The Last Gospel

22

‘ J ack? Jack Howard?’

A woman detached herself from a huddled group of monks on the rooftop of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and marched across the sun-drenched courtyard, her white robe flowing around her. Jack shielded his eyes as he took in the scene. The dome of the greatest church in Christendom lay before him, rising above the whitewashed walls and flat rooftops of the Old City of Jerusalem. Up here there seemed to be more room to think, above the narrow alleyways and hemmed-in courtyards below, where every square inch was zealously guarded by one of the many factions who had staked a claim in this holiest of cities. Jack looked over at Costas, and rubbed his eyes. He had found it impossible to sleep on the flight from Los Angeles. They had left Morgan a few minutes earlier at the entrance to the Holy Sepulchre, intent on checking accessibility to the part of the church he wanted them to explore. But Jeremy was not with them. At the last minute Jack had asked him to go to Naples, to join Maria and Hiebermeyer and to do what he could to find out what had happened to Elizabeth. Jack had felt uneasy about sending anyone else back there, but Maria and Hiebermeyer were completely wrapped up in the media circus at the villa site and he felt he could rely on Jeremy to do everything possible until he himself could get there.

The car ride from Tel Aviv had been hot and dusty, but as the Old City of Jerusalem opened out in front of them Jack had felt a surge of exhilaration, a certainty that they had come to the right place, that whatever lay at the end of the trail would be here. With the feeling of certainty had come increased anxiety. Ever since he and Costas had met with the mysterious figure in the catacombs under the Vatican he had felt trapped in an inexorable process, a narrowing funnel, with no knowledge of who might be watching them. If what they had been told was true, for almost two thousand years those who were following them had won all their battles, allowed no failure. And with every new person Jack brought into the fold, there was another name added to a hit list. He looked at the approaching woman, then glanced again at Costas beside him. He suddenly remembered his friend’s old adage: If you can calculate the risk, then it is a risk that can be taken. But he hated gambling with other people’s lives.

The woman came up to him, smiling. She had strips of colourful embroidery down the front and around the wrists of her robe, and wore a gold necklace and earrings. Her long black hair was tied back, and she had the high cheekbones and handsome features of an Ethiopian, with startlingly green eyes. She extended her hands and Jack embraced her warmly. ‘My old school friend,’ he said to Costas. ‘Helena Selassie.’

‘That surname rings a few bells,’ Costas said, shaking hands with her and smiling.

‘The king was a distant relative,’ she said, in perfect English with an American accent. ‘Like him, I’m Ethiopian Orthodox. This is our holiest place.’

‘Virginia?’ Costas murmured, his eyes narrowing. ‘Maryland?’

Helena grinned. ‘Good guess. And you have a hint of New York? My parents were Ethiopian exiles, and I grew up among the expat community south of Washington DC. I was at high school with Jack in England when my father was stationed in London, then I went back to MIT. Aerospace engineering.’

‘Really? I must have just missed you. Same faculty, submarine robotics.’

‘We didn’t mix with the sub jocks.’

‘The Old City of Jerusalem’s a far cry from moon rockets and outer space, Helena,’ Jack said.

She gave him a wan smile. ‘After NASA wound down the space shuttle programme, I figured I’d seek the spiritual route. Get there quicker.’

‘You knew you’d be coming out here eventually.’

‘It’s in the blood,’ she said. ‘My father did it, my grandfather, his father before that. A fair number of women along the way. There are always at least twenty-eight of us up here on the roof, mostly monks but always a couple of nuns, have been for almost two centuries now. Our presence on the Holy Sepulchre is the hub of our Ethiopian faith, helps keep our sense of identity. I don’t just mean the Ethiopian Church, I mean my extended family, Ethiopia itself.’

‘Seems a little crowded down in the church below,’ Costas said.

