105 – Portland, Maine
Ben and Abram rose before dawn, as they’d planned. Wearing bathing suits, they jumped into the chilly pool and pulled themselves around the edge of the water to the deep end. Shapiro took a breath, then dove to the bottom. The bomb was surprisingly light in the water. He easily lifted it to the surface.
They soon had the bomb on the patio deck. They carried it to the glider, still inside its enclosed trailer, hitched to the Pathfinder. It fit easily into the plane’s rear seat. Shapiro buckled the five-point safety harness around the cylinder, snugging it into place.
Goldhersh ran to the garage, saying over his shoulder that he had a surprise for Shapiro.
He came back staggering under a weight that was heavy even for him, carrying what appeared to be small vinyl-covered blankets.
“My cousin Herman,” Abram said as he dropped the blankets on the ground with a thud. “He’s in the dental supply business. I thought of these.”
He lifted one blanket from the pile and handed it to Shapiro, who bent his knees under the surprising weight.
“For when you get X rays,” Abram said. “You know, they go over your lap so you don’t fry your balls with the radiation. I told Herman not to ask any questions. He said to make sure he got them back. Guess I’ll have to write him a check.”
They draped the heavy blankets around the bomb, covering it as best they could.
“Maybe that will help hide the radiation,” Abram said to Shapiro. “I figured it couldn’t hurt.”
“Thanks. One more item for my pre-flight check list,” Shapiro responded. “Remove the radiation shielding before takeoff. No reason to fly with that extra weight, and a few hours of radiation exposure won’t kill me.”
The thought of what would kill him brought his effort to sound casual to an end. The men went inside to join the others, gathered around the kitchen table, their morning ritual. Sarah puttered at the stove, serving coffee, carrying fruit and cereal to the table.
Abram Goldhersh was fidgety as a ten-year-old the morning he was to pitch his first Little League game. He sat. He jumped from his chair to look out the window. He sat and shoveled Cheerios from his bowl into his mouth.
“I was up all night,” he said, speaking to Shapiro. “I decided. I’m going with you.”
“We went through this, Abram. No.”
Sarah Goldberg opened her mouth to speak. Her husband silenced her with a stare. He spoke to Ben.
“I went through everything in my mind, every step. Tell me, can you put the wings on your plane by yourself?”
Shapiro opened his mouth to speak, then stopped. There had always been somebody to help put the plane together, a tow pilot, another glider pilot. There wasn’t much involved in getting the plane ready for flight, just mounting the wings and the tail surface.
In the past, when Shapiro traveled with the plane, somebody always showed up to help, and if nobody was available, he waited, and eventually somebody came.
He pictured himself parked at the small field he’d selected, home to the Mid-Maryland Soaring Society, glider in its trailer, a surly tow pilot standing with his arms crossed saying he didn’t do heavy lifting.
And an atom bomb sitting in the rear cockpit, with every cop in the country searching for it.
Not a moment for patience, Shapiro thought.
“OK,” he said. “You can come on the drive, then drive the car home. Make us harder to trace, I suppose.”
Shapiro lowered his voice so only the burly man sitting to his right could hear.
“You do know, Abram, that there’s no room in the glider for you. You wouldn’t fit, even if I agreed to take you.”
“I know that, but I want to be there to watch you fly into the sky.”
Debra Reuben was all business. That was her way of coping. Deal with the details. Think of the big picture later, when it’s over. That’s what got the jets off the ground at Dimona. She struggled against the desire for a little bit of vodka and orange juice to get her morning started. Not today, she thought. I won’t do that today.
“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 tow plane 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. He did not want to spend his morning giving lectures on the theory of flight. “Enough already. 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,” he said. “I’ve flown this plane hundreds of miles in one flight. This is nothing.”
Sarah Goldberg 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 the rest of us?”
There was no conversation in the kitchen as 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, his 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. Until five minutes ago, she thought she’d be saying goodbye to Shapiro, for what she knew was the final time, but not to her husband. She hadn’t processed that thought, or the possibility that she would never see him again.
She glanced at Shapiro, at Reuben.
Like he will never see his wife again, and she will never see her lover, she thought.
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 Debra and Sarah catch up. Both gave him quick hugs, hardly holding him at all, as if they were afraid of touching a ghost, or someone soon to be a ghost.
Reuben, however, whispered in his ear before letting go. “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, not 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 that 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 walked to the driver’s seat of the SUV, where Abram was waiting. He started the engine and pulled out the driveway, the glider in its trailer behind him, as was his entire life.