The Jerusalem Puzzle Read online

  ‘What part of the city is Xena from?’ I was wondering why she was hanging around with Mark. Was she his girlfriend, his bodyguard?

  ‘She lives in Zamalek, an island in the Nile near here. But she’s originally from Sudan. She likes it in Zamalek. Rich people live there. It’s full of fancy boutiques, businessmen and fortune tellers with gold-plated mobile phones. And it has two million people living in it.’

  He waved a hand in the air to catch the attention of a waiter.

  ‘There’s a lot more to Cairo than shuffling past Tutankhamun’s mask in a sweaty crowd of tourists, or getting stuck in a traffic jam of tourist buses at the Pyramids,’ he said. He pointed his finger at me. ‘The Qaytbay funerary complex alone is better than all of the sightseeing in Venice put together.’

  ‘What does Xena do?’ I asked. I was being pushy, but I didn’t care.

  ‘She helps me with a few things,’ said Mark. He looked at me as if I’d spat on the floor between us.

  ‘She told me if you find friends in Cairo, you can die in Cairo.’

  Isabel sat forward. ‘Is that what they say?’ she said, looking at Mark.

  ‘I never heard it,’ he said.

  ‘Is she … ?’ Isabel paused, smiled. ‘Close to you?’

  He replied, quickly and emphatically. ‘No.’

  ‘I hope you’re not getting sucked in, like you did in Iraq,’ said Isabel.

  He stared at her, his eyes wide, as if she’d just extolled the virtues of living with Jack the Ripper.

  ‘What exactly do you want, Isabel?’ he said. ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘We need a little help.’

  He sighed, as if he’d heard such pleas far too often. ‘What sort of help?’

  ‘We want our deportation notice taken off the Israeli Immigration system.’

  There was silence at the table.

  ‘That’s a big ask,’ he said. ‘A very big ask.’

  Isabel’s expression hardened. She tilted her head to one side. ‘I’m your ex-wife, Mark. I don’t think it will look good for you to have me barred from Israel.’

  Mark stared at her for a minute before responding. ‘I might be able to do what you’re asking, but I won’t guarantee it.’ He paused, his hand at his mouth, as if thinking hard. Thinking hard what lie to tell us, most likely.

  He leaned forward.

  ‘I’m going to Taba tomorrow,’ he said. ‘To a meeting of border security officers. I’ll see if I can do anything.’

  Isabel looked sceptical. ‘You can do it, Mark, if you want to. I know that. You know that. So don’t bullshit me. Remember, we worked together. This is in your interests.’ She spoke slowly, emphasising each word.

  ‘Are you planning to go back to Israel?’ he said.

  ‘If you get our records changed maybe we should,’ she said.

  ‘Wouldn’t you both be better off staying away for a while, perhaps a few years.’

  I leaned towards him. ‘We were that close to finding out what the hell happened to Kaiser. I could feel it.’ I held my thumb and forefinger almost touching in front of his face. ‘Before we were thrown out over some stupid bureaucratic nonsense.’

  ‘Are you doing all this to help your institute or for personal reasons?’ he said.

  ‘Both.’

  He’d probably think I was crazy if I told him I thought there was a connection between Susan’s kidnapping, her husband dying, and the book she was translating. It was all too much of a coincidence that she’d got involved, just as disaster struck.

  He looked at me. ‘Are you planning to give Isabel a job at your institute?’ he said.

  She pointed a finger at him. ‘I’m not doing all this to get a job. I want that deportation off my record.’

  He was staring at her. There was simmering admiration in his eyes. I didn’t like the sight of it. ‘I told you, I’ll see what I can do,’ he said. ‘And I will. Seeing as we’re old friends.’ He smiled at her, as if I wasn’t there.

  ‘Tomorrow?’ she said.

  ‘What’s your hurry?’

  ‘We have a return flight booked for Sunday from Tel Aviv,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to waste the tickets.’

  I could have said I didn’t care about the tickets. I had more money than I knew what to do with. I’d been piling up cash in my bank account since Irene had died, not going out much and not spending, but I didn’t say anything. Maybe I should have. What blinded me to the danger of going back to Israel was a sharp urge to get out of Cairo.

