Free The Black Madonna by Peter Millar

I’ve no way of explaining it. At least not one that makes any sort of sense.’
    ‘Then how do you know …?’
    ‘Take a look at this. Not that it’s going to help with any of the questions you want an answer to,’ and she handed the bemused Kriminalpolizei lieutenant a sheet of paper. It was a printout of an email message, though he noticed that the headers had been blocked out with a thick black indelible, and impenetrable, marker.
    ‘It’s a translation of the official Israeli report of the incident,’ she said.
    Weinert read: ‘Report from 1st battalion, 3rd Coy, Gaza frontier unit, IDF (Israeli Defence Force, he understood), Major XXXXX (blacked out) commanding:
    ‘The incident was logged as commencing at 00:10 hours when the duty sentries at the Israeli end of the Erez crossing point into Gaza became aware of some form of altercation at the Palestinian checkpoint some 150 metres distant. Heightened observation immediately after identified a vehicle heading for the main checkpoint fortification at approximately thirty kilometres per hour. As crossings without prior notification are heavily restricted, all checkpoint personnel were immediately put on full alert.
    ‘As the vehicle continued to approach, floodlights were trained on it and the usual warning given in Arabic, Hebrew, English and Russian. The vehicle continued its progress and warning shots were fired into the air.
    ‘With the aid of night vision binoculars, the forward watch ascertained that the vehicle in question was an early-model Honda CR-V with limited four-wheel drive capability and darkened executive windows. It was not possible to see inside the vehicle or know how many people it contained.
    ‘As is customary in the current heightened security situation,the officer commanding gave the order to fire once more into the air above the vehicle and repeat the warning, this time in Arabic only, that failure to halt immediately carried potentially lethal consequences.
    ‘Notwithstanding the vehicle continued. When it was approximately seventy metres distant, the commanding officer issued the general order to fire at the vehicle’s tyres with the express purpose of halting its progress, with permission granted to aim at the radiator grill or other bodywork if necessary but not yet at the cabin pending further, imminent instruction.
    ‘Hits were marked on the vehicle’s front radiator grill and left-side front tyre, causing it to skew but not halt. At this stage the commanding officer considered due process to have been observed and ordered blistering fire at the windshield which disintegrated, affording a partial view of a single occupant in the driving position now hunched forward presumed hit.
    ‘The vehicle however continued to advance in the face of withering fire to within ten metres of the checkpoint at which distance it was consumed by a powerful explosion presumably as the result of onboard devices detonated by the occupant. There were no other casualties. IDF forces secured the area with no Palestinian resistance . Representatives from the Palestinian Authority denied all responsibility for the incident, claiming their own security people were “distracted”.’
    ‘And you’re trying to tell me the man inside the car was …’
    ‘Exactly, the same individual whose vital organs had arrived in Altötting nearly twenty-four hours earlier. From what the Israeli forensic team pieced together …’ Weinert winced at what he was not altogether sure was an unintentional pun, ‘he was pretty high on the list of wanted terrorists. Just not their list.’
    ‘I don’t follow.’
    ‘Oh, they wanted him okay, as did a lot of other people. They just hadn’t expected him to turn up on their territory.’
    ‘So how did they identify him?’
    ‘By the DNA, there and then like here and now. He was on an internationally distributed database. They’d taken comprehensive samples when he was in jail in Spain.’
    ‘Spain?’
    ‘Yep. Their