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

warning, a threat, pressure, and a demonstration of
total lack of consideration, which was perfectly understandable and, no more
and no less – justified. This made me angry.
    “That is my last word.”
    “If that’s the case,”
Shmulik declared, “I’ll be seeing you tomorrow.”
    “You don’t know where I
am.”
    “Tell me.”
    “I’m not revealing my whereabouts,
on principle,” I replied.
    “A fine principle,” he
told me approvingly. “You stick to it. But I’ll find you. Don’t be ridiculous.
How do you think I got to you, and I’m speaking to you now? Sleep well tonight
and I’ll be seeing you.” End of conversation.
    My wife was burning with a
curiosity that was not to be doused until she heard all she wanted to hear,
demanded to hear in fact, a silent, stern demand that could not be resisted,
willingly or unwillingly, consciously or otherwise.
    About ten years ago, I
began telling the story, I took part in manoeuvres, as director of a laboratory
in a field hospital. We set up the hospital in the desert of Ze’elim. And when
I say ‘we set it up’ you have to understand it literally. The whole team was
involved, everyone from the hospital director, a world-famous expert in brain
surgery, through all the medical staff, doctors, nurses, orderlies, the duty
chemist and your husband too, down to the last of the stretcher carriers. We
erected huge tents, crammed in beds, which were nothing more than stretchers on
trestles. I had to set up the laboratory tent myself, with minimal assistance.
I took delivery of a heavy chest, made of wood and containing all the equipment
and materials needed for the lab. Then we were told that the sergeant-major in
charge of the hospital was intent on doing everything to ensure the success of
the exercise, meaning, he would allow no officer, medical or otherwise, to
sleep on the stretchers; they were expected to sleep on the solid ground of the
desert, with no mattresses or anything resembling mattresses. It was clearly
explained that the hospital sergeant-major was a young man, of very rigid
personality and with experience of imposing order and discipline, who had
proved himself in difficult situations, baulked at nothing and without a shadow
of doubt, was liable to pounce on the most minor of infractions. Rumour had it,
it wasn’t worth tangling with this sergeant-major from any point of view.
    This was not to my liking
at all. Night came down. The signal was given. And all the personnel of the
field hospital were required to bed down on the rocky ground of the Ze’elim
desert. I sat in the lab tent, for which I was responsible. I lay down on the
box of equipment and materials, and waited for the sergeant-major to arrive.
Time crawled at the speed of a snail crossing dry ground. I stood up and went
wandering around among the other tents, peered into the biggest tent where the
doctors, in spite of the stern warnings, were lying down in the places reserved
for theoretical patients. And then I saw a tall, erect young man, with an
athletic build and an air of unassailable self-confidence, coming in by the
other entrance to the tent. He approached the doctor closest to that entrance,
leaned over him, asked his name and with the utmost civility, commanded him to
get down immediately and lie on the ground… The doctor tried to say something,
the charismatic young man simply repeated the word “immediately!” with dryness
sharp as a scalpel and the doctor obeyed. So he went from doctor to doctor and
soon had them all down on the ground.
    I left the tent and the
degrading treatment of those officer-doctors, humiliated before my eyes by that
impertinent, ignorant young man, who had no sense of decorum whatsoever.
    He came to the lab tent
and found the acting director lying prone on the box of equipment and
materials, which was locked and bolted.
    “Get down from that box at
once!” – his metallic voice cut through the stuffy air in that small tent.
    “Who are you,