The Jerusalem Puzzle Read online

  The temperature was high down here. I felt sweat run down my forehead. My shirt was getting damp at the small of my back too. Then a head appeared, poking up out of the unguarded stairwell. And wheover he was, he was angry.

  21

  Henry Mowlam took the teabag out of his thin white plastic cup and dropped it into the stained bin. Working for the Security Service was not as glamorous as TV shows made it out to be.

  He took his mid-afternoon tea back to his desk. He had a report to read. It was on one of his two smaller side screens. The report was a secure PDF, an un-printable and un-saveable document, which his password had allowed him access to. It could only be read on screen and the length of time it remained opened, and by whom, was being recorded as part of the document metadata.

  The report was the latest impact assessment for a war between Israel and the US, and Iran and possibly Egypt too, as well as others, depending on which Arab governments got embroiled to prove their Islamic credentials.

  Its contents were stark.

  The human and economic impact of such a war would be greater than any conflict since the Second World War. Iran was a regional power now and had a standing army of 545,000 as well as a reserve of 650,000 men. It would be the largest and most advanced military force Israel had ever engaged. Israel had an active defence force of 187,000 and a reserve of 565,000. Israel’s population was 7.8 million. Iran’s 78 million.

  The casualty predictions were based on a number of possible war scenarios. Even the most optimistic prediction for the loss of life in the region would be unacceptable to the public in any of the participating countries, should the information ever get out.

  The second half of the document detailed the levels of long-term human and physical destruction if a limited

  nuclear exchange took place. It included details of the

  Israeli nuclear arsenal and an estimate of the restricted Iranian nuclear capability, currently believed to lie within their

  military’s reach.

  Henry was allowed to see the document only because the new remote pursuit protocol allowed him to track high-value permanent UK citizens outside the country for short durations, rather than hand over monitoring to MI6, the branch of the British Security Service focused on external threats.

  The situation relating to Dr Susan Hunter, one of the UK citizens he was tracking, and the tension in Israel, where she had last been seen, necessitated he be aware of the latest intelligence for that country for his level of security clearance.

  What he had to do now was evaluate the intelligence and decide how they should proceed regarding the Susan Hunter situation.

  The report he had read before the war scenario document was the item he would have to take an operational decision about.

  It claimed to have traced the report of a letter from the first caliph of Islam, regarding the fate of Jerusalem, to a statement by a Max Kaiser, the archaeologist who had died a week before, soon after he had given an interview to a journalist working for an Egyptian newspaper.

  The article had only appeared the day before in Cairo, written in Arabic, and it had taken the translation service this long to prioritise and translate it.

  It hadn’t even mentioned Max Kaiser’s death. Presumably, the reporter had interviewed him before he died and hadn’t bothered to update his story, if he had been made aware of Kaiser’s death at all.

  A link between this article and Kaiser’s death was one question he had to consider. But why would any Islamists want to kill him? The letter was in their interests.

  And how was all this related to Dr Hunter?

  22

  The man had slicked-back silvery grey hair and a big pale face. He wore gold-rimmed glasses, and looked fifty-

  something.

  ‘Heh, who are you?’ he asked, with a German accent.

  ‘We’re here to have a look at the dig. I was a colleague of Max Kaiser’s. I’m Sean Ryan, from the Institute of Applied Research in Oxford. This is my colleague, Isabel Sharp. A professor from Hebrew University is on his way down. He was Max’s reference to get on this dig.’

  He rubbed his forehead. ‘We were expecting visitors after what happened to Max. It shocked us all. I’m Dieter Mendhol from the University of Dusseldorf. My colleague, Walter Schleibell, is below.’

  We followed him down the stairs. The floor below was a totally different scene. The walls were covered in yellowing plaster. One wall had faded wall paintings, the sort that you’d see at Pompeii, with toga clad people in stylised poses.

  A tingle of excitement ran through me. This was the real thing; a room that had been used almost two thousand years ago. Contemporaries of Christ and Caesar might have been here.

