The Columbus Affair: A Novel

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

ALLE RESENTED BRIAN JAMISON’S HOLIER-THAN-THOU ATTITUDE. Two hours had gone by since the video from Florida ended, and Brian had stayed on the phone in another room with the door closed the entire time. She sat in the house’s small kitchen and nursed a cup of coffee. The scene outside the windows was rural and wooded, no roads or other houses in sight. It was after 7:00 P.M. Czech time, which meant early afternoon in Florida. Her father was apparently coming to Vienna to make a deal for her release.

Which still surprised her.

A door opened and footsteps pounded the wooden floor. Brian walked into the room, still wearing a shoulder holster holding a weapon. He poured himself a cup from the coffeemaker.

“This is changing fast,” he said to her.

“I don’t like you.”

He laughed. “Like I care. If it were up to me, I would have let Simon kill you.”

His bravado was beginning to wear thin. “What happens now?”

“Aren’t you the least bit concerned about your father? He’s put his ass on the line for you. What do we do about that?”

She said nothing.

“He’s walking into a trap at that cathedral.”

“So stop him. Have your man in Florida tell him what’s going on.”

“How do you suggest I do that? We have no idea how he plans to get to Vienna. My man lost him after the orchard. He surely isn’t going to fly out of Orlando. I’m betting he drives to Tampa, or Jacksonville, or Miami. And he’s not a dumb-ass, contrary to what you might think, he won’t fly straight to Vienna. He’ll come in another way. So there’s no way to deal with him until he gets to the cathedral.”

“You don’t give a damn about my father. You just want what he has.”

“Sure I do. But I still have the problem of him in Vienna. And so we’re clear, he’s not my father so, no, I don’t give a damn.”

“My father was one of the best reporters in the world,” she said. “He knows what he’s doing.”

She’d never said any of those words before.

“Is that how you convince yourself to feel better? I assure you, your father has never dealt with a man like Zachariah Simon.” He sipped his coffee. “I want to know what this is about. The least you can do is tell me what’s going on here.”

“I don’t know.”

“Then tell me what you told Simon.”

In 71 CE, after crushing the rebellious Jews and destroying Jerusalem, Titus returned to Rome. His father, Vespasian, was now emperor and welcomed his son back with the greatest celebration Rome had ever seen. Over one million had died in Judea, and now all of Rome came out to pay homage. Eight years later, after Titus himself rose to be emperor, he immortalized the day with a stone relief that showed him, as conqueror, parading the streets by chariot, the Jews’ Temple treasure—the golden Table of Divine Presence, the silver trumpets, and a seven-branched menorah—carted ahead of him.

For 380 years those treasures stayed in Rome. Then in 455 CE. Vandals sacked the city. A Byzantine historiographer wrote that the Vandal leader, “with no one to stop him entered Rome and taking all the money and the ornaments of the city, he loaded them on his ships, among them the solid gold and bejeweled treasures of the Church and the Jewish vessels which Vespasian’s son Titus had brought to Rome after the capture of Jerusalem.”

The Temple treasure was taken south to the African city of Carthage, and there it remained from 455 to 533 CE until the Byzantines conquered the Vandals. Another chronicler described the victor’s triumphant return to Constantinople in 534. “And there was also silver weighing many thousands of talents and all of the royal treasure and among these were the treasures of the Jews, which Titus, the son of Vespasian, had brought to Rome after the capture of Jerusalem.”

The Emperor Justinian displayed the Jewish treasure at various sites around the city. Though one of the greatest Byzantine leaders, Justinian was extremely unpopular, and that discontent finally fermented into open revolt. A contemporary from the time reported, “And one of the Jews, seeing these things, approached one of those known to the emperor and said, ‘These Temple treasures, I think it inexpedient to carry them into the palace in Byzantium. Indeed, it is not possible for them to be elsewhere than in the place where Solomon, the king of the Jews, formerly placed them. For it is because of these that the Vandals captured the palace of the Romans and how we captured the Vandals.’ When this had been brought to the ears of the emperor, Justinian became afraid and quickly sent everything to the sanctuaries of the Christians in Jerusalem.”

“Justinian was superstitious and paranoid,” Alle said to Brian. “He allowed an anonymous Jewish courtier to spook him with the fact that all of the civilizations that had possessed the Temple treasure since 70 CE had crumbled. First the Jews, then Rome, then the Vandals. Would he be next? So sometime between 535 and 554 CE he ordered the Temple treasure returned to the Holy Land.”

Brian cast a doubtful look. “Simon is after the Temple treasure?”

She nodded. “The three holiest objects in all of Judaism. They never made it to the Holy Land. History lost track of all three when they left Constantinople. Zachariah said my grandfather knew where they were hidden. That he was the Levite, the only person alive who knew the location. He said whatever I buried with him would lead us there.”

“For what? Not its worth. He’s a billionaire.”

“He wants to restore it to the Jews.”

“And you believed him?”

She wanted to know something. “What’s your interest?”

“Tell me the rest. How do you fit into this?”

After Rome sacked Jerusalem in 70 CE and the Second Temple was razed, over 80,000 Jews were deported from Judea to the Iberian peninsula—which, at that time, lay at the extreme western reaches of the Roman Empire. More Jews immigrated there over time, until a thriving community formed that came to be known as Sephardim.

Life for Jews there was tolerable since the emerging Catholic Church had difficulty establishing itself so far west. The Visigoths, who ruled the land, did not convert until 587 CE. This began what became a recurring phenomenon in Iberian policy—Jews were ordered to either become Christians or be expelled. Many did convert, becoming the first conversos, maintaining their Jewish identity in secret while openly professing to be something else. Tens of thousands either left or were expelled. Periods of tolerance and intolerance followed. Property seizures occurred frequently, especially when Jewish assets were needed by monarchs. When the Moors invaded Iberia in 711, Jews welcomed them as liberators. Life under Moorish rule became the Golden Age for Sephardi Jews. Their numbers grew, as more immigrated.

But the Reconquista changed everything.

Christians slowly reclaimed Iberia and forced conversions, engaging in pogroms. By 1400 Jews had become a focus of Spanish hatred. To avoid death or persecution thousands more converted to Christianity, creating a new wave of conversos. Laws that restricted Jewish industry eventually brought commerce to a standstill. Soil was left uncultivated, finances were disturbed. Entire communities were destroyed, many more reduced to poverty. In order to restore the Spanish economy the Crown tried to draw Jews back to the country by offering them privileges.

Which worked, but it also bred resentment from Christians.

When Ferdinand and Isabella ascended the throne and completed the Reconquista in 1492, expelling the last of the Moors from Spanish soil, they issued an edict that all Jews must either convert or leave Spain.

They also reinstituted the Inquisition to root out false conversos.

165,000 Jews chose to leave.

Many stayed and kept their secret.

Many more were slaughtered.

“How much of that is you and how much came from Simon?” Brian asked.

“I’m not ignorant of Jewish history,” she made clear. “It’s what I’ve studied.”

“I didn’t say that you were. I just need to know what that crazy man is trying to do.”

“He told me a story. I don’t know if it’s true. But it was quite amazing. About the Jews in Spain, at the time Columbus sailed.”

“Tell me.”

“Why should I?”

“Because your father’s life depends on it.”