Read Online Murder in Jerusalem by Batya Gur - Free Book Online Page A

ON THE JERUSALEM–ETZION BLOC BYPASS ROAD.
    For a moment there was utter silence in the room. The loud ringing of a telephone was the only thing to break it.
    â€œThe telephone’s ringing, are you people deaf?” Niva asked. “It’s the hotline, someone’s got to answer it. Is someone picking up? Aviva, answer it, it’s the hotline!” When the telephone next to her began ringing too, she picked it up without taking her eyes from the television screen. “I don’t understand,” she was saying into the mouthpiece. “Talk clearly. Are they from Hamas or what?” Just then the opening notes of Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 rang out noisily from a mobile phone, sending Niva scrambling for her large black leather bag. After fishing through it madly, she managed to extricate a silver cellular telephone, took a look at its display panel, pursed her lips, and said, “Yes, Mother, what is it?”
    Zadik stood in front of the wall monitor, watching the interviewer and his two guests, whose lips were moving soundlessly.
    â€œWhat are you doing at the supermarket on Agron Street?” Niva shouted into her phone. “Oh, Mother, we agreed that you wouldn’t leave the house until I get there!”
    â€œHello?” Aviva said into the receiver of the hotline. “Hello? Yes, he’s right here, just a minute. It’s for you,” she said, handing the phone to Zadik.
    Zadik listened for a moment, raised his head and announced, “Quiet, everyone, you can calm down; it’s not terrorists.”
    Only then did someone raise the volume on the monitor so that it was possible to hear the military correspondent from Channel Two summarizing the turn of events: “And so,” he said, facing the camera, clearly emotional, “we now have official confirmation. This is not a terrorist attack. To sum up events, we know that at six-forty-five this morning a tunnel on the Jerusalem–Etzion Bloc bypass road was blockaded by four trucks parked inside the tunnel. It appears that the car of the minister for labor and social affairs is trapped—”
    â€œTurn down the volume!” Zadik shouted. “I don’t understand why Zohar isn’t on the air! How is it that their military correspondent is there but ours isn’t?”
    â€œAs of now you no longer need a military correspondent there,” Aviva said spitefully, as she removed her makeup kit from her purse. “Didn’t you hear him? It’s not a military maneuver, it’s just some strikers, and they’ve kidnapped what’s-her-name, Madame Minister Ben-Zvi.”
    â€œYeah,” said Hefetz, “but we didn’t know that until now. Zohar was on his way there, now I get where he was headed so fast before. He should be right there with their correspondent. Never mind. Benizri, get down to the studio, we’ll interrupt programming. Go on, get down there!”
    â€œHere, here he is!” Aviva announced, and everyone looked to the Channel One monitor, where they could see Zohar, microphone in hand, a thick gray wool scarf wrapped around his neck. He was speaking into the camera, but there was no sound. A second later the image disappeared, and in its place a caption: TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES, PLEASE STAY TUNED.
    â€œNaturally,” Tzippi scoffed from the doorway. “Were we really expecting a problem-free broadcast? We’d all go into shock!”
    â€œJust tell me how we expect to make the ratings with shoddy work like this?” David Shalit grumbled.
    â€œWhat I can’t understand,” Hefetz said despairingly in a hoarse voice, without taking his eyes from the monitor, “is why it always happens at moments like these. Sometimes I swear it feels…it feels like it’s on purpose…”
    â€œI totally don’t get why a military correspondent is there,” said Danny Benizri to Hefetz. “You heard them: if