Never Again

by Harvey A. Schwartz

  All eyes in the room were locked on the young woman taped to the board on top of the table. Her reaction was completely unexpected.

  She broke into loud, uncontrolled laughter.

  “You people are out of your minds,” she said. “I don’t know anything about atom bombs or about anything being smuggled anywhere. I got onto that ship to save my ass. That’s all I know about anything.”

  The young woman locked her eyes onto the older woman. Dr. Bayard shook her head slowly.

  “You disappoint me, Dvora,” she said. “I told you I would not give you a second chance.” She turned to one of the soldiers. “Tape her mouth, then bring the equipment in.”

  The soldier tore a six-inch strip of duct tape and placed it over the young woman’s mouth, careful not to cover her nostrils. He went out the door and returned pushing a cart. Bayard took a three-foot, red rubber hose from the cart.

  “It hurts me so much to have to do this to you, dear Dvora.” The doctor turned to the two soldiers. “Take the cinder block from the cart. Lift the other end of the board and put the cinder block under it. I want her feet elevated. Then come back to this end.”

  The two soldiers followed her instructions. The young woman’s feet were higher than her head as she lay on her back on the wooden board. The rubber hose dangled from Bayard’s hands just above the young woman’s vision, swinging in front of her face from time to time. All signs of Dvora’s cockiness had disappeared. Her eyes opened wide in fear.

  Where is the washcloth? she wondered. This isn’t waterboarding.

  “Hold her head tightly,” Dr. Bayard barked to the soldiers. She leaned forward, holding one end of the rubber hose and snaked it into the young woman’s right nostril, causing the woman to gag as the hose went in at least twelve inches, passing down her throat.

  “That wasn’t too bad, now was it, Dvora?” Bayard said. Turning to one of the soldiers, she said, “Put that plastic funnel in the end of the hose and hold it up high.” To the other soldier she said, “Push the cart over here. Dip me one cup of water, please. We’ll start with that.”

  The soldier dipped a plastic cup into a pail of water on the cart. He went to hand the water to the doctor, thinking she was thirsty. She smiled at him and pointed at the hose.

  The soldier poured the water into the funnel, watching as it drained into the young woman’s nose and down her throat. Her body spasmed with gasping as her throat filled with water. She was unable to swallow because her head was lowered. She was terrified to inhale, knowing the water would fill her lungs. The tape over her mouth prevented her from spitting the water out. Her eyes went white with terror and she attempted to thrash from side to side but could not move because of the duct tape wound around her and the board.

  “Dip me another cup,” Dr. Bayard said to the soldier. He again looked to the interrogator, who looked at Dr. Bayard expectantly, then, seeing only impatience, shook his head in the affirmative. The soldier held the cup of water near the funnel, waiting for instructions.

  The young woman’s eyes began to roll upwards, leaving a startling amount of white showing in her wide-open eyes. Dr. Bayard leaned forward and whispered to the woman again.

  “Are you ready to talk with me now, Dvora?” she asked softly.

  The young woman reacted with enthusiasm, nodding up and down vigorously, life seeming to return to her, mumbles coming from her sealed mouth.

  “Wonderful,” Bayard said.

  The soldiers lifted the young woman, still taped to the board, off the desk and stood her against the wall. She gasped and coughed, spitting and swallowing water at the same time. When she caught her breath she glared at Bayard.

  “I thought you were going to kill me, you bitch,” she whispered.

  The doctor stepped in front of the young woman, who was still bound to the board leaning against the wall.

  “But that’s the point of this medical procedure, my dear,” she said. “So, tell me, who is this man who brought that big bomb to the United States?”

  “The absolute God’s honest truth, Doctor, is that I don’t know anything about any atom bombs. I really and truly don’t. I admit I’m in the army, even in the special forces. I’ll tell you all about how we sank those Coast Guard boats. I’ll even tell you I fired one of the RPGs. Or all of them. I’ll tell you everything I know. But I really and truly don’t know anything about atom bombs. I don’t. I don’t.” The woman now looked defiant. “You can pour as much water as you want into me. I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

  Bayard shook her head. “You disappoint Dr. Bayard. Now I am going to have to do that all over again. And you know that this time you will tell me the truth. Please, Dvora, don’t make me do this to you again.”

