Vengeance by George Jonas

Author:George Jonas [Jonas, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Military, Spies
ISBN: 9781443403573
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2012-09-03T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

Mohammed Boudia

THE truth was that, for the first time since they had set out from the Hotel du Midi in Geneva at the end of September, perhaps for the first time in his whole life, Avner became afraid. He could not recall ever having experienced the same feeling before. Not in the army, not during the Six Day War, not while he was being trained, and not while he was working as an ordinary agent. Not even during the mission, until the middle of April. Of course, he had always known what it was like to be tense or startled. Or scared. But the feeling he began experiencing in April was entirely different. It wasn’t a fleeting rush of adrenalin, a sensation of his heart beating in his throat for a few seconds, a sudden pang that would never outlast the immediate cause that gave rise to it. This new feeling was a quiet, low, nagging anxiety that would not leave him for days at a time, regardless of what he was doing. He could be eating his lamb chops in a restaurant or even watching his favourite actor, Louis de Funes, in a movie—Avner must have seen every film the French comedian had ever made—and the feeling would still be there. Sometimes it was like a dull pain, sometimes like a solid lump. Fear.

At first Avner actually thought it might be something he ate.

When he recognized it as fear, and he soon did, he became resentful and ashamed. For a while he was mortified at the thought that the others, Carl, Steve, Hans or Robert, might recognize it in him, and as far as Avner was concerned that would have been worse than anything. To counteract it he found himself saying, “Guys, I’m scared,” and “Guys, I’m worried,” at every turn. This, of course, was braggadocio army-style, in the only form permissible, proclaiming courage by protesting the opposite too much. But he must have overdone it, because one day Carl said to him, very quietly, when they were alone:

“I know. I’m pretty worried myself.”

He spoke in a tone that caused Avner to stop pretending.

“Oh shit,” he said. “You too? I wonder why.”

But Carl only shook his head. They never talked about it again.

Soon afterwards, the answer came to Avner in a flash. At the time, he was flying back from New York where he had just spent a week with Shoshana, which might have had something to do with the timing of his discovery. Not directly, but in a roundabout way.

Their reunion was not entirely happy. Shoshana had settled during the first week of April into the apartment in Brooklyn that Avner had found for her. While Avner was still in Beirut, she had moved in with the baby, Geula, and Charlie the dog. Alone. Without ever having lived outside Israel before. Without having any idea where Avner might be or how soon he might turn up in America. When he did arrive, about three weeks later, Shoshana clung to his neck with such desperate force that she actually caused him physical pain.

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