The Last Testament

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

J ERUSALEM , F RIDAY , 11.50 AM

Maggie stared at the message, her brow slowly smoothing into a smile. She only knew one Vladimir, and that was Vladimir Jabotinsky, mentor and pseudonym of Shimon Guttman. Vladimir Junior could only be one person. With a relief that flowed through her as a wave of exhaustion, she understood what Uri was telling her. That he was alive. Somehow he had survived the gunshot on the highway; somehow he had endured whatever agonies Miller’s goons had inflicted on him. And now he was in ‘an old moment’. She had to smile at that. He knew she would remember it, because they had talked about it: the café that used to be Moment.

When she opened the door, she saw him immediately, in the same seat she had found him in two days ago. Except now he was looking up, straight at her.

‘You know,’ she said, ‘I normally insist on going somewhere new for a second date.’

He tried to smile, but only a wince would come. She sat beside him, planting a long kiss on his lips. She had been relieved when she got the note, but that was nothing next to her feelings now. She moved to hug him, stopping when he let out a yelp of pain.

He pointed at his leg, explaining that underneath these jeans was a thick bandage covering a bullet wound. He told her about the shooting and the interrogation, her face registering each new agony as he described it. And he told her how his tormentors, in the middle of their work, had received a phone call, one that made them stop. They had dressed him in new clothes and driven him to the centre of town, dumping him ten minutes from here. They left him with a warning: ‘You saw what happened to your parents. If you don’t keep your mouth shut, the same will happen to you.’ He had been blindfolded throughout.

‘Uri, did the men who…did they ever tell you who they were?’

‘They didn’t have to.’

‘You guessed?’

‘I guessed even before they spoke in English. They were speaking to each other in Arabic. Calling their leader Daoud, the whole thing. Their accents weren’t bad. But they were like mine.’ He tried to smile. ‘They had intelligence-officer Arabic. You know, an accent learned in a classroom. Mine’s the same. I wondered if they were Israelis at first. I spoke to them in Hebrew.’ He shook his head. ‘Not a word. So I worked it out. Later, when they were torturing me, they didn’t even hide it. That’s what frightened me the most.’

Maggie’s eyebrows shaped themselves into a question.

‘When they don’t care if you know who they are, that can only mean one thing. That they’re going to kill you. Their secret is going to be safe.’

When she described what had happened to her, trying hard not to spell out the physical details, his eyes held hers with a seriousness she hadn’t seen before. His face registered fury and resolve but, above all, sorrow. Finally and quietly, he said: ‘Are you OK?’

She tried to speak, to say that she was all right, but the words were caught in her throat. Her eyes were stinging too. She hadn’t cried until this moment, not until Uri had asked her that question. He held her hand, squeezing it as if in compensation for the words she wasn’t saying. And he kept holding it.

When she told him about Miller, keeping her voice low, his face showed only mild surprise. ‘You do realize,’ she said, ‘that this goes all the way to the top.’

‘Of course it does. Special forces don’t just deploy themselves.’

And then she felt it again, that same unease she sensed when Miller had let her go. She reached into her pocket, pulling out the piece of paper from the hotel, with Uri’s message on it. On the other side, she scribbled a question.

When did they let you go? What time did the phone call come?

Uri looked puzzled for a second, then wrote down a guess at the answer. Maggie looked at the clock on the wall in the café. It was hard to work out with any accuracy, but if Uri was right, he had been released just minutes after her. The phone call must have come from Miller. We’re letting her go; now let him go, too.

Maggie pulled back the piece of paper. ‘So, Uri, I need to eat. What do they have here? I need to have something hot.’ As she spoke, she was writing furiously.

They set us free to follow us. They haven’t given up. They want us to lead them to it.

‘Well,’ said Uri, reading Maggie’s note and nodding. ‘The eggs are not bad. And the coffee. They serve it in big cups. Almost like bowls.’

They carried on like that, chatting about nothing. They spoke about what had happened, knowing it would sound strange if they didn’t. But of what they would do next, they said not a word. At least not out loud.

There were fewer cars on the road now: Shabbat was coming, Uri explained. Jerusalem was getting more and more orthodox these days which meant driving from Friday afternoon till sundown on Saturday was frowned upon. Another reason this place could make you crazy.

Uri hailed a cab, speaking to the driver who promptly cranked up the volume on the radio.

‘OK, Vladimir Junior,’ said Maggie. ‘What’s going on?’ She made a dramatic face before quoting his message: ‘“I know what we have to do.”’

Uri explained that he had worked it out as the pain had intensified; he was sure it came to him right then. They were torturing him for information he didn’t have. But by the time they were ready to let him go, he had something. My brother, his father had said. Who else could he mean?

He had gone back to the internet café, logged on as his father once again and found that email Ahmed Nour’s son or daughter had sent. Who are you? And why were you contacting my father? In their haste, Maggie and he had done nothing about it, assuming that Nour Junior knew as little about his father as Uri did about his.

