King Solomon's Curse

3

The process of photographing the wall was painstaking and, to Nina’s mind, excessively prolonged. She decided not to call Ziff out on it, however. Having a debate with him based on her archaeological knowledge and experience was one thing; haranguing him for dragging his feet, on the other hand, was not something she wanted to do in front of a television camera.

Instead she went back outside. The crew had returned to the surface after Fisher decided the ongoing work was not interesting enough to film. The director was now on his phone — from the snippets of conversation she caught, she guessed to the production company’s offices in Los Angeles — while the fourth member of the small crew lounged under an olive tree, the quadcopter beside him.

Howie Pinkett was tall, tanned and in his early twenties, wearing a corded wooden necklace and matching bangles. Nina had not been surprised to learn that the fast-talking Angeleno was a surfer. He did not lack ambition, though; while his official position in the crew was ‘production assistant’, a catch-all term that boiled down to ‘gopher’, the film school graduate also acted as a second cameraman, digital editor and archivist, and drone operator. Had Lydia ever let him touch her precious sound equipment, Nina was sure he would have taken on some of her role as well. But he most obviously had his eyes on an eventual director’s job, usually staying as close to Fisher as his own shadow. ‘So you really think there’s a secret room down there?’ he asked.

‘I do, yeah,’ Nina replied.

‘That is so cool. Genuine Indiana Jones stuff, huh? Or Eden Crest stuff, I guess.’ He flashed a perfect white smile.

‘Uh-huh.’ Her opinion of her sexed-up Hollywood avatar was not the highest.

‘I guess you can visit the set of those movies whenever you want,’ he went on, sitting up. ‘Any way you could get me an invite? It’d be awesome to watch a big-budget blockbuster being filmed — especially when it’s based on the life of someone I know.’

‘Very loosely based,’ she said. ‘But I’m not really interested in that side of things.’

‘Oh.’ The single word conveyed his disappointment. ‘But still… could you ask?’

To her relief, a distraction came when Ziff emerged from the tent. ‘Nina!’ he called. ‘We’re ready. Are you coming?’

‘I wouldn’t miss it,’ she told him. ‘Okay, everyone, let’s go! Steven, hang up — it’s time.’

Fisher frowned, saying something to his other party that she suspected was uncomplimentary, but ended the call. ‘All right,’ he told Lydia and Rivero, ‘let’s get down there. Howie, you coming?’

‘Got all the drone footage we need, so I’m not gonna miss anything this time,’ Howie replied, springing up. He collected an SLR camera — another of his roles was the team’s still photographer — and strode to the tent with the others.

Nina and Ziff made their way back down underground, the camera crew following. The other archaeologists were waiting below. Lights had been positioned in the chamber to illuminate the wall. ‘Okay,’ she said, indicating one of the patches of missing plaster, ‘I’d say that if we remove this corner here, it should reveal the doorway’s edge. That’ll confirm if there really is something here.’

‘Or if there is not,’ said Talal. ‘Dr Ziff, we are moving too fast. Just because there are cameras here, we do not have to perform for them.’

‘This is not a performance,’ Ziff told him, a little defensively.

‘Then why do this first when there is a real doorway?’ He indicated the blocked exit.

‘I have made my decision,’ snapped the Israeli.

‘So let’s do it,’ said Nina.

‘All right.’ Fisher waited for his crew to get in position, then retreated. ‘Roll it.’

‘I think you should do the honours, David,’ Nina said to Ziff.

‘Thank you,’ he replied, taking a small chisel and carefully sliding its tip under the plaster’s edge. ‘We may be able to remove it in one piece if we are caref—’

A snap — and a chunk the size of a man’s boot print fell away, smashing into gritty powder at the two archaeologists’ feet.

Nina and Ziff stared mortified at the hole, the silence broken by a muffled snort. They both glared at Howie, who was struggling not to laugh. ‘Sorry,’ he said, holding a hand over his mouth.

The awkward moment was broken by a gasp from Yaron. ‘Dr Ziff!’ he cried. ‘It is a doorway! Dr Wilde was right!’

