Never Again

by Harvey A. Schwartz

  “I was hired by your father,” he said. “I don’t know if I’m the best. I’ll tell you one thing, though. I’m not bought by anybody. And I’ll tell you another thing. You better understand that you are in the deepest hole of your lifetime, and it goes downhill from here. I’m walking out in an hour and going home to my wife and son. You are going to be behind bars tonight. You are most likely going to be behind bars when you are sixty years old.”

  Another one, Shapiro thought. If only I could have a case without a jerkball client. Hundreds of clients, and still barely a handful I’d invite for dinner. And here was jerkball number 1,001.

  Mandelbaum sat facing Shapiro.

  “What is this shit case? I didn’t kill anybody. All I did was jump off that stinking boat when they told me to jump. How can they charge me with killing anybody?”

  “What you are charged with, sir, is conspiracy to commit murder.” Shapiro looked through his papers. “This is the charge—actually one of ten charges, all the same, one for each dead Coast Guardsman.”

  Shapiro read from the document in the sing-song rhythm legal pleadings seemed to call for.

  “You have been charged with conspiring with other unknown persons to illegally enter the United States and in furtherance of that conspiracy to commit acts of violence, to wit murder and assault with intent to commit murder, and that in furtherance of this conspiracy you or others with whom you acted in concert did commit acts of violence including assault with intent to murder and murder in the first degree.”

  He looked up at his new client, searching for any sign Mandelbaum appreciated that he’d come to a fork in the road of his life and was heading down the wrong path.

  “You had the misfortune, Mr. Mandelbaum, of being the only person from either ship who Boston police managed to retrieve from the harbor. I expect that the other four thousand people will be difficult to hide for very long and that you will soon have company. But for today, at least, you are the test case. Tell me, Mr. Mandelbaum, how did you come to be on that ship?”

  “I didn’t come to be on the ship,” the young man said angrily. “I got on that ship to stay alive. The fucking Arabs were killing people all over the place. I was lucky as hell to get on that boat. Wait, before I answer your questions, you tell me first, how can they do this to me? I’m an American. Why didn’t the Marines come to save me? Why did I have to spend three weeks on that ship like some kind of refugee?”

  “From what your father told me, you moved to Israel and you became an Israeli citizen. And you were in the import-export business there? Is that correct?”

  “Sure I moved there, but I was born here. I’m an American, dammit, I went to school here, I watched Sesame Street as a kid, I know all about Homer and Bart, I cried when John Kennedy Jr. got killed in the airplane crash. I saw all those dumb Disney movies when I was a kid. My dad even voted for Reagan once. Listen to me, don’t I sound like an American? Look, I grew up in Fair Lawn, fucking New Jersey. What is this foreigner crap they keep calling me?” The young man paced around the small room, working himself into a rage. “I’m as American as you are, right?”

  He stopped talking and sat in the chair, all evidence of cockiness evaporated, the enormity of his situation slowly sinking in.

  “They’ll kill me in this jail. Get me out of here. Get me out of here before they kill me. Or worse.”

  His head fell to the armrest. Shapiro watched the young man’s body shaking, heard him crying, gave him a few moments to regain control, placed his hand on the young man’s shoulder and shook him gently.

  “I only have an hour with you. We have a lot of ground to cover. Let’s get to work.”

  Within minutes of leaving the jailhouse, Shapiro was confronted by eager news reporters. Shapiro didn’t mind; in fact he reveled in the attention. News coverage was good for business, and certainly for his ego.

  “Mr. Shapiro, do you have any personal hesitation about defending a foreign national who killed American servicemen on American soil?” The reporter attempted to inject a sense of righteousness into her questions about Shapiro’s representation of the only person—so far— arrested for escaping from the two ships.

  “It has not been established that my client killed anybody.” Shapiro looked directly at the camera, not at the reporter holding the microphone in his face. He knew to look directly at the camera; the camera was the audience, not the interviewer.

