47 - Washington, D.C.
The White House Situation Room is located in the basement of the West Wing. The President sat in the middle of the long cherry table that dominated the room.
“Here is what is troubling me the most, keeping me awake through last night, to be perfectly frank with you,” President Quaid said. He reached into his jacket pocket and dropped a handful of gold-colored objects on the table in front of him. Each was a flat metal plate, two inches wide by four or so inches long, containing a Star of David, the letters “IDF” and some writing in Hebrew.
“These are twenty Israel Defense Forces dog tags. Divers salvaging the two Coast Guard boats that sank in Boston Harbor recovered these from the bottom of the harbor underneath where those two freighters were anchored,” the President said. “Quite obviously, they were thrown overboard by people on those ships, military people, almost certainly the people who fired those rocket propelled grenades that sank the two Coast Guard boats.
“Twenty Israeli military commandos, special forces probably. And they are in this country. Somewhere. We have no idea what weapons they took with them off the ships.”
“Mr. President, chances are we have them in custody right now, Sir, along with all those other people we grabbed from the ships, right?” Attorney General McQueeney was unsure where the President was heading with this meeting. She’d learned that he’d met for hours yesterday with his own counsel, Carol Cabot. What worried McQueeney more, however, was that she’d just learned that one of her First Assistant Attorney Generals, Wilson Harrison, met privately with the President yesterday, too. That troubled her the most. It was a serious breach of White House etiquette for the President to meet with her assistant without inviting her to attend, or at least without informing her of the meeting.
“Well, dammit, Queen, we don’t know that now, do we,” the President retorted. “We don’t know who we have in custody and we don’t know who is on the loose from those ships. And we certainly don’t know if any of the people we have in custody are the military people who sank our Coast Guard boats.
“All we know is that at least twenty members of a foreign military snuck into this country, armed to the teeth it appears and killed Americans and attacked our military vessels. And we’ve done squat to either retaliate or protect ourselves. Now doesn’t that make us look like a fine collection of major league pansies? Anybody disagree with that analysis?”
There was no comment from around the table.
“Well Gentlemen, and Ladies, that isn’t the half of it. General, give everybody the bad news.”
Gen. Hutchings Paterson (retired), head of the Department of Homeland Security stood up. Mimicking President Quaid, he reached into his pocket and removed a single gold-colored object and tossed it onto the table in front of him.
“That is one more IDF dog tag, identical to the ones recovered from Boston Harbor,” he said.
“Tell everybody where that came from, General. But let me tell you folks, as scary as the first set of dog tags is, this one is going to make you wet your pants,” President Quaid said. “Go ahead, General. Tell them everything. That’s what we’re here for.”
Paterson looked around the table.
“This dog tag was recovered from a sailboat, a fairly high end sailboat,” he said. “A sailboat that somebody intentionally scuttled, that’s boat-talk for sank, in the middle of Penobscot Bay, on the coast of Maine. Whoever sank the boat bungled the job. A liferaft inflated automatically and provided enough buoyancy to float the boat. A couple of lobstermen spotted it and called the Coast Guard.”
“OK, so we’ve got twenty-one Israelis rather than twenty running around,” Attorney General McQueeney said. “What’s so significant about that?”
“Ma-am, if you’d let me finish,” Gen. Paterson was not used to being interrupted. “What is so significant is that the Coast Guard found that the top of a water tank on the sailboat was cut open so something inside the water tank could be removed. In fact, they found that somebody rigged up the water tank so that something was hidden inside and couldn’t be found from the outside.
“Now, what is so scary about all this is that whatever was inside that water tank, whatever was recently removed from that water tank before the boat was intentionally sunk in 130 feet of water, was a strong emitter of U-235, a radioactive isotope of uranium. I am told that there is only one use for U-235, which is damned near impossible to manufacture. It is the primary ingredient in atomic bombs, right from the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima up to many of our present bombs. We don’t know whether what was in that boat was a functional bomb or enough U-235 to make a bomb. Either way, this is a very serious problem. If it is only the U-235, then it could make a powerful dirty bomb, using conventional explosives to spread radioactive material for miles in some city center.
“If it is an operational bomb, all bets are off. For the first time, we have confirmed evidence that an enemy of this country has managed to smuggle nuclear material across our borders. We’ve dreaded this day coming. Well, its here.”
The General sat down, leaving the Situation Room in shocked silence.
Air Force General Ricardo Cruz was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Gen. Cruz turned to his adjutant, sitting behind him with an open notebook computer in his lap. The computer was connected to the Situation Room’s secure wireless network. A greatly enlarged photograph of the IDF dog tag appeared on a rear projection screen covering one wall. Gen. Cruz addressed the group.
“The dog tag recovered from the sailboat belongs to an Israeli Navy lieutenant named Chaim,” the general was thoroughly briefed and pronounced the Hebrew name with the requisite throat-clearing sound, “Levi. We know absolutely nothing about his military service or training. The Israeli military is, or was, exceptionally secure about identifying individual soldiers. They had to be careful, considering that their enemies’ families could have been living down the block from their soldiers’ families.
