by Erez Aharoni
Chapter 6
A large crowd had gathered on the sidewalk in front of the old residential building next to the Shalom Tower. The entrance was sealed with plastic tape declaring it to be a closed crime scene.
Nir Alush turned off the flickering blue light on the roof of the unmarked car and tossed the portable siren back inside the vehicle. He didn’t need to take out the police ID he carried in his pocket. The policeman who kept the large crowd away from the building recognized him immediately, even though he wore civilian clothing, and let him pass with a nod.
He jumped down the stairs, two at a time, on his way to the building’s cellar. The lighted cellar was empty of people. A few of the white plastic chairs were stacked against the wall, a few more were still scattered upside down on the cellar floor.
Three members of the police forensics department were busily collecting evidence and seeking fingerprints.
A tall young woman with short black hair stood at one end of the cellar next to a whiteboard, leaning on the wall with her body slightly inclined like a question mark. Now and then, she buried her head between her hands. The injured had already been evacuated. Around the place where one of the wounded had fallen, apparently the one who was severely hurt, a white chalk circle was marked. Inside it were large, fresh bloodstains that had begun to congeal.
“What happened?” Alush asked the commanding officer dryly. The name tag on his chest identified him as Shimon Elbaz.
“A lone shooter. Possibly used an M16. Fired at least six shots. We’ve found a few of the bullets. There were a few slight injuries, and one person was severely wounded. We evacuated all of them to the hospital. They told us the name of the person who’s badly wounded is Igor Harsovsky. A Russian Jew. Oligarch. A recent immigrant. I passed on the details for verification…but they’re working slowly.”
“You did well,” said Alush and felt the adrenaline rushing in his body again. His recent tiredness dissipated as if it had never been there.
“Who’s the lady?” asked Alush, pointing at the tall young woman whose face was as pale as the wall she was leaning against.
“A lawyer. She’s in charge of this association. She manages it or serves as its legal advisor, I’m not sure exactly. She was here with more people when the shooting took place. I think you’d better talk to her.”
Alush didn’t waste any time and walked to the other end of the basement. He offered the lady a chair. “Hello, pleased to meet you. I’m Nir Alush, a district interrogation officer. Just some routine questioning. Can you tell me what happened?”
Gali Shviro introduced herself and shook his hand. Alush, who paid a lot of attention to the way people shook his hand, was surprised by her firm grip.
“Attorney Shviro, may I call you Gali?” asked Alush.
“Sure, Gali’s fine.”
“Why were you here? What took place here tonight? What was your part in all of this?” asked Alush, firing his questions at her one after the other.
She told him with a steady voice who she was, what the association was and what took place a short while ago. “It was a regular assembly of all our active Environmental Action Association members. We decided to go into a legal struggle against the Viromedical factory. We are dealing with environmental subjects…”
Gali was about to repeat the main points of her lecture when Alush cut her off, “Viromedical you say? Did I get the name right? It sounds very familiar.” Suddenly, he remembered. For the second time that night, that name had popped up, and in two different crime scenes, both with a dead body or an attempted murder. All of his senses were tingling.
“Yes, you got the name right. Why?” Gali sounded interested.
“It doesn’t matter. Let’s continue. Do you know the wounded man?”
“Yes, I know him. His name is Igor. Igor Harsovsky. He volunteered to aid our association, and he’s an amazing man. A kind and generous soul.”
“What do you know about him?” asked Alush.
“He emigrated from Russia. A Jewish man who made a lot of money over there, came here many years ago and decided to invest in green economy and promote environmental issues. He contacted us and wanted to donate and assist us. Just unbelievable…” Tears flooded her eyes and she hurried to wipe them away.
“You have any idea who could have come in here and started shooting people just like that?” asked Alush. He noticed that her earlobes connected gently to the sides of her cheeks and that they were adorned with tiny snail-shaped gold earnings.
“No. Not even a hint.”
“Could you identify the shooter?”
“No, he wore a ski mask.”
“You think he wanted to hurt all of you, or only Harsovsky?”
“I don’t know. I find the whole thing difficult to believe. Why would anyone want to hurt us…why would anyone want to hurt…”
“How long have you known him, that Harsovsky?” Alush cut her off again.
“A few weeks, I think. He was the one who made the initial contact,” she clarified.
“Did you check his background? Where he came from and what his current line of work is?” Alush continued, his face devoid of expression.
“Honestly, no. We were so excited by his offer that we simply…” Gali somehow found it difficult to explain the deep and immediate sense of trust she felt for Igor.
Alush rose from his seat, approached the commanding officer of the forensic team and chatted with him in a low voice.
One of the team members came up to them and showed them an object he had found between the scattered chairs—an expensive leather wallet with Cyrillic letters on it. Alush peeked into the wallet and fished an Israeli driving license from it. The serious and tanned face of a man stared back from the plastic card. He appeared to be about fifty-five, with dark blue eyes, thick hair, an upturned nose and tense, smile-less lips.
Alush pressed the speed dial button on his cell phone.