  That evening at dinner, Sally Spofford Shapiro turned off the TV. She usually liked her husband’s celebrity, but not this time. America was threatened by intruders, by murderers of the ten coastguardsmen and her husband was representing the worst of them.

  “Please, Ben, please. Can’t you skip this one, just once, for me? I’ve never asked this before.”

  “I don’t see why this case is any different,” he said. “I’ve represented unpleasant folks before. What’s the big deal this time? What I said on TV was true. I’m a lawyer. Sometimes I represent people who have done bad things. That’s my job. It gives me the greatest stories to tell at parties.” He smiled at her.

  Sally stood, looking down at him. “This is different,” she whispered. “Different. It feels un-American. Yes, un-American, Ben. I’ve never asked you this before but . . . but this time this is important to me. Please, once, this time, let another knight slay this dragon.”

  She sighed, exhaling like a balloon deflating. Those were her best shots, and they’d missed.

  Ben looked at his plate, chasing cherry tomatoes with his fork while he searched for the right words. Or for the right effect. Sally knew her husband, knew he was always performing. In the midst of a fight with a courtroom opponent. In the midst of a fight with her. He lived his life onstage—at least, in his mind he did.

  “You’re right,” he finally said, speaking without raising his head from the plate. “This one is different. This one I can’t refuse.”

  “Because they are Jews?” she whispered.

  He looked up. “Because I’m a Jew,” he said. He stood up and held both hands out to her. Reluctantly, she played her part, held her own hands out to him, then leaned her head against his chest, feeling his arms wrap around her, feeling one hand slide down to her buttock and squeeze. It had been a while. Her head dropped to his shoulder. He pushed her out at arm’s length.

  “Let me tell you about the SS St. Louis,” Shapiro said slowly. “You know about Kristallnacht?”

  “Of course I’ve heard of Kristallnacht. Some Nazi thing, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah, some Nazi thing,” Shapiro replied. “After Kristallnacht, the handwriting was on the wall for German Jews. They knew they had to get out, but getting out had gotten harder, and, it turned out, getting into any other country also became harder.

  “The St. Louis was a German passenger ship. Nine-hundred-thirty-seven Jews managed to bribe their way on board. The ship sailed to Cuba, where the Jews expected to wait until they could get into the US.

  “But it didn’t work out that way. The Cubans wanted half a million dollars to let the Jews off the ship. They couldn’t raise the money and the ship sailed for Florida, a ship with nearly a thousand Jews, old people, women, children. Things were so desperate the passengers formed a suicide committee to keep people from killing themselves, they were so afraid of being sent back to Germany. Remember, this is 1938. Franklin Roosevelt, the great liberal, is president. So guess where the St. Louis landed in the United States.”

  “Stop. Enough,” Sally said, her voice rising. “I don’t want to hear about Nazis. Nazis have nothing to do with what’s happening now. This is America. There aren’t Nazis here. Nazis were history. I don’t know where the ship landed, Ben,” she said, acid slipping into her tone, “but I am sure you are aching to tell me, so go right ahead.”

  “Nowhere. That’s where in the United States of America the St. Louis passengers got off that ship. Nowhere. We shut the door. Wouldn’t let them in. The St. Louis sailed back and forth near Miami and we sent the Coast Guard
to make sure nobody tried to swim to shore. So guess where the thousand Jews went? Back to Europe. The St. Louis delivered its passengers right back to the Holocaust. To the camps.

  “Two years later Congress voted to change the immigration laws to allow twenty thousand additional people into this country. Guess who they were. Jews? No, they were twenty thousand English school children sent here by their parents to keep them safe. Don’t you think the St. Louis passengers could have used a good lawyer?”

  She knew better than to answer. She turned her back and walked away from her husband, leaving him alone in the living room, thinking he’d won another argument.