  ‘You’re not going straight back to Israel?’ he said. He stared at me, wide-eyed.

  I shrugged.

  ‘Why don’t we come with you to Taba?’ said Isabel. ‘Once the Israeli computers are updated, you can drop us at the border. You go through that way, don’t you?’ She turned to me. ‘Taba’s near Sharm el-Sheikh. There are taxis on the Israeli side that can drive us to Jerusalem in a few hours, if we’ve a few hundred dollars with us.’

  ‘Great,’ I said.

  Mark pursed his lips, tapping hard on the table. ‘You can come with me,’ he said. ‘But I won’t be responsible for what happens if you go back into Israel. That’ll be on your heads.’ He pointed at me, then at Isabel.

  If I was the type to believe in omens, I’d probably have interjected right there with a decision not to go through with it all. But I don’t believe in them, even the ones that are just common sense.

  After we’d eaten we arranged to meet at the Hilton the next morning. We should be in front of the hotel when he came, he said, as he’d be on a tight schedule. It would be a four hour drive to Taba.

  Then he rang the Hilton to see if it was reopened yet, after the attack.

  I assumed it had been evacuated, that we would have to find other accommodation.

  ‘That’s not the way they do things here,’ he said.

  And he was right. Apparently they had closed the hotel for all of two hours, while every room was searched, but as only one restaurant had been shot up and a controlled explosion had gone off, they’d reopened the hotel. The main restaurant would be closed only until the morning, he said.

  We took a taxi back to the Hilton and went straight up to our room. I poured some slightly odd-tasting orange juice from the minibar for both of us. We stood at the window, looking over the city. It was midnight. There were still car horns honking. The traffic on the bridge in front of us made it look like a pearl necklace of lights.

  ‘I didn’t realise you wanted to go back to Israel tomorrow,’ I said.

  Isabel put her hand on the glass and leaned on it, looking down. I moved a step closer to her, brushing against her bare arm.

  ‘I thought it was a good idea when I heard he was heading for Taba,’ she said. ‘I know how responsible you feel for Susan disappearing. We were getting close to finding out something in Jerusalem. I could feel it in my bones. You said so too.’

  ‘You’re right.’

  She kept staring down. ‘I got this weird feeling when I saw Xena with you.’

  ‘What feeling?’

  ‘There’s a lot of stuff going on here that we don’t know anything about.’

  ‘That’s the truth.’

  ‘No, no, not just in general.’ Her brow furrowed. ‘I mean about us getting thrown out of Israel like that. There’s something strange going on. Maybe I’m crazy, but …’ She shook her head, as if she didn’t want to say any more.

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Nobody seems to care much about what happened to Susan Hunter. The Israeli police didn’t even blink when we mentioned we were looking for her.’

  ‘I’m sure the British Embassy in Tel Aviv is trying to find her.’

  She shook her head, slowly. ‘I’ve seen what happens. They’ll make a few enquiries; talk to the police, the hotel she was staying in, contacts of hers that they know about, and that’s it. They’re too busy to do much more. That’s the reality. They’ll do their best, but there’s so much to do.’

  ‘Do you want vodka in t
hat?’ I said, pointing at the tall glass of orange juice I’d given her.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a thumping headache.’ She looked me in the eyes. ‘I need to go straight to sleep.’

  ‘Sure.’ I said. I wanted to ask her if seeing Mark had given her the headache, but I decided not to go there.

  It was the third night in a row she’d wanted to go straight to sleep. I lay in the dark wondering what was happening to us.

  I knew for sure that if I asked her whether she still had feelings for Mark, she’d deny it. And that if I didn’t like her smiling at him, I was just being jealous.

  But maybe knowing her answer wasn’t the real reason I wouldn’t ask her.

  Was I afraid that if she hesitated at all, I couldn’t pretend that everything was okay between us? Because then I’d have to confront her. I couldn’t avoid it. And who knew what would happen after that. Best to leave it all alone until we got back to England. I had my own feelings to figure out too. They couldn’t be denied.

