"Could you take me to the Old City please?"
Within a few minutes they were back on the main road, retracing the dawn journey she had made with Uri, winding steadily upward back to the centre of Jerusalem. She felt her ears pop.
Now the traffic was thicker, but hardly a regular urban rush hour. "Shabbat, shabbat," the driver said, gesturing to the view outside the windscreen. The city was emptying out for the sabbath, which would come with the darkness that evening.
And soon she could see it, as the car ascended Hativat Yerushalayim Street, the long, solid wall that marked the western boundary of the Old City. She was hardly looking, staring into s.p.a.ce, thinking only of what might have happened to Uri. Had he really taken a bullet just so that she could break free? The heaviness on her chest, the sense of dread, almost broke her. Another mistake; another betrayal. Angrily, she forced herself to channel her emotions into an unbending determination: she would find the people who had shot Uri and she would do it by finding the tablet. She sensed she was getting close. The last testament of Abraham could not be very far away.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO.
JERUSALEM, FRIDAY, 7.50AM.
The car turned through the Jaffa Gate, stopping almost immediately in a small square, a paved plaza fringed by a souvenir shop selling the usual kitsch and a couple of rundown backpacker hostels. She would have to walk from here. Maggie thanked the driver, waved him off and took a good look. In front of her was the Swedish Christian Study Centre. Close by was the Christian Information Centre and next to that, the Christ Church Guest House. A distant memory of slide shows in Sister Frances"s geography lessons rose to the surface. Maggie realized she had heard about such places long ago. These were all missionsmissions to convert the Jews.
Straight ahead of her was what looked to be a central police station, complete with a tall communications mast sprouting multiple aerials. She began to walk towards it. She would report Uri missing, she would tell them about the shooting, they would send out patrol cars and find Uri and bring him back to her...
But then she stopped still. She would have to explain the stolen car and why they were being chased in the dead of night; why Uri was dressed in a stolen bellboy uniform. No one would believe a word of it. The police would immediately get on the phone to the consulate to check her out and she only had to imagine that call, as Davis, Miller and Sanchez were told that Maggie Costello had spent the night with Uri Guttman.
She stood there, frozen. If Uri was alive, he needed her help. But there was no one she could turn to, no one who would understand or believe what they now knew. Her only hope was the tablet. If she had that, she would have the answers: she would know who was behind these killings and who had Uri. If she could just find the tablet, she would have her own bargaining chip. Then all she had to do was decide how best to use it.
She looked around, trying to get her bearings. She had found this place almost suffocatingly intense as soon as she had arrived, but here in the Old City the sensation was heightened, as if all Jerusalem"s fervour, its fevered history, was cooped up between these solid, sandy walls. No wonder people spoke of Jerusalem as if it were a form of mental illness.
She stopped a man with an oversized camera around his neck, wearing sandals and socks, and asked for the Western Wall. He pointed at an archway directly opposite the Jaffa Gate. This, she remembered, was the way to the souk souk.
It felt like plunging down a hillside, taking that steep, downward path that had been smoothed by millions of feet over hundreds if not thousands of years. It seemed different from the market she had seen twenty-four hours ago. It was still early; almost all the stalls were locked up behind green metal shutters, and, instead of the thick crowds of tourists and shoppers, there was just a boy pushing a handcart, occasionally jumping on the small tyre he kept loosely chained to the back that, when dragged along the ground, functioned as a makeshift brake.
She looked at the names of the shops, now visible thanks to the absence of people. She could imagine the older Guttman browsing here, visiting Sadi Barakat & Sons, Legally Authorized Dealers or the grandiosely named Oriental Museum, always on the lookout for some quirky item of ancient treasure. How he must have quaked when he came into Aweida"s shop that day.
She pa.s.sed a bearded man in full black robes. Was he a rabbi or an orthodox priest, maybe Greek or Russian? She had no idea and, in this city, any of those was possible. Coming from another direction, a gang of eight-year-old Arab boys and, walking around them, an old woman reading from a prayer book, muttering incantations, as if she couldn"t afford to waste even a minute away from worship of the divine.
Finally Maggie saw a simple sign in English which appeared handwritten. To the Western Wall To the Western Wall, it said, with an arrow indicating a right turn. She followed it, heading down some more steps until she saw another more formal sign, with a series of bullet points, all in English: You are entering the Western Wall plaza.
