43 - Washington, D.C.
Enclosed stadiums, fine as they are as a venue for sporting events, don’t work as detention centers, not after a week or so of indecision by the government. That lesson was learned in New Orleans. The Agganis Arena, to put it bluntly, stunk. There were no showers. The miasma of 3,000 people living together twenty-fours hours a day, cooking food on hotplates when they tired of trying to eat what was trucked in to the concession stands, settled down from the domed ceiling like a fogbank over the surface of the ocean, gradually lowering until it hovered just over the heads of the people on the floor, engulfing those families who staked out higher sections of the seating area for themselves.
Something had to be done with these people, thought General Hutchings Paterson (retired), director of the Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security. Gen. Paterson was responsible for housing the Israeli detainees. He knew he had a problem but was at a loss with what to do with the people he was holding. There was not enough prison space in the Northeast to house them, even if prison were the solution. After all, they had not yet been charged with any crime. From what he’d heard, they would be dealt with by the military, not the criminal system, not even by Immigration and Customs. That was fine with him, Gen. Paterson thought. He just wished somebody would come up with a bright idea, soon.
Harry Wade, the wonder-manager recruited from Honda Motors USA to revitalize the moribund Federal Emergency Management Agency, had won wide praise the past year for FEMA’s response to what was dubbed the Twin Hurricanes, which resulted from a single storm branching into two separate cells so close to one another that they were named Hurricane Jack and Hurricane Jill. The storms had struck southern Florida from both the east and west simultaneously, causing record property losses and loss of life. Wade telephoned Gen. Paterson.
“General, I understand you have a few thousand people on your hands in Massachusetts and no place to put them,” Wade said. Problems, to Wade, were like daisies on the lawn, something to be dealt with, plucked and displayed.
“Nice to hear from you, Harry,” Gen. Paterson said smoothly into the telephone, signaling his First Assistant Director to pick up the extension next to the sofa in the Director’s office. “Haven’t spoken with you since that reception at the British Embassy, when the Prince introduced the new wife, that third one of his, to all of us. Lets hope he got it right this time, them being our one-and-only ally in Europe.”
“His problem isn’t in outliving his wives,” Wade joked. “His problem is that it looks like his mother is going to outlive him.”
Gen. Paterson laughed politely.
“Here’s what I’m calling about, General. Your situation in Boston. You’ve got thousands of people trying to live in a basketball stadium, with more being arrested every day.”
“Yes, Harry, it was my people who stopped that Amtrak train between Boston and New York and checked Americards. We picked up fifty Israelis trying to get out of Boston.”
“And what a good job that was. But where are those people, General? Cooped up in that basketball stadium at Boston University. That’s a problem.” Harry Wade told people he had only one business, whether it involved selling cars or fighting acts of God. He solved problems. General Paterson had a problem. Wade had a solution.
“Here’s my suggestion. You can’t take all those Jews and hand them over to the Arabs, like the Arabs want us to do. Not after the TV coverage of those camps over there. Wouldn’t look good. Time for that is past. Agree with me so far?”
“The President tried getting those ships out of our hair and he failed at that,” Paterson said. “We’ve lost the option of returning these people to their homeland, like we did with all the other illegals in the past, since their homeland no longer exists, at least as their home. So go on.”
“OK. General, FEMA’s got access to a former military camp with housing for 5,000 people in more comfort than any other federal detention facility,” Wade said happily. “It’s right in Massachusetts, a military place with loads of security, but a place with enough comforts so the liberals won’t scream too loud.
“We just removed the last of our Jack and Jill refugees from Camp Edwards at the Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod. Great facility. Housing for thousands there. We left it all spiffed up. Ship ’em down there, General.”
“What about security, Harry,” Paterson asked. “Your hurricane folks weren’t trying to escape.”
“No problem with security. The Air Force stored nukes there. Best security in the world. Triple razor wire fences all around, guard towers, the works. If it was good enough to keep terrorists out, it’s good enough to keep terrorists in. Right? So, what do you say?”
Gen. Paterson paused to think. Any place was better than the basketball stadium. Then he pictured the military base, coils of barbed wire. Old women, children inside. He looked at his assistant. The man’s eyes were closed. All color had left his face. Paterson knew why. He picked up the phone again.
“I can’t make a decision like this on my own, Harry.” He paused for an acknowledgement. Hearing nothing, he continued. “I don’t have to tell you that shipping Jewish refugees to a military detention camp surrounded by barbed wire has a pretty bad historical precedent for some people, do I?”
“General, I’m well aware of historical precedents, but we live in the present. We have people in our custody, people who just happen to be Jews. We’re not holding them because they’re Jews, we’re holding them because we can’t do anything else with them. Which do you think would cause more of a fuss from the liberals, handing a bunch of Jews over to the Arabs or moving them into comfortable housing on Vacationland Cape Cod?”
“Oh, I agree with you, Harry. I’ve gotta tell you, though, I get a sick feeling with the idea of me being in charge of a military detention camp filled with Jews, even if they just happen to be Jews. There are going to be photos of Jewish kids staring through barbed wire, American barbed wire. You know that.
“I don’t want to be America’s Adolph Eichman.”
“You don’t want to be Jimmy Carter, either, General, wringing your hands and complaining that we’ve got a problem we can’t solve. This decision is in your hands because these people are in your hands. So, what’s your decision?”
“My decision is to run this by the President first and let him decide. This is too big for me on my own.”
Gen. Paterson hung up the phone and looked across the office at his First Assistant.
“So?” Paterson asked.
Harris Rosenberg, whose father, a sergeant in the U.S. Army’s First Infantry Division, was captured by the Germans two weeks after landing in Normandy, whose father ended up in the Berga POW camp, the Germans’ special prisoner of war camp for Jewish-American prisoners after he’d neglected to bury his dog tags with the word “Hebrew” stamped on them next to the word “Religion,” whose father sometimes still woke his family in the middle of the night screaming through his nightmares, stood up, stared at his boss for a moment, then turned and walked out the door, closing it with a slam that startled Paterson’s secretary in the reception area outside the General’s office.
“What was that?” she yelled at Rosenberg as he stormed past her. He turned his head without stopping and said as he continued down the hall, “That was my resignation.”