68 – Brooklin, Maine
Debra Reuben missed the quiet house on the water in Brooklin even before she left it. She did not expect to return to it, ever. Her greatest concern was how she would get in touch with Levi to warn him not to return there. She would have to depend on Abram for that. He would know how to reach Levi.
She’d packed what little she had into a suitcase she’d found in the basement, feeling badly about taking clothing from the anonymous owner of the house. I’ll get it back to her somehow, she said to herself.
Reuben quickly made up her mind about what to do with the object in the wine cellar. She feared that if she left it in the basement it would be found before she could return to collect it. She mentally kicked herself black and blue for using the library computer. The FBI agents were certain to return and discover that somebody in sleepy, quiet Brooklin had such an unusual interest. There could not be many new people in town besides herself and Levi. The FBI would easily be directed to the house, she thought.
She looked at the plastic-wrapped cylinder in the wine cellar. Maybe I should let them have the damn thing, she thought. What a relief it would be to simply walk away from the bomb.
No, she thought wearily. It isn’t mine to give away. It belongs to the State of Israel, whatever and wherever that is these days. Israel has so few weapons left. I took responsibility for this. I can’t abandon it. But, oh God, I wish I could find somebody to hand it over to. She knew she could no longer hide the weapon from Sarah, which also meant that Abram was certain to learn about it. Reuben was disturbed at the thought of Abram Goldhersh getting his hands on the atomic bomb, but she could see no alternative.
She sat on the front porch, waiting for Sarah to arrive, hoping the car that would come up the driveway would be Sarah and not the black SUV with the FBI agents. While she waited, she sat in a rocking chair and looked out at the calm water, an occasional lobster boat roaring by.
I’m going to miss this house so much, she thought, then she smiled. This is where Chaim and I fell in love. Some day I’ll tell my grandchildren how their grandfather sailed me across the ocean and we lived in a cottage by the sea.
Thinking pleasant thoughts, Reuben nodded off, the late afternoon sunshine warming her face.
The sound of a car in the gravel driveway woke her with a start. Heart beating furiously, she cautiously leaned her head around the end of the porch to glance at the driveway. A broad smile broke across her face as she recognized Sarah’s car, with Sarah behind the wheel.
Reuben took one step toward her friend and then froze, the THWAKA THWAKA THWAKA of a helicopter drowning out any greeting she could have shouted. FBI, she thought, looking up at the helicopter flying slowly along the shore, over the houses lining the water. No, she thought, it’s that same one that has been going back and forth all week.
The sound of the machine faded as it flew away. Sarah got out of her car and spotted Reuben coming around the edge of the house from the porch. She spoke first.
“So, Debra, what is this big emergency? I have a speech to write, you know,” her words were angrier than her tone, however, especially when she saw the relief on her friend’s face.
“FBI,” Reuben blurted out. “The FBI knows we’re here, or will know any minute. I have to get away. I have to tell Chaim not to come back here. You have to help me, please.”
“FBI? They can’t know about you. Believe me, if they knew you were here, you’d be wearing handcuffs by now,” Goldberg said. “How could they know about you?”
Reuben quickly described what she’d overheard in the library, skipping, for the moment, the nature of the Internet research she’d done there. She saw the puzzled expression on her friend’s face.
“Why would the FBI find out about some research you did,” Sarah asked. She saw how troubled Reuben was. “Just what sort of research was this, Debra?”
I have no choice now, Reuben thought. Besides, I can’t carry that thing up from the basement without Sarah’s help. But I’ll have to be quick.
“We can talk more in the car,” she said. “I promise I’ll tell you absolutely everything, no secrets, no more secrets. For right now, though, I have something that is going to be difficult for you to hear. Sarah, you know I was in the government, a cabinet minister, over there?” Reuben gestured roughly toward the ocean.
“Of course, culture minister,” Sarah said. “Abram said it was a joke, but I was proud of my D-Phi-E sister.”
“It was sort of a joke, I know that,” Reuben said. “Until the end, that is. As it turned out, as far as anyone knew, I was the last of the government to survive. That was only luck because I happened to be out in the desert instead of in Tel Aviv for the Prime Minister’s birthday party.”
Reuben paused, then placed both hands on the other woman’s shoulders. She squeezed lightly, as if she did not want the other woman to run away when she heard what Reuben was about to say, or maybe just to provide comfort to her friend.
“Sarah, Damascus, the bomb dropped on Damascus,” she said slowly. “The bombs were stored at a place, a place in the desert. I was there. I was the only one left to make the decision.”
Sarah’s eyes opened wide. “No, Debbie, no, don’t tell me,” she whispered.
