up to his bedroom, smiling to herself at her husband calling for the Marines, remembering the man she’d walked over to get to a job interview, a man who would sooner have called for help from a magician than the United States Marines. Has he changed that much, she wondered. Or is it me? Being married to a Jew had been a quirk, she realized, with very little downside to it. She feared that was about to change, and she did not know how she would react.
She put her son to bed, then went to bed herself, ducking her head under the pillow to cover the sound of CNN.
CHAPTER 8
Chaim Levi’s plans to return to Israel were cut short when he saw more Egyptian naval ships in Israeli waters than he thought were floating on all the world’s oceans. Instead, he came up with a new plan to sail Swift west “into the sunset.” Or “to America and freedom.” Maybe the Caribbean, maybe New York, maybe Miami Beach—mystical places he’d heard about from American tourists.
He knew his time in Marbella, on the southern Spanish coast, was limited. Eventually an inquisitive police officer would wonder about the American boat tied to the pier and would realize that it had not alway
s been there and that he should look into it. Levi’s paranoia notched upward when he’d returned to the boat from a grocery expedition and found the cabin subtly rearranged, as if somebody had been on board.
The sail from Greece to Spain was easy enough, stocked with cans of Greek provisions and the water tanks topped off. The boat had charts covering the entire Mediterranean and, while Levi’s navigation was rudimentary, he knew that if he sailed far enough west he would reach Spain, and he was not too particular as to where in Spain he wound up. Besides, with the global positioning system on the boat, navigating did not involve much more than moving a cursor across the screen to set his course.
Tied to the pier in Marbella, sitting in the boat’s cockpit, sipping a vodka and orange juice and studying a World Book Atlas he’d found in a secondhand book store, Levi suddenly looked up when he became aware of a woman standing on the pier, blocking the sunlight.
The sun behind her turned her red hair into a blazing halo and obscured her face completely.
Levi smiled tentatively.
“Shalom,” she said.
“Shalom,” he answered automatically, then realized what he’d said. Heart beating rapidly, he considered diving overboard and swimming for his life, or leaping to the pier and running.
She was alone, he observed, or at least he did not see anybody with her. Play it cool, he thought. Lifting his glass, Levi said, “Would you like to come aboard? For a drink? Or a chat? Or whatever?”
As she climbed over the stern railing into the cockpit, he saw her face for the first time.
I’ve seen her before, Levi thought with relief. The hair is different, but the face is familiar. He watched her hop from the dock onto the boat’s deck. He smiled. And the body. I should remember that. She knows me; we’ve met before. What he’d first seen as a threatening situation was a familiar problem he’d lived with as long as he could remember.
Levi had no memory for faces. Shopping for clothes, Levi was always startled to see himself in the full-length mirrors. Not tall, not short. Thick, dark curly hair. Always tan from being on the water. Good build. Big Jewish nose. Not a bad-looking guy, he thought. Is that really me? Levi knew he’d recognize the redhead eventually. He guessed she was probably in Spain on a two-week vacation from Chicago or someplace. Her name will come to me, he thought. Probably someone I gave sailing lessons to.
“Imagine us meeting again,” he said, smiling at the woman as he stepped onto his boat. “It seems like such a long, long time.”
“We’ve never met,” she said, the smile dropping from her face, her eyes narrowing. “Save the charm for someone else. But we have business to discuss. Does this boat of yours have a cabin, someplace private?”
“Sure, welcome aboard,” he invited.
Sitting facing each other on the cushioned berths inside the boat’s cabin, surrounded by New England craftsmen’s woodworking, the teak and holly cabin floor, the white pine cabin walls, the tiled fireplace, Levi waited anxiously for her to speak first.
She looked around the cabin slowly and spoke for the first time in English rather than Hebrew.
“You’ve done well for yourself since the death of Eretz Yisrael, haven’t you, Lt. Chaim Levi?” she said slowly as her eyes swung to meet his. She noticed the shock in his face, all pretense of suave confidence evaporated.
Her right hand came out of her pants pocket and she swung his gold-colored dog tags on their chain in front of his face.
“Lt. Chaim Levi of the Israeli Navy. Do you call this vessel a motor torpedo boat, or is it a submarine? I’m afraid I have not kept up with the state of the art of Israel’s warship industry.”
“Okay, okay,” he muttered, avoiding her eyes. “Who are you? What do you want? You’re an American, so what are you, a private detective? Is that what you are? The American wants his boat back? Fine. Take it. It’s in better condition now than when I borrowed it.”
“Lt. Levi, I’m not a detective and I’m not, or at least not any longer, an American. I am, in fact, your commanding officer.” She tossed the dog tags into his lap and laughed. “Just when do you think you were discharged from the navy?”
She fixed her eyes on his, watching for the man’s reaction.