This time Uri had replied and, not long afterwards, there had been a response. Uri had been careful to say little, just that he had information on the death of Ahmed Nour and was keen to share it. The two bereaved sons, Israeli and Palestinian, agreed to meet at the American Colony Hotel, just fractionally on the eastern, and therefore Arab, side of the invisible seam that divided Jerusalem. They would be there in just a few minutes.

Maggie nodded. She had stayed there once, the last time she had been here. Nearly ten years ago, but she remembered it: the place was a legend. Watering hole for visiting journalists, diplomats, unofficial would-be peacemakers, assorted do-gooders and spies for all she knew. They would sit in the shaded courtyard, sipping mint tea and trading gossip for hours. In the evening, you would see the news correspondents come in, the dust of Gaza on their shoes. After a day seeing Third-World poverty and often bloody violence, coming back to the Colony was like returning to a safe haven.

That’s how it seemed now, too, as they paid the taxi and walked in. The cool stone floor of the lobby, the old-world portraits and drawings on the wall, the bowing welcome of the staff. ‘Colony’ was right; the place could have been air-dropped straight out of the 1920s. It came back to her now, a memory of the room she slept in nearly a decade earlier. Above the desk had been a black and white photograph of the British General Allenby, entering Jerusalem in 1917. Modern Israel might have been just outside, but in here you could find the Palestine of long ago.

Uri didn’t linger. He headed through the lobby and down the stairs, limping heavily. It was hardly a precaution-he knew they were being followed-but he told Nour to meet them by the one place the Colony’s guests rarely used. If there was anyone else but Nour’s son around, they would know just how closely they were being pursued.

Sure enough, the swimming pool was desolate, surrounded by a few unused sunchairs. Even when the weather was good, no one really sunbathed in Jerusalem. Not that kind of city. There was only one person here.

When he saw Uri approach, followed a pace or two behind by Maggie, he stood up. Against the bright sunlight, Maggie couldn’t make out much more than an outline at first. But as she got nearer, she could see that he was tall, with hair cut short, almost shaven. As her eyes adjusted, she registered that he was probably in his early thirties, with sharp, clear green eyes. He wore jeans and a loose T-shirt.

Uri offered a hand, which the Palestinian took hesitantly. Maggie remembered the famous Rabin-Arafat handshake on the White House lawn back in 1993, how awkward Rabin had seemed, his whole upper body clenched into a posture of reluctance. The media had made so much of it, but the world fraternity of mediators had given it a familiar nod: they saw similarly constipated body language all the time.

‘I realize,’ Uri began, ‘that I don’t even know your name.’

‘It’s Mustapha. And you’re-’

‘I’m Uri.’ They were speaking over each other. Nervousness, Maggie decided, and unfamiliarity: Israelis and Palestinians might live yards away from each other but, she knew, they hardly ever did anything as simple as talk.

Each gestured for the other to continue. Then Uri remembered himself, dipping into his shoulder bag to produce the portable radio he had picked up that morning. He turned it up loud, before mouthing, by way of explanation, the single word: bugs. Then he began again, first introducing Maggie, then getting to business.

‘Mustapha, thanks so much for coming here. I know it’s not easy.’

‘I’m lucky to have Jerusalem residency. Otherwise, from Ramallah, it would have been impossible.’

‘Look, as you know, our fathers knew each other.’ Uri went on to explain the discovery of the anagram and the coded emails. Then, taking a deep breath, as if girding himself, he explained everything else: the tablet, the videomessage from his father, the tunnels. How Uri knew they were close, but not close enough.

‘And you think my father knew where this tablet was hidden?’

‘Maybe. After my father, yours was the very first killed. Someone thought he knew something.’

Mustapha Nour, who had been holding Uri’s gaze, now looked over at Maggie, as if for validation. She gave a small nod.

‘You know,’ he said finally, looking down at his fingers, ‘I always stayed out of politics. That was my father’s business.’

‘I know the feeling,’ said Uri.

‘We went through his emails and notebooks. We didn’t see anything about this. There was a lock on his phone, so we couldn’t check that, but his assistant went through his computer thoroughly.’

‘Did he talk to you, in the last few days? About some kind of discovery?’

‘No. We didn’t talk much about his work.’

Uri leaned back, exhaling noisily. Maggie could tell that he was about to give up; this had been his last good idea.

I have put it somewhere safe, somewhere only you and my brother could know.

A wheel began to turn slowly in Maggie’s brain. She thought of how Shimon Guttman’s messages had worked so far, urging Uri to remember things he already knew. What did we do on that trip, Uri? I hope you remember that. Perhaps, Maggie thought now, he had done the same with his ‘brother’, Ahmed Nour. He had passed on no new information to his Palestinian colleague. Nour merely had to remember something he already knew.

‘Mustapha,’ Maggie began, placing a hand on Uri’s forearm, gently but firmly telling him to give her a moment. ‘Did it come as a complete surprise to you that your father knew an Israeli?’

