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

  THRILLER*:

  The Galilee Plot

  By

  Shlomo Kalo

  _________________

  * Fiction, the product of creative imagination, for the diversion and entertainment, in times of leisure or insomnia, of reader and author alike.

  © All Rights Reserved

  Y D.A.T. Publications POBox 27019,

  Jaffa 6127001, Israel

  Email: [email protected] www.y-dat.co.il

  More about and of Shlomo Kalo here: www.y-dat.com and on the last page of this book

  Original Hebrew title: THRILLER

  English translation by Philip Simpson

  First Kindle edition 2016

  Cover: The author and his wife

  Cover design: *********. Image:*******

  ISBN: 978-965-7028-63-6

  THRILLER's print editions are available in English and in Hebrew

  No part of this book, except for brief reviews may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, digital or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any storage or retrieval system, without Permission in writing from the Publisher

  Do not come praising friendship to me

  Do not come praising harmony

  Come praising independence

  Praise human dignity

  To Rivka my wife

  I salute you

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Epilogue

  Appendix A

  Appendix B

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  It was a particularly pleasant summer this year – a summer which was to degenerate into anger and upheavals, and natural disasters – and as every year, I spent it with my wife in a quiet and comfortable hotel, well known and not inexpensive, in Switzerland. In the very same room in which my recent books have been written, including this one. For the benefit of patrons not conversant with German, the management of the hotel provided an English newspaper, the “Herald Tribune” which we read avidly, even rising early to be sure of seeing it. The number of copies was limited, and the first into the dining room in the morning would get the paper.

  We sat beside the teapots and the bowls of cereal. My wife was leafing through the paper. Suddenly she stopped leafing as her eyes focussed on something, presumably important and relevant, so I supposed, to our home country. And my supposition proved to be correct, as she handed the paper to me, pointing to an item on the front page, in the lower left-hand corner. A short item headlined: Mystery disease erupts in the mixed village of Hasda, in Galilee. I read the article, or more precisely, I devoured every word, every letter. The paper reported that Hasda, the only settlement of its kind, with Jewish and Arab families living side by side, founded not long ago with the aid of a generous grant from the Saudis, had been struck by a mysterious and as yet undiagnosed disease: symptoms included high temperature, prolonged and debilitating fever – but it was definitely not any form of malaria. Some twenty families had been affected, half of them Jewish and half of them Arab. Within two weeks, ten patients had died. And the astonishing thing – the paper reported with no small degree of smug satisfaction, proud of the achievement of its intrepid correspondent, in finding the story had an “astonishing” element – was that all ten were, without exception, Jews and Jews exclusively.

  Two young families of Jewish idealists, who came to break down the barriers of hatred, fear and prejudice, had perished, parents and children alike. The authorities were investigating. As previously noted, the disease itself was yet to be diagnosed.

  “Do you remember that story of yours,” my wife asked me, “about some way of infecting only Jews with some virus or other? There was a young Arab – you studied together, or rather you did your postgraduate studies together in the U.S.A – and he came up with this crazy idea, and you tried to convince me that in principle it was possible…”

  I smiled a forced smile.

  “It looks as if he’s done it,” I replied, rereading the succinct report in the prestigious journal and in the process asking myself repeatedly – had the thing really been done, taken out of the realm of theory and laboratory exploration, and put into practice, on the ground?

  Amin Abu Halil I had met at Columbia University, a distinguished institution of higher education with a worldwide reputation, especially for its faculty of natural sciences. We were both up for the degree of Ph.D.; he got his and I remained an M.Sc. I wasn’t too disappointed. The whole Ph.D. thing had a hefty portion of snobbery about it, without the slightest trace of sincerity or any interest in genuine research – all the excuses and justifications of those infected by banal-intellectualist laziness. I expressed my opinion to Amin; despite the tradition of mutual hostility that had grown up and still existed in our disputed homeland, or perhaps because of it, we often talked and relations between us were decidedly friendly. He didn’t accept my opinion, nor did he reject it out of hand. He justified his studies by reminding me he had been sent here at the expense of some Arab educational fund, and he had absolutely no intention of disappointing his sponsors, especially since the administrators of the fund, it transpired, expected great and glorious things of him. Amin proved himself and was duly awarded his Ph.D. for a thesis focussing in particular on Rickettsias, as distinct from my more modest endeavours, studying the micro-organisms responsible for plagues and in particular P.Pestis which created havoc, so it seems, in the Middle Ages, with a number of outbreaks in the world of the developing nations, not correctly diagnosed as such. I often talked with Amin about our research and about other subjects. Our conversations were characterised by open-heartedness and flawless sincerity.