  There were niches in the walls, where you could put busts. And the floor was whiter than the one above, smoother too. It looked as if it was made out of a similar sandstone as used in other parts the building, but from a different source, from a higher quality quarry.

  Another Germanic-looking man, of the same vintage as Dieter, and wearing the same type of pale sand-coloured trousers and matching shirt, was standing by the far wall with his hands on his hips. He nodded steadily as we came down.

  Introductions were made. We all shook hands. I gave them my card. Each of them examined it. I told them their colleague up above had allowed us in for a quick visit and the reason why. They looked at each other, then shrugged their shoulders.

  ‘This is really something down here,’ I said.

  ‘Ja, it certainly is. First century is what we think,’ said Dieter. ‘Late Herodian era. Everything points to it. We’ll be presenting a paper on the discovery, of course, and we’ll include carbon dating analysis to back up our judgement. That will prove it all, for sure.’

  ‘The History Channel will give you a whole series.’

  He shrugged, as if he didn’t care.

  ‘How many rooms have you found like this?’

  ‘Just this one and the one below.’

  There was another hole, a jagged one, right in the far corner. A blue plastic sheet and some rolls of wide black plastic tape lay near it. Were they covering the hole at times?

  ‘You’re afraid of contamination?’

  ‘Ja, moisture in particular. The rooms have been airtight for a long time. The moisture gets in at night as the temperature in the air above us goes down. We seal the lower floor as tightly as we can. Come, have a look.’ He sounded keen to show their find off.

  Beside the hole there were two stacks of see-through plastic boxes. They were all about a foot wide and six inches tall. Some of them, the pile on the left, had something in them; scraps of parchment, pieces of wood, a piece of marble. Each box was numbered. I looked down into the hole. The site that confronted me was extraordinary.

  It looked like an ancient rubbish pit into which people had thrown the contents of several buildings. There were pieces of wood sticking up out of the mess, like whitened bones in an ancient charnel house.

  Some of the pieces of wood looked like boards from shelves, others were carved intricately. I could see a lot of scrolls too, some were crushed, some were just fragments, but many were whole. Among the debris were pieces of masonry, broken bits of furniture. The whole lot of it covered the floor below completely. I couldn’t even make out how deep the pile of ancient rubbish was.

  There was a shiny steel ladder leading down. I put my hand out to hold it.

  ‘We don’t want anyone else to go down there,’ said Dieter, quickly. ‘We had a problem a few weeks ago. We think our security was breached.’ He moved towards me and put a wide hand on top of the pile of boxes.

  ‘As a trained archaeologist you know we have to make sure everything that comes from this find is properly recorded; that each item is identified, photographed in its layer and in its original position, before it is moved.’ He sounded as if he was giving me a lecture, and he was only on his first slide.

  ‘How far have you got with all this?’ said Isabel.

&nbs
p; ‘We’re selecting sample items for testing right now.’ He looked at his colleague, then back at Isabel. ‘We expect the Israeli Antiquities Authority will take over this site after we present our findings. They’ll organise the removal of the artefacts in sections to preserve impressions and any organic remains. If the site is what we think it is, there will be many years of work in this place. All we have done is open it up.’ He sounded pleased with that idea. His colleague did not look so happy.

  ‘We’ve put in for an extension to our licence, of course. But it’s hard to say what will happen, after Max being murdered and everything that’s going on up there.’ He pointed at the ceiling.

  I didn’t argue with him. I was distracted by the wealth of ancient material below.

  ‘Why do you think all that stuff is down there like that, all jumbled up?’ asked Simon. He had come down the stairs as Dieter was talking.

  ‘We have a theory, if you’d like to hear it,’ said Walter.

  ‘Sure.’

  My forehead was hot, my skin tight. It was certainly warm enough and dry enough down here to preserve anything. The recommendation for preserving archaeological finds, particularly organic compounds, is to allow a 3% fluctuation in relative humidity from the conditions in which the item was found.