  CHAPTER 10

  How many “cousins” paying surprise visits, “cousins” who spoke little English, could suburban Boston accept? Four thousand frightened people could not be hidden for long, no matter how quixotic their rescuers hoped to be. The cleverest ones landed on shore and never stopped running, catching planes and trains and buses heading anywhere, ducking police and immigration authorities as best they could. Most of the people off the two ships, however, were smuggled into finished basements and attic bedrooms in houses in Boston suburbs.

  These houses were not fitted with secret doors and hidden rooms like Anne Frank lived in. No underground railroad had been established to smuggle illegal Jewish immigrants. Instead, Jewish doctors, lawyers, businessmen, woken from their beds by late-night telephone calls, had to make snap decisions.

  “Can you take somebody in?” the caller would ask. “Just for a day or two until we sort things out. There’s really no risk to you. Nothing will happen to you. Don’t worry.”

  How could they refuse, just for a day or two?

  Cold, wet, terrified, hungry people, sometimes an entire family, were dropped at nice houses in nice neighborhoods, 4,000 people scattered and hidden before the sun rose the next morning. They were treated not quite as guests, not quite as fugitives. They weren’t foreign exchange students, an accepted category of foreigners who showed up once in a while. They certainly weren’t au pairs; neither were they foreign business visitors. They certainly couldn’t be fugitives from the law. Good people would not hide criminals.

  People didn’t know how to handle these sudden visitors. Could the neighbors be told or not? Did they distinguish between Jewish neighbors and non-Jewish neighbors? Were they only staying at Jewish homes? Suddenly the distinction between Jewish friends and non-Jewish friends took on a new significance.

  Roselyn Lowenstein was called to the principal’s office at Swampscott High School the day after the escape from the ships.

  “Roselyn, I have some serious questions to ask you,” Principal Warren said.

  Roselyn was a National Honor Society member and co-captain of the school’s state championship debating team. Principal Warren knew Roselyn and her parents well. Roselyn was never called to the principal’s office for causing trouble. This time, however, she was nervous, fidgeting while Principal Warren spoke to her.

  “Roselyn, somebody told me you were talking at lunch about visitors at your house. I’ll be blunt with you. I heard you told people you have a family from those ships hiding at your house. Is that true?”

  For a seventeen-year-old girl who should have been worrying about whether she should apply early decision to Harvard because, after all, it was Harvard, or to Columbia, because imagine going to the Columbia School of Journalism, hiding illegal refugees was the last problem Roselyn Lowenstein expected to have to face. She did not want to deal with it now. In fact, she did not want to give up her bedroom for four people who barely spoke English. And Mr. Warren wasn’t the enemy. He was okay. He’d promised to write a great college recommendation letter for her.

  “It’s a secret. We’re not supposed to tell,” she whispered, laying the drama on thickly.

  Warren removed a yellow filing folder from a desk drawer. Peeking, Roselyn could see her name was typed across the tab.

  “I have a very important letter to write for you,” the principal said, looking closely at the young woman. She stared at him for no more than five seconds, then glanced again at the file folder.

  “Okay. It’s only for a few days. Maybe the school newspaper should be covering this. Lots of other kids have them at their houses, too, you know.” He could hear the excitement in her voice.

  Warren watched the local TV news while eating breakfast that morning. He watched the bodies of young coastguardsmen lifted from the water. He watched footage of the flaming remains of the two patrol boats. Like many people, he was ambivalent about letting the refugees off those two ships. Sure, they needed someplace to go, but hadn’t the US just deported all those South Americans and Haitians and Asians? You couldn’t start making exceptions for white people; fair was fair.

  And now ten Americans were murdered by these Jews. That sealed it for Warren.

  When Roselyn left his office to return giggling to her Spanish class, where she huddled with half a dozen friends who also had instant relatives at home, Warren searched the telephone book for the Massachusetts State Police number, picked up the telephone and dialed quickly.

  “I don’t know how many other families are also hiding people,” he told Detective Lieutenant Francis O’Brien, “but there is an awful lot of whispering in the halls, and it’s mostly the Jewish kids doing it. I suspect there are a lot of them in town, a lot of them. So what are you going to do about this?”