  He did not hide his opinion that the greatest plague of humanity, casting down into Hell its pride and all its noble aspirations, is caused by no micro-organism but rather by a parasitical macro-organism, walking on two legs, belonging to the restricted and exclusive and loathsome strain of the Jewish community, whose much vaunted culture is decidedly anti-cultural. National chauvinism, unbridled pursuit of profit, arrogance and cunning, arousing in the most direct, simple and natural way, murderous hatred to say the least, and more precisely – aversion. And all the nations that call themselves enlightened, have cast them out from within their borders and installed them in the desert, on the understanding that there they enjoy, according to the ancient writings, certain rights. And this “desert”, as it turned out, had been inhabited since time immemorial by “fools”, law-abiding people and respecters of tradition, whose hard lives allow no parasitical creatures to share the desert with them. Here he would preach an impassioned sermon about attempts to tackle this morbid evil, Jews and Judaism, starting with the Roman Empire, through the Middle Ages, the statement of Erasmus: “If it is a Christian virtue to hate the Jews, then we are all good Christians”, the Nazis in the more recent past and the Arab
s today. The debate was heated and like any debate, it was futile from its foundations to its lofty pinnacles. I brought up all the atrocities committed by the Roman Empire, the dark days of the Middle Ages, the Hell of Nazi ideology, and the devilish, magnified reflection of these three elements in the present day, in Arab terrorism, the heroes of which are methodical murderers, devoid of conscience and devoid of heart, whose sole aspiration is murder for murder’s sake. In spite of this, we continued to hold conversations, only in English, naturally enough. Amin resolutely refused even to curse in Hebrew. Amin Abu Halil knew the language perfectly well, and his Hebrew was as fluent as mine, but he insisted he had sworn a vow not to speak it, read it or write it, since it was the language of the conqueror of his land and the oppressor of his people. I was not bothered either way, so we spoke in English, the language which we shared, and it may be that in the course of our intense efforts to express ourselves to each other, the standard of our spoken English improved, something we could both be grateful for.

  The great and the glorious times of the Arabs, Amin Abu Halil was not well informed about, and when the gaps in his knowledge were shown to him, the result was helpless fury. He was particularly enraged when I pointed out to him that during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the principal livelihood of the western “Maghrebi” Arabs, the inhabitants, that is, of present-day Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria, was based on prostitution and piracy. I even found a dubious point of light on this dark page of Arab history, when America, a young country in those days, negotiated with the above-mentioned nations and offered a generous ransom, on condition that ships flying the American flag would not be attacked by Arab pirates, and the agreement was made and implemented…

  Amin Abu Halil smiled and then burst into loud laughter, making his whole body shake:

  “My ancestors,” he said emphatically, “did something for the good of humanity, removing the democratic mask from the faces of those devoid of honour and faith. And what about the Europeans?” he asked – “Weren’t they included in the agreement? After all, they are no less female than those Americans, in fact they are their legal and illegal ancestors; you can be sure that among those who came up with the idea and did the negotiating, there were a fair number of Jews…”

  “That’s possible,” I answered him, “I don’t know the details. As far as Europe is concerned, Britain and France took on the pirates and beat them.”

  “The Arabs have a mission”, he declared in a tone of firm conviction.

  “And that is?”

  “To cleanse the world from spiritual whoredom and I’m talking about the so-called ‘progressive’ American-European nations, which are polluting the holy land of God.”

  I offered him a ceasefire: “Did you know, you’re quoting Osama Bin Laden?”

  “That was my intention,” he explained and added: “And what, in your opinion, should be suggested to these cultural nations, that call themselves ‘progressive’…

  It seemed that a ceasefire was in force. I clung to it:

  “To stop polluting the holy land of God.”

  “Your answers are typically Jewish.”

  “And what do you suggest?”

  “To accept what you say.”

  “Accept the answer of a Jew?”

  “Accept it and implement it!” my interlocutor declared, with an enthusiasm that could not be described as other than quintessentially Mediterranean, based, if it has a base, on impulsiveness, which beyond any shadow of a doubt is not to be trusted at all, like any form of impulsiveness.

  And this was clear to both of us. The question remained to be answered, how to make progress in this impulsive Middle East, so that it may learn something from something, from what is the opposite of impulsiveness.

  “The only true and accurate answer is: it’s impossible to achieve this.”

  “We shall all know before too long,” he commented simply.

  On this there was full agreement – Mediterranean agreement.

  Chapter Two

  We studied with the same professor – one of the greatest luminaries of human microbiology, Mick Antonio, born in Canada, from emphatically British roots. His affection for the pair of us was obvious for all to see, and aroused some envy. Despite this, he didn’t invite us to dine at his house, unlike his other pupils, who were neither Jews nor Arabs, although we were both reckoned the elite among his students, and we not only earned praise from him, but quite often, if a student was falling behind he would be referred to us for some extra coaching.