  It was a tiny amount, given daily fluctuations at ground level here were probably as high as 30% at this time of year. Preserving finds was one of Susan Hunter’s areas of expertise. Was that why she came out here?

  ‘We think most of the material was in this room or nearby before someone dumped it all down there. It’s unusual to find a room full of material like that, but we think we know the reason. In 66 AD, a group of Zealots, extremists called the Sicarii, took over this part of the city. They were a fun lot. They used to go to the forum and stab Romans who passed by. They were trying to drive them all out. In the end though, all they did manage to drive out was Herod Agrippa’s troops. At the time, Roman officials might have taken refuge in this house and others like it. They might have thrown racks of scrolls down into that room to give themselves more living space as they waited for rescue.’

  I could see the remnants of racks down there.

  ‘Maybe they tried to escape by night afterwards. If they’d been caught by Zealot patrols, they’d have all had their throats cut, no questions asked. Things were bad in the autumn of ’66.’

  ‘So why wasn’t all this stuff found afterwards?’ said Simon.

  ‘When this part of the city was eventually recaptured by Titus a few years later, as he suppressed the great Jewish revolt,’ said Dieter, his tone growing more confident as he spoke, ‘the building up above was probably destroyed and turned into rubble. Titus ordered every building in this city to be torn down to its foundations. They did it quickly too. No arch or roof was allowed to remain standing. Eventually, when later builders went to work, they would have used the rubble of the floor above as a foundation. They wouldn’t have bothered to break through to find out what was below. They were Roman slaves most likely, with orders to construct new buildings to a new street plan.’

  ‘That’s all plausible,’ said Isabel. ‘But I’m amazed these rooms have never been uncovered in all the time since. We’re talking nearly two thousand years.’

  ‘Much of this city was abandoned and in rubble for decades after the great Jewish revolt, not just for a few years. That was the key event in Jewish history. The city was deliberately depopulated. It was rebuilt to a totally different design by Hadrian in 130 AD.’ He motioned at the ceiling above us, his hand cupped and turning.

  ‘This part of the city was abandoned for long periods after that as well. Building work was banned in Jewish sections of Jerusalem for centuries.’

  ‘How did the people who were down here escape?’ I said.

  Dieter pointed at a small hole in one wall. Straight beyond it there was a wall of dusty rubble, but the hole could have been used to escape into another building, before that building was razed too.

  ‘What’s your best find?’ I asked. I moved towards the boxes, bent over, put my knee on the ground and looked at them.

  ‘That’s a good question,’ said Walter. He hesitated, looking at Dieter.

  ‘This is one of the better finds,’ said Dieter, softly. He held out one of the plastic boxes set apart from the others. The only thing inside was a piece of triangular marble the size of a large chocolate bar. It looked like a notice that might have sat at the top of an ancient shelf. There was Roman lettering on it. The marble was broken, in half it looked, but the second part of the inscription was visible when I moved the box, so the yellow long-life light bulb strung up above our heads shone down directly on it.

  It read … S PILATUS.

  ‘You think this used to say Pontius Pilate?’ I held it forward for Isabel to see it.

  Walter nodded vigorously. ‘The Latin is the same as they found on the inscription in Caesarea Maritima.’

  ‘So, you’ve found material from Pontius Pilate’s time,’ said Simon. ‘Who knows what else is down there, maybe the plans for Herod’s Temple.’

  ‘Or a receipt for the marriage feast at Cana,’ I said.

  A shout echoed from above.

  ‘Who’s down there?’ Whoever was shouting, his accent was American.

  The atmosphere in the room changed in a second, as if someone had shouted fire. Our two German friends looked at each other as if they’d been found out. Then a clattering noise filled the air.

  Walter put his hand out, took the box from me and put it back where it had been. I stood away from the hole and the ladder.