  We had an early breakfast. I’d told her about my plan to go to the Antiquities Museum and be back by 10.30 a.m. I had to find out if I was right about why Kaiser had come here.

  ‘Do you want to come?’ I said, as I picked up a second croissant from the plate I’d brought over from the breakfast buffet. We were in the Hilton’s other restaurant, the Desert Café, overlooking the Nile. The white tablecloths, cutlery and blue bone china were all sparkling in the early morning sunlight.

  The only sign I could see of the attack the night before was a notice saying the main restaurant would be closed until lunchtime.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I feel a bit sick this morning. You’re well capable of taking pictures of a few papyri without me.’

  ‘One papyrus.’

  ‘But you want to see if there are others like it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I looked around. There weren’t many people staying in the hotel.

  ‘Kaiser is the key to everything,’ she said. She popped a piece of croissant with some quince jam on it into her mouth.

  After breakfast I walked to the Antiquities Museum. It was only five minutes away. It was due to open at 9 a.m. The papyrus collection was on the ground floor. The golden treasures of ancient Egypt, which were still in the museum, were on the upper floor.

  I arrived outside the gates at five minutes to nine. I was dressed in cream chinos, a loose black t-shirt and nothing else. Some of the locals had jackets on, but it was as warm as a good summer’s day in London, so I didn’t need one. I thanked God that we hadn’t arrived in the summer. The sweltering heat then, strong enough to melt tar, would not have been my idea of fun.

  I wasn’t alone waiting. There was a slowly growing queue of tourists, as well as many Egyptians. We were a small demonstration of our own. There was a lot of shuffling and mumbling about the delayed opening, until finally the gates of the garden courtyard in front of the museum swung open and we were allowed in.

  I had to go through two security checks, one near the steps of the museum and a second inside the doors. There was no photography allowed, but they let me keep my phone.

  The museum was amazing. It was a relic of another age, a long colonial-era red stone Victorian museum. Outside in the courtyard, there were ancient statues, mostly all pale pink, including a small sphinx, stone pharaohs, and some mythical Egyptian animals. In its monumental entrance hall there were awesome twenty foot high statues of pharaohs.

  I picked up a plan of the building at the entrance, headed to the papyrus collection. Most of them hadn’t yet been moved to the new museum. I passed through a long, double height hall, with tall pillars and a gallery level above. The hall had more stone pharaohs, mostly sitting down, with straight backs, and a collection of tombstones.

  The papyrus room was full of flat oak and glass cases containing collections of papyri from all over Egypt, from almost the beginning of recorded human history. I hadn’t realised they had papyri going that far back, to the early First Dynasty, about 3,000 BC.

  Glass-fronted cases lined the walls while others stood on their own in front of them. There was a dusty smell. I asked a guard standing in a corner to look at the picture of the hieroglyph and tell me where in the room the papyrus was. He looked at me as if I was an alien with flashing antennae.

  ‘It’s from the Black Pyramid,’ I said.

  He grunted, walking towards a nearby case. There was a woman wearing a headscarf and a long blue smock dusting it. He motioned me close to him.

  ‘This, this,’ he said. ‘Am I right?’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said. I peered at a black tray on its own.

  ‘Yes, that’s the one.’ I looked closely at it.

  He stood right beside me.

  ‘Do you have anymore from that time?’ I gestured at the cases all around us. There were visitors in the room, but not as many as I’d seen heading up to the more popular treasure rooms.

  ‘You like the Black Pyramid?’ he asked. He smiled. His teeth were yellow and there were a few missing.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And symbols like this one.’ I pointed at the papyrus fragment with the arrow in a square symbol. ‘That symbol has been found in Jerusalem.’

  His smile faded. ‘I must go,’ he said.

  He walked fast from the room. I studied the papyri fragment, then the others in the surrounding cases. Then I looked in all the cases in the room to see if I could see the same symbol on any other papyri, but I couldn’t. I looked at my watch.

  It was 9.50 a.m. I had maybe twenty more minutes. It was just enough time to look at some of the other rooms. I followed in the wake of some Japanese tourists heading towards the stairs.

