Fire in a Haystack: A Thrilling Novel Read online

  He drew a small silver flask from his jacket’s inner pocket and took a long sip. “This is fine whiskey, trust me. Eighteen-year-old single malt Glenfiddich Scotch whiskey. Made just a short time after you were born. It’s been waiting ever since for this festive moment in an oak barrel. You’ve never tasted anything like this in your life. It’s not really alcohol, it’s a medicine,” Rodety explained his entire viewpoint about the drink he always carried so close to his heart.

  Rodety’s insistent pleas continued. Ofer felt uncomfortable refusing him. “All right, I’ll take your word for it, if you insist.” He took a sip from the expensive-looking flattened flask. Heat waves immediately spread throughout his body.

  “This is really something else. A pleasant surprise. It’s hard to believe such a small bottle can contain such a great pleasure,” said Ofer.

  A wide smile of contentment spread across Rodety’s satisfied face. “Oh… nice… now you’ve learned the secret. A fine whiskey doesn’t burn, it warms you up. Like a miniature candle that spreads a nice fire in your intestines. Like cooking on a kerosene burner.”

  Ofer had to admit he wasn’t especially suffering. All the dancers, the ones who danced next to the bar and the ones beside them, now appeared prettier, perfectly built and filled with desire, and he found himself enjoying the occasional fluttering touch of Zionist breasts on his face and shoulders.

  “Tell me, kid, aren’t you the son of the late Mordechai Angel?” Rodety suddenly became serious. He motioned for the two girls to leave them. A quick spark flashed through his pupils. He cleared his throat a bit.

  Rodety’s question had landed Ofer right back onto the solid ground of reality. “Yes, that’s me,” Ofer immediately admitted. “Did you know him?”

  “Of course,” he said, “of course. I knew him through and through. He was an exceptional man.”

  “Yes, I know.” Tears choked Ofer’s throat as he recalled his father.

  “How’s your mother?”

  “She’s fine, you know how it is…she’s coping.”

  “Yes, yes, I know,” said Rodety. “She’s something else, your mother.”

  Ofer stared at Rodety who returned to taking long drafts from the spout of his personal flask. A sudden illumination caused him to recognize the man who was now sitting in front of him, the man who drank and joked around with him. Only when Rodety’s face changed and became serious, his mind was invaded with the powerful realization of where he remembered that fattish, drunk kangaroo from. The dim memory transformed into reality and a scream almost escaped his lips.

  Rodety was the mustached man from his father’s funeral. The man whose whiskers Ofer swore he’d one day pluck off his face. Only, since he took that oath, about ten years were added to his age and to the age of the man in front of him.

  “I remember him well. He was a real tough guy, your father. Stubborn. The word ‘compromise’ did not exist in his vocabulary…but, how life goes round and round…who can understand God’s sense of humor? His jokes are certainly not funny…” Rodety said.

  “What…why do you say that?” asked Ofer, openmouthed. Everything he had seen thus far contradicted the possibility the Rodety was a God-fearing man. So much time had passed that he had nearly forgotten his father. And now the thought that he was about to hear, for the first time, what had really happened to his father pounded at him wildly.

  “He overstepped his boundaries. You understand? He was a talented and hardworking man who allowed himself to do things he shouldn’t have done. You understand? You can’t illegally break the rules of the place which feeds you and provides for you. You work in a law firm, right? So you must realize what the consequences of such actions are. Especially in a factory that has to do with national security.” And again he asked, “You understand?”

  “What exactly did he do?” asked Ofer, avoiding a positive or negative answer, feeling he had an opportunity that would not repeat itself.

  “He took some things without permission and passed them on without permission. Simply put, he stole information from the company he worked for and sold it for a lot of money. And when they caught him…the shame of it killed him.”

  Rodety grew silent and sucked his flask until there was nothing left in it to drink. They sat utterly still for a few more minutes. Rodety withdrew completely into himself and said no more.

