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

moment, and
then asked my wife:
    “Why is he objecting?”
    “He has reasons of his
own, but” – my wife pointed out, “it is normal to ask permission before taking
someone’s picture.” The lady turned to me:
    “May I take a picture of
the two of you?” The voice was gentle, thoroughly amiable. I answered in a tone
of offended dignity:
    “I’d much rather you
didn’t.”
    The middle-aged couple
turned to stare at me with a pair of question-marks, which soured the
atmosphere completely.
    A more modest question
mark was posed by my wife, who lost no time, turned to the American lady and
asked in her fluent English:
    “Why do you want to take
our picture?”
    The woman softened:
    “I’m going home and I want
to preserve some memories. You and your husband are among the more pleasant
ones. Does your husband find me intolerable?”
    “Heaven forbid!” my wife
exclaimed, putting the treatment before the injury. The woman was quick to draw
her conclusions:
    “Then he likes me?” – her
hard features glowed, with something like infinite satisfaction, curing all
ills, psychological ones too. My wife suddenly found herself straying into a
minefield. A rapid retreat seemed the logical solution in these circumstances.
    “Yes, he likes you.”
    “So why does he object to
me taking his picture and keeping it as a souvenir?”
    My wife said the first
thing that came into her head, which was in fact what she believed to be the
truth:
    “He lived for many years
under a communist regime and as you know, everyone there suffers to some degree
from chronic paranoia.”
    Any reaction on the part
of the ailing American lady could have been expected, even a violent assault on
my wife or on me or on both of us. But it seemed that the Swiss were treating
her condition with their typical dedication and expertise.
    “Yes,” the American lady agreed
without hesitation, “Joe Stalin was paranoid too.”
    “That’s right,” my wife
backed her up with excessive warmth and added by way of emphasis: “No one comes
out from under a communist regime without a touch of paranoia in his heart.”
    Later, she admitted to me
that she was telling the truth as she had experienced it and that she had been
rather surprised by my reaction, exceeding any logical boundaries, and added:
“It’s true that we have to be careful after the incident with Mr Abd Rahman,
but here everything is calm… We’ve known those people for more than a month now
and they’ve known us.”
    “All the same,” I
retorted, “you have no conception of the other reality.”
    “You mean the communist
reality?”
    I had no option but to
confirm this. The atmosphere had been spoiled, and we agreed that it was time
to leave the café.
    The next day we happened
to be in the area. I asked my wife to wait for me while I went to the familiar
toilets.
    “Take care, don’t let the
American lady see you!”
    “No need to worry!” I
assured her. The moving staircase carried me up four floors to the familiar
café. I stood in the doorway and glanced briefly at our regular table –
with the two-seater bench. A corpulent, middle-aged American man was sitting
there. The “American lady” moved across, stood behind him, and with undisguised
anger, began pulling back curtains and opening windows. Wind and sun flooded
in, swamping the American who tried in vain to compress his big body. I turned
to the toilets. On the way out I met the large American, who scanned me with a
suspicious look, and asked:
    “Are you Swiss, sir?”
    “No.”
    “Tourist?”
    “Yes.”
    “Me too. These Swiss guys
– weird or what?”
    “I don’t think so,” I gave
my honest opinion.
    “I just sat down for a few
minutes in this café” – he pointed with his heavy chin at “our” seat,
now deserted. “Some lady comes along, don’t know if she’s quite sane or not,
tries every which way she can to make me move. I asked her – why? She said –
you’re taking the place of a