‘You can say that again. Greek Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, Roman Catholic, Coptic Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox. We spend more time negotiating when we can use the washroom in this place than we do worshipping. It’s like a microcosm of the world here, the good, the bad and the ugly. In the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Turks who ruled Jerusalem imposed something called the Status Quo of the Holy Places, in an attempt to stop the bickering. The idea was that any new construction work, any change in the custodial arrangements in the Holy Sepulchre required government approval. Trouble was, it got turned on its head and used for more in-fighting. We can’t even clear fallen wall plaster from our chapels without weeks of negotiations, then formal approval from the other denominations. Everyone’s always spying on each other. We’re never more than one step from open warfare. A few years ago an Egyptian Coptic monk staking a claim up here moved his chair from the agreed spot a few feet into the shade, and eleven monks had to be hospitalized.’

‘But at least you’re in pole position on the roof,’ Jack said.

‘Halfway to heaven.’ Helena grinned. ‘At least, that’s how the monks console themselves in the middle of winter, when it’s below freezing and the Coptics have accidentally on purpose cut off the electricity.’

‘You live up here?’ Costas asked incredulously.

‘Have you smelled the toilets?’ she said. ‘You must be kidding. I have a nice apartment in the Mount of Paradise nunnery, about twenty minutes’ walk from here. This is just my day job.’

‘Which is what, exactly?’

‘Officially, I try to get back all our ancient manuscripts, the ones held here by the other denominations. They’re easy to spot, with Ethiopian Ge-ez inscriptions and bound in colourful artwork, the signature of our culture.’

‘Get back?’ Costas repeated.

She sighed. ‘It’s a long story.’

‘The nub of it.’

‘Okay. Ethiopia, the ancient kingdom of Aksum, was one of the first nations ever to adopt Christianity, in the fourth century AD. Not a lot of people realize it, but Africans, black Africans from Ethiopia, are one of the oldest Christian communities associated with the Holy Sepulchre. We were given the keys to the Church by the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great’s mother Helena, my namesake. But then for centuries we had a very unholy rivalry with the Egyptian Coptic Church, the monks from Alexandria. Things began to go seriously downhill when we refused to pay taxes to the Ottoman Turks after they took over the Holy Land. Then in 1838 a mysterious illness wiped out most of the Ethiopian monks in the Holy Sepulchre. They said it was the plague, but none of us believe it. After that most of our property was confiscated. The surviving monks were banished to the roof, and we kept our foothold here, bringing mud and water by hand from the Kibron Valley to build these huts you see around us. Then came the worst desecration of all. Many of our precious books were stolen from us and burned. They claimed the manuscripts were infected with the plague.’

‘In other words, there was something in them they didn’t want revealed,’ Costas murmured.

Helena nodded. ‘They were afraid of proof that we were here at the site of the Holy Sepulchre a few years before them, that we could use our books to claim ascendancy. The tragedy is, we know some of those lost documents dated way before the foundation of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the fourth century. There were manuscripts on goat parchment almost two thousand years old. Some of them may still exist, locked away in the libraries of our rivals. My dream is to find just one of these manuscripts, something dating from the lifetime of Jesus and his followers, those who met him and actually heard his word, and to house it up here in a purpose-built library. Something that speaks to all the pilgrims of any denomination who come here seeking Jesus, not the bickering and rivalry you see below. Having that kind of treasure to show the world would put the Ethiopian community firmly on the map again, as something more than a bunch of oddballs camped out on the roof.’

Jack shaded his eyes and glanced past the dingy grey structures of the monks’ cells to the holy cross on top of the dome over Christ’s tomb, rising behind the west range of the courtyard in front of him. The seeming purity of the scene, the whitewashed walls set against the sky, seemed to bely the complex history Helena had been describing, yet he knew they were standing on the accretion of centuries like an archaeological site. ‘I agree, he murmured. ‘This would be the perfect place. I’d love to help you.’

‘We don’t have much of a stake below, near the tomb, but up here we feel we’ve got the edge. Right over the spot where Christ rose, as high as you can get.’

‘You believe this is the place?’ Costas asked.