  After Amin was awarded his doctorate, and I voluntarily excluded myself from the ranks of doctoral candidates, the professor talked with us in his office, separately. I was the first to be invited. The esteemed professor launched immediately into a tirade: “Why do you people tolerate those beasts of the desert among you, you who are the bearers of the flag of human culture and progress, and have been so since time immemorial? All the western nations revere those who have emerged from your midst – Jesus Christ and Karl Marx. You come up with advice about everything and without you, the practical use of the atom would never have come to fruition. Finish them off! I respect your refusal to go for the degree of Ph.D., along with that character, El-Husseini,” – he corrupted Amin’s name and continued without embarrassment – “or Abdul el-Said, or whatever his name is, who cares, impossible to pronounce anyway. So please do something! Liberate humanity from these murderous monsters!”

  After me, Amin Abu Halil went in and received a lecture in the same spirit, although not identical. “Why are you people proclaiming Jihad? Do it, don’t just proclaim it! Liberate the world from those leeches, put an end to the ‘Elders of Zion’! Talking of honour and culture and progress and standing helpless before a gang of leeches! Finish them off, crush them. Bring about their definitive end, once and for all, and earn the gratitude of all the great nations, nations of honour and culture, in the past, present and future. Enough of speeches and demonstrations. One of your greatest men demanded that every Arab should kill a Jew. If every self-respecting Arab can kill two – what’s wrong with that! Do something, so you’ll have a part in building the new world. So you’ll be its princes! You have the oil, soak all the Jews in a sea of oil and set them alight.”

  We met after the personal meetings with the esteemed professor, and told one another what had happened there.

  “What do you think?” asked Amin, with deep sadness reflected in his habitually gloomy eyes.

  “You’re asking for my opinion, the opinion of a Jew?” I pressed him.

  “Yes. In the situation we’re faced with, there’s no one else to ask.”

  “I’ll tell you my impressions, which are decidedly objective impressions. The esteemed professor is inciting us against one another. He wants to get rid of us both, at a stroke, and he’s leaving the job to us.”

  “What’s to be done?”

  “An unnecessary question. You know as well as I do what has to be done.”

  “All the same,” he asked again, “what’s to be done?”

  “What logic requires.”

  “What does logic require?” Amin persisted.

  “Not to obey it. And the rest follows.”

  “To do the opposite!” Amin declared.

  “Explicitly!” I stressed.

  Chapter Three

  Several months passed. The two of us continued to hang around the university, with its lofty marble halls, pleasantly cool in the summer, comfortably warm in the winter, its massive libraries, its sophisticated laboratories, friendly locals. Amin’s bursary did not end – on the contrary, for reasons best known to the sponsors, it was doubled.

  My own, personal resources, I usually managed to avoid wasting in their entirety.

  We did a lot of revelling, the kind of revelry appropriate to our age. We didn’t come across any craze that we didn’t dabble in. We found girlfriends of dubious character. Those that Amin chose were more glamorous, laden with strident jewellery. The
ones who came out with me had no glamour about them at all, and it seemed they weren’t even interested in such things. I drank. Amin refused to be my partner in sin.

  His religion apparently prohibits this – so he told me.

  “And what about drugs?” I asked a pertinent question.

  “We’re not talking about them.”

  “Well?” I pressed him.

  “Everyone can do as he pleases.” He was addicted to drugs but remarkably, at the end of the day, he managed to kick the habit. My drinking stopped before I got hooked.

  And then came the day when he appeared in my room, waving a newspaper at me. A conventional paper, not a scientific journal, or something of a more serious kind.

  He pointed with his long bony fingers, which reflected his thin, upright body, rising to a height of 1.88 metres.

  I read, and I was stunned.

  The paper quoted from research conducted in Canada by some expert in D.N.A., who had succeeded in proving that Jews have a special, and unmistakable, form of D.N.A. This scientist had travelled to India and to Africa and on the basis of reliable tests had proved that among both Indians and Africans there are large numbers of Jews who have no inkling of their Jewish identity.

  “Yes,” I said, “I know Hitler used to claim that Jews have the blood of Negroes.”

  “Then I expect you know there was Jewish blood flowing in Hitler’s veins too,” Amin commented with undisguised pleasure.

  “I’ve heard that one as well,” I declared, hinting that I had neither the interest nor inclination to go wallowing in the putrid mire of a conversation on this subject or anything like it.

  Amin took the hint, but he didn’t change the subject and didn’t leave my room.

  “There’s something else here,” he added emphatically, as if to inform me that the “something else” was of the greatest importance, and he had not the shadow of a doubt that it would arouse my interest. Perhaps he was right. I listened to his theory.