The Old Warrior - Chapter 28

Nothing Uzi might have said could possibly have prepared Ari for the little gnome of a man who answered to his knock a few hours later. A very round, wrinkled face topped by unruly white hair and punctuated by the brightest of blue eyes peered out through the doorway and sized up Ari in one glance.“Come in, come in,” came the hearty greeting in barely understandable English and the thickest of accents. “You must be Ari Thalberg. I’ve been expecting you. I’m Yakov Kimchy. Welcome to Israel!”Ari felt his hand gripped in a bone-tingling handshake. The man was a bundle of energy with the enthusiasm and strength of someone thirty years younger—and his smile was contagious. For the first time since boarding the plane, Ari felt his pain-ridden defenses relax in a very slight yet discernible way. This infectiously happy man was a new breed in Ari’s life, a man he liked and trusted instinctively from his first greeting.