THRILLER: The Galilee Plot: (International Biological Terror, The Mossad, and... A Self-contended Couple) (7 page)

We sat in our spacious,
familiar room, and didn’t switch on the television.

“Interested?” I asked and
handed her the remote control.

“Not at all. I prefer the
quiet, the sights, the rain falling calmly, mercifully I would say.” And then
she added: “The weather forecasts have got it completely wrong.”

“Not completely,” I
commented.

“It seems, the weather
forecasters aren’t doing their job properly. Or perhaps,” she added, “this
profession isn’t an exact science.”

“A science, yes, and exact
– yes, but all the same, it depends on who is doing it”

“What’s that supposed to
mean?” my wife asked, her curiosity aroused, “What are you referring to?”

“Getting the job done is
what counts. In other words” – I gave the answer in advance to the question, or
perhaps, a flood of questions, “they aren’t doing a conscientious job.”

“What is a conscientious
job?”

“A job done by someone who
loves it and is a believer.”

“That sounds a bit
idealistic,” she commented, with some justification.

“A story occurs to me,” I
countered, “about professions and the way they are practised.  It’s a
story that’s all true, and it’s from an Arab source.”

“I’m all ears.”

“In fact,” I said, “I
heard it from Amin Abu Halil, one fine evening in New York City. We were
sitting in my room, going through material that he was going to be tested on, and
the subject of choosing professions came up. Amin claimed that according to the
ancient Arab perception, still valid today, a man is predestined to a certain
profession, even if he thinks it’s his own choice. In fact, God guides him
towards it. And this is the story that Amin told me.

“In the Muslim world, a
few decades ago, pilgrims to Mecca complained to the sovereign, King Ibn Saud,
about a small Muslim tribe, living in the mountains, all of whose members
practised a single trade, exclusively, handed down from father to son and
grandson and great grandson, for centuries. And the trade, on which this small
mountain tribe subsisted – was plunder.

“King Ibn Saud sent a
high-powered delegation to talk to the dignitaries of the tribe and demand that
they abandon their ancient profession, and stop harassing decent Muslims in
their efforts to uphold the commandment of Hajj, supreme among commandments.

“The dignitaries of the
tribe listened attentively to the eminent delegation, considered what they had
to say, and gave an unequivocal answer:

For as long as the tribe
has existed, it has made its living from robbing pilgrims, a profession
enjoined upon us by Allah, and we know no other trade. Nor have we any
intention of learning another trade and dishonouring the tradition of our
forefathers. We regret this defiance of His Majesty the King
.

“Ibn Saud, ‘His Majesty’
was enraged. He sent an even more high-powered delegation, with a categorical
command to pass on:

This plunder is to be stopped
immediately and at any price. I shall not tolerate any such profession in my
kingdom, a profession that derives not from Allah but the laziness
of mankind, those who
are weak in mind and in body and under the influence of Satan. If I hear of any
further acts of pillage against holy pilgrims, I shall not leave a remnant or a
relic of this rebellious tribe, I shall exterminate and destroy and leave no
trace of it on God’s holy earth and under His clear skies. This is my command,
given to you by divine
right
.

“This time, the small
tribe made no reply at all to the distinguished delegation, for better or
worse. And in fact, Ibn Saud displayed exemplary patience, until the next Hajj,
when a column of pilgrims was attacked and robbed by the practitioners of that
ancient profession. He mustered his soldiers and led them down to the sea,
where they all bathed, put on their warlike headgear, took up their ancient
swords, and prayed. And King Ibn Saud addressed his troops, and made them swear
to destroy and exterminate every living thing in that tribal encampment,
whether man or beast, and burn the encampment and let no one evade the avenging
sword of God, and obliterate the memory of this rebellious tribe, from the face
of the holy earth and from under the clear skies of God. And as he said, so it
was. The well-drilled army attacked with their ancient curved swords, set
alight everything that would burn and slaughtered, over one whole day, all that
belonged to that rebellious tribe, man and beast, people irrespective of age
and sex.”

I admitted this was an
interesting story.

“And it’s all true. No
Scheherazade here! ” Amin assured me.