“Certain people working with me have had their eyes on you here. They searched this boat of yours. If you want to get rid of your identification tags, you’ll have to find a better place to hide them than under your mattress. Lieutenant, your country still needs you.” For the first time she smiled and leaned back on the berth, “and you seem to be captain of the entire Israeli naval war fleet. By the way, my name is Debra Reuben.”
“Do I salute you or kiss you?” Levi asked. He looked at her closely. “Reuben? I know you. The one from the television who went into the government. I thought you did things with artists or tourists or something like that, not with the navy.”
“Today,” she said, “we do what we can.”
“With what?” he asked. “Our country is gone. Our people have been exterminated. We have no navy, no air force, no troops. Fight back with what?”
“With what we have,” she said slowly, looking him squarely in the eyes. “We could start World War III, and then get our land back.”
As she explained a carefully redacted version about Dimona and what was stored in the warehouse ten miles up the Spanish coast, Levi realized with a stunning certainty that his plans for drinking piña coladas on Caribbean beaches would be put on hold for a while—a long while.
CHAPTER 9
The decision was made at the highest levels of government. No exceptions. Not for any refugees. Not even for Jewish refugees. The two ships were ordered to leave. They would be escorted by an Egyptian warship on a visit to New York back to the new nation of Palestine.
Before dawn the next morning, two rocket-propelled grenades dashed from the Iliad and three from the Ionian Star, turning both Coast Guard thirty-eight-footers into flaming wrecks that quickly sank to the bottom of the harbor, killing all ten on board the two boats.
Dozens of small boats—even canoes from the Charles River—dashed out from the nearby shore. The boats filled with people jumping into the water from the ships’decks. Once loaded with wet passengers, the small boats disappeared into the darkness. Fireboats speeding out from the inner harbor to help the Coast Guard vessels ignored the dozens of small boats, which the firefighters assumed were shoreside residents out to search for survivors.
By noon, the Iliad and the Ionian Star were empty, even their crews deciding perhaps this was a good time to look up relatives in Chicago.
Newspaper accounts of the attack on the Coast Guard boats and the escape of the refugees used a new phrase to define America’s latest enemy. JEWISH TERRORISTS KILL 10 ON COAST GUARD SHIPS, PASSENGERS ESCAPE INTO HIDING, the Boston Globe headline said.
JEWS KILL AMERICANS was the Boston Herald front page, implying there was a difference between the two groups.
Howie Mandelbaum did not think of himself as a violent criminal. Neither did his fellow residents of the Charles Street Jail, a Dickensian building leaning against one of the outbuildings of the Massachusetts General Hospital. The jail was a model penal institution when it was opened in 1857, shaped, as were classic cathedrals, like a cross. The central vault was an open space, 100 feet long on each side, five stories tall. The four stubby arms of the cross were short, U-shaped hallways open to the central vault. In turn, the hallways were lined with row after row of steel bars separating the hallways from the cells.
The benevolent theory, at least in 1857, was that each cell was open to the central vault so that every guard could see into every cell and every prisoner had the benefit of the light and fresh air from that central vault. What that also meant was every inmate could see every other inmate. No cell was separated from any other cell by anything but steel bars and open air. All that prevented any of the 687 inmates of the jail from speaking with any other inmate was the strength of his lungs and his ability to make himself hea
rd over the roar that reverberated through the central vault. On top of the inmates’shouting were the shouts of guards telling prisoners to shut up, and radios and televisions turned to maximum volume to be heard at all.
The cells were meant to hold one inmate. Despite the order of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts enforcing that intention, Mandelbaum shared his accommodations. His roommate found Mandelbaum’s whimpering funny.
“Never heard of a Jew being anything but a bookie, Jew Boy,” said Sean Connery, like the James Bond guy. “And you don’t look like no bookie. What happened, pretty boy, get caught with some coke on the front seat of your Bimmer when you ran a red light?”
Connery was interrupted by a banging on the cell bars.
“He came on the Jew boats. He was fished out of the hahbah.” Bobbie Flynn, a corrections officer, came from the same Charlestown project as Connery. “But leave him be, lad. This here is a foreign agent who came to our country and is committing crimes, serious crimes, before he even steps foot on American soil. He’s facing murder charges, ten murder charges. Ten dead Coasties in Boston Hahbah. This must be one big tough Israeli Jew boy.
“Your lawyer’s here to see you. Come with me,” Flynn said to Mandelbaum.
Flynn escorted Mandelbaum to a small room on the ground floor. The young man sat in one of two chairs in the room—chairs abandoned from some Boston public school, writing platforms on the right armrests. Years of initials and obscenities, from bored high school students and terrified jail inmates, covered the writing platforms. Ben Shapiro sat in the other chair, his briefcase open.
“If you are the court-appointed lawyer the judge said I’d get, you might as well leave,” Mandelbaum told Shapiro, speaking in the same tone he’d use with a surly waiter. “My father is hiring me the best lawyer money can buy.”
Shapiro looked up slowly, then held his hand out without rising from the chair.
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