  Someone was coming down. More than one person, by the noise of them. Then legs, clad in green army fatigues, came down the stairs. Two crew cut men appeared, both at least six foot six, and big enough to be running backs for the Jets. They stood near us, as if they were security guards who’d caught us trespassing.

  A third American, an older guy with white hair and a bushy white beard came down after them. He had a big white handkerchief in his hand and was mopping his brow as he arrived.

  ‘How the hell did you people get in here? You ain’t supposed to be down here at all. This is a closed site.’ He stood in front of me and poked a finger into my chest.

  I swatted at it. He pulled his hand back.

  ‘And who are you?’ I said. His two friends came up, one on each side of him.

  ‘That boy upstairs made a serious mistake letting you all down here just because of a reference. You’re trespassing. You gotta leave now.’ He turned to Dieter.

  ‘You didn’t let ’em go down below, did you?’

  ‘No,’ said Dieter. ‘No way.’ He sounded so deferential I assumed at once that the older American was his boss.

  ‘Did I miss you telling us who you are?’ I said. ‘Are you going to give us some idea of why we should listen to you?’ I wasn’t one of his employees.

  ‘You do not need to know who I am. What you need to do is leave this site immediately.’ It looked as if a bunch of rats were gnawing at the inside of his face, it was so bunched up, even purple in places.

  ‘You’ll have a heart attack if you take everything so seriously,’ said Isabel.

  ‘This site is beyond your comprehension,’ he said. ‘It is divine providence that it has been found. You should not be here.’

  ‘I hope the whole world gets to see what’s down here,’ said Isabel.

  I could see he didn’t appreciate her remark. His face became even more purple.

  ‘Take them upstairs,’ he said. Then he headed for the stairs.

  ‘Who is this guy?’ I said, turning to Dieter.

  ‘Pastor Stevson. He sponsors this dig,’ said Walter.

  ‘Well, we were leaving anyway,’ I said. ‘We’ve finished our tour. We’ve seen everything we needed, thanks.’ I emphasised the word everything.

  The crew cut guy near Isabel put his hand up again, as if he was going to take hold of her. I took two steps towards him, raised my hand and swi
ped it between him and Isabel, as if I was sweeping away a cobweb.

  ‘We’re going,’ I said. ‘Don’t put a goddamned hand on any of us, unless you want your ass thrown down that rubbish hole over there.’ I nodded toward the hole in the floor, not that far away from where the guy was standing.

  ‘Go then,’ said the other young guy. ‘And make it snappy.’

  ‘Did no one teach you any manners yet?’ I said.

  His grin had a bit of a snarl in it.

  We headed up the stairs. Isabel and Simon went first. We didn’t move nearly as fast as they wanted us to; I was nudged in the back twice, but I swung my elbow violently to warn them off. It didn’t happen again.

  Upstairs, the guy who let us in was standing sheepishly to one side by the door to the lane.

  He opened it. There weren’t stones falling around us any more, there were rocks. Not that many, one every few seconds, but enough to make the lane a place you wouldn’t want to hang around when discussing the weather.

  ‘Ow,’ shouted Isabel, as the door closed with a bang behind us.

  A rock had struck her calf. Her jeans were torn. There was a splattering of blood on them. I held my hand up, to try to stop anything else hitting her.

  ‘We’ve got to get around the corner,’ said Simon. ‘You should go to hospital, have that looked at.’

  ‘Where’s the nearest hospital?’ I asked the policeman who opened the barrier to let us go past.

  ‘Go to the Bikur Cholin,’ he said. ‘They have a good emergency room and they’re near.’ Then he looked away. His expressionless face seemed to indicate he’d seen a lot worse than the scratch Isabel had suffered.

  We headed back towards the Jaffa Gate and ended up at the taxi rank. Simon bid us farewell there.

  ‘Any taxi will take you to the hospital,’ he said. ‘Call me if you need any more help.’

  Ten minutes later we were pulling up outside the hospital. It was 3.55 p.m., Tuesday afternoon. We’d been in the city only two days and we already needed a hospital.