We caught colds. With
everything that goes with catching cold – especially abroad. Pains in the
joints, difficulty breathing, runny noses, coughing, low temperature, using
tissues by the ton and a strong desire to go home. A sense of home, powerful
and radical, incomparable, unambiguous  certitude that it exists. Or as my
wife, with the deepest  roots in the homeland, summed it up: “Abroad has
exhausted itself!”

In my youth, in my
schooldays, my classmates made persistent efforts to make me aware I was a
foreigner. The country, which I, like them, called my country, was not my
country in any sense whatsoever, in any way at all. I argued. I claimed that
both my grandfathers fought to liberate our country from Turkish rule, I said
“our country” in a faltering voice, because I knew I couldn’t hope to convince
my classmates, not under any circumstances, not at all. And all the patriotic
songs, giving wings to the young spirit, which we sang in class with youthful,
irresistible enthusiasm, did not apply to me.  They applied to all the
others, not me. Because I wasn’t a son of the land that I called my country. I
was an alien plant. More than that – I wasn’t wanted. From one eternity to the
next. My new homeland I didn’t love. But it was the only homeland offered to
me. I needed a homeland as a child needs a supportive, affectionate mother,
loving or not.

Catching a cold wasn’t the
reason behind the primeval sacred longings – honest, powerful, revered,
sincere. Rather it was the age-old pain of the orphan, forever a fugitive, the
acute self-awareness, growing  more intense, consuming every part – good
or bad, sincerity that nothing can resist, the truth that you have a homeland
and you’re prepared to sacrifice everything for it – however pathetic this may
be, theatrical and staged – and there’s nothing to compare with it. And this is
what my wife declared as a natural, self-evident conclusion: “Abroad has
exhausted itself!” And it wasn’t the illness, which of course we had to contend
with, the first priority being to find a suitable answer for my wife, a concise
answer to her question: “What is illness?”

The answer:

In the Middle Ages, they
called man a “microcosm”; i.e. a miniaturised copy of the world, which exists
by virtue of preservation of divine justice and the balance of natural forces –
and as it has turned out, they were absolutely right. “Progress” and “culture”,
which try to make out of every object and every topic something synthetic, have
ignored some important issues, opposing the excess of arrogance that suffuses
them.

“The person who dispels
God from his presence, and he is the average person today, lives on his senses.
Believing only in the senses, devoted to the senses and dying by them. You
could say, man tries to derive sensual pleasure from everything.”

“Like for example?” she
interjected.

“Like for example, eating
not because you’re hungry and you need nourishment, but as often as possible,
for the pleasure of the palate alone – and the result is?” I addressed the
question to my audience and she was not slow to answer:

“Sickness.”

“And when one tries to
make sexual indulgence a principle of life, the result is?”

“AIDS.”

“That’s the modern
outcome. Alongside AIDS march those famous war heroes – syphilis, gonorrhoea,
and in recent times, chlamydia trachomatis and herpes. And no doubt, sexual
promiscuity will have further surprises in store for us. And finally, at the
moment, pain-killing drugs such as morphine, cocaine and similar substances,
are turning into sources of sensual pleasure, with results that are known only
too well. And in case I haven’t told you this before, in the fifties I knew a
doctor called Serr, a Jew of Polish origin, sent by the Germans to the
death-camps. He told me, and later he published an article about it in a
prestigious medical journal, that in one of the camps he found some of his
former patients, including cases of acute heart disease, cancer and diabetes.
He examined them again after several months spent in the extermination camp,
and could find no symptoms of those serious medical conditions. He reported on
this to the German doctor who was his superior, and the latter, genius that he
was, ordered the execution of those patients, although they had been cured, by
the lethal hunger and other privations suffered in the camp, of diseases that
were reckoned incurable.”

“German genius indeed,” my
wife concurred. “What’s to be done?” she demanded to know.

“From everything you have
heard, what is the conclusion?”

“Not to over-indulge.”

“Bull’s-eye!” I declared.
“In all senses, in all sectors.”

“And in the meantime, what
are we going to do about the illness we’re suffering from?”

