On a hot September day in Tel Aviv, a road sweeper is witness to a murder. For a moment, the man doubts his sanity, for he believes he has recognised an old friend in the murderer. And this would contradict all the rules of probability. For Sascha Sokolov is no ordinary road sweeper. Only recently, the emigrated Russian was one of his country's most respected space research experts – until the day when the rocket he had helped to develop inexplicably exploded on take-off. Sokolov and his old project director and friend Lev Lesjava were suspended – and this was the man who looked so strikingly like the murderer in the Rechov Etsel. Ever since Sokolov came to Israel he has been trying to drown his sorrows in drink: the memory of his wrecked career and marriage, his fruitless search for a Jewish identity and, last but not least, the unsolved dilemma of the role Lev had played in the explosion of the rocket and his friend's enigmatic, seemingly unscrupulous character… A rousing novel about friendship and betrayal, a search for identity and the achievements of modern science, and at the same time an exciting thriller about international Mafia machinations against the background of the impending Gulf War which threatens to destroy Israel.