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

effectively as possible. If
there’s no other choice, just run away from him, go into a shop, a cinema, a
café, so you can come out again and disappear. I don’t need to teach you
these things, which I’m sure you learned in the ‘Combat Squads’ in Bulgaria.
Anyway, always try to be part of a crowd. Warn your wife too. Women, despite a
tendency towards hysteria, have a more highly developed instinct than men have
for detecting danger. My best wishes and my compliments to her. I hope there’ll
be no more need for phone conversations like this, before you come back to this
country. Enjoy your vacation! Incidentally,” Shmulik remembered – “checks in
the blood-banks of several hospitals have yielded surprising results, and a
number of cleaning workers and nurses, male and female, have been sacked, after
confessing what was on their consciences. There was a network, not so much
surprising as astounding. It’s in our hands now. Stocks of blood are being held
under rigorous supervision. You deserve a medal for this, but as you know, our
country doesn’t do medals. My best wishes again and see you soon!” End of
conversation.
    I told my wife, who
characteristically became very tense. We went out for a walk in the woods,
which in a sense was the longest living of all our walks, having been part of
our routine for the past ten years.
    Without realising it, my
wife – despite her highly developed instinct for danger, as Shmulik had put it,
and I – despite the exercises of more than thirty years ago and my experience,
albeit ephemeral, of these things, were constantly turning our heads, checking
every shadow, moving or otherwise, and sighing with relief when the pedestrian
passed us by, taking no notice of us and making no impression on us whatsoever.
This was the way we liked it.
     
    Meetings with Israelis
aren’t uncommon. Especially around Jewish festival days, almost every fourth
tourist arriving at the Bahnhoff is an Israeli. I went with my wife to the
“H&M” clothing superstore; she picked up an item and went into one of the
changing cubicles to try it on. At that moment I was approached by a tall woman
with sunburnt face, flushed as if she had just run a marathon:
    “Oh, it’s you!” she began
in Hebrew, which could not be described as anything but ‘strident’, and
immediately added – “I recognised you! Speak Hebrew?” she went on to ask in
English, not giving me a chance to reply, “I recognised her too!” She pointed
to the cubicle where my wife had disappeared behind the curtain, passed a hand
over her scalp, indicating that my wife’s short hair was an unmistakable mark
of recognition, and in the same emphatic tone she added, “I’m listening to her
song all the time!”
    “Which one?” I asked.
    “All of them. All the
discs, all on auto-play, I’ve got her on continuous loop!”
    A mannish, formidable
Israeli woman, and there’s no wonder that I felt cowed by her solid presence.
Suddenly she disappeared, as abruptly as she had descended on us, to my relief
and to the relief of my wife, who had apparently heard every word she said from
behind the curtain.
    That’s the way we are, we
Israelis, and I only wish I could add “And it’s nothing to be ashamed of”.
    We entered the “Manor”,
with the express intention of using the toilets on the top floor. As we climbed
the stairs, my wife stopped beside a wooden wall panel covered with socks, of
all materials, styles and sizes. She swooped on them with me following close
behind, examined some of them, picked out nine pairs, and smiled one of her
most charming smiles, pointing with her free right hand to the bundle clutched
in her left and explained:
“Exactly the fabric I was looking for. Top quality, there’s nothing like this
at home.” She went to the cash-desk, pulled out a credit card. While she waited
for the conclusion of the paying process, her eye strayed over an extensive
display of shoulder-bags, including an