“We must methodically
probe the crevices of our consciousness, bring out and replay the fantasies
we’ve entertained recently, the plans we’ve made for the future, the visible
things and the invisible, and when we find the black sheep, we’ll expel them
with courage and without compromise, a total expulsion.”

A few days passed. One
morning we both rose and found, that of all the pains, in all parts of the
body, of all the appeals for mercy – no trace was left. And then my wife put a
question that she had been keeping for a suitable time, and the time was now:

“What about all those
invisible creatures?” she asked, and added by way of clarification, “Microbes,
viruses?”

“If body and mind are in
balance,” I answered her calmly, “they can come to terms with them, just as an
efficient housewife comes to terms with the dirt in her house. She has vacuum
cleaners and other instruments available to her and her home is always clean
and sparkling, like yours in fact.”

“So it’s good to be a housewife.”

“It’s excellent to be a
housewife, if that is what you really want to be. If you’re a housewife and you
don’t want to be a housewife, it will make you ill, and your family too.”

  And although I am
opposed, totally opposed, to anything betraying the slightest hint of
preaching, and what I have just finished writing gives off a distinct and more
or less tolerable whiff of childish sermonising, and you, my reader, are no
doubt proud of your intellectual atheism – try all the same to retain in your memory
what you have just read. I hope you don’t need it, and if it turns out that you
do need it, don’t be ashamed to make the necessary use of it. You have nothing
to lose, except a morsel of pride which is of no real value at all, and may you
and yours be well.

In the evening, the phone
once again shattered the blessed silence of the room. My wife and I both ran to
the phone. She got there first, and picked up the receiver with an air of
triumph.

“Shmulik!” she announced, handing
over to me.

“Ask him,” she added as an
afterthought, “to stop sending us all these demons from Hell.”

I took the receiver.

“Please tell your wife,”
Shmulik responded, having evidently overheard her, “that we’re not the ones
sending you demons from Hell, these or any others.” It seemed that Shmulik had
been kept well-informed. Now he wanted to hear an account from first hand a
“full account” as he put it. I complied willingly enough.

“Mr Abd Rahman came here
to pay a courtesy call. His name means ‘merciful’ but he doesn’t live up to
it.”

I told him everything. He
uttered a grunt of satisfaction.

“The version you gave to
the police inspector was very good,” he concluded, “just make sure you stick to
it all the way. It’s possible they’ll call you in for another interview.
Sometimes, in democratic countries, the police are working under pressure from
the government and from the public, who demand to know everything in detail, as
precise as possible and the more sensational the better. Remember what you said
and don’t deviate from it to left or right. Until they realise they have no
prospect of getting anything more out of you, even a fabricated or imaginary
version. I’m having to watch what I say in this conversation too. It’s very
possible that interested parties, and there’s no shortage of them, are
eavesdropping on us at this moment, with all ears.”

Later, when we met back at
home, Shmulik told me more:

“Your assessment of Mr
Rahman was quite correct. He had done this a number of times. And if you want to
know, one of the passports he held was an Israeli one. He was a Bedou from this
country, husband to five wives and father to more than thirty offspring, all of
them supported out of national insurance. Recently he’s earned millions from
his special talent, shooting accurately over a considerable distance from any
position required, however impossible it may be. He got a contract on you and
set out to do the job. Our services took it on themselves to stop him, and they
hired the good offices of Paul Atlas, Abd Rahman’s sworn competitor. Mr Atlas
went everywhere Mr Rahman went, even following him to the toilet if that was
necessary. He went into your hotel and sat down not far from Mr Rahman, trying
to find a suitable position, that wouldn’t look suspicious and would give him
the best prospect of taking him out in time, as it was obvious Rahman was
determined to act, and soon. Paul Atlas wasn’t favourably impressed by you. You
struck him as physically weak and he said he wouldn’t bet on you. Everything
happened with unexpected speed and Mr Paul Atlas did a sterling job, at the
right moment and in the right way, and earned 20,000 dollars, in ready cash,
from his employers, one of whom was the one talking to you now. It occurs to
me, that a suitable post at the Nes Ziona Biological Institute might appeal to
you. One way or the other, we were all relieved with the way it worked out and
I guess you were too, your wife as well. We’ve been drinking to your health,”
and he concluded this conversation with the vehement Biblical exhortation: “Be
strong and bold!” I responded with a “Be strong and bold!” no less vehement
than his.