“We do know that when he wasn’t in the Navy, he worked at a beach resort. He was a sailing instructor, among other things.”
“How in the hell did you learn that, General? You can’t tell me whether this guy was a nuclear spy but you know he taught sailing,” President Quaid was feeling unusually powerless for the most powerful man in the world.
Gen. Cruz turned to his adjutant and whispered. He turned back to address the people around the table.
“Evidently, Sir, we Googled him,” the general said.
President Quaid slammed his hand down on the table.
“Well fuck me to high heaven,” he said. “How many trillions of dollars have we spent on intelligence gathering and all we can do is the same thing a twelve year old would do. Let’s keep this bit of information to ourselves. Is that understood?”
“Uh, Mr. President, we do have a photo of Levi,” Gen. Cruz said. “Evidently, the hotel was affiliated with a Swiss-owned hotel chain and they never removed it from their web site.” He turned and nodded to his aide and a photo appeared on the screen. It showed a crowded beach with three small sailboats tied to moorings offshore. Chaim Levi stood on the beach, the sailboats visible over his shoulder. He was smiling and tanned, and wearing the skimpiest of bathing suits. The photo caption identified him by name.
It was not an especially good photograph. For one thing, it was at least ten years old, taken when he helped his father, who managed the hotel, long before he went into the Navy full-time and received advanced commando training. For another, he had a full, dark beard in the photo, something that was long gone. Despite that, it was without any doubt Chaim Levi in the photo being viewed by the President of the United States.
“That is our nuclear terrorist?” President Quaid huffed. “He looks like he’d be happier on a surf board than a war ship. OK, we know the guy’s name. We know what he looks like. Let’s find him and question him. Gen. Paterson, I take it you are about to take this man into custody.”
“Actually, Mr. President, since he is on U.S. soil, jurisdiction belongs to the FBI, not Homeland Security. We’ll fully brief them.”
“OK, Mr. President,” McQueeney once again spoke up. The FBI fell under the Department of Justice. “We’ll get started immediately. It will be massive, Mr. President. Unprecedented.”
“Good, what about the rest of the Israelis, the one’s we’re holding?” Quaid asked.
“Mr. President,” Gen. Paterson spoke up. “We’ve located a long term detention facility, Camp Edwards on Cape Cod. Just cleared out the last hurricane refugees. It’s a fully secure facility. Otis Air Force Base there used to stock nuclear weapons. Its tight, sir, double razor wire circling the entire installation.”
A thought struck President Quaid. “Is there any indication the military from the two ships hooked up with this Levi guy or with the bomb?”
“No proof sir,” Gen. Paterson said. “Actually, we don’t know one way or the other since we don’t know who they are or even if we are holding them. I can tell you that nobody we have in custody matches any of the names on the dog tags we recovered from the harbor.”
“With all due respect, General,” Gen. Cruz interrupted. “Is there some rule that says spies have to give their real names when they are captured? Of course these people won’t voluntarily tell us who they are, especially if they're involved with a nuclear bomb being smuggled into the country. We’re going to have to get it from them through interrogation, which is one more reason to have them in military rather than civilian custody.”
“That brings me to my next point,” the President said. “I’ve received legal guidance from people I trust on this point.” The Attorney General glared at Carol Cabot, each suspecting the other. Both were wrong, as it turned out. “Immediately after this meeting I will be issuing a Presidential finding and directive that the people taken from those two freighters are declared to be, uh, enemy combatants.”
He spoke the term slowly, letting each syllable roll around in his mouth before passing his lips. President Quaid liked the phrase, enemy combatant.
“Every one of those people joined an operation that included taking up arms against the United States and killing U.S. military personnel. They are each to be considered enemy combatants and to have only the rights of enemy combatants. As such, they are now under the jurisdiction of the military, not the Immigration Service and not the Justice Department. Is that clear to everybody?”
He looked around the table. McQueeney felt his eyes remained on her longer than on anybody else. She thought to speak up, her question being, even the children, even the infants, are they enemy combatants, too? But she reconsidered, holding her tongue. The President said he’d received legal guidance from people he trusted. McQueeney knew he hadn’t spoken with her about enemy combatants. She didn’t like the implication of that.
“And one more point,” the President added. “Based on the legal advice I’ve received, I will be submitting a request to Congress tomorrow for legislation affirming that the revocation of federal court jurisdiction for all claims brought by enemy combatants, the law that brought to an end all those lawsuits by Guantanamo detainees years ago, applies to our present enemy combatants, too.”
He looked around the table. Nobody spoke.
McQueeney remained in her seat after everyone left. Even the grandmothers, she asked herself. Jewish grandmothers are now enemy combatants locked behind razor wire. What comes next?