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getting anywhere.”
    A policeman arrived with the records of the three prisoners. “All three are Palestinian,” he said. “The one here is from Hebron. He was arrested for aiding and abetting a homicide, illegal gun possession and for being a member of an underground terrorist group. The two in Israel are from Gaza; they were arrested during an attack on a civilian bus not far from Tel Aviv.”
    Ryan wanted their families contacted.
    “What if the identities are fake,” Saul asked.
    “Let’s find out.”
    Agence France Presse,
OCTOBER 24, 1975
    The security services in New York have been mobilized after the disappearance of Shaltiel Feigenberg, an American citizen born in Europe. Sources report a connection to ongoing violence in the Middle East.
    The New York Times
,
OCTOBER 24, 1975
    … unofficial sources confirm that the missing man lives in Brooklyn. The police refuse to release more detailed information, other than to say that he is the son of a Holocaust survivor.
    Associated Press,
NEW YORK, OCTOBER 24, 1975
    … the New York police in charge of investigating the disappearance of Shaltiel Feigenberg refuse to speculate on whom the abductors might be and what their demands are.
    Yedioth Ahronoth
,
TEL AVIV, OCTOBER 24, 1975
    The government’s top-level security cabinet held an emergency session last night to discuss the disappearance of Shaltiel Feigenberg in the United States. The prime minister reminded his colleagues of the traditionthat all his predecessors have abided by: to consider themselves responsible for the life and security of endangered Jews everywhere in the world, including in friendly countries. The Israeli secret service has offered its help to American law enforcement agencies …
    So, from one day to the next, Shaltiel Feigenberg and his family became famous. Their names and faces appeared on the front pages of newspapers. “The Mysterious Disappearance of a Jewish Storyteller” was one headline. They were discussed on television. President Gerald Ford, when brought up to speed, made his concern publicly known. His secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, followed developments closely. The prospective presidential, senatorial and congressional candidates published statements condemning “all forms of terrorism and proclaiming their solidarity with the Jewish people.” Blanca and her nieces reluctantly submitted to the journalists’ questions to assuage them.
    Time
magazine quoted Malka saying that the investigations should focus on anti-Semitic groups: “It’s simple. They’re everywhere. They won’t forgive us for having survived and for having children.” (The magazine pointed out that the hostage had no children.)
    The New York Times
published excerpts of a short story that Blanca had found in the jumble of her husband’s desk drawers. A literary agent contacted her and asked whether she wouldn’t consider publishing his short stories in a book that could be produced in a matter of weeks.
    An Israeli evening daily printed Shaltiel’s Israeli short storyin its entirety. It was hardly characteristic of his oeuvre, if oeuvre is the right word. It lacked the intellectual, let alone mystical, preoccupations of his other writings. This one was an action narrative.
    Brooklyn was in turmoil. Some young Hasidim created a small self-defense group and offered to protect the Feigenberg family. Their elders announced a day of fasting and invited the entire community to join them in reciting the appropriate Psalms: Heaven will help the Jews when men prove to be powerless or indifferent. A great mystic spent the entire night in silence, in strict reverent meditation, trying to locate and protect Shaltiel.
    In Israel, for understandable reasons, official circles and the public were following the Feigenberg episode with ever-greater interest. Are people more interested in the fate of a writer, no matter how modest, than in the fate of an anonymous person? Possibly.
    The special adviser to