She looked back at the broken section. A vertical line marking the division between the near-perfect brickwork and the misaligned section was clearly visible. ‘Look at that!’ she said, running her fingertip down it. ‘Wow. That’s almost sharp. I don’t know what they used to cut it, but they did a hell of a job.’

Ziff glanced towards the blocked doorway. ‘If this is like the other door, it would be… this wide,’ he said, indicating a point four feet from the exposed edge. He poked the plaster with his chisel. A ragged crack opened in the surface. ‘Yes! Here, I found it.’ He flicked away the crumbled coating.

Nina leaned closer to the wall. ‘I can feel the draught on my cheek,’ she whispered. ‘David, give me your chisel, please.’

He passed it to her. ‘I can’t see anything.’

‘Nor can I, but I can definitely feel it…’ She gently tapped the wall. Specks of grit dropped from a crack in the plaster — then she flinched from a puff of dust. ‘Whoa! Okay, I think I found it.’

She eased away a piece of plasterwork. Behind it was a mortarless gap between two of the cruder bricks. ‘It’s a right bodge-job,’ she said.

Ziff gave her a quizzical look. ‘A what?’

‘That’s what my husband would call it. He’s British, he says weird stuff,’ she added. ‘But this hole goes all the way through.’ She poked the chisel into the gap. It penetrated easily.

‘So what is inside?’ asked Yaron.

‘Only one way to find out,’ Nina told him. ‘David?’

The older archaeologist was caught between his innate caution and the prospect of unearthing something completely unexpected. ‘Finding the First Temple alone is a major discovery,’ he said at last, remembering he was being filmed and turning towards Rivero. ‘Ordinarily, we would proceed slowly, searching one room at a time. But it is clear that this chamber is merely an entrance to something more important. We should open this hidden door, to find out what wonders of the Temple of Solomon are inside.’

Fisher nodded appreciatively; Nina was not the only one who had got the hang of playing to the camera. However, not everyone was as impressed. ‘Dr Ziff, I protest!’ said Talal. ‘The Temple Mount is under the jurisdiction of Jordan, and I refuse to allow this… this performance to go any further.’

Ziff drew in an angry breath. ‘This dig is a joint cooperation between Israel and Jordan. And I am in charge. That is what was agreed.’

‘We are scientists, not television stars!’ Talal protested. He jabbed a finger at Nina. ‘We are not extras in her story!’

‘You wouldn’t even have found this place if it wasn’t for me,’ she reminded him. ‘I told you, my way works.’

‘But now we are rushing and causing damage so that she can… she can trend on Twitter!’

Ziff held up a hand. ‘Mohammad, can you honestly say that if you were in charge, and the cameras were not here, you would not also want to open the secret door?’

‘I — no, no, I would not,’ he said, but his hesitation revealed his true feelings.

‘Look,’ Nina said to Talal, ‘I’m not here to step on anyone’s toes — and I’m grateful to both Israel and Jordan for being invited. But I know while we as professional archaeologists would all absolutely love to spend a week excavating each little corner of a site, I’m also a realist. I’ve run a major archaeological agency. And I know for a fact that the big, exciting finds finance the smaller ones, the ones that sometimes we care about more.’

Talal frowned. ‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m saying that something I’ve learned from dealing with Hollywood is that if you start with a bang, you get people’s attention. And the bigger your initial find is perceived to be, the more time and resources you’ll get to follow it up.’ A wry smile. ‘And the better it reflects on you. You personally, Mohammad. One big find can make your career.’

The Jordanian was still unconvinced. ‘That is how it works in America. We are not so… shallow.’

‘That’s how it works everywhere. You just haven’t been doing this long enough to see it.’

Ziff nodded. ‘That is the truth.’

Talal snorted. ‘I hope that when I am as old as the two of you, I am not so cynical.’

‘I’m not old!’ said Nina, affronted — though her recent fortieth birthday was something she had tried to downplay as much as she could. Another muffled chuckle came from Howie’s direction.

‘We will open the door,’ Ziff announced firmly. ‘Let us see what the priests were hiding from Nebuchadnezzar.’ He issued instructions to the other archaeologists. Talal scowled, but joined them.

