The Columbus Affair: A Novel

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

BÉNE FOLLOWED TRE, WHO LAGGED BEHIND FRANK CLARKE. None of them had switched on their flashlights. No need. Sharp rays of bright moonlight provided more than enough illumination. Tre was reading the GPS, but Frank plunged ahead without any electronic aid.

“He’s headed straight for it,” Tre said to him.

No surprise, considering the conversation he’d had with Clarke back at the estate. He’d never thought his old friend would deceive him in such a way. But that violation had made him cautious, so he’d come prepared, a semiautomatic tucked into a shoulder holster beneath his open shirt.

“Another fifty meters,” Tre said.

A rush of falling water could be heard. They pushed through more foliage until they found a pool, water tumbling down from twenty meters above. A stream entered and exited the pool, disappearing into the black forest. He’d seen a thousand of these in the mountains around his estate. Water was not in short supply on Jamaica, and had always been one of its main draws.

Frank’s flashlight clicked on and the beam cruised across the pool’s surface, then up the waterfall. “There’s a slit in the rock. Behind the water. A cave. But it’s a dead end. A false route that goes back to nothing.”

“So why show it to us?” he asked.

The colonel lowered his light and turned. “It once led to the mine, but was sealed long ago. Maroons eventually laid traps there. A way to deter anyone who might come for a look.”

“What are you saying, Frank?”

“That what you are about to see has cost men their lives.”

He heard the unspoken part. There’s risk here.

“I’m ready,” he declared.

“That gun you’re toting will do no good. You have to swim to get inside.”

He stripped off his shirt, then removed the shoulder harness, handing both to Tre. He started to remove his pants and boots but Frank stopped him.

“You’ll need those in there.”

“So what do I do?” Béne asked.

“There’s an opening about three meters down, below the waterfall. It’s a shaft that leads up a few meters to a chamber that was part of the mine at the time of Columbus. Back then, you walked straight in through the slit behind the falls. Not anymore. That’s why this place has never been found.”

“How do you know about it?” Tre asked.

“It’s part of my heritage.”

“I’m going, too,” Tre said to him.

“No. You’re not,” Béne said. “This is between Maroons.”

———

ZACHARIAH WAITED FOR AN ANSWER TO HIS QUESTION.

“You want the Third Temple,” the ambassador said. “Without the coming of the Messiah.”

“It is my belief that the Messiah will return if we build the Third Temple.”

“Most Jews believe that the Messiah must first come before we will have our Third Temple.”

“They are wrong.”

And he meant it. Nowhere had he ever read anything that convinced him that the Temple must await the Messiah. The first two were built without him. Why not the third? Certainly it would be preferable to have the Messiah. His arrival would herald the Olam-ha-Ba, the World to Come where all people would coexist peacefully. War would cease to exist. Jews would return from their exile to their home in Israel. No murder, robbery, or sin.

Which justified everything he was about to do.

“You also plan to start a war,” she said. “Tell me, Zachariah, how will you return our Temple treasures to the mount?”

She did know.

“In a way that the Muslims cannot ignore.”

“Your spark.”

What better way to reawaken a sleeping Israel than to have the Jews’ most venerated objects—lost for two thousand years—attacked on the Temple Mount. And the Arabs would react. They would regard any such act as a direct threat to their control. Every day they suppressed any semblance of a Jewish presence on the mount. For the Temple treasure to return after 2,000 years? That would be the greatest provocation of them all.

They would act.

And even the meekest of Israeli citizens would call for retaliation.

He could already here commentators comparing the Babylonians to the Romans to the Arabs, each defiance a denial to Jews of their divine right to occupy the mount and build the Lord a sanctuary. Twice before destruction occurred with no consequences. What about this time? they would ask.

Israel possessed more than enough might to defend itself.

This singular act of sacrilege would resurrect its protective vigilance.

“A spark that will ignite a blazing fire,” he said.

“That it will.”

“And what will you do,” he asked, “once all that happens?”

He truly wanted to know.

“A call in the Knesset for retaliation. The Temple Mount retaken. Every single Muslim expelled. When they resist, which they will, they will be shown that we are not weak.”

“And the world? The Americans? They will not want any of that to happen.”

“Then I will ask them, what did you do when your country was attacked by terrorists? You mounted an army and invaded Afghanistan. Eventually, you invaded Iraq. You defended what you believe to be important. That is all we will be doing and, in the end, we will have Israel, the mount, and our Third Temple. If you are right, the Messiah will then come and we will have global peace. I would say all that is worth the risk.”

So would he.

As had his father and grandfather.

“How close are you to success?” she asked him.

“Closer than I have ever been before. The final piece of the puzzle is here, in Prague. Which I should have shortly.”

She seemed pleased. “What can I do to help?”

“Nothing. I have to do this myself.”

———

BÉNE DOVE INTO THE CHILLY WATER AND CLAWED HIS WAY down, following the light Frank Clarke held as he led the way. He should be cold but his blood ran hot. He felt like one of his ancestors, preparing to do battle with British redcoats, their weapons few, their determination great.

Clarke’s light disappeared into a dark hole, the beam faded but was still there. With a light in one hand he followed and entered the same cavity, about two meters in diameter. He stared through the water and still saw Clarke’s light toward the ceiling. His pants and boots were like anchors and he was reaching the limit of his breath, so he kicked toward the brightness, propelling himself upward, breaking the surface and sucking air.

Frank stood on a rocky ledge, pants dripping, staring down, holding his light. “It takes about all you have, doesn’t it?”

That it did.

He laid his light on the rocks and leveraged himself from the water. His lungs stabilized. His nerves calmed, but remained on high alert.

Frank angled his beam around the chamber. He saw it was irregularly shaped, a few meters deep, the same in height, with one exit—beside which, carved into the rock, was a hooked X.

“The mark of the Spanish,” Frank said. “Maybe made by the great Admiral of the Ocean, Columbus himself.”

———

ALLE WALKED WITH HER FATHER AND BERLINGER.

They’d left the underground room and house, emerging onto the street. The clock above what the rabbi noted as the Jewish town hall read nearly 9:00 A.M. People filled the cobbled streets, the quarter alive for another day. Vendors were beginning to open stalls that lined the cemetery wall, the iron gates leading inside to the graves now guarded by an attendant. She could hear a murmur of traffic and the growl of engines in the distance. The chill from earlier remained, though it dissipated rapidly beneath a brightening sun.

Her father’s outburst had affected her.

She wondered about something he’d said.

“Don’t hate me for something that I didn’t do.”

She’d called him a cheater and a fraud because of all that happened.

But what had he meant?

She should have asked, but could not bring herself to do it. She simply wanted to learn what she could and get away from him. She carried her shoulder bag once again with the cell phone inside. Her father harbored the note, the key, and the map.

Of Jamaica, she’d seen.

What did all this mean?

Berlinger led them to a turreted building identified by a placard as the ceremonial hall, built in 1908. Three-storied, neo-Romanesque style, fortresslike, with a turret rising from one side to a distinctive slate roof.

The rabbi stopped, then turned and faced them both. “From that balcony up there funeral orations were once delivered. This was the place where the dead were prepared for final resting. Now it’s a museum.”

Berlinger motioned to an exterior staircase. “Let us go inside.”