The Last Testament

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

J ERUSALEM , F RIDAY , 1.11 PM

Uri kept his spirits high for most of the journey. Sitting in the front, alongside the driver, and against a pounding techno beat from the radio, he took delight in explaining his father’s clue.

‘You see, I read it too quickly. I assumed that ‘Go west, young man’ had to refer to the Western Wall. It was obvious. But why would my father go to all that trouble just to do something obvious? He meant go west across Jerusalem, to the west of the city. To the place that “my brother”-your father, Mustapha-would know. The clue was in the word Mishkan. It can refer to the Temple, but also this place, the Knesset.’ Right on cue, they passed Israel’s parliament.

‘What about the rest? The path of ancient warrens?’

‘Don’t worry, Maggie. We’ll see it when we get there. I’m sure of it.’

He then turned back towards the driver, asking to borrow his mobile phone. He had done the same thing the instant they had left the Colony, then, as now, speaking intently in Hebrew for a while, before smiling and hanging up. Maggie wondered whether he had just phoned Orli: perhaps she was not as ex a girlfriend as Uri had insisted.

She was about to inquire when Uri’s face seemed to darken. He began drumming his fingers on the hard vinyl above the glove compartment, urging the driver to go faster. When Maggie asked him what was wrong, he came back with a single word: ‘Shabbat.’

They pulled into a car park, one that was worryingly empty. Uri did his best to bolt out of the car, hobbling over to the ticket office which consisted of a series of windows, all of them closed. By the time Maggie and Mustapha had caught up, Uri was already gesticulating desperately to a security guard on the door. As he feared, the Israel Museum was closed for the sabbath.

After much pleading, the guard grudgingly passed Uri a cellphone, apparently already connected. Uri’s voice changed instantly, suddenly lighter, full of warmth and humour. Maggie had no idea what he was saying, but she felt certain that Uri was speaking to a woman.

Sure enough, a few minutes later an attractive young woman carrying a walkie-talkie and with a name tag pinned to the front of her dark blue jacket, appeared at the gate. As she approached, Uri turned to Maggie and Mustapha and whispered: ‘We’re a TV crew from the BBC, OK? Maggie, you’re the reporter.’

The woman had a quizzical look on her face, but it was not hostile and Maggie could only admire as she watched Uri go to work. He gave this girl, her hair pulled back into a ponytail, both barrels-the fixed eye contact and the occasional shake of the head, to get the long curls of hair out of his eyes, even the hand landing, as if inadvertently, on her forearm. It was a charm offensive that offended Maggie much less than it charmed the ponytail girl, at least if the sudden unlocking of bolts and creaking opening of the gate was anything to go by.

As they were ushered in, the guard shaking his head in jobsworth disbelief, the woman pointing at her watch as if to say ‘just five minutes’, Maggie gave Uri a bewildered look.

‘Media relations officer,’ Uri said. ‘Told her we’d met a few years ago and how sad I was that she’d already forgotten me.’

‘And did you meet her a few years ago?’

‘I have no idea.’

Uri had played the film-maker, somehow persuading the young woman that he, Maggie and Mustapha were part of a documentary crew due to fly back to London tonight. They desperately needed to get one last shot. It was, Uri had explained, a long distance zoom, which is why there was no sign of a cameraman. He was, in fact, over there, Uri had said, pointing at the faraway trees just below En Kerem. The camera would begin with Maggie in shot, then pull out to show the whole, extraordinary panorama. Their colleague was in position now; the media relations officer could call him if she wanted. The whole thing would take just five minutes and they would be gone.

‘And she bought that crap?’

‘I think she liked that I still remembered her.’

They were walking through what seemed like a university campus, or a private garden. There were neat rows of shrubs, each lovingly irrigated by lines of black hosepipe. All around was playful modern sculpture, including a giant steel column, painted red, that revealed itself as an oversized dog-whistle. There were signs off the main path, directing visitors to galleries, the gift shop or the restaurant. She could understand why Nour, exhausted by the dust and grime of Ramallah, would have dreamed of such a place for Palestine.

Now they passed an enormous white structure, set in a square pool of shallow water. It was an extraordinary shape, like a sensuously moulded breast, its nipple in the dead centre, pointing skyward. The surface, Maggie could now see, consisted of a thousand tiny white bricks.

‘Shrine of the Book,’ Uri said briskly, marching forward. ‘Where they keep the Dead Sea Scrolls. You know they were found in, how do you say that in English? An urn? So that’s the shape of the lid.’

‘So not a tit then,’ Maggie said to no one in particular. But Mustapha, who was walking beside her, smiled.

‘Here.’ It was Uri who had led them upward, so that they were now standing on a raised stone platform, looking across at a sweeping view of Jerusalem. On her right, Maggie could see the various government buildings Uri had pointed out en route, even a running track. Opposite, and in the distance, was indeed a thick covering of trees: Maggie half-expected to spot a cameraman, waiting for their signal.