She quietly sighed in relief. ‘That was good, Nina,’ said Fisher, giving her a thumbs-up. ‘Drama, conflict — that’s what people want to see. It creates a good narrative.’

‘The only narrative I care about is the one that ends with us seeing what’s behind that wall,’ she replied.

‘Yeah, sure. But if you can use a sledgehammer to make the first hole, that would be great. It’s more exciting. Remember, start with a bang!’

She gave him an irritated look for echoing her own words, then went to assist Ziff and the others.

‘Ready when you are,’ said Fisher eagerly. ‘Make it big!’

Nina tried not to let her exasperation show. The plaster covering the hidden doorway had been cleared away, the bricks blocking the entrance now fully exposed. More gaps were visible in the mortar, some of the roughly hewn stones actually loose to the touch. ‘Okay,’ she told Ziff and his team, ‘I think if we pull this out first, it’ll make it very easy to clear the rest.’

‘I agree,’ Ziff replied, prodding the brick she had indicated. It clunked against its neighbours. A long breath, then: ‘Raphael, the pry bar.’

The other Israeli slid the crowbar into a gap, then pushed. The stone ground out of its space with very little effort. Talal lifted it clear, then Nina and Ziff shone lights through the hole.

‘Definitely another room,’ the redhead reported. ‘A lot bigger than this one. I can see…’ She frowned. ‘A pit, but I can’t tell what’s in it.’

‘If you open that hole a bit wider, I could fly the drone in for a look,’ suggested Howie.

‘I’d prefer to see for myself, thanks,’ said Nina. She drew back to let Yaron continue his work.

The opening was soon wide enough for a person to traverse. ‘Are we going in?’ she asked Ziff, who nodded. ‘You first.’

‘No, you, Dr Wilde,’ he replied. ‘Without you, the First Temple would never have been found. It is only right that you should be first to see what is inside.’

She smiled. ‘Thank you.’ A quick aside to camera. ‘Let’s hope the priests didn’t leave any booby traps.’

Talal shook his head. ‘You have seen too many movies.’

‘I’ve seen too many booby traps,’ she retorted. ‘You wanna go first instead?’

He hesitated. ‘No. Dr Ziff is right. You should go.’

Her smile became more sardonic. ‘Okay,’ she told Rivero, ‘follow me and Dr Ziff inside. Everyone else, come through after the camera. You ready?’ The others acknowledged. ‘All right. Let’s see what we have.’

She stepped into the secret chamber.

The first thing that struck her was, to her relief, not some long-poised mechanism of death. Rather, it was the smell. The air felt much damper than in the outer room. But it was also stagnant, unpleasant.

Rivero entered behind Ziff, sweeping his light across the circular chamber. It was close to a hundred feet across, broad columns supporting a domed ceiling. A round pit occupied most of the floor. Its walls were stepped, forming an inverted ziggurat. She followed the beam as the cameraman tilted it downwards to reveal…

‘Wow!’ she cried, the exclamation echoing from the walls.

Ziff’s reaction was of equal astonishment, though more reverential. He murmured in Hebrew, putting a hand to his chest in wonderment.

A city was exquisitely rendered in miniature on the pit’s broad floor. The largest building — a temple or palace, Nina guessed — was an elaborate rectangular structure with twelve towers rising like battlements around its vaulted roof. Not just the city’s structures had been modelled; its landscape was also present, the palace sitting atop a jutting promontory with a near-vertical cliff dropping down to a river curling around its foot. The latter explained the smell. The channel had once had water flowing through it, but now only sludge remained.

The sight overcame even Talal’s dour mood. He exchanged excited words with his Jordanian colleague, then darted his flashlight beam over the model city. ‘It must be ancient Jerusalem!’

Nina shook her head. ‘The topography’s wrong. There isn’t a cliff like that on the Temple Mount.’

‘But what else could it be?’

Ziff noticed something on one of the lower tiers. ‘Look at this,’ he said, hurrying down a steep flight of steps. ‘There is text, all around the wall.’

‘Is that Old Hebrew?’ Nina asked as she followed.