Visitors with pacemakers should inform the security personnel...
There was an airport-style metal detector to go through, watched by a couple of Israeli police guards. A policewoman frisked her, all the while laughing and chatting with her colleagues, and then waved her through.
And now it stretched before her, a sloping, paved plaza already teeming with people and at one end of it the solid, enormous stones of the Western Wall. It seemed to belong to another world: its scale was not human. One stone was almost as tall as a man. The weeds sprouting from its cracks were small trees. And yet this dated from a temple built here some two and a half thousand years ago.
People were milling everywhere. Bearded men striding about as if they had trains to catch, others handing out skullcaps, while still a few more were smiling, like charity collectors hoping pedestrians might stop for a chat. She avoided eye contact, listening instead as a teenaged American boy allowed himself to be b.u.t.tonholed.
"Er, Aaron."
"Hi, Aaron. I"m Levi." Lay-vee Lay-vee. Have you got somewhere to spend shabbes tonight?"
"Er, maybe. I"m not sure."
"Do you wanna spend shabbes shabbes with a family, having chicken soup like at home? Maybe with a family, having chicken soup like at home? Maybe daven daven a little at the a little at the Kotel Kotel?" The last word was p.r.o.nounced to rhyme with hotel, though with the emphasis on the first syllable. The driver had used the same word. Kotel Kotel. The Wall.
Now she could see more clearly the sets of white plastic garden chairs arrayed in front of the Wall. There was no pattern to them. Instead, there seemed to be a dozen different gatherings and services taking place at once. It was a scene of spiritual chaos, more like a railway terminal than any shrine she had ever been to.
Perhaps four fifths along the wall a part.i.tion emerged to bisect the crowd. It wasn"t much, no different from the panels of fencing her father might have put up in their back garden. But on the left side of it, as you faced the giant stones, the crowd was much thicker. She walked closer, to work out what this division could mean.
Ah. Men on the left side, women on the right. There was another sign, addressed to the women. You are entering an area of sanct.i.ty. Women should be in appropriate modest dress You are entering an area of sanct.i.ty. Women should be in appropriate modest dress. But it was the men whom she looked at. Even now, there were a good number of them, many draped in large black-and-white shawls, facing the Wall. Some let the shawls cover their heads, like boxers in hooded robes, readying for a fight. Others wore them over their shoulders. All seemed to be rocking back and forth on their heels or swaying from side to side, their eyes closed. Maggie tried to get nearer.
"Are you Jewish?" A matronly woman with a European accent. She was nodding and smiling.
"No, I"m not. But I am here to join these good people"s prayers to the Lord," she said, the voice of Sister Olivia from school in her head. The woman gestured towards the ladies" side of the part.i.tion and wandered off.
Maggie wondered how long she would be able to stay here before somebody moved her on. She had to find out where to go. She saw a policeman, armed, and asked for the Western Wall tunnels. He pointed at a small archway, apparently newly built into the long, but much lower, wall that ran perpendicular to the Kotel itself.
Outside was a group of maybe thirty men and women, kitted out with water bottles and video cameras. Perfect Perfect.
She loitered at the back, then followed them through the archway, her eyes down and fidgeting with her phone.
"All right, people. If we can all listen up. Thank you," said the tour guide: American, late twenties, with a whiskery beard and bright, shining eyes. He clapped his hands three times and waited for silence. "Great. Thanks. My name is Josh and I"m going to be your guide through this tour of the Western Wall tunnelsand this journey into the ancient heritage of the Jewish people. If you just follow me through here, we can begin."
He led them into an underground cellar, a chamber whose shape was described by a vaulted arch. The stones were colder and greyer than the ones Maggie had grown used to in Jerusalem and there was a drone of fans, struggling to dispel the smell of dry, lightless must.
"OK, do we have everybody?" His voice was bouncing off the walls. "All right. We"re in a room the British explorer Charles Warren called the Donkey Stable. That may be because that was what this room was once used foror perhaps it just looks that way."
There was polite laughter from all those who were not framing up a shot on their camera phones. Maggie started scoping the walls, desperate to see if there was any kind of opening, a place where Shimon Guttman might have stashed his precious discovery.