Gali heard him reading Igor’s name and license number to someone on the other end. She drew nearer to him, pretending her movement was incidental, and with great effort could hear a feminine voice reporting to the investigating officer, “You don’t say? That’s the same man Interpol sent us the questionnaire about this week.”
Alush moved away from Gali, and she couldn’t hear the voice on the other side of the call any longer.
“Yes, someone tried to put a few dozen holes in him with an M16,” she heard Alush mumbling back. “Let me speak with Dadon.”
After a few seconds, Alush continued to blurt quickly into the receiver, “Son, the man who was shot is being treated in the Tel Hashomer Hospital. Make sure there’s some tight security over there. No one should see him until I’ll get there to conduct an initial investigation,” he said and closed his phone.
Gali walked away from him a bit and tried to instill some order in her confused thoughts.
Alush came over to her and touched her shoulder. Gali turned around fearfully. She was nervous and as tense as a wound spring.
“I’ve just been told Interpol has been asking questions about Igor Harsovsky, the renowned philanthropist… lots of questions,” said Alush, carefully examining Gali Shviro’s reaction.
Her mouth opened wide with shock. “How can this be? Why would they be looking for him?” she asked, her body leaning forward. She remained with her mouth wide open and continued to pretend the message shocked her and she hadn’t eavesdropped on Alush’s conversation.
“Why? Why not?” answered Alush, the words coming out of his mouth slowly. “Weapon deals, commercial fraud…and that’s just a partial list,” he said and managed, to his great joy, to avoid whistling his S’s thanks to his slow and deliberate speech.
Gali stared at the floor and didn’t react. Regardless of everything she’d just heard and despite the shock of the event in which she and her friends could have been hurt, a single thought passed through her mind—satisfaction for the fact that the organization was lucky. No matter who Igor Harsovsky
was, at least the money he had promised was already in the association’s bank account. The rest of it was less important.
Alush was already elsewhere. He gave instructions to Officer Elbaz and was on his way out. He planned his next moves while leaving the cellar.
Two more interrogation assignments awaited him before the long night would be over—a visit to the injured Harsovsky in the Tel Hashomer Hospital and a visit to the Paradise Club. He had a lot of questions to ask in both places.
Chapter 7
Dr. Aryeh Friedman glanced at the gold watch on his right wrist. It was fifteen past six in the morning. His favorite time. The Viromedical factory was still dormant and quiet. The parking lot was empty. The security guards were still drowsy. The employees have not arrived yet, some of them may even still be in their
beds.
It was the hour in which he was at his best. Serenely planning his daily schedule and organizing his thoughts.
He never regretted the occupation he had chosen for himself, an occupation that brought him to the challenging job of factory manager. The combination of scientific abilities, industry knowledge and business management was suitable for his character and skills.
On his laptop he ran the slides for the lecture he was supposed to give in the afternoon. From time to time, he was invited to lecture in different venues as an expert in the field of biological products manufacturing.
The slides made a slight shiver pass from his palms to his elbows.
The title of the presentation was “Biological Terrorism—Past, Present and Future.”
He thought he should open his lecture with a historical description of the horrors humanity has experienced due to various biological hazards. After all, biological hazards were what justified the existence of the factory and its products.
Even in ancient times, the human mind was monstrous in its creativity. Those quiet dangers have left a trail of casualties behind them that no other type of terrorism, be it loud, explosive and filled with fireworks as it may be, could even come close to leaving in its wake.
He flipped slowly from one slide to another, not tiring of re-reading the data, even though he already knew it by heart.
400 BC—The Scythians were the first to coat their arrowheads with the excrement and blood of animals.
300 BC—Both Persians and Greeks poisoned the water sources of their rivals by throwing in them carcasses of animals that had died of contagious diseases.
190 BC—Hannibal won a battle by throwing containers filled with poisonous snake venom onto the flagship of the King of Pergamon.
1139—The French launch horse carcasses at the citadels of their enemies.
1346—A Mongolian army that besieged the port city of Kaffa hurled polluted bodies towards the city. Merchants from the city of Genoa fled the besieged city in their boats, carrying the disease that brought the plague of the Black Death, a plague that devastated Europe.
1767—The British general Amherst provided blankets ridden with smallpox to the Native Americans he fought. The plague that broke out killed many of them.
1917—German agents infested with contagious diseases a horse and cattle shipment destined for Europe.
1940—Japanese warplanes distributed fleas carrying Yersinia pestis, more commonly known as the bubonic plague.
1991-1992—Saddam Hussein fired Scud missiles on Israel. Did he mean for them to carry warheads with anthrax bacteria? Was a biological attack prevented or was he simply making empty threats?
2001—The first actual case of anthrax was discovered in Florida. Three men were infected, one passed away. The FBI is still investigating the case.
2015…?
Dr. Friedman repeated the final words out loud, preparing for the moment in which he will say them with great emphasis during his lecture, and his eyes will examine the panicked reactions among his crowd of listeners: “2015. What’s waiting for us next? Can history repeat itself? To be continued…”
A telephone call disturbed his concentration. The call was on his personal line. I assume it’s from someone who knows me and my early morning work habits well, he thought while picking up the receiver.
