THRILLER: The Galilee Plot: (International Biological Terror, The Mossad, and... A Self-contended Couple) Read Online Free PDF Page A

mistake.”
    “What has?”
    “Telling you.”
    “Doesn’t every male try to
impress his woman? Your behaviour is normal. And I don’t mean to offend you,
and you haven’t taken offence, have you?” she asked with disarming,
irresistible innocence.
    “Absolutely not!” – a
heartfelt, two-word closing statement, clarifying everything.
    “And do you think you’ll
take up the offer?” she asked.
    “No,” was my candid reply.
    “Perhaps all the same you
could make some contribution,” she suggested.
    “I can do that without
being drafted. The nice thing about retirement is that they stop pestering you
with instructions and demands. If they want the benefit of my accumulated
experience, they’re welcome to it. And that’s the best for both parties.”
    “But you won’t be paid for
it.”
    “With the pension, and the
extra income from writing and recording royalties – in particular what you
bring in – we have enough and to spare!” I declared in a tone to brook no
contradiction.
    My wife considered this
and agreed: “You’re absolutely right!”
     
    Two weeks later, there
were reports in the papers, on radio and the visual media too, of a perplexing
incident which had occurred in a hospital in Nahariyya; a twelve year old Arab
boy, seriously injured in a road accident, had been admitted and he needed an
emergency blood transfusion. His blood type, AB, Rh(-) was a rare one, but
according to the list of types available in the hospital, there was supposed to
be a supply of it in the blood-bank. To the surprise of the doctors, it turned
out there was none there, and the child died in their hands. An enquiry
revealed that a quantity of AB, Rh(-) was kept for urgent cases and so it was
listed,  but it was not to be found in the special refrigeration unit
where it was stored. A police investigation concluded that the blood had been
stolen. Rumour had it that Arabs from Upper Galilee had started stealing blood,
for no discernible purpose. It turned out that stocks of other types of blood
were missing too, despite the meticulous lists that were kept, and these were
not necessarily the rare types. The grandfather of the boy who had died,
Muhammad Nabulsi, a cleaner at the hospital for many years, went to the police
and confessed that fanatical underground types had demanded that he hand over
to them stocks of blood from the hospital, which they needed, and if not, they
threatened to kill him and his family. To the question, did they demand
supplies of blood of rare types, Mr Nabulsi admitted that this was not the
case, but in his foolish way of thinking, as he put it himself, he decided that
the rare types, kept in a separate fridge, would be of more interest to the
blackmailers, and so this was what he did and Allah had punished him and his
beloved grandson had paid with his life for his conduct, which ill befitted a
Muslim. When asked if he was afraid that those fanatics would carry out their
threat and kill him, the man replied that this no longer mattered to him, and
he was praying that God would forgive the evil he had done and his life was
worthless to him now; he would try to mend his ways and beg to be forgiven,
since he did what he did in innocence of heart, and God sees, as no other can,
the inner thoughts of the human heart, and He is compassionate and merciful.
    The police investigation
continued, and it was discovered that stocks of blood had been stolen from the hospital
in Haifa too, but of common types. An Arab cleaning lady and her two assistants
had been arrested. The motive behind the thefts remained obscure.

Chapter Five  
     
     
     
    As is the natural way, things
began to calm down. We went out every day to stroll around Zurich, which we had
come to know well. We didn’t often find a restaurant that suited us. Japanese,
Chinese, Thai, Greek, Turkish, Arab restaurants – all had long ago lost their
exotic charm. It seemed they only kept going on the basis of European boredom
and the