The Black Madonna (3 page)

Frey was almost running across the quadrangle, even though he knew it would provoke not only stern looks from his fellow dons but possibly even a rebuke from the Warden. Even so he mounted the stairs two at a time, shooting past the descending portly figure of Nicholas Butterworth, an individual whose only day-to-day
relationship
with rapid motion involved the operability of quantum mechanics at near-light speed.

Once inside his comfortable if spartanly furnished set of rooms, Frey switched on the small flat-panel television which despite their acquaintance with cutting-edge scientific theory most of his
colleagues
regarded with little short of wonder, and flicked through the Freeview channels to BBC
News
24
. It was only when he read the last few words of
The Times
story that it had occurred to him it might have made the television news at well, if only as a tail piece. But it was not so much the facts that interested Marcus, as the possibility of seeing more of Nazreem.

The featured item when he turned on was a long dreary report on yet another funding crisis in the National Health Service, but using the red interactive button on his remote, Marcus found there was indeed an item on the theft from the Gaza museum. His suspicion that it might have been given the ‘light news’ treatment was
confirmed
when he hit the button and heard the anchorman’s opening words:

‘And finally, controversy raging amongst clergymen and
archaeologists
today amid reports that what is believed to be the oldest known image of the Virgin Mary has been found in Gaza City, and then stolen all within the space of a few days.’

The report gave details of how the find was made when
contractors
clearing debris had come upon remains of an ancient, previously unrecorded Christian church and called in local archaeologists.

And then, all of a sudden, there she was, standing on the steps of a nondescript concrete building amid all the noise and chaos of
a typical Middle Eastern street. For a moment Marcus sat
spellbound
, staring at the face and listening to the voice of the woman that had once meant more to him than anything else: that
familiar
soft but slightly husky accent that bore indecipherable traces of both French and Arabic, as she told a gaggle of reporters that although the missing artefact had yet to be authenticated its loss was a devastating blow, not just to a new museum struggling to restore a sense of identity to the people of Palestine, but to the whole world of archaeology. Passionate, proud, just the same as ever. But no, not the same. Different: the figure on the television screen was
simultaneously
harder and more vulnerable than the Nazreem he knew. As if there was somehow unfathomable hurt and repressed fury lurking beneath her tone. And then she was gone again.

Marcus was almost tempted to jiggle with the red button to go back to the beginning of the piece, but he found himself instead
listening
to a Roman Catholic archbishop described as a ‘senior
antiquities
expert’: ‘The discovery of an image of Our Lady created in her own lifetime would of course have been a huge blessing for the faithful, presuming of course that it was proved to be authentic,’ this last phrase with a slightly sceptical upward curl of the lips.

‘It has long been believed by many that the first image was created by St Luke himself, painting on the Holy Virgin’s own kitchen table. However, we have unfortunately had no information yet as to the precise nature of this archaeological discovery, which it would seem has almost immediately been tragically lost. Needless to say we must pray for the miracle of its recovery.’

Marcus wasn’t sure but somehow the expression on the face of the man in purple did not exactly suggest a belief in miracles.

Nazreem Hashrawi felt like shit. She felt sullied, violated, as if all of a sudden the foundations of her life had collapsed under her, and there was nothing or nobody she could rely on.

Amidst the chaos of the air raid, it had taken six hours from the time the alarms at the museum had started ringing before anyone else had even thought to investigate. By then Nazreem herself was no longer there. When she had come to, bloody and defiled, she had felt sick to her core. She knew what had happened and took what little comfort she could in the knowledge that it could have been worse, much worse. Apart from anything else, she was still alive. She had made her way home, grateful for once for the darkness, and had
showered
as well as she could with the meagre water supply in her tiny flat.

She knew that in cleansing herself she was removing evidence, but it was not evidence that would ever be used to support a
prosecution
. The Palestinian police had not the resources for DNA
sampling
. Even if they had what good would it have done? An arrest for rape was as likely as an agreement over Jerusalem. If the Palestinian Authority was ever to become a government in any real sense of the word, one day their police would have to be respected as such, not just by the Israelis who treated them as potential enemies, but by their own people.

What had happened to her personally was not something she would admit, even to herself, though she knew she would never forget. She would not submit to the innuendo that would be ever after in their eyes if she told them. As so often, a lie would serve better than the truth.

She had let the idiot policeman who rang her at home tell her of the break-in as though she were hearing it for the first time. She feigned to appear shocked, distressed when she rushed to the museum, and then made the announcement to the press, that a great discovery had been snatched by petty criminals who almost certainly had no idea that it was of insignificant monetary value.

It was not what she believed. The statement was a sham.
Sometimes
it seemed to Nazreem that she lived in a perpetual sham, a state that was not a state, neither at peace nor all-out war, with
politicians
forever following ‘road maps’ they knew led to dead ends.

