Hi-Tech Hijack (13 page)

For three months Eddie held himself back from writing to Rose out of respect for what she had asked of him. He absorbed himself in guilt over Rose’s departure and did not dare write to her. He assumed he had lost her forever, but still wished for a letter or any sign of life from her. At the end of one long day at work, sitting alone in his office feeling too exhausted to go on with the research, he decided to retire to home, where no one was waiting for him. He closed the file he had been working on and checked his inbox, which he had emptied only an hour before. It wasn’t that he was expecting any new e-mails. It was simply a habit he had, checking his inbox whenever he felt lonely. As always, the letter from Rose he so wished for was not there, and suddenly he started typing, writing to her spontaneously and from the heart.

My darling Rose,

It’s been three months and two weeks since you left, or should I say, since you returned to your true home. Despite the never-ending work from dusk ’til dawn, I miss you. I miss knowing or feeling that you’re here, waiting for me at the end of each day at our home. I miss how you listened and understood me on the nights you weren’t cross. I miss feeling your body against mine every night and the way you used to touch me and make all my worries fade away.

I’ve tried so hard to honor your request and not write, but I just can’t take it anymore. I’m sure you know if it weren’t for my commitment to the company, the workers, and more importantly to the investor, dearest Aubrey, whom we’ve lost, I would have come to be with you. I am torn everyday between my obligation and missing you.

Love, Eddie.

He stared at the screen for a long while, wondering if he should add or erase anything, until finally he pressed Send. He had the feeling Rose was also sitting at her computer at the very same time and hoped for an immediate response. But there was none. So he turned off his computer, shut off the lights, and rode home on his bike. In the morning—earlier than usual—he came to work and checked his inbox first thing. Still there was no reply from Rose. He kept this up for two weeks until one Sunday, a response came.

Dear Eddie,

I read your letter right when you sent it, but couldn’t bring myself to write back until now. I’m afraid to admit that I still love you, but even more afraid of returning to the dungeon that life with you between Rehovot and Be’er Ya’acov felt like. I keep busy all day long running the farm, and as you know so well since work takes up all of one’s energy, the feeling of loneliness is muted. Like you, I miss the few nights of grace when we enjoyed each other’s company and the tenderness and passion we shared. I remember it vividly and treasure the memory.

I don’t know what the future holds, and I doubt if it has something in store for the two of us together. Life this past year has taught me we cannot make any plans. . . Please take care of yourself, and I’ll do the same for the sake of the people who depend on me here on the farm. As for the future, I think we should let time play its part. I don’t expect you to stay faithful to me, though it would hurt me if you didn’t. I am making no commitments to you either. Do not feel obligated to me in any way because of my father’s investment. I have every confidence that you will make it worthwhile eventually.

Love you still, Rose.

Eddie could not concentrate on his work all day after reading Rose’s letter. He felt her words poking at his mind. Her tone was one of disappointment and acceptance. He searched between the lines for hope of change, but realized both he and Rose were bound by unbreakable commitments they could not bridge—like two parallel lines that can never meet.

He spent a depressing evening in his little apartment in Be’er Ya’acov. Making significant scientific progression on the one hand and the lack of funds on the other was causing him a great deal of frustration. Sasha, an employee who had joined the company a few months earlier, had some new ideas about electromagnetic radiation that had the potential to really transform the rate of progression, but again, money was the block that could not be surpassed. He detested the thought of having to woo investors, to go on a road show in order to raise the money. He thought of Rose again. He knew that she would invest more money into the company if only he asked her, but that was the one thing he would never do.

The phone rang and broke his thoughts.

“Hello,” he answered in a grim tone.

“Hey, Eddie, why so serious? We’re all here already waiting just for you!” said a familiar, joyful feminine voice.

“Who’s this?” He wondered for a moment.

“Shame on you. . .”

“Orit, Orit!” Eddie came to his senses and made a save at the last minute. “I’ve just been preoccupied with annoying thoughts. I got in from work just now. I’ll jump in the shower and be there in half an hour.”

The phone call reminded him of Orit’s e-mail two weeks earlier, inviting him to a little class reunion—a small, intimate gathering of friends at Café Napoli.

“I’m visiting Israel and have a surprise to share,” she had told him.

Eddie wrote back to say he was coming, but with all his concerns, he forgot all about it. He was in no mood to meet the guys from university and answer questions about how things were going at the company, but he couldn’t let Orit down.

