Free Fire in a Haystack: A Thrilling Novel (Legal Mystery Book Book 1) by Erez Aharoni

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