She paused. ‘It’s like everything else to do with early Christianity. You have to cut away so much encrustation to reach the truth, and sometimes the truth you were seeking just isn’t there to be found.’

‘The encrustation of history,’ Costas murmured. ‘Funny, Jack uses that word too.’

‘Same school, I guess,’ Helena grinned. ‘The Church of the Holy Sepulchre wasn’t dedicated until three hundred years after Jesus’ death, at a time when the search was on among some Christian clergy for a fantasy past, one that fitted the political needs of the emperor Constantine the Great. The story of his mother Helena finding a fragment of the True Cross in one of the ancient water cisterns below the church is probably just that, encrustation. But there’s truth here too. This place where we’re standing really was an ancient hill, outside the city walls. There were tombs here at the time of Jesus, and it could have been a site for executions. It all adds up.’

‘You’re sounding dangerously like an archaeologist, Helena,’ Jack said.

‘It’s what lies under it all that I want to get at, the bare bones of history.’

‘They’re not always bare, in my experience,’ Costas muttered.

‘Don’t mind him,’ Jack said, smiling. ‘He’s recently traumatized.’ He turned back to Helena. ‘But I understand what you’re getting at.’

‘There’s something about spending time on this rooftop, Jack,’ Helena said. ‘It’s as if everything below is smothered under the great weight of the past. Up here, with nothing but the sky over us, it’s like being above a great bowl of history, radiating upwards to some distant focal point. And looking down, all the absurdities of humanity seem trivial, easily dispensable. You seem to see the shape of things for what they really are, the simple truths. It gives me hope that one day I will find the real Jesus, Jesus the man. That’s what makes this place precious to us. I sat beside the Sea of Galilee only a few days ago, just water and shimmering hills and sky, and I seemed to see it all so clearly in front of me.’

Jack glanced at Helena. ‘I’d love you to share some of that. But first we need your help. Pretty urgently. It’s what I called you about. Is there somewhere we can go?’

At that moment Morgan came up the stairs on to the rooftop courtyard. Like Jack and Costas he was wearing chinos and a loose shirt, but he was carrying a straw hat which he put on as he came out into the sun walking towards them.

‘Welcome to the kingdom of heaven,’ Costas smiled.

‘It’s hot enough to be the other place,’ Morgan said, then looked at Helena apologetically and held out his hand. ‘You must be Sister Selassie.’

‘Dr Morgan.’

Helena gestured for them to follow her to a line of doors on the other side of the courtyard. The walls and upper structure of the church that surrounded the courtyard kept the noise of the city at bay, but there was a sudden sharp clatter from somewhere nearby followed by a series of percussive echoes. ‘Gunfire,’ Jack said. ‘Sounds like. 223, M16. Israeli Army.’

‘They’ve just called a curfew,’ Morgan said. ‘Apparently there’s been some kind of disturbance at the Wailing Wall, and it’s spread up to the Christian Quarter. A couple of tourists have been knifed. We got into the Old City just in time. They’ve shut all the gates. I’d only just started my recce of the Holy Sepulchre, and then they shut that down too, got everyone out.’

‘That’s another advantage of being up here on the roof,’ Helena said. ‘We’re above all that. But it’s pretty unusual for tourists to be attacked. The extremists here rarely resort to that. Doesn’t help any cause.’

‘Just what we need,’ Jack murmured, suddenly feeling uneasy. ‘Curfew, no tourists, police and army distracted. It leaves us vulnerable. I only hope Ben can get through.’ He glanced at Helena. ‘Our security chief. He flew out of London early this morning, and is due in from Tel Aviv about now.’

‘If anyone can get them to open the gates, it’s Ben,’ Costas said.

‘He’s already liaised with the chief of police here,’ Jack said. ‘They knew each other from Special Forces, some combined UK-Israeli operation even I don’t know about. Special Forces is a pretty small world.’

‘You guys sure do network,’ Helena said.

Jack gave her a wry look. ‘Anyone thinks being Indiana Jones is a one-man show, forget it.’

