Title: The Mediterranean shimmered in the morning sun as I swung the camcorder in a slow pan of the Jaffa waterfront
Author: Chester
Company: Village Properties

The Mediterranean shimmered in the morning sun as I swung the camcorder in a slow pan of the Jaffa waterfront. Gulls circled above the world’s oldest working port. A steady breeze bore the smell of salt and dry seaweed.
“Come on, Greg,” Jill called. “Keep playing with that little black box and you’ll miss the bus.”
I smiled at her. “Just so I don’t miss the bus for dinner. Besides, you’re the one who made sure I brought plenty of tapes.”
I popped a stick of Mr. Wrigley’s famous Spearmint into my mouth. I’d quit smoking a few months earlier and was suffering the inevitable withdrawals.
“Maybe so. But I didn’t intend for you to use the tapes as if they were going out of style.”
I let it go. For a man who had survived sixty-five years on his wits, that was a concession.
“Are you going to put together a film for the next class party?” Folds of dark hair above an arched brow belied her sixty-plus years.
“I’ll limit it to epic proportions,” I said.
All kidding aside, I had counted on this trip to separate me by time and distance from the agonizing predicament making my life unbearable back home. My situation seemed as insolvable as the standoff between the Palestinians and Israelis. Here it was played out with rocks, bullets and bombs. In my case, I felt the entire Metro Nashville Police Department was lined up like some Civil War regiment, glaring down their barrels at me. For the moment, though, my problems seemed remote.
Grasping Jill’s hand, I strolled beside her out to where our group stood on a large open plaza. Clustered around us were entertainment places, restaurants, an art gallery and one of Israel’s countless churches named for Simon Peter, the Galilean fisherman Jesus chose to lead the early Christians. We were mostly seniors, on a tour organized by our Sunday School class from Gethsemane United Methodist Church in Nashville. I would give long odds that we had not missed a single St. Peter’s since our arrival on a hot November morning two weeks ago. Some had questioned our sanity in traveling to this battleground of the Jews and Palestinians. But we had landed during a lull in the unpleasantness.
By now the weather had cooled, making my yellow cardigan feel good when we started out from Netanya after breakfast. But the sun was nudging the mercury toward a high in the seventies. I was pulling off the sweater when I heard a cheery voice from nearby.
“Hey, Greg!”
Sam Gannon strolled over, pointing across the plaza. “You won’t believe what I saw in that gallery over there.”
“What?”
Gannon stands half a head taller than my five-foot ten, and he’s depressingly slim while I bulge in all the wrong places.
“I just peeked in the doorway,” he said, “and saw this painting of an old C-47 in the desert. Boy, I haven’t been in one of those jewels in many a year.”
A retired multi-engine Air Force driver, Sam had been the point man in organizing this trip to Israel and Jordan.
I glanced at my wife. “I’m glad it was just a painting. If it was real, she’d probably want to buy it.”
Jill smiled. “A C-47 would look nice in the backyard.”
I should point out that I am also a retired Air Force officer, but not a flier. I spent my time in the OSI–Office of Special Investigations. I pursued such evils as overpriced wrenches and stolen toilet paper, plus chasing down drug-pushing airmen, communist spies and terrorist groups that posed a threat to Air Force personnel and installations. Jill was the pilot in the family. She had held a commercial license for many years, once running her own charter service.
Just then two scruffy looking boys came racing across the plaza on bicycles, jabbering away in Arabic and paying no attention to where they were going. One of them cut just in front of the tour group and the other skidded to a halt, nearly colliding with Jill.
“Idiot!” I shouted.
I stepped around Jill in a move toward the boy.
She grabbed my arm as he stood there, glaring. “Cool it, Greg.”
“Damned juvenile,” I muttered. As I spoke, the boy peddled away at full speed.
During my OSI days I was noted for a volatile temper. Retirement and Jill’s patience had mellowed my disposition. But my troubles with the Nashville cops, plus the burden of no smokes, had begun to trigger old habits. As a voice called out at the front of the group, I caught Jill casting me an unhappy glance.
“Okay, people,” our tour guide said. “You have about twenty minutes to look around, shop, whatever. Then we have to be back on the bus. We’ll drive through some of Tel Aviv, then head toward Jerusalem.”