"This gives us an opportunity to say a little about where we are. We are now very close to the area known as the Temple Mount. As you know, this is a very special place indeed. Our tradition holds that on this spot stood the Foundation Stone, from which the world was literally created five thousand seven hundred years ago. We also know it as Mount Moriah, where Abraham was asked by Ha"shem Ha"shem, by the Almighty, to sacrifice his son, Isaac. It"s also where Jacob laid his head to rest, and had the dream of angels moving up and down between heaven and earth. And where he predicted that the House of G.o.d would be built.
"Sure enough, the Temple was constructed here many years later. And what you were looking at before, the Kotel, that was the western retaining wall of the temple. Which temple? Well, there were two. The First Temple was built by King Solomon nearly three thousand years ago and the Second was built by Ezra about five hundred years after that. When the Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70, the only part that was left standing was the Western Wall."
Maggie was keeping her place at the back, her eye scanning every crack between the white-grey stones. You"ll find what I left for you there, in the path of ancient warrens You"ll find what I left for you there, in the path of ancient warrens, Guttman had said. Could that refer to something in this room?
"...most people don"t realize is that the giant wall we just saw outside, with everyone praying, is not the entire Western Wall. It continued on, northward, for four times four times as long again. Trouble was, over the years, people built against it, and eventually as long again. Trouble was, over the years, people built against it, and eventually over over it. Building layer on layer of houses and foundations and support structures. Until we couldn"t see much of the wall at all. it. Building layer on layer of houses and foundations and support structures. Until we couldn"t see much of the wall at all.
"But the good news is, we"ve been able to dig out a tunnel along the entire length of the wall. Now we can see all those layers of historyand see the beauty of the wall itself, a treasure that was hidden from the Jewish people for at least two millennia."
While the men in shorts and women with sweaters tied around their waists ooh-ed and aah-ed, Maggie was trying to guide her eye like the beam of a flashlight. Was Abraham"s tiny tablet hidden somewhere in here? She examined the ground, wondering if there was a trapdoor, a staircase perhaps, that might lead to a vault. But where?
"OK. We"re going to follow that little light you can see thereand head down the Secret Pa.s.sage."
A teenage boy made a ghost sound. His sister sang the theme tune from The Twilight Zone The Twilight Zone.
The group walked in single file down a long corridor, beneath a low vaulted ceiling. There was no daylight now, just the orange glow of electric lights embedded at intervals along the ground. Maggie shivered, a product of shock and fatigue as much as the cold.
The guide was speaking again, his voice raised to be heard above the footsteps. The echo meant that, from her position at the back, Maggie had to strain to hear him.
"Legend has it that this was an underground walkway used by King David so that he could travel, unseen, from his palace, which would have been west of here, to the Temple Mount..."
Maggie looked above her and at the walls. Guttman surely wouldn"t have left anything here. How would he have managed to hide it? Behind one of these stones? She began to worry. If he had loosened one of these ancient stones, and hidden the tablet behind, how on earth was she to find it? Where would she start?
The guide was answering a question. "That"s what I find so beautiful about being here, touching the very stones and breathing the very air that our ancestors would have touched and breathed. As we delve deeper, we can begin to reach the very roots of Jewish existence." His eyes were shining, two dancing beams of light. "We can touch our souls here." He left a pause while he smiled wide enough to show all his teeth. "OK, let"s move on."
Maggie was feeling twitchy. The light was too weak for a proper search and, if she was to stick with this group, there was too little time in each stop along the tour. She thought of Uri, cursing his father and his elaborate schemes. Leading them here was all very well, but not if they had no chance to find the tablet.
She suddenly became self-conscious. She glanced up to see a man gazing at her, then looking away. Had she been muttering? She was so tired it wouldn"t have surprised her if, in her desperation, she had started thinking out loud. She could feel her cheeks grow hot.
The guide shepherded the group around a gla.s.s panel in the ground, which revealed they were in fact walking on a bridge, with a well-like hole directly below. "This is only thirteen hundred years old," he said, with a smile. "Because this is not the original bridge, but one that was added later by the Muslims."
They walked on, until they were under another vaulted ceiling. The smell of damp was getting stronger. They were, the guide explained, walking through a series of cisterns whose arches supported the houses built above. "See the holes in the ceiling," he said, as everyone looked up. "They would drop a bucket from those, then pull it up, full of water."
