The Masada Faktor by Naomi Litvin Read Free Book Online Page A

the lighthouse was a paper shopping bag. I looked around but didn’t see anyone. The bag had my name printed on it in English, and it looked like the same handwriting as the note. I recognized the European style of writing, being distinctly different than American.
     
    I grabbed the bag after checking the inside for anything that might explode and saw just paper. Then I hurried back up the hill to Dizengoff Street where I could get the #5 bus to Alozorov Railway Station and go back to Haifa. Once on the train and sure that I had not been followed, I steeled myself to inspect the contents of the shopping bag.
     
    Before looking at the material, it struck me how long it had taken me to get to Israel. Too long. Had I come thirty years ago, like many others did, I would be fluent in Hebrew, I might have had children and grandchildren. No, there was no doubt about that.
     
    Instead, I had arrived at this late time of my life alone, chasing a mystery. I had no memories of childbirth or waking up in the mornings wrapped in the arms of a loving husband, perhaps with children jumping on the bed. Still, I was hopeful.
     
    I didn’t understand who knew where I was, and how to contact me. That creeped me out. But the truth? I had a devil may care attitude about my life. I felt reckless and wild. I had blogged about journeying to Israel and tweeted daily as to where I was headed, so really, anyone in the world could easily know where I was. I wanted to make up for lost time. I was ready to experience life.
     
    The only thing in the shopping bag was a lot of blank wadded up newspaper. On closer inspection, I saw a small plastic bag. Inside was a folded piece of paper that read, “You must reply to the email from Millie Stone.”
     
    The name Millie Stone was vaguely familiar. There had been an email from a Millie some months back before I had left for Israel. I would dig it out of my inbox later and refresh my memory. It was late and I had gotten the last train back to Haifa.
     
    I knew that if I didn’t get off at the Bat Galim Station, I wouldn’t get a bus back close to Gid’on Street. I’d have to walk up the steep hills in the dark. I got off at Bat Galim. It was late and deserted at the bus stop.
     
    I waited a long time for a bus outside the train station. There was an old abandoned bus station next door. It looked like the perfect place to hide a dead body. I needed to put a cap on my wild fantasies. Eventually, after almost an hour, the bus arrived and I got back to my stone cottage, half running from the bus stop on Herziliya Street.
     
    Returning to Haifa late at night scared me and I was convinced more than ever that I wanted to move to Tel Aviv. I loved the 24/7 action. There was nothing that I didn’t like about Tel Aviv. I wanted to be a Tel Avivian.
     
    I would finish up in Haifa. There were a few more things I needed to see. And then I would get the hell out of there.

CHAPTER TWELVE
    I had previously, only peripherally seen Millie Stone’s email to me. I was busy, at the time, holding onto my dead end job, coming home nightly to my lonely condo after Mother had died, and in general having one big pity party. Really, I didn’t remember reading it at all.
     
    I found Millie’s email way down in my inbox. She wrote that she was the granddaughter of an acquaintance of Mother’s from post-World War II Germany. She said that her grandfather’s name was Oskar. He had died sometime in 2011, and she, being his only grandchild, had cleaned out his apartment in Munich where he had stayed since the end of the war.
     
    She had found me through Google, and then my blog site which contained my email address. She told me she had something for me and was strictly instructed not to open it. I felt as if she was trying to entice me with this information of her findings.
     
    She was specific in pointing out that the only reason for not throwing these findings in the trash was the stipulation in her grandfather