  CHAPTER 11

  Lt.Chaim Levi applied the last brushstrokes of WEST System epoxy to the water storage tank under the main cabin settee, then scrambled up the cabin ladder into the boat’s cockpit, drawing deep breaths of fresh air after inhaling epoxy fumes in the closed cabin all morning. He regretted losing the forty gallons of water storage from the starboard water tank; he’d have to find someplace to put collapsible plastic water bags for the crossing, but he was terrified of what filled the tank now.

  This warhead, alone among Israel’s diminutive nuclear arsenal, was designed for use by a commando squad, perhaps one infiltrated into, say, Tehran. In a truck. The tube-shaped warhead was three feet long and eighteen inches across. He’d cut the water tank open, then sealed it with fiberglass and epoxy. It held water again, but Levi did not want to drink it. He was careful to leave no inspection port in the fiberglass. The tank would have to be cut open to find the warhead inside. Levi expected no customs inspector would be willing to do that much damage to such an expensive boat.

  Before sealing the weapon inside the water tank, Reuben and Levi spent a morning with a young man whose English and Hebrew were equally interrupted by fits of nervous coughing. This man, a physics graduate of Hebrew University whose newly sunburned face was the recent payback from years spent mostly underground at the Dimona facility, carefully explained the workings of the arming device and the detonator. He was obviously proud.

  “Even a child could use it,” he said. “It was my design the government selected as the standard detonator for nuclear field munitions.”

  “Field munitions?” Levi asked. “What are nuclear field munitions?”

  The technician gave Reuben an exasperated look.

  “Are we really giving this man access to the device?” he asked. She nodded.

  “Nuclear field munitions are small nuclear devices designed to be carried by jeep, boat or helicopter,” he explained slowly, as if speaking to a child. “There are unique problems in designing the detonator for field munitions.”

  “Why not just a simple clock?” Levi asked. “Or a button to push while you kiss your ass goodbye. Why are these any different from detonators for normal bombs?”

  “Do I have to go through this with this man?” the technician asked Reuben.

  She waved her hand, her impatience showing.

  “Because,” he said, “with nuclear devices you only want them to detonate when you want them to detonate. There is always the possibility, slim as it might be, that these devices could fall into the wrong hands and then—”

  He stopped i
n mid-sentence, realization clouding his expression as he recalled what happened to Tel Aviv.

  “I suppose we might not have made the security quite as good as necessary.”

  Levi looked at the young man and shuddered. Scientists like this one made the bomb they used in Tel Aviv, he thought.

  “Air-dropped bombs have fail-safes so they only detonate under specific conditions of acceleration and altitude, conditions that don’t apply to field munitions,” he said. “So on this device the timer can be set anywhere from one hundred hours to one second. Two arming codes must be entered on the keypad first, followed by the time setting, followed by the timing code. That sequence sets the trigger. Reentry of all three codes in the proper order stops the timer and disarms the device.

  “Of course, you have to first insert the authorization card before entering the codes.” He looked at Reuben as she removed a Chemical Bank of New York Visa card from a chain around her neck.

  Reuben looked at Levi, then at the scientist. She inserted the Visa card into a slot. Levi placed his hand on her wrist and held it away from the keypad.

  “Now what would happen,” he asked with a smile, “if you have a heart attack after you entered the codes and before you have time to reenter them? Where would that leave me?”

  Reuben smiled. “It would leave you to join me in heaven,” she answered. “Only I know these codes. It’s going to stay that way.”

  She armed the bomb and disarmed it, twice, confirming that the detonator activated each time.

  “Load it into the boat,” she told Levi. “And your job is done,” she told the scientist. “Give me your card.”

  He handed her a Visa card identical to the one dangling from the chain around her neck.

  “Remember, this never happened,” Reuben told the pale man. “You never met me. You will tell no one. If you do, we will find you. Not every member of Mossad was in Tel Aviv.”