He recognized the deep voice on the other end right away. The excessively familiar voice of Mr. Asher Dvori, the Ministry of Health’s Director General.
He was surprised to hear the senior official sounding so firm and decisive. Dr. Friedman was a man whom other people normally obeyed; the habit of giving instructions for many years had turned into an addiction. He was surprised to find himself, so early in the morning, in an upside down world in which he was the one getting the instructions from a senior government official.
But he could not ignore the things that were said to him.
“Aryeh, yesterday an autopsy was performed on the body of a tourist who died in Tel Aviv. Unfamiliar germs were discovered in the body. It’s exactly what we were afraid would happen. We received the first results of the autopsy,” said Dvori. “Apparently, it’s an unknown plague. It has all the symptoms of smallpox but is different. We need to prepare for the worst. We will be requiring the expertise of a person such as yourself. Time is of the essence. We must act immediately. This is what the minister demands. We must call an urgent meeting and decide on emergency preparedness steps that should be executed without delay,” his voice continued to rise and fall, and Friedman sensed a hint of hysteria.
“We need to congratulate ourselves. In the past few months we’ve increased the pace of vaccine production. We’ve accumulated an extra inventory of tens of thousands of medications,” said Friedman, obviously content he was the one who had given the instruction.
“You did it because of the drill. I applaud you for implementing the conclusions,” said Dvori.
Friedman knew, of course, what Dvori was talking about. The decision was made following a successful joint drill of the health care and national security systems. In the drill, a scenario was played out in which two European citizens were purposely infected with a lethal disease and impersonated tourists. The two virtual terrorists walked through various crowded urban areas and supposedly infected as many passersby as they could.
“The problem is,” said Dvori, “that in the current case, it’s not entirely certain that the vaccines you manufacture are even relevant. The pathologists say that what killed the tourist is a strain of bacteria they have never encountered and do not know how to treat. And that’s the main problem, that this is a new virus that’s unfamiliar to us. It is obvious it will be stronger, more brutal and lethal than anything we have known before.”
Friedman heard even stronger signs of anxiety in Dvori’s words. He himself was always fearful of contagious diseases, and when he came back home from the factory he scrubbed his body with antiseptic soap at length. “How can we help?” he asked impatiently.
“Two things: first, we would like you to join the team that’s in charge of this operation and will be carrying out operational decisions. Secondly, we would like the factory to go to a state of high alert as part of the emergency regulations.”
“You’ve got both of them. What else can the factory do?” he asked.
“Thank you, Aryeh, we knew we could count on you. You manufacture vaccines, right? If an epidemic breaks out, we will need to somehow calm the general public. No matter if the vaccine is effective or not, we’ll use what we have. Or more precisely, what the factory has. We are coordinating our efforts with the Ministry of Defense. They are calling the operation Fire in a Haystack.”
“Couldn’t they have come up with a slightly more optimistic name?”
“You know exactly what makes me anxious,” said Dvori. “No scenario scares us more than a new plague which can infect thousands of people daily. One can easily picture the hysteria that will spread, the overcrowded hospitals, the medical teams that will simply give up and the bodies…piles of bodies that we will need to bury quickly to prevent an even quicker spreading of the disease…”
It seemed like
nothing could stop the flow of Dvori’s speech. He went on and on ceaselessly, “In this type of scenario all the drills we’ve had in the past few years will pale next to the harsh reality in which the epidemic will quickly spread from city to city, from settlement to settlement…so to answer your question, doctor—we couldn’t have picked a name that better describes the danger at our doorstep. Such a plague, when it emerges from the dark depths—knows how to do its job. It doesn’t have a shred of mercy or compassion. It is evil and monstrous and uninhibited.”
Dr. Friedman thought to try and calm him down, but Dvori had already hung up.
Friedman replaced the receiver and stood by the window, pensive and caressing his chin with his hand. He nervously scratched his balding head and immediately returned the thin strand of thin hair he stretched from the right side of his scalp to the left.
If he only could, he would light up a cigarette, no matter that he had quit many years ago.
He tried to imagine the difficult and horrifying scenarios Dvori spoke about. Even so, he maintained his self-control. The order of the actions that needed to be taken was sharp and clear in his mind.
He went to the computer, even though he knew he would have to instruct his secretary to cancel the afternoon lecture as soon as she arrived at work.
He pressed the delete button and re-typed the content of the last slide:
2015—The next biological terrorist attack will spread like a fire in a haystack.
Then he turned off the computer, opened the locked cabinet behind his desk and took out the binder on which was written “Immediate actions to be taken in times of emergency.”
Chapter 8
At six o’clock in the morning, the screams of the on-duty prison guard who passed through the cells to wake the prisoners bounced off the corridor walls. Ofer opened his eyes and at first did not realize where he was.
He sat upright on the hard bed and felt his entire body itch. Before he could give himself a proper scratch, the door of the cell opened and the guard screamed that everyone should stand by their beds for the morning count.