you’re doing this on your own?”
She shook her head, a bashful smile on her face.
“So what does he think?” Schreiber asked her, a look of suspicion on his face. “What did you tell him? Did you tell him I’m involved, did you, Natasha?! You’re going to drive me crazy, Natasha.” Now she thought he was mad at her for real.
“I had no choice, Schreiber, they won’t let me … if I told him, he’d send someone else, he’d say I didn’t own the story.”
“Natasha, it’s without authorization!”
“Rubin promised he would work things out with Hefetz, that there’ll be after-the-fact permission,” she mumbled, “and that he would cover for you if we get in trouble on the other issue. Look, he promised. He’s seen the material.”
“Tell me what exactly you think we would see there.”
She told him about the restaurant and the meeting with the piles of money and maps and suitcases. His eyes grew wider with fear as he listened.
“Natasha,” he said, his voice choked with emotion, “you’re playing with fire. You have no idea who you’re dealing with here. Don’t forget, Natasha, where I come from. I know them, they won’t let you get away in peace. They’ll take revenge on you, I know them better than anyone else around here, I was one of them.” He tugged at the ring in his left earlobe. “They’ll kill you, arrange an accident for you, they’ll put a curse on you without batting an eye if you’re onto them, and it’s all true. It would be the end of you.”
“That’s what journalism is all about, Schreiber,” she said pleadingly.
“Think about it seriously.”
“I don’t like journalism, I like shooting dramas, didn’t you know that?” he said, teasing her. “I like filming Iddo and Eynam for Benny Meyuhas. I don’t have any time for you.” He was smiling, drumming a finger on his nose.
She grabbed his shirt. “Schreiber, please, I’m begging you.”
“Natasha, I can’t,” he protested. From the hallway they could hear people running and shouting. “Now what’s happened?” Schreiber wondered as he fished a cigarette from the front pocket on his safari vest and rubbed his double chin. His small mouth disappeared into his wide face as he listened to the noises from the hall. “God only knows what’s happened, maybe a terrorist attack or something. I can’t just toss everything aside and stand here chatting with you. You understand, don’t you, Natasha?”
“Schreiber,” she said as she removed her red scarf and mindlessly slipped off her black coat and her sweater and her black undershirt, too, so that she was blocking the door with her body, her small nipples erect. “Listen, Schreiber—you want to fuck me?”
He gave her a look of terror, and for a moment she was frightened, as though he might slap her across the face. But then something familiar flickered in the hazel-colored part of his slightly crossed right eye, and a tremor passed through his thin lips and he began to smile, and then laugh a stifled laugh. She would have been offended if she had not known him so well.
“What’s with you, Natasha?” he said, coughing. “Put your clothes back on right away, the sweater—what’s with you? Like you’re willing to do anything for—” The noises in the hallway were growing louder.
“Something’s happened,” he said as he pulled the sweater over her head and pushed her arms into the sleeves as though she were a little girl. “Natasha, let’s get out of here.”
“First of all, promise,” she demanded. “Promise you’ll help me.”
Schreiber rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “If you weren’t such a … if you weren’t so … so … like, alone in the world,” he said, shaking his head reproachfully, “if I didn’t know you well enough to know you’ll do it anyway, I would tell you to go to Hefetz. But you won’t go to Hefetz, will you?”
“There’s no reason to,” she fumed. “But if you come with me—
look, I’ll … I’ll pay you.”
“Like with money?” Schreiber laughed even harder this time, shaking his head. He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his checkered flannel shirt, straightened his safari vest, zipped closed one of the pockets. “How exactly are you going to pay me? You’re going to give me the savings you don’t have? You’re going to start working as a cleaning lady? Hit the streets? Okay, I’ll give you an answer in a little while, all right?”
She would not be placated. Holding his arm, she asked, “When?
When will you give me an answer? When it’s too late?”
Schreiber removed her fingers from his arm. “What time is it now, eleven-fifteen? I’ll have an answer for you by two o’clock, okay?” He was holding her hand in his own and caressing it with the other. “But don’t go and do anything until I get back to you. Don’t go anywhere, don’t talk to anyone. Nothing. You got that?”
Natasha nodded, following his movements as he stuck the cigarette back into his vest pocket, opened the door, and peered into the hall.
“Go on,” he told her, “you first and then me, so that nobody catches us coming out of a closed room together and think … I don’t have the strength to fight with Hefetz over his girl.”
“I’m not his girl,” she whispered angrily as she left the room and fell straight into Hefetz’s arms. His face was grave, and she could not see his eyes behind the dark lenses of his eyeglasses.
“I’ve been looking for you all morning,” he intoned. “Where have you been hiding?” Without waiting for an answer, he asked, “Did you hear about Matty Cohen?”
She shook her head.
“He died,” Hefetz said, removing his glasses and rubbing his bloodshot right eye. She did not care that once again his eye was infected, she wished it would spread to his left eye, too. “A half hour ago, just like that. What do you say about that?”
What could she say? She very nearly shrugged her shoulders. She had barely known Matty Cohen, who was she anyway? The guy was too important for someone like her. Nevertheless, she forced her face into a serious expression as Hefetz continued speaking.
“A guy wakes up in the morning healthy, well, not completely healthy, but pretty healthy, maybe a little overweight, but not obese, really, and a few hours later he’s dead.”
Natasha nodded. “What did he die of ?”
“His heart, a heart attack while under investigation at police headquarters in the Russian Compound. They were talking to him about Tirzah. He didn’t sleep all last night, and then the interrogation this morning … too much effort and excitement, the doctors say.” His gaze drifted to the stairway and the two people coming up the stairs.
“Here they are again, they’re back,” he said, frowning.
“Who?” Natasha asked under her breath.
“Can’t you see them? The police. Those are the guys who were here earlier. They’re back.”
The only thing she could think about was how she had no chance whatsoever anymore; who would give her the time of day now? Now they might not even let her on the air with the item about the yeshiva students. She watched the two men, noticed they were the same two she had seen in the newsroom that morning. The taller one—the one with the dark eyes and eyebrows—was nodding to Hefetz and seemed to be watching her with special interest; his gaze made her wish to behave herself so that he would look at her and think she was all right.
The other one was saying something to Aviva, and everyone was walking out of Zadik’s office now. Rubin was explaining something to Hagar. When she touched his arm, Rubin said, once again, “Not now, Natasha. A little later.”
“A weekly meeting?” Michael verified. “Same day each week in your office?”
“If I’m in the country,” Zadik confirmed.
“And everyone drinks coffee?” Michael asked.
“Whoever wants to,” Zadik answered. “Look, you see we’ve got everything we need right here: a kettle, and over in the corner there’s herb tea and regular tea and decaf coffee and instant coffee and Turkish coffee. And sugar and artificial sweetener and milk. Styrofoam cups for those who don’t mind them. I for one can’t stand them, so we’ve got mugs, too—you can see for yourself. Once upon a time we had filter coffee too, and hot chocolate. But we’ve cut back.”
“Did Matty Cohen always drink coffee?”
“Turkish coffee, two packets of sweetener and half a teaspoon of