She just might give me a good enough reason to get over my mood
, he thought, and already felt a bit better.

He put down the phone and hurried to get ready.

A hand waving happily at him rose up from the cheerful bunch sitting around several tables grouped together. Someone’s broad back was blocking Orit from his view. She got up and gave Eddie a warm hug and kiss on the cheek.

She stroked his cheek and said, “You’ve lost weight, Eddie. What’s up? Is there no one taking care of you?” The whole group greeted him and before he had the chance to speak, Orit switched to English. “This is Eddie, a good friend from university and an old, unrequited love of mine. And this is Leon Mendelsohn, my fiancé. We’re getting married in two months.”

The men shook hands, and Eddie, feeling quite embarrassed, took a seat. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Eddie. I take it you almost made it to California too, which would have prevented me and Orit from ever getting together.”

“Yeah, I could have ended up in California. As for Orit and I, I think it’s been an unfulfilled dream for both of us.”

“What a confession, Eddie!” cried one of the friends. Eddie said nothing, cursing the moment he ever agreed to come.

“We met six months ago,” said Orit. “Leon is a Navy Seals officer, so you two probably have a lot in common—lots of army experiences to compare. He’s being relocated to Naples, Italy, to a navy base with the US Sixth Fleet. We visited there together last week and took some time off to visit Israel so that Leon could meet my family. He’s Jewish, but it’s his first time here. Next time we come, it’ll be for the wedding.” Orit grinned with true joy.

The next hour passed with everyone catching up and reminiscing about their time in the university. Eddie paid no attention. He forced himself to have some army small talk with Leon just to be polite. In his mind he was somewhere else entirely. Then he got a phone call from his parents and seized the opportunity. He apologized, saying there was an emergency at the company he had to deal with, and left.

Now he felt even more depressed than he did at the beginning of the evening. He lay awake in his bed for a long while, trying to make sense of things and figure out what he was doing wrong. He had no relationship, was in constant disagreement with his business partner, and was leading the company to failure due to lack of funds. And if all that wasn’t enough—here comes Orit and shows him what he missed out on. How could he not see she was into him? Why had he just assumed he had no chance with a girl like her?

He felt he was such a bad judge of character that surely he was wrong about everything: the way he was with Reuben, the way he was with Rose before she left, the way he was with everyone around him. The only person he felt comfortable and at ease with was Ronit, his partner’s wife of all people. Or maybe he was wrong about her too, and was misreading her empathy toward him?

He felt confused, despaired, and unsure of himself. He considered calling Amit, but couldn’t even muster the strength to explain to him what he was feeling. Time and distance took their toll, and Amit’s happy letters from South Africa about his fiancée seemed so remote from the depressing reality Eddie found himself in that he passed on the option to share what he was going through with him.

He tried to think of a dramatic action that would break the chain of wrong moves and bad results. He had to turn things around before giving in completely to apathy and fatalism. In that moment of utter desperation Eddie made the decision to infect himself with the Ebola virus.

Voices coming from the direction of the entrance door to his room brought Eddie back to reality.

The door opened and a man dressed in a security guard’s uniform and carrying a gun entered. A second uniformed man entered and placed a tray of aromatic food on the table. By the time Eddie sat down the two men had already left the room without uttering a single word. Eddie went over to inspect the tray and saw a bowl of steaming soup, a bun, and a plate of salad. The cutlery and dishes were all made of plastic. His captors clearly did not take any unnecessary risks that would enable him to harm himself.

They thought of everything
, he thought and sat back down on the sofa. He had no appetite, but then gave it a second thought and changed his mind.
I’m going to need all the energy I can get if I’m going to make it out of here.
He walked to the table and forced himself to eat every last scrap. His stomach, shrunken after five weeks of staying at the hospital and fighting Ebola, still had not recovered its normal dimensions, and he was still very thin. In fact, the difficulties he had been through made him lose weight several months before the decision to infect himself with the dangerous virus.

Who knows how long I’m going to be pampered in this nice room and what the next step these people have in store for me
, Eddie pondered after finishing his meal. He got undressed, ran a bath, and soaked in the steamy, fragrant water and bubbly foam. The hot water and suds caressed his body, and he tried to retrace everything that had happened to him and Reuben during those past few hours. He tried to gauge how long it had been since they were taken and whether it was day or night out. He was extremely tired, which made him think it was probably late in the night, but he had no way of verifying that. He thought he was somewhere in Europe, and the fact that the men who took them spoke German caused him to believe they were in Germany or Austria. He assumed if it was nighttime, they would probably let them be ’til morning. What really made no sense to him were the comfortable accommodations and that message he read on the TV screen. What the hell was this Science City that required abduction?

