The Jerusalem Puzzle (19 page)

Susan closed her eyes. She let her breath out. He was gone.

Thank God!

She crawled on her hands and knees to where he’d left the bowl of rice. There had been fried egg mixed with it the last time, a taste she normally didn’t care for, but she loved it now, craved it, after having had nothing to eat for endless hours.

Hopefully the water wouldn’t taste odd this time. Her fingers were cold, they felt icy, but her face was boiling, as if she had a fever. How many days had it been?

She felt for the bowl, took the rice with her fingers, put it to her mouth and gobbled at it. It was dry, undercooked, but there was a taste of egg and for a moment she was in heaven. She started listing the streets in the centre of Cambridge again. Doing it had helped her stay sane in the last few days.

And then a tear slipped down her face.

She had finished the rice and she’d remembered how her husband used to try to get her to make proper dinners, how she’d been unable to do so because of her work commitments. She held herself, pressed her back hard into the stone wall behind her. Why hadn’t she listened to him? He’d told her not to come out here. The muscles in her body tightened like ropes under strain.

No, she wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t going to let him win as he listened to her whimpering.

The taste had stung her throat. That was all. Nothing else.

She’d been down here too many days. But why was he keeping her? If he had something planned for her, why was he waiting to do it?

Was it all a way to torture her? She banged her fist against the stone, hurting herself, not caring. Banged it again. Was this all because of what she’d said to Kaiser about the book? Had he told her captors?

And was her captivity leading towards a main event?

She’d read about people being burnt at the stake in Europe; Cathars, witches, Jews. Sometimes they were kept in cells near where the burnings took place. Often they were forced to listen to the cries of those who went before them. That alone must have magnified their fears excruciatingly.

Was he planning such a death for her? She couldn’t dismiss the thought. She knew how Kaiser had died. And she was now in the hands of the man who’d done that. It made her want to scream.

How could this be happening in the twenty-first century?

It can take such a long time to die, if you’re being burnt. Your legs can literally melt, and you might not even fall unconscious. The endlessly searing pain keeps you awake.

She’d read about how thousands had been burnt in pogroms all across Europe in centuries past. She knew it was a tradition that went far back, to the Celts burning enemies in giant wicker men, to tales from Rome and Carthage and evidence about children being sacrificed by fire.

Could she escape this fate? Could she kill herself, before it happened? She shivered. Her head touched the cold of the rock behind her. That was a decision she could only make if she had a tool to carry it out.

And she didn’t have one yet.

She’d tried to bend the plate she’d been given, to see if a sharp edge could be broken off, but she hadn’t succeeded. She’d also searched for a hard sliver of rock from the stone around her in the darkness, but she’d failed to find that too.

She had to start looking again. Start thinking. At least it would keep her busy for the next few hours, until she fell asleep again and started dreaming about food and then about fires burning.

I had a shower before calling Simon Marcus. I could still feel a trace of the dust of the Negev on my skin. It had filtered into the taxi the day before. Breaking into Max’s apartment would be risking a lot. If we were arrested we’d be thrown out of Israel, permanently most likely, after a spell in prison. And it might take months to get out of an Israeli jail.

While I was in the shower, Isabel popped her head into the bathroom to tell me she was on her way downstairs to look for something in the hotel shop. I asked her to join me.

‘Maybe later,’ she said. Then she disappeared. I didn’t blame her. Being here was not conducive to romance. In London we spent a lot of time going to restaurants, meeting friends, showing things we liked about the city to each other.

After I got out of the shower I called Simon Marcus.

‘Sean, where are you?’ were his first words.

‘It’s good to hear your voice,’ I said, avoiding his question.

‘They told me you were deported. Is it true?’

‘Yes. But can we talk about the site we visited?’

‘Sure, yes, yes. Amazing, wasn’t it?’ There was scepticism in his voice.

‘You’re not sure about their claims, is that what I’m picking up?’