  The young woman was silent, then she spoke in a voice barely above a whisper. “I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

  “Put her back on the desk,” Bayard said to the soldiers as she took the rubber hose in her hand. This time, the young woman did not resist, and before the tape was placed over her mouth, she softly said the first words of the ancient prayer, “Sh’ma Yisrael Adonai Elohaynu . . .”

  As before, the young woman gagged and choked when the water entered her throat. Her body jerked against the duct tape. She rocked from side to side on the desktop.

  “Pour in another cup, slowly this time,” the doctor ordered.

  The water drained down the hose but seemed to have no effect on the woman, who went limp, her eyes rolled upwards, only the whites showing.

  “Shit,” Bayard said as she pulled the stethoscope from over her shoulder, placed the ear cups into her ears and placed the end against the woman’s chest. She tore the tape from the woman’s mouth. The woman did not move. Dr. Bayard leaned down again, placing her stethoscope on the woman’s chest.

  “Shit, shit . . . she’s dead.”

  The Echo Team interrogator remained alone in the room for several minutes, his mind racing. Leavenworth, he thought. Use torture and you’ll rot in Leavenworth, he’d been trained.

  He walked quickly from the interrogation cell to the Echo Team office. He sat at a computer and found a file labeled Interrogation Room 3. He slid a DVD into the computer’s drive and copied the interrogation room file onto the DVD, removed it from the computer and placed the DVD in his jacket pocket, then walked to his bunk to lie down and stare at the ceiling.

  I won’t be the one going to Leavenworth, he thought.

  CHAPTER 42

  Despite having sailed a small boat across the Atlantic Ocean, despite having escaped from a nuclear disaster in his homeland, Levi was terrified at the thought of driving on American roads to an American city. That he had no US driver’s license was the least of his concerns. He’d long since abandoned his Israeli license on the assumption that being caught with no license was safer than being stopped with an Israeli license.

  American drivers scared him.

  His only experience with American drivers was in occasional trips on the back roads near Brooklin. These roads were narrow, barely wide enough for two cars to pass in either direction, and heavily crowned in the center so snowmelt would run off and not accumulate to freeze when the temperature dropped.

  Undeterred, Mainers drove as if they were on eight-lane superhighways, tailgating anybody cautious enough to dawdle within ten miles per hour of the speed limit. He insisted that Reuben accompany him on a test drive before he felt confident enough to take off on his solo odyssey to Boston.

  Since they were out of the house anyway, Reuben suggested stopping at the Blue Hill Co-op grocery store in the next town over from Brooklin. Reuben stocked up on organic produce, whole grain bread, and free-range, symphonic-music-listening chickens’eggs while Levi waited in the car, growing increasingly apprehensive about driving to Boston to meet with people he did not know.

  When Reuben returned to the car, she offered to drive the ten miles back to Brooklin to let him rest before heading out to Boston. He accepted her offer and sat in the r
ight-hand seat for most of the half hour drive without saying a word, lost in his thoughts.

  Levi was jerked from his reverie by Reuben’s exclamation.

  “Who the hell is that?” she asked as the car slowly drove past the Brooklin Public Library. A black Ford Navigator SUV was parked in front of the library. Two obviously upset men in nearly matching black suits, white shirts, and dark ties walked quickly toward the car. One man reached through the open driver’s window and pulled out a microphone on a coiled cord. He spoke into it, then tossed it angrily into the car.

  The other man looked up and surveyed the Honda Accord as Levi and Reuben drove slowly past the library. His head swiveled to follow their course.

  The two men were so obviously out of place—neither tourists, summer people, nor locals, the only varieties of people to come to Brooklin—that seeing them left Levi unsettled and apprehensive.