They reached a door, indistinguishable from others along the side of the courtyard. Helena unlocked it, switched on an electric bulb hanging just inside and ushered them in. ‘Welcome to my office,’ she said. They all squeezed in, Jack and Costas sitting on a bench and Morgan standing. It was little more than a monk’s cell, with the bench and devotional images on one side, but on the other side there were shelves brimming with books, architectural drawings pinned to the wall and a narrow desk with a state-of-the art laptop. ‘I steal electricity from the Armenians, and hack into wireless internet from the Greek monastery next door.’ She grinned, and sat down on a stool behind the desk. ‘You see, it’s really all a sharing community.’

Morgan peered at one of the drawings, showing simple rectilinear structures surrounded by rocky outcrops and terrain contours. ‘The Holy Sepulchre?’ he asked. ‘Is this the early church?’

‘I’m doing an architectural history of the Roman Church,’ Helena said. ‘I’m most interested in what lies beneath, what can be found out about the site before the Constantinian Church was established in the fourth century. There was a lot more going on here in the early Roman period after the crucifixion than people have ever guessed. It’s been my secret after-hours project, but now you know. I reckon if I’m going to be sitting on top of one of the most complicated places in history for the next few years, I may as well do more than keep my monks in order.’

‘Then you’re going to love what I’ve got,’ Morgan said excitedly, patting his bag. ‘Someone else was doing the same thing almost a hundred years ago. His work was left unfinished, and has never before been published. It’s mostly a detailed record of the early medieval elevations, but there are some observations on the Roman stuff underneath that will take your breath away.’ Morgan lowered his voice. ‘He thought that when King Herod Agrippa rebuilt the city walls in the mid first century AD, he also put a shrine on this spot, only a few years after the crucifixion. If you can help me follow his clues, we may have one of the most extraordinary revelations ever in the archaeology of early Christianity.’

Helena seemed rooted to the stool, and had gone pale. ‘You’re kidding me. Wait till you hear what I’ve found. Who was this guy?’

Jack took out a sheaf of papers from his faded khaki bag, and laid them on his knees. Costas leaned over from where he was sitting and shut the door. ‘That’s what we couldn’t tell you about on the phone,’ Jack said.

For the next forty minutes he quietly ran through everything: the shipwreck, Herculaneum, Rome, the London tomb, the clues they had found the day before in the nunnery in California. At the end he glanced at Helena, who was staring speechless at him, and then he placed a photograph on her desk of Everett’s wall painting with the chi-rho symbol and the Greek letters. ‘Does this do anything for you?’

Helena looked straight at the bottom of the photograph. She seemed stunned, and remained motionless.

‘Well?’

She cleared her throat, and steadied herself on the side of the desk. She blinked hard, then peered closely at the image. ‘Well, that’s an Armenian cross. The lower shaft is longer than the arms and top, and those are the distinctive double tips.’

Jack nodded. ‘Does that help us?’

‘Well, if you’re looking for something Armenian inside the Holy Sepulchre, you’d be thinking of the Chapel of St Helena, below the church in the ancient quarry. It’s one part of the church the Armenian monks are responsible for.’ She stopped abruptly, gripped the table and whispered, ‘Of course.’

‘What is it?’

Helena spoke quietly. ‘Okay. Here’s my take. My particular interest is what lies under the church. Everything above, between the bedrock and the roof, is encrustation, that word again, Costas. A fascinating record of the history of Christianity, but encrustation on any truth this place may have to offer on the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the man.’

‘Go on,’ Jack said.

‘It’s what Dr Morgan said about Herod Agrippa, the idea of a first-century shrine. Ever since first standing in that underground chapel, I’ve been convinced there’s more Roman evidence buried under the church, from the time of Jesus and the Apostles. From everything you’ve just told me, from what you’ve managed to piece together about the events of 1917, it turns out we’ve been following the same leads.’

‘Explain.’

‘You say this man Everett was here during the First World War? A British intelligence officer? A devout man, who spent much of his time in the Holy Sepulchre? An architect by training?’

