Though They Come from the Ends of the Earth by Carl Douglass

Author:Carl Douglass
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Publication Consultants

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Berkeley, California, January, 1993

Most undergraduates choose a major after their second year in their university training. Gideon Rothsberger IV was hardly a typical undergraduate. He did not have a major in the usual sense; rather, he specialized. He focused his energies on becoming a world-class banker as was expected by his father and grandfather (III and IV). Toward that end, he specialized in banking and business management, the mathematics of economics, accounting, and finance. Because of his intense interest in the mysteries and intricacies of higher mathematics, he pursued a course in math designed by his major professor, Samson Bernstein, and his math tutor, Dr. Stephen Ammon Rhodes, just for him. Gideon had every intention of going his own way, but he allowed his most trusted adult advisors to help guide him—his mother and father, Frau Gunnhilde Miller at the Saint Francis Woods Hebrew Academy, Levi Schmuel—irrespective of his Kosher Nostra leanings—his Krav Maga instructor, Lt. Col. Shai Avitan, his major professor, and his math tutor at Berkeley. Most undergraduates take four, even five, years to complete their work for a bachelor’s degree; Gideon completed his freshman and sophomore years in one year and his junior and senior years in the second year at Berkeley.

He graduated maxima cum laude [with very great honor], which was the highest possible honor, rarely given by any university and never before awarded at U.C. Berkeley. He was one day past his thirteenth birthday and was the sixth youngest person ever to receive a degree at any school in the University of California system. The San Francisco Chronicle, Oakland Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and even The New York Times and Life Magazine ran feature articles on the “boy prodigy.” The Daily Californian, U.C. Berkeley’s newspaper, put out a special edition on Gideon and other past prodigies who had graduated from Berkeley. He appeared on the Johnny Carson, Maury Povich, and Oprah Winfrey Shows on television.

The articles and appearances caught the attention of important people well beyond the usually intended readers and viewers in the popular media. One of those was alerted to the young man’s potential by Gideon’s Krav Maga instructor, Lt. Col. Shai Avitan, and that man communicated with his opposite in the United States.

The call came through Rear Admiral Neal Daastrup’s scrambled home telephone at two o’clock in the morning. He was grumpy whenever anyone disturbed his sleep, a condition he wanted to be sacrosanct; but all too often, he got disturbed anyway.

The encoded caller ID showed the caller to be Major General Zwi Rosenstein, Daastrup’s counterpart in the Mossad.

“Zwi, you old criminal, this had better be good. Do you know what time it is here?

“I do. It is about the only time I can get to you without having to deal with everybody who runs interference for you.”

“Okay, I’ll assume it is at least reasonably important. It’s your nickel, shoot.”

“Do you read the papers and watch a talk show or two?”

“Sure—in my copious free time.”

“Did you happen to notice some attention

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