39 – Brooklin, Maine
“The first thing I want to do is to move out of that damn boat,” Debra Reuben said as she and Chaim Levi and the Goldberg-Goldhershes walked along the dark waterfront at the headquarters of WoodenBoat Magazine, where the Hinckley was anchored. The magazine, devoted to everything concerning boats made from wood, had a surprisingly large and well-heeled readership of more than 100,000. It was based in a former mansion on a 60-acre waterfront estate in Brooklin, Maine, down the coast from Acadia National Park. The magazine offered its waterfront area as an anchorage for passing boaters, including the large wooden schooners that carried dozens of tourists for week-long cruises around the Maine coast.
The Hinckley yawl, “Swift,” was anchored in front of the boathouse at WoodenBoat. After three days there, Levi was concerned they would begin attracting unwanted attention. He agreed they needed to find a place to stay on shore, and he wanted to remove the “object” from the boat and find a safe place to hide it.
Abram Goldhersh did not stop talking for ten minutes. He grew increasingly more excited.
“They’ve jailed thousands of Jews, thousands of Israeli citizens and all you want to do is march around carrying signs saying Let My People Go,” he said, speaking to his wife, Sarah, in a tone so exasperated that it sounded as if he were a teenager whose voice was cracking. “You think you are Moses begging the Pharaoh to let your people go?
“Sarah, you know what sort of things I’ve been running around the country collecting the past few years. I’ve done that because Jews, at least Jews in Eretz Yisrael, learned that carrying a sign gets attention, but carrying a gun gets results.”
“That is Israel and this is America,” Sarah explained to her husband. “You walk around Boston with a gun now and you’ll wind up behind bars and that won’t do anybody, anybody any good, will it, Mr. Shoot-em-Up? We have some very prominent people coming to this march, politicians, actors, business people. Besides, those poor people have been in that basketball stadium for almost a week now. They have to let them out. What else is the government going to do with them?”
Debra Reuben interrupted the argument between husband and wife.
“Sarah, I understand all that but Chaim and I have a more immediate concern. We can’t stay on that boat much longer, at least I know that I can’t stand it. We need some place to stay. Do you have any suggestions?”
Levi interrupted before Sarah could respond.
“And it has to be some place, can I use the phrase, ‘out of the way.’ There is a slight chance that the government may take some interest in us,” Levi said. “I assume that an Israeli naval officer and a former cabinet minister aren’t high on America’s invitation list right now. I myself would rather not be locked up in any sort of stadium.”
Goldhersh looked at the former Israeli naval officer closely. Reuben had been part of an Israeli government that Goldhersh had viewed as weak, as far-to-willing to compromise with Arabs. Here she was now, though, with an in-the-flesh member of the Israeli military. He placed an arm on Levi’s shoulder.
“Well, Chaim, I’d like to have you not too far away, myself,” Abram said. “You know, I’ve got a warehouse in Portland stocked up with items ready to go to Israel, to some friends of mine in the settlements who the military stopped supporting. I spent a lot of time, and a hell of a lot of money, putting these items together.
“I was never in the military myself, you know, and I wouldn’t mind having somebody look at this who knows something about weapons, and about explosives. I got quite a deal on some drums of something labeled C4. I know that’s an explosive, but that’s about all I know.”
“C4? That sure is an explosive,” Levi answered. “We trained with that for commando operations in the Navy. Half the C4 in the world is manufactured, or was manufactured, in Israel. It is a magnificent weapon as long as you remember that it packs a bigger bang than TNT. You can mold it like modeling clay. You can drop it from the roof and it won’t go off, but use the right detonator and its child’s play to make a big boom with it.
“I set off some great bangs in training. We’d leave our patrol boat at night, run a rubber boat up a beach and rush ashore to the target, all in training, never did it for real, stuff it with C4 and set the detonators, then run for the rubber boats.” He looked at the other mad oddly. “How in hell did you get that stuff, Abram?”
“Lets just say that I spent a lot of time hanging around Army bases. I got to know some gentlemen marketing heroin. Once they learned how much more I’d pay for toys like that C4, they started taking payment from their soldier customers in goods, rather than cash. That way they made money from both ends of the deal.
“It was all in a good cause for me,” Abram said. “I doubt if the Army ever knew what it was missing.”
“Stop that kind of talk,” Sarah said, looking directly at her husband with a not very loving expression. “Boys and explosives and guns. Stop it.”
The huge man obeyed his wife’s command, for the moment. Levi saw Abram’s eyes light with excitement, excitement, not uncontrolled anger, when he talked about the drums of explosives in his warehouse. Drums of C4, Levi thought. That would get some attention.
Sarah interrupted Levi’s reverie.
“Debra, Chaim, I have an idea about a place where you two could stay. I’ll have to make a phone call first but I think it could work out very well. Remember, Debbie, I told you that I knew somebody with a vacation cottage right here in Brooklin? Well, she’s Nancy Lowenstein, married to Arthur Lowenstein. He’s the CEO or the Chairman or something of KGR Insurance, that big insurance company that advertises all over TV and the newspapers. They have a summer cottage here, on the water.
“I know Nancy from a fundraising campaign she and I managed together for Ethiopian Jewish children. It was so beautiful, those children are so beautiful. Imagine, black Jews. We raised over $15 million for them. Nancy broke her back working so hard, and broke her husband’s bank account. We had an event at their house here. Nancy told me they’d had their caretaker come by to turn on the water and electricity because they hadn’t been to the house in two years themselves.”
Sarah smiled at a memory.
“Nancy was so excited to do something for Israel. And she was charmed by an Israeli man who hinted that the money was not going to be used entirely to help poor black Jewish kids. Nancy thought he was involved with the Mossad, you know the Israeli Secret Service?” She looked inquisitively at Levi and Reuben.
“We’ve heard of Mossad,” Levi said dryly.
“Well, she just loved the whole cloak and dagger aspect to it. I’ll ask about opening her house to help some secret friends from Eretz. I’m sure she’ll go for it.”
“The sooner the better,” Reuben said. “I want to sleep in a bed that doesn’t move.”
“And I want to move something off that boat, the sooner the better,” Levi added.
Abram gave Levi an odd look after that statement, but chose to go no further then.