Morgan patted his bag. ‘He’s the one who wrote the architectural treatise I mentioned. I’ve got a CD copy you can have.’

‘I didn’t know the name, but I know the man,’ Helena murmured. ‘I know him intimately. I feel his presence every time I stand in that underground chapel.’

‘How?’ Jack exclaimed.

‘Three years ago, when I first arrived here. The key to the main door of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is held by two Muslim families, a tradition that goes back to the time of Saladin the Great. One family takes care of the key, the other opens the door. They’ve been more sympathetic to the Ethiopians on the roof than some of our fellow Christian brethren, and I became close to the old patriarch of one of the families. Before he died he told me an extraordinary story from his youth. It was early 1918, when he was a boy of ten. The Turks had been evicted, and the British were in control of Jerusalem. His grandfather remembered from decades before that British officers often had a great interest in the history and architecture of the place, engineers like Colonel Warren and Colonel Wilson who mapped out Jerusalem in the 1860s. Because of this, the caretakers were better disposed towards the British occupiers than the Turks, who were fellow Muslims but had no interest in the Holy Sepulchre. The old man told me that a British officer who spoke Arabic came with two army surveyors and spent many days in the church, mapping out the underground chapels and exploring the ancient quarry cuttings and water cisterns. Afterwards the officer came back many times by himself, and befriended the boy. The officer was sad, sometimes tearful, said he had children of his own he’d not seen for years and would never see again. He’d been badly wounded and gassed on the Western Front, and had difficulty breathing, coughed up blood a lot.’

‘That’s our man,’ Jack murmured excitedly.

‘Apparently on his last visit he spent a whole night in the church. The caretakers knew he was a very pious Christian, and left him alone. When he emerged he was muddied and dripping, shivering, as if he’d been down a sewer. He told them they had a great treasure in their safe keeping, and they must guard it for ever. They knew he had been badly traumatized in the war and thought he was probably delirious, and was referring to the Holy Sepulchre, to the tomb of Christ. He disappeared, and they never saw him again. With his lungs being so weak, they thought his final night’s exertions might have killed him.’

‘Did the old man talk about anything that Everett and his surveyors might have found?’ Jack asked. ‘Anything in the Chapel of St Helena? We’re looking for some kind of hiding place.’

Helena shook her head. ‘Nothing. But the custodians have always known there are many unexplored places under the Holy Sepulchre, ancient chambers that might once have been tombs, cisterns cut into the old burial ground. Entrances that were sealed up in the Roman period, and have never been opened up since.’

‘Then we’ll just have to trust our instincts,’ Jack murmured.

‘I’ve spent many hours down there, days,’ Helena said. ‘There are so many possibilities. Every stone in every wall could conceal a chamber, a passageway. And they’re almost all mortared up or plastered over. I know of at least half a dozen stone blocks in walls that have spaces behind them, where you can see chinks through the mortar. But doing any kind of invasive exploration is out of the question. The Armenians are going to take a dim view of me taking you down there in the first place, let alone unleashing jackhammers.’

Jack reached for the photograph of Everett’s wall painting from the nunnery, and opened his folder. ‘If we don’t try, someone else will. There are others who know we’re here, I’m convinced of it. We need to move now. Can you get the door to the Holy Sepulchre unlocked for us?’

‘I can do that.’ Helena caught another glimpse of the photograph in Jack’s hand, then suddenly reached out and grabbed his arm. ‘Wait! What’s that? Under the cross?’

‘A Latin inscription,’ Jack said. ‘It’s not clear in the picture, but it says Domine Iumius.’

Helena was still for a moment, then gasped. ‘That’s it! Now I know where Everett went.’ She got up, her eyes ablaze. ‘I need at least two of you with me. Two strong pairs of hands.’

Costas gave a thumbs-up. ‘I’m with you.’

‘Where?’ Jack demanded

‘You’re the nautical archaeologist, Jack. Ships and boats. What’s the most incredible recent discovery in the Holy Sepulchre? Follow me.’