The next day I was
recalled to the police station. They wanted to know about the phone conversation
I had held yesterday – who was the other speaker, what was it about, and what
were my connections with him. It seems one of the hotel employees had leaked to
them the information about the call, and because the conversation had been in
Hebrew, they were not much the wiser. With commendable composure I declared I
wasn’t prepared to answer these questions and I concluded – playing the
slighted tourist – I wasn’t obliged to either.

The business of upholding
the law is something which the Swiss police evidently take very seriously. The
officer turned to me and with plain and emphatic brusqueness he declared:

“You’re not a fool. You
know that when a top-ranking hitman is sent to take you out, there’s nothing
casual about it. I haven’t a shadow of a doubt you know perfectly well why he
came after you, and you know perfectly well it’s my duty to get something
logical out of you. Give me a line to follow, a line with something solid
behind it, as to who wanted to eliminate you and why, and I’ll leave you alone.
You have my word as an officer. Around here, the word of an officer counts for
a great deal more than any other kind of promise, oath or solemn vow. Help me
Sir, and I can help you.”

His request was sincere. I
thought it over briefly, and I reckoned I’d found a way out:

“It has to do with the
Arab-Israeli conflict. As you know, Arabs are very quick to take offence, and
when they’re out for revenge they never give up.”

“You impugned the honour
of one of their top people?” – the officer clutched the straw that I held out
to him.

I nodded in an unequivocal
fashion. He hastily jotted down, in broad handwriting, clearly legible to the
one sitting opposite him: “Arab-Israeli conflict. Revenge.” We both breathed
sighs of relief. He stood up and held out to me his broad and heavy hand, and
parted from me with an endless series of felicitations, for a good day, a happy
year and a nice life. And there was yet to be a further meeting between us. I
was summoned urgently to the police station, the day after that interview.

“Help me to help you. You
have to understand, your life is in danger” he pulled out a drawer, taking out
a photograph of me standing at the window of my hotel room, shot with a
telescopic lens. “You have to understand,” continued the investigating officer,
becoming more friendly by the moment – “these people are clever. This photo was
found in Mr Rahman’s pocket. People are watching you, there’s no doubt about
that. Give me details about yourself and I’ll find them, keep tabs on them. And
you will be protected as befits you, as befits every guest in the state of
Switzerland, with its long tradition of neutrality.”

My refusal was
disappointing and absolute.

“In any case,” he
continued in an affable tone, intended to inspire confidence, “I’ll put one of
my people in the hotel. He’ll keep an eye on you, and you won’t know he’s
there. This is being done for your benefit.” We parted with a hearty handshake
– Swiss style. A handshake that isn’t obligatory, isn’t warm and yet at the
same time – radiates friendship.

The next day I noticed a
young man, very young in fact, a little on the plump side, in a shirt, trousers
and jacket of standard police colours, without any identifying marks or
insignia of rank. He followed me into the dining-room, and went out with me,
until I disappeared into the lift. On the third day, my “escort” started eating
with gusto in the dining-room, flirting with the waitresses and the
chambermaids. I didn’t mention it to my wife, hoping she wouldn’t notice for
herself, a hope that was quickly dashed.

“What kind of a cop is
that?” she commented – indicating the plumpish figure who was sitting at a
table not far from ours, wolfing down sausage, bacon and eggs and drinking
coffee, following every shapely female tourist with a hungry look, and
constantly trying out clumsy chat-up lines on the waitress who served his
coffee, winking at her just as clumsily.

“It’s no business of
ours,” I answered my wife.

She took this in, digested
it and commented in a whisper: “Anyone can tell he’s a plain-clothes cop.”

“Perhaps that’s
intentional,” I replied equably, and the subject was dropped from the agenda.
For a week the undercover cop ate and drank in the hotel, and socialised with
the hotel staff of the feminine gender, and then he disappeared as if he had
never been.

The budget of the Zurich
municipality, it seemed, was not unlimited.