The police had other things to deal with of course. Even now police and emergency workers were still sorting through the rubble of the building around the corner, targeted by the Israeli air force allegedly because the head of a ‘terror squad’ had been using it as a hideout. Nazreem had no idea; she had only ever seen it used by old men for prayer meetings. She knew that that meant nothing. But the air-to-ground missile was a singularly blunt instrument for political assassination.

The Israelis called it retaliation. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Tit for tat. To Nazreem it had become a bloody and
wearisome
game without respite or hope of conclusion. But it was not that nor her own brutal violation that preyed most on her mind; it was the coincidence between the timing of the air strike and the theft.

At any other time the chances of a successful break-in would have been far lower. But in the confusion and chaos that
accompanied
the air strike, with ambulances, police, screaming citizens and hotheads firing Kalashnikovs into the sky in the insane hope of bringing down an F-16 already fifty miles away, the flashing light and clanging alarm bells on a museum building had not even been a distraction. They had simply been ignored. By everyone, including the bastard who had violated her personally as well as professionally.

At any other time, there would have been next to nothing worth stealing. Whoever had broken in had chosen his moment. In advance. This was not an opportunistic break-in. He had seized only one object. The clear implication was that the thief had not only known about the discovery, he had known the timing of the air strike. Down to the minute. And that pointed the finger of guilt in only one direction as far as Nazreem was concerned.

She unlocked the side door to the museum, as she had done the day before, and let herself in. The place smelled fusty, desiccated compared with the odours of the street. She was surprised to find Ahmed, the janitor, shuffling along the corridor towards her, his face more lined and drawn than usual. But then he did not have much to laugh about. He had lost three children in the intifada. One son had been shot by an Israeli sniper for throwing stones at the cars
of settlers. In response his daughter had become a suicide bomber, killing three Jewish children at a school bus stop.

His youngest son had died in his cradle, crushed by the tank sent to demolish their home in retaliation. He lived in a refugee camp with his sole remaining child, a four-year-old, whom he feared in turn would become a suicide bomber, now that they had nothing left to lose. Ahmed could not understand those who in response had become fanatical Islamists: Allah the all-powerful, the all-merciful, had done nothing for him. He had stopped even saying his prayers any more. Nonetheless, he greeted Nazreem with the traditional ‘
Salaam aleikum
.’ Peace be with you. ‘And with you,’ she replied.

She had to steel herself to walk through the main gallery,
shuddering
as she passed the open mummy case and the marble
sarcophagus
which now exuded a chill that vestiges of the ancient dead had never before evoked in her. Beyond, in the exhibition room, the central plinth was vacant. Absent-mindedly she ran a hand over the spot where she had last seen the face of the Madonna looking down on her.

She glanced around the rest of the room, at the various objects already assembled for the exhibition that would now have to be
cancelled
, an exhibition that was to have told one of the great stories of human religion. The story was not over yet, but the telling would have to be postponed.

Nothing else had been taken, nothing at all, not even the little clay cuneiform tablet, one of the famed Tell El-Amarna letters to the pharaoh, this one originally written by a provincial governor,
possibly
even the one who had been buried in the sarcophagus, from the imperial outpost of Uru-Salim warning of an invasion across the River Jordan by a tribe known as the Habiru. It did not take a great leap of the imagination to see that as the earliest verified historical reference to the Hebrews’ arrival in Jerusalem, and the conflict that continued today.

She opened the door to her office. Thin shafts of sunlight filtered in through the closed shutters. She turned on the light and a slow rotating ceiling fan started the illuminated dust motes dancing. The office was sparsely furnished. The walls were lined with cheap
shelving
supporting a small fortune’s worth of research and reference books in three languages: English, French and Arabic. Nazreem had a natural ear for languages. She had even a basic working knowledge
of Hebrew, and found the guttural sounds of another Semitic
language
uncomfortably familiar.

There was a filing cabinet below the window and an elderly rubber plant with brown-edged leaves that suggested it needed watering. There was a bare functional desk with lockable drawers and a dusty computer with an old cathode-ray display. The desk was covered with papers, the product of weeks of research since the find. The thing that had preyed on her mind, even at the worst moment as the bastard thrust himself into her, was that he might ransack her office too. But the burglar had been single-minded. She herself had been his sole distraction. He had spotted his target and been gone from the building within minutes.

Nazreem turned the key in the lock behind her, then crossed to her desk and sat down. She looked at the mound of papers on her desk, shuffled a few of them and then set them down again, before using another key to open the deep lower drawer in the frame of the desk, opened it and biting her bottom lip, reached inside. At that precise moment a sudden shrill screech sent an electric spasm through every muscle in her body.

She slammed the drawer shut, then slumped back in her chair, shocked but ashamed by her own stupidity, and let the telephone ring twice more before answering. When she heard the voice on the other end, she was thankful that the adrenaline charge had given her the strength to reply.