‘I think so — yes, it is,’ he said as he reached the inscriptions. ‘The language of King Solomon.’

‘So what does it say?’ demanded Fisher as he descended behind Rivero and Lydia. The cameraman positioned himself to watch Ziff.

‘Wait, let me work.’ The elderly archaeologist studied a prominent section of text enclosed in a rectangle. ‘This is Solomon’s name, here,’ he pointed at a particular word, ‘and these first lines say… “The farthest reach of King Solomon’s realm.” Then there is a word I don’t recognise — it must be a name. Zan, hhet, el, kaph…’ He fell silent for a moment, combining the individual Hebrew letters into a word. ‘Zhakana, it says. “Zhakana, city of…”’

His eyes widened. ‘What is it?’ asked Nina.

Ziff turned towards her, Rivero’s camera catching his unnerved expression. ‘It says,’ he announced, ‘that this is Zhakana… City of the Damned.’

‘Well, that’s not ominous or anything,’ muttered Lydia.

Nina cautiously went to the bottom of the pit as Ziff continued reading. Talal followed her, as did Rivero. The turgid river’s outer bank marked the diorama’s edge. She stopped at it, trying to get a sense of how big the city would be in the real world. The palace on the clifftop had no visible doors or windows, nothing she could relate to a human scale.

The smaller buildings did have them, however — as well as a surprise. ‘They’re ruins,’ she realised. ‘The whole city’s in ruins, except for the palace.’ The models themselves were not broken, but had been carefully built to replicate how their originals had succumbed to the ravages of time.

Assuming the doorways were six feet high… ‘The whole city must be well over half a mile across,’ she said after some rapid mental calculations. ‘And I’m guessing from these trees around the outside,’ she pointed out clusters of shrivelled twigs, ‘that it was either in a forest or a jungle.’

‘It was in the jungle,’ said Ziff.

Nina looked up at him. ‘You’re sure?’

‘I’ve translated more of the text. It describes Zhakana as being hidden in the jungle on the outer reaches of the territory of Sheba.’

‘Sheba?’ asked Howie, who had been taking photographs. ‘As in, the Queen of?’

‘No, the cat food,’ Nina said sarcastically. ‘Of course that Sheba. Or the kingdom of Seba or Saba, depending on the translation. There hasn’t actually been much archaeological evidence found of it to date, but it seems that it covered both the Arabian and African sides of the Red Sea.’

‘The queen, Bilqis, came to Solomon here in Jerusalem,’ said Talal. ‘Some say Solomon summoned her to pledge her kingdom to God, others say she came to test him, to see if he was truly the wisest man on the earth. But in each story, they married and had a son, Menelik — the first emperor of Ethiopia.’

‘Bilqis is the Arabic name for the queen,’ said Ziff, excitement in his voice. ‘But I think we can now say that her traditional Ethiopian name, Makeda, is correct.’

‘Why?’ Nina asked.

‘Because it is written here! After they married, the kingdoms of Israel and Sheba were united. Solomon visited his new lands with his wife — and she took him to Zhakana, City of the Damned, the greatest secret of Sheba.’ He waved a hand towards the impressive miniature below. ‘And this is it. Perfect in every detail, or so Solomon claims.’

‘Solomon claims it?’

‘If the text is correct,’ Ziff continued, ‘this chamber, this map room, was built on Solomon’s orders to be an exact replica of Zhakana.’

Nina noticed more carvings on the lowest wall surrounding the city. These were not words, however. She pointed her flashlight at the nearest. ‘Look at this.’ The beam revealed a rolling relief chiselled into the stone. ‘It’s a landscape — hills and mountains.’ She moved the light along the wall. The terrain rose and fell, sometimes with multiple planes to show where a more distant peak was visible beyond nearer features.

She looked back at the model, noting that one of the palace’s towers was capped by a small bronze cylinder — the only metal in the city. ‘I wonder…’ she said to herself, crouching beside the cliff to peer more closely at it. Its top had several vertical slots cut across it at different angles. At a nudge from Fisher, Rivero turned away from Ziff to film her.

