95 – Portland, Maine
Judy Katz’s lecture about the data mining capabilities of the National Security Agency scared them sufficiently that they agreed no telephone calls would be made or answered, not from any phone in the house, not from any cell phone, not even from a pay phone. As Judy described to them, the NSA did not tap individual phone lines. Instead, it monitored every telephone switching center, every location in the country through which every telephone call traveled.
She didn’t know how the NSA’s computer algorithms separated the common wheat from the incriminating chaff.
“But the people who run these things are brilliant,” she said. “They have unlimited money behind them. The bottom line is that these programs work. I know. We found bad guys based on leads from the NSA, bad guys we had no idea were even bad.”
The same programs searched the nation’s, and most of the world’s email traffic. Katz did not know if Internet usage could be monitored. She cautioned, however, that if it could be done, then it was being done.
Shapiro had called her, once, on her cell phone to tell her he was worried about how she was doing. She told him she was working on the detainees’ case, that she had lots of help from other lawyers and that she hoped to visit the camp soon. She’d heard nothing about her grandmother, though, and that terrified her. Just minutes into the call she interrupted him and asked where he was calling from. When he told her he was using the Goldberg’s phone, she warned him to never use that phone again, to tear it from the wall. Then she hung up.
Her warning forced them to become electronically isolated, no email, no telephone, not even any Internet browsing. The result was that this group of two men and three women was cut off from all contact with the greater Jewish community. Perhaps their isolation protected them from discovery, but it also left them with an operable nuclear weapon in their possession and nobody but themselves in a position to decide what to do with it.
Their paranoia blossomed, fertilized by Debra Reuben’s vow of revenge against the government for murdering Levi, growing from Ben Shapiro’s grief for his wife and son, watered by Abram Goldhersh’s vision of them as modern-day Maccabee warriors, Israel’s last hope. They left the house only for furtive grocery expeditions. Their waking hours were spent watching television news and debating, arguing actually, about what to do with their bomb. Their nights were riven by personal nightmares.
Factions formed. Abram Goldhersh and Debra Reuben were all for taking immediate action, issuing a demand or multiple demands with the threat to detonate the bomb. Shapiro was more cautious, urging a wait and see approach, not willing to give up hope that cooler heads would prevail in Washington, that the detainees would be set free, that the government would intervene in the Middle East, if just for humanitarian reasons.
Sarah Goldberg was terrified by the proximity of the bomb. “Put it in a boat and drop it in the ocean,” she said.
Days passed. They watched news coverage of emergency evacuations of Akron, then San Diego, after what turned out to be false threats to detonate nuclear bombs. Dozens of people died in those frantic evacuations.
The government tried to calm the nation by reporting extensive efforts to locate the bomb, roadblocks, SWAT team raids on suspected Jewish terrorist cells, airborne radiation monitoring. Those reports may or may not have made the general public feel better. They terrified the five people huddled in the house in Portland.
“It’s only a matter of time before they find us,” Abram said after dinner one night. The four people were gathered in front of the television in the living room, CNN murmuring in the background. “They’ll find us. Judy knows everything. She’ll talk, or they’ll capture her and make her talk.”
The others nodded. They’d discussed this. They all heard the same clock ticking. They all waited for the doors to be knocked down, for the SWAT team to storm the house.
“One phrase keeps running through my head,” Abram continued. “One of those 1950s sayings about the Cold War. You know what it is. I’ll tell you what it is. Use it or lose it. Get it. Use the bomb or lose the bomb. Back then it meant that America had to strike the Russians first because if the Russians hit us first they’d wipe out our bombers and missiles on the ground.
“I stay awake at night picturing the SWAT team kicking in our doors and them carting off our bomb in a big truck. That’s what will happen soon. They’ll find it. They have ways. They’ll get more and more desperate. They have ways that they’ll be willing to use.”
No one doubted that.
“Use it or lose it,” Abram intoned. “We’d better use what we’ve got or we won’t have it any more. We may be Israel’s last hope. Think about that, will you.”
Debra Reuben nodded her head in agreement. Like the Maccabees, she thought, Israel’s first terrorists, we may be Israel’s last defenders. Like at Chanukah. Judah Maccabee, our leader. Abram is right, he’s so right, she thought, what choice do we really have? They killed Chaim. They killed Ben’s wife and son, or at least the government was responsible for that. They want to kill us.
“I hear the same clock ticking,” she said. “I agree we can’t wait forever. I say we issue a threat, make a demand, do something, something besides sitting here watching television, for God’s sake. At least let’s do that much.”
“Use it or lose it, Abram?” Shapiro asked, shaking his head in disbelief. “You sound like the Jewish Barry Goldwater, or was he Jewish? Are we going to kill thousands of people because of a slogan?” Shapiro turned to Debra. “Tell me Debbie,” he asked, his voice dropping in both tone and volume, realizing he was breaching a topic they’d barely mentioned. “Tell me, is that the same level of reasoning that went on in that bunker in the desert? Did you and the generals kill a hundred thousand Syrians, Syrians we now know were totally innocent, because you had to use your bomb or you feared you would lose it?”
Her eyes widened as her cheeks were drawn in. They could see Reuben struggling to hold her composure, not to answer his accusation with tears. She struggled, but lost. Instead of crying, Reuben stood and walked quickly from the room. The sound of her pouring something into a glass could be heard, followed by the clunk of ice cubes. Shapiro turned to face Abram.
“Make a threat? And if they call our bluff?” Shapiro asked quietly. “What do we do if they call our bluff?”
The room was quiet. Only the full-haired, blonde CNN newscaster talked on about President Quaid vowing to “pull out all stops” in detainee interrogations.
Debra Reuben walked back into the room, carrying a refilled glass. She stood in front of Shapiro, who’d remained seated on the sofa. Looking down on him, she resurrected the voice that had sent two jet pilots on their missions.
“What bluff is that, Ben?” she asked.