Maggie was barely listening, studying instead the two illuminated signs that had been placed down here: incongruously, they listed the foreign donors, the Schottensteins and Zuckermans, who had made these excavations possible. She scanned the names, looking for a Guttman or an Ehud Ramon or a Vladimir or a Jabotinsky, anything which might give her some clue. This place was so big, a maze of tunnels: how on earth was she meant to find anything here? She fully understood Uri"s exasperation with his father: why couldn"t he have been clearer?
The guide was calling them forward, to see what he introduced as Wilson"s Arch. He pointed to a small opening, through which they could glimpse again the solid oblong stones of the Western Wall, no different from those they had seen outside. Most of their view was blocked, though, by a "women"s prayer area" that, even at this hour, was busy.
Enough of this, she decided. Tagging along in a tour party was never going to lead her to the tablet. She needed to search properly. And that meant alone. She walked, as quietly and un.o.btrusively as she could, away from the group and towards the first available opening.
It was a flight of newly-constructed metal stairs she had spotted when they came in. She went down, pressing her heel into each step to prevent her boots making the clacking noise that would give her away. At the bottom, she saw a deep rectangle that seemed to have been neatly carved out of the earth, with steps on each side. Some kind of bathing pool.
Go west, young man, and make your way to the model city, close to the Mishkan. You"ll find what I left for you there, in the path of ancient warrens.
There was nothing here that connected this place to Guttman"s clue. She moved forward, into a wider s.p.a.ce, where a group of men in yellow hard hats were working: Arabs, Maggie couldn"t help noticing. She remembered the note in the briefing material, noting the irony that the Jewish settlements on the West Bank, like Israel"s security barrier or wall, which were so hated by the Arabs, were almost always built by Arab hands.
Facing her was the newly-exposed section of the Western Wall. She skim-read the sign: five tons each, finely cut, bevelled edges and neat borders, one longer than a bus, weighs in at five hundred and seventy tons, heavier than a 747 loaded with pa.s.sengers and all their luggage. s.h.i.t s.h.i.t. When was she going to see something that made sense?
She searched for an opening. There was only one and she took it, finding herself on a narrow path, faced on one side by an enormous arch that seemed to have been bricked up, filled in with a coa.r.s.e, craggy rubble. Next to it was a sign: Warren"s Gate.
Thank G.o.d for that. Guttman was not messing them around after all. Had not his clue spoken of the "path of ancient warrens"? Both she and Uri had taken that to mean this warren of ancient tunnels, but Guttman had been far cleverer than that. He meant this place: not warrens at all, but Warren"s. And here she was.
She looked up, down and around, confident that the hiding place was about to reveal itself. Yet all she could see was this wall of stone and brick, each piece apparently solid and unyielding. She began tapping and pulling, hoping to find a loose brick that might come away easily. None yielded.
Her confidence waning, she fell to her knees. She would work methodically, starting with the bottom line of stones. She began grabbing and tugging, the skin of her fingers scratching and tearing on the coa.r.s.e brick. The wall was rock solid. Her hands moved frantically across the next line of stones, then the next. Nothing.
She stood up to look at the wall opposite. Perhaps the hiding place was here. She gazed high above and then below. Where in G.o.d"s name had Guttman hidden it?
And then she saw him.
The same man she had made eye contact with during the tour, except now he was standing, alone, at the other end of this narrow pathway. Maggie registered no embarra.s.sment, only recognition.
She had seen his face before. But where? Her mind was so addled with exhaustion, it was like wading through deep water to find the memory. It was recent, she knew that. Just the last few days. Was it at the hotel? At the consulate? No, she suddenly realized. Oh no. It was not there at all.
It had been at the nightclub in Tel Aviv where she and Uri had tracked down Baruch Kishon"s son. Maggie had noticed him at the entrance, shortly after they had arrived. She had almost given him a sympathy smile: another thirtysomething, out of place in a club heaving with lithe and gorgeous kids. He had followed her thenand he had followed her now.
His purpose was beyond doubt. Whatever she was about to discover, he would want for himself, to pa.s.s on to G.o.d knows who. To the men who had killed Uri"s mother, Kishon, Aweida and maybe even Uri. The men who would doubtless do the same to her, right here, right now, in this catacomb of age-old secrets.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE.