Nina positioned herself to look through one slot as if it were a gunsight, aiming her torch at the target area of the wall. One of the carved mountains was highlighted.

Talal stood beside her. ‘What have you found?’

‘Hold on, let me try this…’ She sidestepped to look through another slot. This led her gaze to a second peak. ‘I think it’s some sort of navigation aid, a way to—’

‘Nina!’ Ziff’s cry this time was full-blown exhilaration. ‘Mohammad! Come here, quick!’

She and Talal hurried back up the stairs to find Ziff reading a dense section of Hebrew text. ‘What is it?’

‘More about the city. The large building on the cliff — it is the Palace Without Entrance!’

‘What, from the legend?’ Nina asked dubiously.

‘I know, it sounds unbelievable. But according to this, Solomon ordered the Palace Without Entrance to be built to contain a great, yet dangerous power. Only those with the wisdom to use it for good can enter, because Solomon’s own riddles protect it.’

‘How do you enter somewhere without an entrance?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps the legend itself holds a clue?’

‘What legend?’ asked Fisher.

Ziff faced him. ‘An ancient Hebrew story. Once, when Solomon was travelling, he discovered a magnificent palace, with no doors or windows. He spoke to some eagles guarding it—’

Lydia’s eyebrows rose. ‘He could talk to birds?’

‘Solomon could do a lot of things, if you believe the legends,’ said Nina, amused. ‘He could summon and control demons, fly on a magical throne, talk to animals — all this and the whole “being the wisest man in the world” thing too.’

Ziff made an impatient sound, then continued. ‘Solomon spoke to the eagles until he found the oldest, who remembered an entrance now buried by sand. So Solomon’s men dug, and found the way in.’

‘I didn’t see any eagles on the model,’ said Nina. ‘Or sand.’

‘We will have to examine it in detail. But there is more in the text.’ He went back to the wall. ‘The power Solomon built the palace to contain is named here. He calls it Imashamir… “the Mother of the Shamir”.’

‘The Shamir?’ she echoed, startled. ‘The stone he supposedly used to build the First Temple?’

‘Nina,’ Fisher said quietly from behind the camera, ‘explanation for the rubes?’

‘The Shamir is… well, it’s hard to describe,’ Nina said. ‘It’s either a green stone or a living creature, like a worm, depending on how you interpret the stories. Either way, it was kept in a lead box that was only opened when it was needed, because its gaze could split stone and shatter metal.’ The crew’s impressed reactions told her that was exactly the kind of juicy legend they wanted to hear.

‘It was given to Solomon by God,’ Ziff went on, bowing his head slightly, ‘so he could build the temple without using anything that could also be used as a weapon, which would defile it. It was only very small, the size of a peppercorn, but incredibly powerful. Solomon used it to cut the temple’s stones.’

‘Which might explain how they were so precisely made,’ Nina mused. She regarded the model. ‘The Mother of the Shamir… it could be where Solomon’s Shamir originally came from. This city in Ethiopia.’

‘Are there jungles in Ethiopia?’ Howie asked.

‘Actually, yes. But the borders of modern Ethiopia are much smaller than in the past — it used to cover a big chunk of the entire continent.’

Ziff was disappointed. ‘Then there is very little chance of finding it. A pity — finding the Temple of Solomon is remarkable, but an entire lost city? That would be incredible!’

‘We still can find it,’ Nina said, her excitement returning. ‘That’s what I was about to say.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Talal.

She looked between the archaeologists and the omnipresent camera. ‘The metal spire on the palace — if you look through the slots on it, they point to different mountains. It’s a way to triangulate the city’s exact position! If you can identify the mountains, you can use their relative positions to calculate the only place where you would see them from those bearings.’

Talal examined the carved landscape. ‘But none of the mountains have names. We do not know which ones they are.’

‘We don’t need to,’ Nina insisted. ‘There are topographical databases of the whole of Africa, and we can use a computer to search for a particular configuration of mountains. I’ve done it before.’ She gazed at the sprawling miniature below. ‘Solomon left clues to Zhakana’s location. We can follow them — and we can find the lost city!’