Selected Detective
TO MINE LOCATION

By the time they took his passport, and drove along sixty kilometers to the airport and to the terminal building, the flight to Vienna had already begun boarding. Ben-Roi gives a glimpse of his police ID card, undergoing the first steps of the security check at the departure hall is the first time and Layla's only chance of trying to negotiate with the local security without endless questioning and going straight to the check-in table. The second step security control, at the entrance to the departure lounge, turned out to be more difficulties. One of the guards forces Layla into a small room of her own to check on her, despite Ben-Roi's insistence that she be in his custody and not a threat at all. By the time Layla is signaled that all is in order, their flight has been called one last time.

“Ghabee!” Layla sighed impatiently as soon as her backpack was returned to her, the entire contents were dismantled. “Crazy.” He holds his bag over his shoulder and turns to chase after Ben-Roi, who has walked towards the departure gate. As he ran, far behind the passport examination table, half of it hidden behind a pillar, his eyes caught the muscular figure, who seemed to be staring at him. Their eyes clashed so quickly, then the man retreated and disappeared from sight.

Outside, Avi Steiner walked towards the car park and slipped into the back of Volvo.

“They are boarding the plane.” Har-Zion nodded, while prodding his body, tapping the driver's shoulder. The car started to light up and they then sped up, passing through the security gate at the end of the terminal and out across the highway, and, passing through a line of cargo before stopping at the side of the garage whose doors open show the Cessna Citation jet. Four other tall, well-trained, expressionless men were waiting for them on the side of the plane stairs, each wearing a black Yarmulke, each holding a large kampas bag. Har-Zion and Steiner exit and, knowing each other's presence in silence, all six disappear into the jet. The door closed, the engine started to light up and roar softly.

In Egypt, Khalifa missed its only daily plane flying directly from Egypt to Austria, so he had to search around and try to gather all the alternative routes to Salzburg through the capital of other European countries. After almost an hour of calling the best he could, he finally got a route through Rome and Innsbruck, which meant he would not arrive at his destination until midnight. By then Ben-Roi almost certainly had reached the mine, finished doing whatever he was going to do there and left again, and Khalifa began to think that he was wasting his time, that there was no way he could catch up to this Israelite, when, with his last attempt to call, he finally got what he needed: a charter plane for tourists straight from Luxor to munich, he said, departing at 13:15. munich is only 130 kilometers by land from Berchtesgaden and, although not an ideal solution, it remains the best option in such circumstances.

He still has time to call Zenab, tell him that he will do a short business trip “Tak need to worry, I will be back around now tomorrow” before heading to the airport. So quickly all this happened that it was only after being on the plane and starting to cross the runway, Khalifa only realized that this would be the first time in his life he had come out of his native Egypt.

Their planes Ben-Roi and Layla landed in Vienna at 15:30, and Salzburg an hour later, headed for a rented car and drove south along the freeway. Ben-Roi is on the wheel and Layla is reading the map. The Bavarian Alps surround them like a circle of battlefields, a plateau overgrown with trees on all sides. Although the lower part is not covered in snow, above it, at a level when there is a forest of birch, Elm, Abu and Juniper trees, giving way to a series of terraced mountain fir and pine, everything was suddenly swept away in the white of the fog.

While her flight landed twenty minutes ahead of schedule, Khalifa spent a lot of time on passport control, when, even with her Egyptian police ID, he struggles to persuade an officer of a large, wry-faced woman with bobbed hair and the largest chest size he has ever seen that he is not an illegal immigrant trying to infiltrate the country to trick his social security system (The fact that his plane ticket was still open for a return trip and not being able to speak German did not help him). By the time he had succeeded in persuading her, and then bought a map, took a rented VW Polo car and thought for a moment about the exit from the airport and headed for the freeway on the east side, which was a road, the day had started at night, the last breath of the day was slowly melting into the thick foggy twilight.

In other conditions, he will certainly behave more calmly, taking time for himself to absorb and pay attention to his new environment. The lush meadows; the forest-covered hills; the beautiful villages with vaulted churches and neat red-walled ceramic houses all seemed foreign to him altogether, it was completely different from the sight of the sunburned desert which was his own world.

But in the condition of Ben-Roi already far ahead of him, there is no time to indulge like that, besides also not being in a good mood to do that, with a quick glance at his surroundings, he spurred his car into the outermost and fastest of the three freeway lanes, squeezing the gas as far as possible and darting into the darkening twilight, forget the above sign that states the speed limit of 130 km/h.

Only once during the next trip did he allow this steel-strong focus to hesitate. He turned to the Dea service post to refuel and buy cigarettes. Khalifa was heading to her car when, on the grassy edge of the gas station, she noticed a patch of snow-covered land, no bigger than a children's blanket, she said, the original one was more covered in snow. He had never seen snow before, real snow, let alone touched it. Although he could hear the seconds passing inside his head, he could not help but run closer and touch his hands on the surface of the ice-covered field, holding it for a moment was as if he was observing an unusual animal, before finally rushing back into the car and heading in the direction he had planned.

“Wait until I tell Zenab,” thought, Her palm still feels numb. “He won't trust me. The snow! Allahu akbar!”