JERUSALEM, FRIDAY, 8.21AM.
Her legs made the decision before she did. She stood up and ran, rushing through a narrowing of the pa.s.sageway, in which perhaps a dozen women were standing, each of them holding a prayer book. Their heads were covered with hats or crocheted snoods and their faces were pictures of intensity. As Maggie pushed past them, she could see they were all but touching a wall that was trickling with water, their lips nearly brushing it. Two other women, tourists probably, were standing apart from the rest. Maggie overheard them: "The Foundation Stone is just through there, on the other side of the wall. Did you hear what they said? That those drops are G.o.d"s tears."
Maggie shoved them out of the way. She looked over her shoulder to see the stalker had now been joined by another man, a videocamera around his neck. They were getting closer. She picked up speed.
Now the pathway became a long, low, narrow tunnel. She ran on, hunched over. When she glanced back she saw them gaining on her, even as they ran in their own awkward crouch. In panic, she whirled around and dashed forward, only to smash her forehead on a metal rafter lodged in the ceiling. She gasped, then jumped as the wall on her left suddenly disappeared: an alcove, inside which was a wizened woman, dressed entirely in black, clutching a prayer book. Maggie felt dizzy.
Now the ground beneath her feet changed: a gla.s.s square looking down onto what might have been a cistern or a room below. The men were only about ten yards behind her.
Suddenly the tunnel pa.s.sageway ended, opening out into another cistern. At last she could raise her head. She was desperate to find a way off the official path, so that she might give these men the slip. But there only seemed to be one opening each time. She would just have to stay ahead of them until she could break back out into the daylight. But how much longer would that be?
She was panting now, as she found herself in what looked like a corner of a long-buried Roman market. She faced two pillars, topped by a portico. Alongside it were two square slabs of stone, dumped on top of each other, as if the construction workers of two millennia past had simply downed tools and abandoned their task. She could hear heavy footsteps behind her. She looked for an exit but could see only one.
The path narrowed again, turning ninety degrees away from the Western Wall which had remained, until then, reliably on her right. Now, instead of the neat, regimented stones, she seemed to have entered some kind of underground gorge, a canyon of steep walls, as high as a cathedral, hugging her on both sides. They were wet and made up of solid, striated layers of colour, like the inside of a cake.
"Stop!" shouted one of her pursuers.
As she glanced over her shoulder, she thought she saw the second man, the one with the camera, draw a weapon and aim it at her. She yelped and ducked, but he could get no clear line of sight: the rocks twisted and turned too sharply.
At last she came to a set of narrow, metal stairs. She almost fell forward into them, and struggled to keep her balance. She clattered up them, breathing raggedly. Once at the top, she had to turn sideways just to get through, so tight was the gap. Behind her she heard a woman"s scream: someone had just seen the gun.
And then the s.p.a.ce opened out again, so that she was in what appeared to be a Roman vault. Once her eyes adjusted, she could see that it was in fact another pool, this one full of thick, stagnant water. She stood for a second, her lungs screaming to extract oxygen from this musty, humid air. Where did this pool lead? Maybe it came out somewhere outside, away from here. She stood at the edge, contemplating a dive. She had always been a good swimmer. Perhaps she could hold her breath...
But then she heard the footsteps, just a yard or two away and her instinct led her to turn away from the pool and scramble through the only opening instead. The second she had, she was flooded with relief. For now she could see daylight. Up a path, through a turnstile and she was out.
Gulping at the air, blinking at the sudden sunlight, she found that she had come out onto a narrow street, busy with people. Directly opposite her was a sign: Sanctuaries of the Flagellation and the Condemnation. And out of the sanctuary came a monk in a brown ca.s.sock with a rope around his waist. She was on the Via Dolorosa, Christ"s route to the Crucifixion.
Maggie would have felt a moment"s ancient Catholic comfort in the familiarity of it, if she had had the time. But she had no such luxury. Waiting for her at the exit were two men, their faces covered, who stepped forward and, calmly and with minimal exertion, grabbed her.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR.
JERUSALEM, FRIDAY, 8.32AM.
Gloved hands gripped her wrists so hard it was as if they were made of steel rather than flesh and blood. She gasped but made no sound: other hands had already placed a small strip of material, like a rolled bandana, into her mouth. No one said anything.