  Levi had loaded a backpack with clean underwear and a toothbrush before they set out on their drive. Reuben stood outside while Levi retrieved his bag. When he returned, Levi walked up behind, wrapped his arms around her and pressed his chest against her back, pulling her tightly against him. He wiped one hand across her right breast, a privilege he felt he’d recently earned.

  She swiveled around in his arms.

  “I am so, so tired of worrying about when disaster is going to strike us,” she said quietly. “How do I know I’ll ever see you again? And those two men at the library. Who do you think they were? They looked so serious, so angry. Chaim, I am so afraid of losing you. I love you so much. Yes, I’ll say it even if you won’t.”

  “I love you, too, Debra.” He tightened his arms to hold her snugly, bending forward to kiss the top of her head. “I’m not afraid to say it one bit. I love you. And because I love you, I’ll be extra careful. Of course I’m coming back to you. I’ll be back here tomorrow.”

  She lifted her face and kissed him on the lips.

  “Deal,” she said, opening the car door for him. As he was about to get into the driver’s seat, Levi sprang out and ran to the basement door.

  “Almost forgot,” he shouted over his shoulder. “Abram’s going to have me do some heavy lifting. He said to bring work gloves.” He emerged a moment later with the bright-orange rubber gloves. “Guess these will have to do,” he said, tossing the gloves onto the back seat as he got behind the wheel and started the engine.

  The walk to the library through the chill air and bright sunshine raised Reuben’s spirits. By the time she arrived at the white front door with the date 1912 over it, Reuben felt ready to launch herself back into her research project, just as she used to do as an investigative reporter back when the world was sane. She sat at the same computer she’d used the day before and renewed her Internet hunt.

  Reuben could not help but overhear the excited conversation the librarian was having with two other women.

  “They barged right in and started ordering me around,” Jo-lene Dodge said, her voice infused with enthusiasm. And a tinge of pride. “They waved their wallets at me and kept on saying FBI, FBI, as if I couldn’t read. Right, as if a town would have an illiterate librarian, even in Maine.”

  Reuben perked up. She could barely keep her eyes directed at the screen to conceal her eavesdropping. She didn’t want them to move their conversation to someplace more private.

  “FBI, well glory be,” one of the librarian’s audience exclaimed. “What in the world did they want?”

  “They came right out and told me what they wanted,” the librarian responded. “They damn well wanted everything we have. They pulled out this piece of paper and said it was some sort of Patriot Act warrant and they wanted to search the library’s computerized list of books people had checked out, and they wanted to look at our computers, see what people had been looking at on the Internet.

  “Well, I laughed right in their faces at that one. Where do you think you are, Bangor? I asked them. We don’t have any computerized list of books folks check out.” The librarian laughed and looked at a varnished set of oak cabinets containing dozens of small drawers. “I pointed over at those drawers and said, ‘That’s our computer checkout system, fellas. It was donated by the post office.’I laughed in their faces.”

  Then the librarian’s voice took on a serious tone.

  “I asked to see that warrant. I looked at the front. I looked at the back. I kept turning the thing over and all round. Then I handed it back to one of the fellas and said, ‘I don’t see any judge’s signature on that warrant you boys have there.’That’s what I said to them, you know.”

  “Why’dja say that, Jo-lene?” the other woman asked. “How do you know anything about judges’signatures and search warrants?”

  “How do I know?” the librarian responded. “I’ll tell you just like I told those FBI boys. I told them I’m not just the librarian in this town. I’m part of law enforcement hereabouts. I said right to them that I am the only clam warden between Sedgwick and Blue Hill. When it comes to the clam flats, I am the law around here, more than those sheriff’s deputies who’d take an hour and a half to get here if you called and said the library was being robbed. I know all about warrants. They have to be signed by a judge or else they ain’t worth—well, ain’t worth the time’a day to print ’em up.”

  “I think the FBI sort of outranks the Brooklin clam warden, dee-yah,” the first woman said, guessing, correctly, that the story of the librarian-slash-clam-warden’s encounter with the FBI would be told and retold throughout the winter. “Why did you give those gentlemen such a hard time, Jo-lene? You’ll give Brooklin a sour name.”