The television was switched off and Marcus Frey’s eyes were drifting over the perpendicular splendour of Nicholas Hawksmoor’s Gothic towers outside the windows but his thoughts were a thousand miles and more away. His fingers drummed on the stained green surface of the ingrained leather on his Victorian oak desk, listening to the unfamiliar single tone ring on the other end of the telephone line.

It had been relatively simple to locate the telephone number for the new Museum of Palestine – a search on Google had pointed him to the web pages of the Palestine Authority’s embryonic Culture Ministry. The bigger question was who, if anyone, would answer.

He had hesitated before ringing, wondering how he ought to ask for her, by name or as the curator; by name probably given the
negligible
state of his Arabic and the likely limited English of whoever might be charged with answering the museum’s telephones.

He need not have worried; on the third ring the phone was answered by a voice that he recognised at once, an unusually quiet, almost breathless, ‘
Marhaba
.’

‘
Marhabytn
,’ he replied. Hello back. ‘Nazreem, it’s Marcus.’

For a moment it seemed as if he had been cut off, a sudden total silence, and then: ‘Marcus. How did you …? Why? Now of all times. This is …’

He interrupted her, as he always did, as she always hated him doing: ‘Congratulations, Nazreem – on the job, I mean. I had no idea. I knew you were capable of it.’

‘Marcus, I …’ he could hear the warning tones in her voice. Of course, she was hardly in a mood for congratulations. ‘It’s been so long.’

‘I know, I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t have a number. Or an email address. I didn’t think to …’

‘Nor did I. Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Not right now.’

All of a sudden Marcus realised he had no clear idea of what he planned to say. Should he tell her he simply wanted to hear the
sound of her voice again? It was the truth, wasn’t it? There was a moment’s awkward silence and then they both began talking at once. This time, however, it was he who gave way.

‘Marcus, I’m glad to hear from you. I really am …’ Her voice tailed away. ‘It’s just that … this is so unexpected, so many things have happened.’

‘I know. I know. Terrible, it was in the papers.’

‘It was? Where are you calling from?’

‘England. Oxford. It was all in
The Times
. And on the BBC.
Terrible,
just terrible. Are we really talking about a portrait of …?’

‘Not on the phone. I’d like to talk to you, Marcus, I really would, but …’

‘Don’t worry about the cost of the phone call. Anyway the college is paying. The book is finished, you know. I owe you.’

‘You owe me nothing. But that’s good. I’m glad.’

‘But let’s talk about you. How are you, apart from the theft, I mean. The report in the paper was very mysterious, suggested it might even be …’

‘NO! Marcus, no! Not now! I will tell you about it, but please not now, not on the phone.’

‘Hey, easy does it. You archaeologists aren’t tapping each other’s phones these days, are you?’

Her reply, when it came, was suffused with the strain of tired exasperation: ‘You don’t understand, Marcus.’

‘No, I don’t.’ He was confused. On the one hand, she seemed genuinely pleased he’d called. On the other he could almost feel the tension that he had seen in her face and heard in her voice on the television. In the circumstances, he said the first thing that came into his head: ‘It would be great to see you again, one of these days.’

There was a silence on the end of the line, a silence that made Marcus swallow hard. He had forgotten that in the world Nazreem inhabited people scorned throwaway lines. Lives were sometimes cheap but words always had meaning.

‘It would?’ He knew the question was real, but so was his answer:

‘You know it would.’

That silence again.

But only because he could not hear Nazreem Hashrawi’s heart pounding on the other end of the line as her eyes flickered around her room, to the slammed desk drawer, to the pile of papers on top,
to alight on one card, wedged under a scarab beetle paperweight. She snatched it, scanned it, then threw it down and reached in her right-hand desk drawer to pull out a dog-eared timetable that the cover announced was two years out of date but she hoped would still be valid. They said the past never escaped the present, and they were right, but sometimes the past, even the very recent past, could ride to the rescue of the present. Even in the improbable shape of an old flame that did not need rekindling.

In distant Oxford, Marcus Frey was struggling with his own particular demon: embarrassment. Awkward silences had always defeated him. He was about to give up and say something he knew would sound stupid like, ‘Well, see you around then’, when all of a sudden Nazreem’s voice returned, clear as a bell and sharp as a sergeant-major.

‘Then turn up at Heathrow Airport on Monday to meet flight MS777 from Cairo. I think it gets in around three p.m.’

‘What? You’re coming to England? Is there something …?’

There was a breathless urgency in her reply: ‘Marcus, can you simply, just this once, do as I say? Yes or no?’

‘Is something the matter?’

A pause. ‘Marcus! Can you just be there?’

‘Yes. Yes, of course.’

‘Good. I’m counting on you.’

The line went dead.

A sudden rattling noise caused Marcus to look up. The golden stone of Hawksmoor’s towers had turned to grey under the leaden shadow of an oppressive black cloud and fat summer raindrops were bouncing off the windowpane. In the distance there was a peal of thunder. It’s a good thing, he thought to himself, that I’m not superstitious.