  Ofer began to shift in his seat with unease. Out of the blue, Rodety said, “Now, I need to stay here by myself…”

  A thousand different questions arose inside Ofer, but he knew this wasn’t the appropriate time to ask them. There’ll be other opportunities, he comforted himself. He had said goodnight to Rodety, leaving him alone with his fine leather bag and his empty flask, bid him good night and hurried to get out of that smoky heaven with its clouds of cheap perfume.

  But now it was already a quarter past six in the evening. And Rodety’s tardiness was simply too much. Ofer ceased dwelling on last night’s activities and walked to the hotel’s front desk impatiently.

  “Excuse me, could you please give me Jacob Rodety’s room number?” he asked.

  The receptionist, a short-haired blonde wearing a crimson uniform, lifted a pair of eyes reddened by sleeplessness. Then she returned her gaze to the computer screen in front of her and squeaked with her plum-like mouth, “I’m sorry, we’re not allowed to provide our guests’ room numbers.”

  “Oh, wait, he’s in room 613,” Ofer suddenly recalled, hoping his memory did not deceive him.

  “In that case, you can simply call from over there.” She pointed with an elongated fingernail towards a shiny telephone on the corner of the desk.

  Ofer obediently crossed to the telephone and dialed the room number. Long and orphaned sounds echoed in his ears. For lack of any other option, he crossed the lobby, went inside the elevator and pressed the button for floor number six.

  The elevator door opened. In the corner of the corridor stood Chinese ceramic vases. On the walls were hung paintings depicting children loading haystacks onto a wagon. “Where will you find children riding a haystack wagon nowadays?” Ofer chuckled as the dark-blue carpet silenced the sound of his footsteps.

  He stood in front of the door staring at the hammered copper numbers 6-1-3. The yellow head of a chambermaid dressed in a bluish robe, flashed for a moment in the corridor’s right corner, and then disappeared. He lightly tapped the door with his finger. There wasn’t any answer. He struck the door with his open palm, still no answer.

  He shouted, “Mr. Rodety, please open the door,” but he was speaking only to himself.

  Anger began to bubble up inside him. He lost his patience. What was wrong with this guy? He could have taken a taxi and reached the office by himself like any other client. This is not what I studied law for, Ofer thought. I’m not interning at Geller, Schneider and Associates, the kind of law firm most students can only dream about, to do this kind of job.

  He tried to call aloud “Yaakov” and “Jacob,” but that didn’t help either.

  He didn’t hear the chambermaid approaching him until she almost touched him. He turned to her, startled, when he heard the sound of her breathing. In front of him stood a handsome, ageless woman, slightly taller than he was and very thin. She wore a light-blue gown and flat-heeled white shoes, and her gold braid was pushed to the front to draw attention to it. She must have heard the knocking or the curses or both, he said to himself.

  “What happened? Why you break door?” the chambermaid asked with a Russian accent.

  “He’s not opening, and we’re late,” Ofer explained.

  “Maybe man is not in room,” the fair lady offered her own solution.

  Truly an illumination, he thought as he looked at her chest, which proudly bore a small golden tag bearing her name, “Natalia.” “A lyre worthy to be played by King David himself,” Yoav would have probably said. He recalled the code words he and his best friend used to refer to a woman whom God has equipped handsomely.

  He imagin
ed how he himself must look to her—a man of medium height, head adorned with curls, with elongated features and pointy ears that slanted upwards as if they wanted to detach themselves from the rest of his face.

  “Perhaps you could open the door for me? Please? He went to sleep very late last night. I’m sure he simply took an afternoon nap and forgot to wake up on time,” he said pleasantly.

  “Can’t. Manager don’t allow,” Natalia answered decisively.

  “What do you care? I’ll take full responsibility,” he said in a flattering tone. “You need to clean the room anyway. It’s already the end of the day and you haven’t cleaned it since morning,” he continued while pointing at the "Do not Disturb" sign that hung on the door.

  Natalia shook her yellow head. Obviously, he was confronted here with a woman with an iron will. He examined her from head to toe. She was thin and attractive. A combination not to be taken for granted. If not for the task he needed to perform, she would have been worthy of some special attention.