  As we reached the staircase an alarm started. Two nearby guards in brown uniforms began waving their hands in the air. ‘Everyone must go outside,’ they shouted. ‘Please, you must go.’

  People were streaming toward the doors. I followed. Whatever was happening, a fire drill or a security alert, they were getting everyone out of the place fast. A twinge of anxiety passed through me. A bomb could be about to explode.

  Outside, in the courtyard, guards ushered people towards a far corner, presumably to wait to go back inside. I glanced at my watch again.

  I had no time for hanging around. I headed for the gate, then walked back to our hotel and went up to our room. It was still only twenty past ten. Isabel was packing toiletries. My backpack was waiting near the door where I’d left it.

  ‘The museum was evacuated while I was there,’ I said to Isabel, as I poured myself some water.

  ‘Did you get to see what you wanted?’

  ‘I did, but I was hoping to find other papyri with that symbol.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, does it? It’s just some symbol.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re probably right.’

  We were at the front of the hotel by 10.31 a.m. It was a narrow entrance with cars dropping off regularly. Some of the windows of the hotel were boarded up, but there were men working already to replace the glass.

  Mark arrived ten minutes late. He left his engine running as he got out to open the back for us.

  As I put our backpacks in, he said, ‘There’s been a security alert at the museum. The traffic around here is going to make it a nightmare to get to Taba on time. That’s why I’m late.’

  Xena was not with him. He was driving himself. I sat in the front beside him. We inched our way through the traffic, and then, after half an hour of shuffling forward through packed streets, he found an elevated highway. Sand-coloured apartment buildings and office blocks three and four storeys high stretched away to the horizon in all directions. A haze, like a sandstorm, hung over the city.

  All the houses, except for neighbourhood mosques, had flat roofs out here in the suburbs. Most of them had skeletal poles sticking up into the sky at each corner of the roof to accommodate a new floor, when a son or relative needed somewhere to live. There were piles of building materials and clothes lines and sacks of God only knew what on most
of the roofs. The traffic was a constant flow of vehicles around us, an endless stream of logs moving down the tributaries of a river.

  I saw a sign for the ring road in English and Arabic. Ten minutes later we were moving a lot faster, leaving the smoky haze of Cairo behind. I looked out through the back window. There was so much I hadn’t seen; the tourist sites mainly. I was determined to go back some day. The Nile, in particular, gave the place a grandeur as it flowed like a giant snake through the city.

  We went through the Ahmed Hamdi Tunnel, under the Suez Canal. It was modern and not very busy. We passed a line of trucks festooned with lights, going the other way. Once we were through we headed south. Much of the landscape was scrub and semi-desert now, though there were occasional villages with tall palm trees, goats and low, flat-roofed mud-brick houses with television antennas or satellite dishes. Some had wooden verandas projecting from their upper floors.

  We stopped at a modern Co-op petrol station. It had miniature palm trees in front of it. At the side of the station there was a donkey and cart and an old Bedouin in an off-white headdress. He didn’t even glance at us. We all got out, stretched our legs. I bought French chocolate, Egyptian water and dates. Isabel found orange juice, but it didn’t taste right again.

  Four hours later, the road was twisting and turning as it headed towards red-tinted mountains, off to our right. As they came closer they looked like mountains of sand, solidified, like something you might see on a relay from Mars. Among them, said Mark, was Mount Sinai, where Moses was given the Ten Commandments. The scrub and desert to our left extended off into a haze, broken by low bushes and occasional hills of sand or rock.

  As we skirted the Sinai Mountains the landscape became paler in the afternoon light. Finally, as we neared the Red Sea the hills became rounded, more like sand hills than mountains. There were few people on the road except for the occasional bus, army lorries and trucks. Twice we passed Bedouins on camels by the side of the road.

  As we approached the Israeli border we were stopped at a military checkpoint by the Egyptian army. We were all asked to produce our passports. Getting through wasn’t a difficulty. An officer spoke on a walkie talkie for a few minutes before letting us go on.