He sighed. ‘Look, Sean. It would be wonderful if we found a treasure trove of manuscripts like that. There’s a lot that could be confirmed if we had genuine documents from that era. I’m sure a lot of Christians would be overjoyed.’ He paused.

‘If what’s down there supports the Bible,’ I said.

‘We have a long way to go before we know that. I’m sure everything will come out in due course.’

‘Or maybe not.’

‘Indeed, but there’s not a lot I can do about it either way. Now, how can I help you, Sean?’

‘Do you think that dig could be connected to Kaiser’s murder?’

There was a guffaw from the other end.

‘That’s a reputable dig. How could they be involved in a murder?’

‘I didn’t say they did it. But anyone could be watching that site, monitoring who goes there, following them. All I’m saying is that there could be a connection. I think it’s a weird way to run a hugely important excavation; to have found all those documents, yet keep it all secret. And then we got thrown out of the country for going there!’

He didn’t answer. I was hoping he was thinking about it.

‘You don’t think it’s odd,’ I went on, ‘that none of them seemed the least bit fazed that Kaiser was murdered, burnt to death?’

‘You really want to poke around in all this, don’t you?’ said Simon. His preference for staying quiet and not waking any dragons, was clear.

Bells began pealing in the distance. Then a far-off muezzin call to prayer started up. An intake of breath came down the line.

‘You’re still in the Middle East. Where are you?’ said Simon.

‘It’s best you don’t know.’

‘Don’t even think about coming back to Israel,’ he said, fast. ‘They throw away the key when they lock people up who break the immigration laws here.’

‘Think about what I said, Simon. There’s something going on with that dig.’

There was silence at the other end of the line for fifteen, maybe twenty seconds. Then I dropped our latest bit of news on him.

‘Kaiser was tortured before he died.’

‘What?’ His disbelief made the word come out odd, high-pitched.

The reality of what had happened to Kaiser was something I found difficult to accept myself. I hadn’t wanted to dwell on it at all, but this might be the way to get through to Simon. I needed an insider. And he needed some motivation.

‘They found melted flesh in the kitchen of his apartment. He wasn’t just murdered and his body dumped.’ I paused. He didn’t say anything. I could hear him breathing.

‘He was tied to a chair and his flesh was burnt off in chunks.’ The idea of it made me sweat under my clothes.

‘Can you think of any reason someone might have done that?’

‘No.’

‘They could do it again. You know that, don’t you?’ My voice cracked, I coughed, gripping the phone tight.

There was a long silence. The muezzin call to prayer had stopped. An ambulance went past in the street below. Its siren wailed, then stopped.

‘Someone painted graffiti on our apartment building last night,’ he said. His tone had changed. He was worried.

‘What did it say?’

‘Traitors will pay.’

‘That’s bizarre. You don’t think it was directed at you, do you?’

‘Honestly, I have no idea. It was at the main entrance.’ He hesitated. ‘My wife has locked all the windows in our apartment. She’s never done that before. I told her about Kaiser, about you being thrown out of the country. She wants me to stay away from trouble.’

‘Did anything else happen?’ I was concerned now.

‘No. And this is not like some of the other intimidation campaigns. It feels different.’

‘Is there any reason why someone would target you?’

I heard a rustling before he answered, as if he was moving. When he spoke, his voice was lower, as if he was afraid of being overheard.

‘You asked me did I know if there was a good reason that someone might torture Kaiser?’

‘You didn’t answer me.’

‘You must know this.’ His tone was full of anxiety. ‘Ordinary Israeli criminals steal wallets. They shoot holes in their rivals. They don’t torture people to death. And I don’t think this is Palestinian work either. It’s something different. Bombs and rockets and shootings are political.’

‘You still haven’t answered my question.’

‘I’m getting to it. You know there’s a history of people being burnt to death, don’t you?’

‘That stuff happened a long time ago.’

‘Not really. All over Europe there are still festivals with effigies of people being burnt every year. Never mind what happened in the past, Jews being burnt to death. Europe has an obsession with bonfires and burning people in effigy. The sanctity of human life hasn’t been part of Europe’s culture for that long, despite what they tell you.’