  “Come on, Natalia, I’ll just wake him up and leave,” Ofer tried the personal approach.

  Her blue eyes and the gray bags beneath them did not even budge. The fact he had read her name off the tag on her chest didn’t make much of an impression either. She pushed her thick braid from the front until it rested on her back and persisted in her refusal.

  He had no other choice. He was determined to pass his bar exam shorty and be the first intern ever to be hired by the law firm. He had already established a reputation as someone who always gets the job done, no matter how impossible it appeared to be. He was not about to ruin his hard-earned prestige because of a stubborn chambermaid who had survived a strict educational system somewhere beyond the iron curtain. Even though he knew this would hurt his pocket, he took out his wallet and fished out a brand new two-hundred shekel bill. There goes a new pair of nice jeans, Ofer thought.

  “I’ll get fired unless I’ll get him to the office right now,” said Ofer to Natalia and waved the bill in front of her eyes.

  She grabbed the bill with the swiftness of a gecko snatching a dormant fly with its tongue. He didn’t even manage to return the gaze of the bespectacled late Israeli president on the bill before it disappeared inside one of the chambermaid’s pockets.

  “All right. But only for one minute,” she whispered.

  She took a plastic card out of a different pocket and quickly opened the door.

  Ofer stepped inside. The room was completely dark. He fumbled to find the light switch on the wall close to the door. He found and pressed it, but the light didn’t go on. Only after a few seconds did he remember that the light couldn’t be turned on without the magnetic key.

  I should have thought of that after all the time I’ve spent in hotels like this, he calmed himself down while calling aloud, “Rodety…Rodety…”

  The man didn’t answer. Ofer walked carefully. Despite his caution, he stumbled against something and banged his knee. He screamed out loud but continued to painfully limp until he reached the end of the room and opened the curtains. The last beams of sunset, which announced the end of the day, penetrated the room. Natalia took the initiative and slid the magnetic card into its appropriate slot next to the door and the light was turned on.

  The room looked like a gladiator arena. The bedspread was rolled up and tossed on the floor. A gray, hard-shelled suitcase, apparently the object he’d whacked with his knee, opened a hungry mouth and scattered its contents on the carpet. Empty pages were strewn across the floor, creating a white pathway leading from the center of the room to the bathroom.

  At the foot of the bed, beside two ironed pink shirts, stood an orphaned empty bottle of Chivas Regal next to a large number of crushed packets and medicines of various colors whose names didn’t mean anything to him.

  On the bed lay Jacob Rodety on his back. Completely naked. Actually, not completely naked. On his feet, he wore a pair of black socks. Around his neck was a tie, printed with images of dancing hippopotamuses holding umbrellas.

  It’s the same tie he was wearing last night, passed through Ofer’s head.

  Rodety’s body covered the entire width of the bed. His white belly sloped sideways and his belly button rose in defiance towards the light fixture on the ceiling. He didn’t possess any kangaroo pouches or anything else that could remind Ofer of the life-loving man who only yesterday drank enormous quantities of alcohol and nestled fondly against “Zionist breasts.”

  Ofer carefully examined Rodety’s face. At its center, between the meaty nose and the upper lip, where the thick marmot whiskers used to dwell, a day’s worth of stubble appeared. The few hairs on his head, threaded with white, were disheveled.

  Ofer went over to the bed and shook it forcefully. The naked body did not respond.

  On the white abdomen and the white sheets stains of dried up liquid could be seen. A trail of hardened and lumpy yellowish liquid stretched from both sides of his mouth all the way to his chin. Ofer lifted the right hand of the body that lay before him. Then he touched Rodety’s neck and tried to check for a pulse. He lifted the eyelids and immediately closed them again when he saw a pair of watery blue eyes staring at him with chilling frigidity.

  It’s a pity Yoav’s not here, he thought. A medical student would definitely know what to do in such a situation.

  Natalia stood by his side, pale and motionless. Her hands were shoved deep inside her pockets and she bit her lower lip with a row of white teeth.