“I ordered them to put that bomb in that plane,” Reuben said. “They didn’t want to do it. I made them do it. I ordered them to do it. I shook that pilot’s hand. I watched him take off. I did it. Me.”
Sarah stepped back, paused for thirty seconds, thinking, then held her arms wide and reached out for Reuben, who walked into her old friend’s comforting embrace. They hugged for several minutes, neither speaking, Sarah repeating quietly, “Poor Debbie, my poor Debbie.”
Reuben pushed herself away from her friend.
“There’s something else,” she said. “Sarah, there’s another bomb.”
“Another bomb?” Goldberg was puzzled. “But only Damascus was bombed. I don’t understand.”
“Actually,” Reuben said, “that is something else entirely, for another time. No, there was another bomb there in the desert, on the ground, a smaller bomb. We didn’t put it in any plane. We didn’t know what to do with it. But we couldn’t let the Arabs get it.
“So I took it with me.”
“Took it where, Debbie?” Sarah asked, suddenly suspicious. She saw her friend turn to look behind her at the house. “No, Debbie, no.”
“We brought it here, Chaim and I, in the boat, the one we had to sink,” she said. “We had to sink it because Chaim thought the radiation in the boat might be detected. He thinks these helicopters might be looking for it now, although we don’t know why they would be looking. It’s in the house, in the basement, the wine cellar.”
“What are you going to do with it?” Sarah asked.
“I’m taking it with me,” Reuben said. “Its heavy, but you and I can lift it. We’ll put it in your car and we’ll take it away and, and I don’t really know what we’ll do with it, but it can’t stay here. “I can’t leave it here, Sarah.”
Goldberg struggled to speak, finally saying, “You want to put an atom bomb in my car, my, my new Volvo?” She turned on her heels and walked quickly away from her friend, to stand beside her car. She turned back to face Reuben, anger in her voice.
“Leave it. Get rid of it. Give the damn thing to the FBI, what do you care?”
“Don’t you think I’ve thought that, too, Sarah?” Reuben said softly. “I hate that thing. For all I know, the radiation from that thing is killing me, and killing Chaim. But, Sarah, as horrible as that thing might be, it isn’t mine to toss away. It doesn’t belong to me.”
“It certainly seems to be in your possession, doesn’t it?” Sarah snapped.
“Not possession, Sarah, custody,” Reuben answered. “I’m just its custodian. It belongs to the State of Israel. And Israel might need it someday. I know this isn’t an easy decision. Sarah, I’ve lived with what I did, with, with Damascus, since the moment that jet took off. I wish I did not have responsibility for that thing in the basement. But I have no choice. We have no choice. Don’t you see that? I had responsibility for the first one and I did what I had to do with it. I have this one now, and I have to do with it what is required of me. This is no time for weakness, Sarah. Please help me carry the bomb to the car.”
Goldberg was quiet for several minutes, pacing away from Reuben. When she returned she spoke to her friend, “I understand what you are saying. Let’s get it and let’s find a place for it. Abram will know what to do with it.”
“That’s something I’m concerned about,” Reuben replied. “But we can talk about that in the car.”
They retrieved the device from the wine cellar. It was still tightly wrapped in the plastic that covered it while it was in the water tank on the sailboat. Nonetheless, the object exuded a sense of evil, of doom, or so it seemed to the two women carrying the atomic bomb to the Volvo station wagon.
They stayed off the main highways on the three-hour drive to the Portland suburb where the Goldberg-Goldhershes lived. Reuben felt a tinge of envy when she saw her former roommate’s comfortable house, her memory flashing on her own tiny apartment in Jerusalem’s Old City. Looking out to the fenced-in back yard, Reuben noticed the swimming pool, its dark green leaf cover floating over the water’s surface. She turned to her friend.
“I know the place for that thing,” she said. The two women lugged the bomb to the pool, rolled back the cover over the deep end and dropped the plastic-wrapped package into the water, watching it settle to the bottom of the pool, covered by eight feet of water. They rolled the cover back over the surface, hiding what was beneath.
“Chaim was worried that the bomb could be detected from above,” Reuben explained. “That’s why he kept it in the wine cellar. I think eight feet of water should block any radiation. Let’s hope so.”
“Sure, let’s hope you and I don’t glow in the dark, too,” Sarah said. “I can’t wait for Abram to get home. He decided to go to that meeting in Boston. He’ll bring Levi back here afterwards, he said.”
“That’s wonderful,” Reuben exclaimed, not making any attempt to hide her excitement. She smiled at her friend. “Let me tell you about me and Chaim. It’s pretty wonderful, you know.”