When the water grew colder, Eddie got up, rinsed himself off, and dried himself with the thick, soft turquoise towel. He wrapped it around his waist and looked at himself in the mirror. There were day-old stubbles on his face that served as affirmation to his hypothesis that it was late at night. His last shave had been the night before his early departure to the airport in Israel. He opened the wardrobe and found two sweat suits to his surprise. He tried one on, and it fit him perfectly. A sense of freshness and comfort fell over him. He began scanning the walls, knocking or tapping here and there, trying to identify any differences in the thickness of the walls and hoping to get some response from Reuben. Because their rooms were on opposite sides of the corridor there was no way Reuben could hear the knocks.

At the very same time, Reuben was in the midst of terrible turmoil. After lying on the bed motionless for a few minutes, he too began inspecting his room. When he realized he was closed in and there were no real windows behind the drapes, he was consumed with panic. He started knocking the door and kicking it and screaming, “Open this goddamn door! I can’t breathe!” Even with the air-conditioning on, he started sweating. His heart was racing, and his temples were pounding. He climbed up on the bed and tried to check the ceiling. That too was made of solid concrete. He ran to the bathroom and tried to remove the mirror above the sink; when that didn’t work, he punched and smashed it hoping to find some sort of opening behind it. Then with a bloody hand, he ran back to the door trembling all over and started shouting for help in Hebrew and English.

At that point the door opened, and two guards took hold of Reuben. A woman who looked over forty and was wearing a white lab coat followed. She took out a syringe from a first aid kit she was carrying and injected Reuben with a sedative in his arm. Then she bandaged his wounded hand.

Reuben was still shaking uncontrollably. The guards put him down in the bed, handcuffed his bandaged hand to the frame of the bed, and left the room. Ten more minutes passed before the shaking stopped. Exhausted and still in his sweat-drenched clothes, Reuben fell into a terror-filled sleep.

The woman in the white coat returned to her bedroom and said to her husband, “It’s very clear who we need to start with. Reuben will be like putty in our hands.”

“Unless he collapses before that.”

“I don’t think he will. He’s had a panic attack due to claustrophobia. It’ll blow off by morning.”

“Isabella! We have six months to achieve operational status. All we need from them is the method to keeping the Ebola alive and airborne. The rest of their study is of no interest to us, and there’s no point wasting any time on it.”

“I know that, Alfonso,” she replied irritably. “There’s no need for you to keep reminding me every day. Let me do it gradually as if the whole study interests me. That way I’ll get what we want. I’m sure within a month I’ll have the information we need, and we’ll still have five months for experiments.”

Utterly oblivious to the drama that was taking place beyond the walls of his room, Eddie was lying in bed trying to figure out which switch controlled which light. He assumed at least some of the lighting would stay on, but to his surprise, all the switches worked and all the lights in the room went out. The room was completely dark except for the repeated twinkle of the fire alarm. Eddie figured there was probably a camera hidden in there—or at least a microphone—but wasn’t really bothered by the thought at that point.

He closed his eyes and tried to think of something positive that would take him away from where he was and into a better night. Slumber started to take hold of him, and he saw a woman’s long braid of hair reaching all the way to her lower back, exposed in a crop top that buttoned in the back. His gaze went down her back to her slim waist and followed the curves of her hips and firm buttocks. Without seeing her face, he knew it was Ronit. Her long legs were in short, frayed jeans, and she was walking barefoot on a golden beach leaving an imprint in the sand with every step. Her left arm was wrapped around the waist of a man who had his arm around her shoulder, and they were walking away from him as the last rays of the sun painted the sky red and orange. The monotonous noise of the ventilation system in the room was transformed into the relaxing sound of the lapping waves trying to reach out to touch and kiss her feet if only for the slightest of moments.

He tried to catch up with the beautiful woman and see who her partner was, but the webs of sleep held him back. Then the woman turned and faced him. Yes, it was Ronit, and her smiling green eyes looked at him with love. Her lips parted and she was telling him something. Her perfectly white teeth glowed in the dark, and he answered her, blowing a kiss. With the remains of the anesthesia still in his system and drained by the exhausting day, Eddie fell into his dream of a perfect world until light would shine on the menacing reality he was about to face.