The windows of the large black car were also covered by curtains.
They could just barely make out the thickly bearded man in the black cap driving the car. No one sat in the passenger’s seat, but when the car came to a stop, two men emerged from the backseat. They looked around and hurried into the building.
“Schreiber,” Natasha shouted, her voice choked with emotion.
“Film them walking into the building. Did you, did you get them?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Schreiber said, hoping to calm her down. “What are you so nervous about? I shot the whole thing, but how’s this footage going to help you? So what if two people came to Rabbi Elharizi’s apartment? Who cares?”
“What are you talking about, ‘two people’?” she whispered. “Those weren’t just any two people. Didn’t you recognize them? Don’t you know who they are?”
“Sure I do.” Schreiber sighed. “So you’ll tell people that Rabbi Yitzhak Bashi and Rabbi Elyashiv Benami, Elharizi’s two close advisers, came to visit. So what? Of course his two close advisers would come to his home, that’s the most natural thing in the world, isn’t it?”
“They’re not just his close advisers,” Natasha pressed him. “One, Yitzhak Bashi, is known to be the treasurer of the movement, he’s always in the news. The other, Benami, handles their international relations, no?”
“All right,” Schreiber said as he peered into the lens. “So you’ve got a meeting here, a gathering, a conference of the heads of this religious movement of Eastern Jews. So what? What’s so significant about that?
They’re allowed to meet, aren’t they? What have you proven? I filmed them… . What are you so worked up about?” As if to prove she was right, three bearded men in dark clothing appeared and unloaded two black leather suitcases and a heavy trunk from the large sedan.
Suddenly the skies cleared and a ray of sunlight, reflecting from a puddle in the street near the car, shone on a single gold lock that secured the trunk.
“Schreiber,” Natasha whispered, “Look! The trunk … suitcases …
don’t stop shooting—”
“I heard you, I’m not deaf, I heard you,” Schreiber said impatiently.
“But who’s going to care about a bunch of suitcases? What do you think they put in them? I’m telling you, it’s got to be holy documents or books written by their rabbis or the latest volume by Rabbi Elharizi.
What do you think’s in there, gold? Maybe a stash of guns? Hey, how about a dead body? You’ve been watching too many movies.”
“What I wouldn’t give … ,” Natasha said as her eyes followed the three men as they entered the stairwell of the building. Suddenly she grew tense again. “Schreiber,” she said anxiously, “you’ve got to go see, you’ve got to get in there, go knock on the door as if—”
“Natasha,” Schreiber said, shutting her up, his voice a warning.
“That’s enough. “I’m not going in anywhere. ”
Still, she heard in his voice the slightest crack, something that enabled her to lay her hand on his arm and plead. “Schreiber, please, Schreiber, we’ve come this far. Don’t you think it would be a shame—”
He did not need that much convincing.
“Just don’t try telling me how to go about this, okay?” he said as she adjusted the skullcap on his head and straightened the ritual fringes he had brought along and was now wearing. “All you have to take care of now is the camera and the microphone.” He patted the front of his black coat. “I’ve known these guys since before you were born,” he said in a rush on his way out of the van, shooting glances up and down the street.
While Schreiber was making his way up three flights of stairs to Rabbi Elharizi’s apartment, Danny Benizri stood facing the information desk at Hadassah Hospital. “She’s probably in the respiratory intensive care unit,” he told the receptionist in his final attempt at convincing her to reveal to which ward the minister had been admitted, and he scolded himself for being so stupid as to ask for the minister of labor and social affairs, and not simply Timnah Ben-Zvi, as though he were a childhood friend or member of the family; otherwise, the receptionist may not even have noticed. Then again, it was likely she would have noticed no matter what he had done. “Why won’t you tell me?” he asked malevolently, hoping to trip her up. “For security reasons?”
“Sir,” she said, without looking up, “you’ll have to talk to the hospital spokesman. I’m not giving you any information.”
Benizri was just turning to leave when a doctor passing by caught sight of him and smiled. “You’re on television, aren’t you?” he asked.
“The news. Education reporter, right? No! Of course, the tunnel, the laid-off workers. Great job, we watched you—”
Benizri approached the doctor, smiled pleasantly, and nonchalantly told him he was hoping to find the minister of labor and social affairs.
“Come with me, I’ll lead you there!” the doctor said exuberantly.
“How do you like that? You’re looking for her, and here she is, right in my ward. Would you call that coincidence or fate?”
Benizri followed obediently. The doctor told him to wait in the outer hallway for a few minutes before entering the ward itself, which he did. Once inside, he encountered no one. A prime minister’s been murdered in this country, he thought, and yet a government minister gets no protection. With no protection, kidnapping them or trapping them in a tunnel or sneaking into the hospital and snapping their pictures is no trouble at all. But he did not have a camera. Light blue curtains covered the windows of the three private rooms along the hallway.
The minister was in the last of them, at the end of the hall, which was where the doctor had entered and from where he was due to emerge.
Benizri progressed to the end of the hall; the curtain did not entirely cover the window, so that he could glimpse the minister as she sat on her bed. Her back was exposed, white, and the doctor was leaning over her, his eyes fixed on a point far in the distance as he listened through his stethoscope. When he finished, she straightened up, asked him something, her face fearful, anxious; she listened to his response, then smiled. She had a wonderful smile, childish and innocent, her arms folded over the small, pert breasts he had already seen once; it took his breath away for a moment. Thinking about the color of her hidden nipples caused a slight current to pass through him, exciting him suddenly: the peeping sleuth always on the make for information.
There was something about the narrow back of this woman—a woman thought to be so aggressive and influential, and whom he himself had mocked more than once in his own reports—that stirred his heart. Now she seemed even more vulnerable, aroused his sympathy even more than in the tunnel. The doctor helped her find the sleeve of her robe; Benizri stepped back, thinking to return to the outer hallway, but suddenly he changed his mind and approached the doorway to her room. The doctor was saying, “I’ll prepare your discharge letter,” without lifting his eyes from the chart on which he was writing something.
“It’ll just take a few minutes, and then you’re free to go.”
“Today? Already?” Danny Benizri could hear the shock and dismay in her voice.
“I thought you’d be glad,” the doctor said, surprised at her reaction.
He tucked his stethoscope into the wide pocket of his green smock, which set off his reddish hair and his pale, freckled cheeks. “The professor said, when he made his rounds … I thought … we can’t hear anything wrong with your breathing, there’s no reason to keep you here. We simply recommend a few days of rest at home.” He closed the file with a tap of his hand. “Why?” he asked, flirtatiously. “Would you prefer to stay a little while longer with us?”
“No,” the minister answered. “It’s just that I thought, well, I sent my driver home, I gave him off until tomorrow, and my parliamentary assistant isn’t available, and my husband … oh never mind, I’ll manage.”
Just then Benizri entered the room with bold steps, confidently, and with false exuberance said, “Perhaps I can be of service?”
“I totally forgot,” the doctor said, “I brought you a visitor,” and he rushed off.
“You,” Timnah Ben-Zvi said, her face clouding. “Who let a reporter in here?” But the doctor was already out of the room and did not hear her protest.
“He knows what’s been going on,” Danny Benizri said. “He thought you would be glad—”
As if she had suddenly remembered who he was and what he had done for her, her face softened. “Actually, I haven’t yet had the opportunity … I haven’t thanked you properly,” she said, averting her eyes as if embarrassed.