But that was not what Uri was looking at. Instead, like a passenger on deck pointing at the seas below, he was gesturing downward, leaning over the observation bar to what lay beneath.

And now Maggie saw it. Laid out on the ground below was a miniature city, its walls, its streets, its houses. Everything was perfect, down to the little red roofs and the rows of hand-crafted columns, the tiny trees and the minuscule bricks in each wall. There were courtyards, turrets, even a coliseum. She was confused: was this a model of ancient Rome? And what was this structure that loomed over all the rest, solid marble and three times taller than any other building, its entrance framed by four Corinthian columns, each one crowned in gold, leading to a roof that seemed to blaze with precious metal?

A heartbeat later and she understood. This was a model of ancient Jerusalem and that was the Temple, its dominating, all-encompassing vastness clear now in a way it had never been before. This was how the city would have looked two thousand years ago, when the Second Temple of the Jews still stood. Of course it was disorientating; the most obvious landmark of the Temple Mount-the gold Dome of the Rock-had not yet been built; it would come six centuries later. But how awesome this sight must have been to the people who lived here two millennia ago. How terrifying to gaze upon a building so high, its walls and colonnades stretching so far and so wide, rendering the rest of Jerusalem nothing more than its hinterland.

Go west, young man, and make your way to the model city…

Maggie wanted to laugh at the simplicity of it. Guttman had been both ingenious and obvious, so long as you knew where to look. He had, Maggie realized now, been thorough too. If ‘my brother’ Ahmed Nour had been alive, he might well have known to come here straight away. But if he was gone, there was an alternative path to this place, via Second Life. He had secured his treasure by both belt and braces.

Uri had already taken the stairs down, so that he was now at the same level as the model. As Maggie watched him walk around, searching, the scale suddenly became clear; most of this city barely reached the height of his knee.

‘OK, Maggie,’ he called up, his voice different. ‘We’ll need you here, I think. For the shot. Musta-Mark, if you can join me down here, we can work out the angle.’

There was a small, low rail surrounding the model, nothing more. Unless you counted the ring of craggy rock which formed a miniature moat around it. But both could be easily walked over, so long as you waded with care.

‘Head there,’ Uri said, pointing at one of the outer retaining walls of the vast Temple courtyard. Behind it was the back of the structure itself. Maggie realized what she was doing: this was the Western Wall and she was aiming for the very spot where she had walked, underground, that morning. They had searched around the Temple Mount in the real world. Now they would do the same here, in the model version.

‘And take this,’ he said, handing her the mobile he had borrowed from, and not returned to, the cab driver. ‘I’ve called it already and it’s on speaker. Leave it on and it’ll be an open line between us.’ He then added firmly, ‘If anything happens, just do exactly what I say. Understand?’ When Maggie asked what he meant, he shook his head: ‘No time. As soon as they see what we’re doing, they’ll throw us out.’

She stepped as gingerly as she could over the barrier and then the moat. She felt like Gulliver in ankle boots, Alice in Wonderland treading her giantess feet between these dwarf dwellings and midget walls. The space between them was barely enough to stand in. As she tiptoed faster, she felt the crunch of what she feared was a portico entrance to some grand mansion.

She looked back to see Uri pointing at a particular spot on the wall. It was a staircase, side on, which ascended to a small opening. It was directly in line with the centre of the Temple and therefore with the Temple Mount itself. Of course. This was Warren’s Gate, where she had been this morning, close to where she had seen the women crying, feeling the dampness of the wall: God’s tears. Directly behind it, just a matter of yards away, the women had said, was the Rock itself, the Foundation Stone, the place where Abraham had been ready to kill his son. You’ll find what I left for you there, in the path of ancient warrens.

She was now looming over this tiny staircase, close enough to examine each individually crafted step. It had been impossible to see from afar, the side wall of the staircase kept it in shadow. She crouched down to see the top of the stairs, the flat surface that led onto the gate. She touched it, but felt only dust. Even this, she thought, the model-makers had got right: the same Old City dust she had had on her feet that morning.

Maggie stayed low, scratching away at the dust, until she felt something. A gap, a line between the sidewall of the model staircase and what was meant to be its top landing. She dug in her nails, pulling away the dust. The space continued all around.

Maggie tugged harder now. There was movement, she could feel it. Finally the small rectangle of ground gave way in her hand. She knew that, at long last, she had found it.

Suddenly, she heard the sound of a woman’s screams, followed by the thundering noise of male footsteps, charging as if in an animal stampede. She had barely stood up to her full height when she heard a single word bellowed out at terrifying volume.

‘FREEZE!’

Stationed all around the model city, surrounding it from every angle, were half a dozen men, all dressed in black, their faces covered in masks. And each one of them had an automatic weapon aimed at her head.