title: The Terrorist Who Fell in Love
author: Livingston, John
description: A young Palestinian man, George, who has lost the whole of his family in warfare over the years volunteers out of guilt, loss and desperation for a suicide mission to blow up the official residence of the Israeli prime minister using a explosive-laden van. The Mafia in Naples outfits the van so it can get through Israeli customs in the port of Haifa. The young terrorist needs to find, seduce and dupe an American Jewish woman to put the van in her name and take it to Israel. He find his woman in Venice, but she's a Baptist from deep Georgia who is with her friend, Regina, on a long European vacation. Janice has lost her family in a terrible car crash that kills her alcoholic husband and three little children. After a year of mourning, she and Regina, recently divorced, go on their European tour in celebration of beginning a new life, reborn Georgian Baptists, as it were. Janice falls for George and his story about being in the car import business, but being Palestinian he needs someone to bring the van to Israel. Janice agrees but Regina thinks the whole thing is fishy and suspects George. During the weeks George, Janice and Regina are in Italy and getting the van ready for shipment from Naples to Haifa, the Mossad gets wind of the assassination attempt and tracks George down in Rome but a mix-up with the Mafia ends in the wrong man getting killed, Rodolfo, who was having an affair with Regina that was becoming serious. By the time the van is being loaded onto the ship in Naples, a middle aged Mossad agent, Jerzi, who is on the verge of retirement and has pretty much lost his family to war, alienation and Alzheimer's,, finds George, Janice and Regina in Jerusalem. His mission is to find the car bomb and bring George in alive, if possible. Passing himself off as a business man, he befriends George and the girls. Regina, badly bruised by the loss of Rodolfo, is attracted to the older man, a father figure offering security. As Jerzi gets to know George, he is reminded of his soldier son killed in the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and can't help but feel a fatherly affection for the young man who has lost his family in warfare, as Jerzi knows. Jerzi also falls for the young, russet-haired beauty Regina and finds himself in a bind between duty and love.