‘Yes,’ he said, looking up at her, the green eyes piercing. Maggie was disappointed, thinking of a new line of inquiry, when he spoke again. ‘And no.’

‘No?’

‘Well, it did when I first heard from you,’ he nodded towards Uri. ‘But the more I thought about it, the more it kind of made sense. I mean, he knew a lot about Israel, my father. He was an expert in the languages of this region, including, by the way, the script those ancient tablets are written in. And of course he knew Hebrew. He knew a lot about the way this country worked.’

‘Know your enemy.’ It was Uri, speaking just before Maggie had a chance to stamp on his foot. She was nodding more energetically now, hoping that she could keep Mustapha’s eyeline from straying over to Uri.

‘So he was a real expert,’ she said. ‘Go on.’

‘Well, it makes sense that he couldn’t only have got that from books. I realize that he probably spent more time here than he ever said. And that maybe he had someone to show him around.’

‘OK. Did he ever mention-’

‘Like I know he went to the tunnels, under the Haram al-Sharif. Not many Palestinians have done that. But I know he did it, though he never said so publicly. He disagreed with them passionately. “They’re a Zionist attempt to undermine the Muslim Quarter,” he said.’

‘But he went anyway.’

‘He was curious.’

‘He was an archaeologist,’ Maggie said with a sympathetic smile.

‘Always. So he wanted to see.’

Maggie imagined these two old men, from opposite ideological poles, one an ultra-Zionist, the other a Palestinian nationalist, tagging along with a tourist party through the ancient tunnels she had seen that morning. Was it possible? Could Shimon Guttman have acted as a guide to Ahmed Nour, showing him the hidden reaches of the Western Wall? Had Nour perhaps done the same for Guttman, ushering him through the buried places of the Palestinian past? No wonder Guttman had wanted to speak to Nour about the tablet. They might well have been the only two people in this divided land able to read what it said-and to understand its true meaning.

She let the silence hang a little longer. ‘Mustapha, I know it’s hard. But we really need you to think. Was there anywhere else, any other place, your father might have known of? That perhaps he had in common with Shimon Guttman?’

‘I really can’t think of anywhere.’

Maggie caught Uri’s eye, full of resignation. This is not working. He began to get up.

‘All right,’ Maggie said. ‘Let’s try this. Can we tell you the exact message Shimon Guttman left behind? See what it means to you?’

Mustapha nodded.

Maggie repeated it word for word, from memory. ‘“Go west, young man, and make your way to the model city, close to the Mishkan. You’ll find what I left for you there, in the path of ancient warrens.”’

Mustapha asked Maggie to repeat it, slowly. He shut his eyes as he listened to her. Finally, he spoke. ‘I think he has to mean the Haram al-Sharif, the exact place you went. Warrens are like tunnels, yes? And the model city. This is how we all speak of Jerusalem, Jews and Muslims.’

‘Sure, but where?’ Uri was showing his frustration.

‘When he says “Go west”, could that tell you the way to go through the tunnels?’

‘There is only one way through and I’ve done it.’ It was Maggie, her own exasperation no longer contained.

‘I am sorry.’

‘No,’ said Maggie, remembering herself. ‘It’s not your fault. We just thought there was something you might know.’

They began to walk back into the hotel. Maggie and Uri kept their heads down until they were in the car park, for fear of being recognized. Once outside, under the covered driveway by the hotel entrance, Maggie realized that she had barely offered her condolences to Mustapha. Out of politeness, she asked after his late father, how many children he had left, how many grandchildren.

‘And he was still working?’

‘Yes,’ he said, explaining about the dig at Beitin. ‘But that was not his life’s dream. His real dream, he will never see.’ His eyes were glittering.

‘And what was that, Mustapha?’ Maggie was aware that her head was cocked to one side, an amateurish bit of body language to convey ‘caring’.

‘He wanted to build a Palestine Museum, a beautiful building full of art and sculpture, and all the archaeological remains he could collect. The history of Palestine in one place.’

Uri looked up, suddenly alert.

‘Like the Israel Museum.’

‘Yes. In fact, I remember him speaking about that place. He said that one day we should have something like this. In our part of Jerusalem. Something that would show the world what used to be here, so they could see it for themselves.’

Uri’s eyes widened. ‘He said that?’

‘Yes.’ Mustapha was smiling. ‘A long time ago. “One day, Mustapha,” he said, “we shall build what they have, to show the world the history of our Jerusalem. Not abstract, but there to see and to touch.”’

‘My father must have shown it to him,’ Uri said quietly.

‘Uri?’

He gave her a brief glance. ‘I’ll explain on the way. Mustapha, can you come with us?’

Within a minute, the three of them were in a taxi, heading west across the city. The smile barely left Uri’s face, even when he was shaking his head, saying ‘of course’ to himself, again and again. When Maggie asked where the hell they were going, he looked at both Mustapha and her, his face breaking into a broad grin. ‘Thanks to our two fathers, I think our journey is about to end.’