Jacob Cohen gestured to the southeast with the long olive wood walking stick he referred to as his “staff.” Ever quick with the pun, he had introduced the stick at the start of the trip with, “Thy rod, my staff–a little Twenty-third Psalm humor.” Originally from New York, Cohen had lived in Israel the past twenty years. He looked a typical bearded synagogue worshiper. Unlike most Israelis, however, he was a Messianic Jew, a member of a congregation that believed in Jesus Christ as the promised Messiah. He was also a walking encyclopedia of the Bible.
I remembered something I needed to take care of and moved over to where Cohen stood with two of the younger women. They were gazing at the towering spire atop the Franciscan Monastery of Saint Peter. 
“Jake, you were going to give me the name of your Messianic Jewish friend in Nashville,” I said. “You’d better do it now before I forget.”
He rummaged around in his shirt pocket. “Sorry about that kid on the bike. Some of them don’t have much respect for their elders.” He pulled out a scrap of paper. “Okay, it’s David Wolfson. Here’s his name and phone number.”
“You said he was a computer nut? I might get him to give me some advice on an upgrade.”
“He’s good with advice. Another ex-New Yorker. Funny thing, his father was an Orthodox rabbi. They had a pretty heavy falling out when Jake turned Messianic. He inherited some of his dad’s biblical curiosity, though. He’s into all this Bible codes stuff.”
I gave him a puzzled look. “Bible codes? Never heard of it.”
“It has to do with the letters in the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. Supposedly concerns hidden messages God placed in the text. It’s too far-fetched for me. I guess it came natural to David, though. He was a computer hacker in college. Then he went legit and signed with the National Security Agency.”
Jill grabbed my arm. “You look calmer, thank goodness. Let’s head on toward the bus. Look at Wilma over there at that van. I’ll bet she’s buying more knickknacks.”
A dusty gray minivan had parked not far behind our red and white Middle East Tours bus. Its tailgate was swung up, displaying an array of olive wood figures and other trinkets. Dealers like this made us run a gauntlet to reach the bus. At our hotel in East Jerusalem, a Palestinian had greeted the ladies out front each morning, peddling souvenirs from the trunk of his car.
As we paused beside Sam Gannon’s wife, Wilma, another tour bus edged past. It fouled the air with its diesel exhaust. I fanned the stench away with my Titans cap. Just then a husky man with black hair and a black beard approached me. He wore a dark suit, no tie. He had a round face and white teeth.
“Perhaps your last chance to buy souvenirs,” he said. “I show something just for you.”
As he leaned into the van, I wondered how he knew we were on the final leg of our tour. Our bus driver or another passenger had probably mentioned it. Also I had a vague impression I had seen this face before. He appeared to be Arabic, but Jews and Arabs had descended from the same Semitic line. I had been trained to remember facial features, and memories of September 11 had kept me alert during our two weeks in the Holy Land. I watched as the souvenir seller held out a miniature Dead Sea Scroll jar, opened the lid and lifted up a paper scroll.
“Just like parchment . . . real Hebrew writing,” he said. “The one you get is all packed secure. Because I need to make haste home, everything is now bargain price.”
I shook my head. “No thanks.”
“Normally is twenty-five dollars. For you, only ten. Yes?”
“It’s bigger than those we saw before,” said Wilma Gannon. She studied the reddish clay jar. “And they cost that much or more.” Tall and lean like her husband, she had a grandmotherly swirl of white hair.
“What would I do with a Dead Sea Scroll jar?” I asked. It looked like a flower vase to me.
Jill grinned.
“You drive some hard bargain,” said the man, frowning. “Five dollars.”
“He’s not going to let you get away without buying it,” Jill said. I had given her a hard time a couple of days before about buying so many souvenirs. A lot of them had to be stuffed into my bag.
The man reached back into the van and pulled out a box a little larger than the clay jar. It was sealed tightly with clear plastic tape. “This one ready to pack in your bag. No way it can break. Only five dollars. Okay?”
I had to admire his persistence. And it did sound like a good deal.
The man held out the package. “Americans are good people,” he said. “I like you. Four dollars–my last offer.”
Jill whispered in my ear. “For God’s sake, buy it.”
I shrugged and pulled a money clip stuffed with dollar bills out of my pocket, peeled off four and handed them over. “You’re quite a salesman,” I said.
I don’t know why, but I had an odd feeling that I might have bought more than I had bargained for.