  “I didn’t like their high-and-mighty attitude,” she replied. “I told them they could come back with a piece of paper autographed by a judge and I’d show them whatever they wanted to see, but until then, they should mind the step at the front door on the way out.”

  “Jo-lene, you’re going to get into serious trouble for that. You better watch out, you know,” the second woman said. Then she laughed and added, “I don’t know where you find the gumption to stand up to the FBI that way. I could never do that.”

  The librarian chuckled. “A couple of city boys in suits.”

  “Do you think that’s the end of them?” one woman asked.

  “No,” the librarian said. “They made a point of saying they’d be back tomorrow with a warrant. And that they would look through every damn card in our files and check every computer in the building. Oh, but they were a mite upset when they left.”

  “So, what did you say when they said they’d be back?” the second woman asked, dreading the effect the answer would have on the town’s reputation in the nation’s capital.

  “I looked that black-suit-wearin’fella in the eye and told him he’d be hearing from my lawyer if he wanted to invade my patrons’privacy that way. So he says, ‘And who would your lawyer be, lady?’He was only pretending to be polite.”

  “You don’t have any lawyer, Jo-lene, you know that,” her questioner interrupted.

  “Oh, yes I do,” the librarian said. “I told those two men—big men they were too, standing right in front of me like that. I told them my lawyers were with the law firm of A, C, L and U. They just stormed right outta here after that, never saying a please or thank you. But I expect they’ll be back.”

  Reuben stood from her computer, nodded at the three women and walked out the front door. She returned home at a half jog. She ran to the telephone as soon as she returned to the house, dialing frantically.

  “Sarah, thank God you’re home,” Reuben said. “Sarah, you have to come here, right away. Today. I have to get out of here. Please, Sarah, can you come today?”

  “Debbie, of course. I understand,” Sarah said. “But the march—you know I have to leave for DC tomorrow for the march. But if you tell me to drive up and get you today, of course I will.”

  “Yes, please, now,” said Reuben, calming slightly. “Hurry. The FBI, they’re here, in town, in Brooklin. They’ll be back soo
n, and they’ll find out who was doing Internet research on safe handling of . . .”

  Reuben paused.

  “Sarah, we have something very important to discuss when you get here. Please hurry.”

  “I’m on my way,” Sarah said. Debbie Reuben always panics easily, Sarah thought, remembering one college ski trip that ended in tears when Debbie realized she’d packed two left gloves as part of her new pink ski ensemble.

  CHAPTER 43

  “I won’t be here when you get back. Neither Adam nor I will be here when you get back.”

  Sally stood in the bedroom doorway, arms crossed in front of her chest, eyes red from crying, throat sore from screaming at her husband.

  “I feel as if I’m living in a dream, or a nightmare. Somebody else’s nightmare, actually. I don’t care how many times you try to convince me; I know you are wrong, so wrong. How can you abandon me? Not just me, but your son. Can you really abandon Adam? I don’t think you can do that. The Ben Shapiro I married couldn’t abandon his son.”

  That was her trump card. But she’d played it before. Day after day that week she’d played one variation or another of that card. And each time, she’d lost, inexplicably but without any question. She’d lost.

  Shapiro interrupted his packing—throwing casual clothes and clean socks and underwear into a blue nylon backpack. He spoke softly, evenly, patiently.

  “I’m not abandoning anybody,” he said to Sally. “I’m not abandoning my son. Apparently, however, either I am abandoning my wife or she is abandoning me; I haven’t figured that one out yet. Sally, I’ve told you over and over. What I am not going to abandon is who I am. Not now. Not when it matters who I am. Sally, I am Jewish. You knew that when we fell in love. You knew that when we got married. And, Sally, my son is Jewish. If that is going to have any meaning, then being a Jew has to remain something that he can be proud of.”

  “You know,” she replied, speaking quickly, “technically he isn’t Jewish. You told me that. You can’t change that. He has to have a Jewish mother to be a Jew, and he most certainly doesn’t have a Jew for a mother.”