‘What crime do you think Kaiser was guilty o
f
?’

‘I honestly don’t know. I just see a link with what’s gone on in the past.’ He spoke quickly, as if he wanted to end the conversation, as if even talking about these things made him uneasy.

‘I have to go,’ he said.

‘I’ll call back tomorrow, Simon. If you get any ideas about our friends from the dig, I’d really appreciate it if you could tell me, help us out.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ he said. ‘But that doesn’t mean I can help you.’ The line went dead.

I looked at it for a few seconds. What had he just done? He’d warned me and now he wanted to stay away from us.

I like getting warnings. It sets you up for a good day.

I checked my email and responded to three queries from the institute. I told Dr Beresford-Ellis’s assistant that I would not have my department’s budget in until the following week, reminding her that I was on holiday.

I checked the institute’s blog, which I contributed to. No new articles had been posted.

I looked at a couple of other web pages. There were articles on all the major news sites about tensions between Israel and Egypt. I read half of a long article about the demonstration expected that day after Friday prayers in Egypt. Then I clicked away. I couldn’t concentrate. What Simon had said about people being burnt to death was stalking around at the back of my mind.

I went down to the foyer to look for Isabel. I found her in the hotel shop going through books about Jerusalem. Some of them had stunning panoramic pictures showing the golden roofed Dome of the Rock, the Wailing Wall, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

We went outside for a walk. It was a warm day, spring-like, almost perfect. The air was clean, still.

We went into a modern one-storey shopping arcade. Isabel spent a lot of time in a leather shop. She ended up buying nothing.

I’d had enough of not-shopping. I waited for her in a coffee shop, people-watching for another thirty minutes while she finished looking around.

‘Some of those shops are amazing,’ I said. ‘You didn’t see anything you liked?’

‘I’m just distracting myself,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

We walked to the Jaffa Gate and then into the Old City, where we did a little sightseeing. Then we decided to
go back to the hotel to rest. The Sabbath had started
after lunch. Quite a few shops and the Tower of David Museum were all closed. And we had an interesting evening ahead.

There was a big group in the foyer of the King David, waiting to be checked in. They looked like pampered financiers from every corner of the planet. As I stood watching them, waiting for our elevator to come, I saw a small man in a dark suit watching me over the top of his newspaper. He was standing by one of the Egyptian pillars. There was nothing particularly memorable about the guy. He was youngish, dark-haired, looked like a businessman and had a plain face and expression, but I was on edge immediately. Had our return been discovered?

I didn’t say anything to Isabel. I didn’t want to spook her. And it was possible I was being paranoid. We decided to eat before going to Kaiser’s apartment at ten. Ten would be late enough that most people would be long off the streets, but not too late to attract attention. I’d bought a screwdriver and a small torch in a little hardware shop in the Old City.

After an early dinner in the Oriental Bar, a quiet wooden-floored haven in the hotel, we went back up to our room and got ready for our little operation. That was what Isabel was calling it anyway.

We weren’t as professional as we could have been, but we were probably better prepared than we had been when we went down under Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. That time we’d ended up in a water-filled tunnel and had to beat off giant eels. I didn’t expect anything like that this time.

We walked about half a mile from the hotel before hailing a taxi. I didn’t want to advertise where we were going to the taxi drivers in the rank outside the King David.

All the way there we stayed quiet. He let us off at the roundabout. He must have thought we were the quietest people ever.

When we arrived at what had been Max’s apartment, all was quiet. The Sabbath in parts of Jerusalem was almost like Christmas Day in London for how silent it felt.

The street lights were humming gently as Isabel went to the door of the apartment block. She wasn’t going to press the intercom this time, she was going to start coughing loudly, to warn me, if anyone came out. The last thing I needed was for a resident to see me climbing up their building.

As I stood at the front of the building the seriousness of what I’d committed to doing was becoming evident. But I wasn’t going to back down. A deep shiver passed through me as I breathed in, calming myself.