  For the first time in his life, he was checking to see if a person was dead or alive. In this case, even a rookie such as he could have no doubt the body that lay on the bed was completely dead. Without a pulse, without air in its lungs and without a functioning brain. A carcass. A lump of pink, flaccid meat that lacked even the tiniest spark of life.

  His foot bumped against a small object that lay on the carpet. He looked down and saw the spout of the silver flask peeking from beneath the bed. He needn’t have bothered to check, but he couldn’t help himself. The small flat flask, which only yesterday had given its owner so much pleasure, was completely dry and

  empty.

  The contents of the personal flask with all the medical qualities of the 18-year-old single malt Glenfiddich, apparently had run out. Rodety had had to drink himself to death by using another fine whiskey and various medicines, whatever their names were.

  Ofer thought to himself that it had been slightly over ten years since he had identified the body of his father, may God rest his soul, on the day of his funeral. He felt as if it were only yesterday. The color was the same—the pink-grayish shade of chicken wings that were to be tossed in the soup pot after their skin had been

  removed.

  The man whose whiskers Ofer had sworn to pluck lay spread-eagled on the bed. Apparently, the man himself, or someone else, had fulfilled the oath for him

  in full.

  He had no time to ponder this revelation.

  It’s a good thing I don’t need to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Ofer sighed inwardly with relief.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a small cellular phone on the nearby nightstand. He quickly grabbed the phone with the edge of the sheet, so as not to leave any fingerprints, and flipped it open. The screen showed the draft of a message that was not yet sent.

  Ofer whispered the words of the last message that was supposed to be sent from Rodety’s cellular phone—“The fire is burning.”

  In his confusion about how to handle this discovery, Ofer fumbled with the phone and mistakenly pressed the “erase” button—the draft disappeared. For a moment, he was startled, but then he hurriedly returned the phone to its place. Luckily enough, he was at least able to memorize the number the message was supposed to be sent to.

  Chapter 2

  On the faded sign pointing towards the stairway leading to the cellar, the words “Environmental Action Association” were written in rounded black letters. The ancient, drab building was on the southern part of Ahad
Ha’am Street in Tel Aviv, very close to the Shalom Tower.

  To the eyes of those who passed the threshold on that night, thick with the humidity of early summer, a large, clean cellar was revealed. Its walls were bare, and fluorescent lights hung orphaned from the ceiling, blazing with white light.

  Although it was late in the evening, the cellar was crowded. On rows of simple, white plastic chairs sat a group of people of various ages. They all maintained a polite, attentive silence.

  Next to the wall, on which was hung a large whiteboard, stood attorney Gali Shviro, tall and slender. Her eyes sparkled, and a lock of black hair bounced on her forehead in perfect harmony with the movements of her body. She was dressed in a pair of worn, patched-up jeans and a gray blouse, which complimented her figure and was tucked in her pants above a gold-buckled belt.

  She began to address the hushed audience with fervor.

  “I would like to thank all of you for taking the time to come here today. For those of you who are not familiar with me, my name is Gali Shviro. I am a lawyer and the chairwoman of the Environmental Action Association. I’m certain the subject I’m going to talk about is as important to you as it is to me. I would like to go straight to the point. I have a document here that presents extremely worrisome statistics about the morbidity rate in the area surrounding the Yavne Industrial Center. Take a look at this graph, for instance…”

  Gali hung a large white paper on the whiteboard, which demonstrated with a prominent red line the higher than average percentage of severe illnesses in the area surrounding the Yavne Industrial Center.

  “This area is densely populated. The responsible party is mainly the Viromedical factory, which manufactures biological products. As you already know, the factory is about to be privatized. This represents an irrevocable opportunity to try and check what is really going on in this factory and if it truly causes so many severe phenomena in the area, especially among children. You are all familiar with various types of cancer, such as leukemia, as well as asthma, allergies, pneumonia and other illnesses. The data indicate a significant and highly disturbing variance in almost any type of medical issue when compared with other settlements in the area.”