THRILLER: The Galilee Plot: (International Biological Terror, The Mossad, and... A Self-contended Couple) by Shlomo Kalo Page B

of
ground. When you were close to the clearing, Mr Olsen drew the Zig Zauer,
stopped and took aim. You could tell he wasn’t born to it, or even properly
trained” – he gave a professional opinion and returned to his story:
    “I had to think about it
for a moment, a long moment. Shooting a man – well, it’s easy enough in the
movies.”
    I couldn’t agree with him
more.
    “However,” Heinrich
continued, “there are situations where there’s no other option but to shoot,
before the damage is done.” It was clear this was the argument which Heinrich
meant to raise in reporting to his superiors.
    “I drew and I fired,” he
exclaimed with a light sigh, and added at once, by way of justification: “I’m
good at that. Trained. And the thing proved itself. That bastard, Mr Olaf Olsen,
fired a hopeless shot, even an amateur could have done better than him, and I
scored a bull’s-eye from twice the range he shot at you from, and he went down
like a shot bird, that’s the part that interests you and you’re entitled to
know it. I’d suggest you don’t publicise this or broadcast it. The important
thing is that the two of you have survived. I say the two of you,” he added,
jabbing an accusing finger at me, “because with your irresponsibility you have
put your delightful wife in danger too, some intellectual you are!”  I
expressed my full agreement with a prolonged hmmm…
    In the meantime, vehicles
were moving into the wood, police vehicles, off-roaders. We returned to our
hotel.
    My wife burst into tears,
I embraced her in a fatherly sort of way and she soon regained her composure.
Then she went to the phone and began talking to nameless people in fluent
English. I went into the bathroom, feeling the need for a shower, although it
was my waistcoat and trousers that were soiled. Leaving the bathroom, I felt
much refreshed and began urging my wife to follow my example and freshen up in
the shower.
    “There’s no time for
that,” she objected.
    “Why do you say that?”
    “We’re going home
tomorrow!” she announced.
    “What do you mean, we’re
going home?” I asked with affected innocence and added: “We’ve got the flight
to sort out and all that.”
    “It’s all arranged,” she
assured me. “Now, you’re to phone Shmulik,” she demanded.
    Without further discussion
I picked up the receiver, with Shmulik’s visiting-card in front of me.
    Somewhere or other, his
wife woke him up. He sounded tense. “We’re coming home tomorrow!” I told him
and saw fit to add that there had been another attempt on my life. For a moment
he was silent and then he responded:
    “Maybe it’s time after all
to sort out that nasty friend of yours!”
    “That wouldn’t solve
anything,” I declared with some heat, although I knew I was in the right – “If
I were to meet him, that could be infinitely more profitable!” I concluded.
    “See you tomorrow!” cried
Shmulik, and he hung up.
    On the plane there was a
party. Champagne was distributed, and a rabbi sitting two rows in front of us,
on his way to Israel to spend the holidays there, raised his glass, said a
prayer and pronounced a blessing: “Blessed be He who has given us life and has
brought us to this time!” I was astonished. I asked my wife: “What is all this?
Who ordered the champagne?”
    The reply was unequivocal
and succinct: “You did!”
    We embraced. My wife whispered
in my ear: “I sent some to Heinrich and his team too.”
     
    In a way that cannot be
explained, that was uninvited, my lungs began breathing in a rhythm different
from that in which they had breathed hitherto. It began with the row of 
houses blazing white below me, strewn across arid, overheated land – “We’re
coming home!” – I stretched out in my seat. A gate invisible to the eye opened
and substitution began, between what was outside it and what was inside. As if
the whole of the Bible had put on intangible skin and sinew and passed through
this gate.