The Last Testament

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

JERUSALEM , FRIDAY , 1.32 PM

Her eyes searched for Uri, but could see no sign of him. Nor of Mustapha. She remained frozen to the spot.

‘Put your hands in the air. Now!’

Maggie did as she was told, phone in one hand and the clay tablet in the other. Her heart was thumping, powered by the excitement, still coursing through her veins, at finding what she felt sure was the tablet and, now, by sheer mortal terror.

Then a familiar voice. ‘Thank you, Maggie. You surpassed yourself.’

He had been the last to arrive, coming down the stairs only now to join his men on the same level as the model city. ‘I’m grateful. Your country is grateful.’ She had to move her eyes to the left to see him: Bruce Miller.

‘So why don’t we do this cool and calm. You just stay there, and one of my boys will approach and relieve you of the tablet. Try anything stupid and we’ll blow your brains out.’

Maggie could barely think above the throb of her own blood. She was truly cornered; what option did she have but to surrender to Miller? After all she and Uri had been through, she had to face reality. He and his gang of torturers had won.

It was then she heard another voice, nearer than Miller’s yet not as clear. It took her a second to realize where it was coming from.

‘Maggie, it’s Uri.’ The mobile phone, on speaker, crackling away inside her own hand. ‘Listen very carefully. Tell Miller there is a live camera on him right now, streaming pictures of this onto the internet.’

She looked around again; no sign of Uri. He must have seen the men coming and fled down the hillside, perhaps into the trees. And what was this lunacy about cameras and the internet? Blagging your way past some PR girl on the door of a museum was one thing. Trying to bullshit a henchman to the American president was madness.

Then she remembered the moment on the highway, the instant moment of judgment when she had had to decide whether she trusted Uri or not. She had trusted him-and she had been right.

‘Now be a good little girl and give us the tablet. Otherwise my boys might want to finish what they started. Don’t think they didn’t enjoy inspecting that tidy little body a yours inside and out. But, gotta tell ya, they found it a little frustrating, being restricted to the use of their hands and all. Next time, what if they take turns banging you, front and rear, then find a hundred different ways to rub out your boyfriend? How’s that sound?’

Uri’s voice again. ‘Tell him to call the consulate. Get them to look at www.uriguttman.com and tell him what they see.’

Maggie hesitated; a plan was forming in her head. This was a public place, exposed. Miller wouldn’t want to take her by force. Not here, not if he could help it. That was why he hadn’t yet pounced. She spoke again.

‘Is that any way for Bruce Miller, Special Assistant to the President of the United States, to be talking?’

‘I’m the Political Counsellor to the President, if you don’t mind, young lady. Now give me that tablet.’

Maggie smiled. Nothing more important to a Washington man than his title.

Uri’s voice crackled again: ‘Maggie, what are you doing? Tell him about the camera! Tell him to call the consulate!’

Not yet.

‘You mean this?’ She held up the tablet, keeping it as straight and steady as she could. ‘What could be so important about this little object that you’ve got six men aiming their guns at me, an innocent woman-Maggie Costello, negotiator for the United States State Department?’

‘We’ve been over this, Maggie.’

‘It’s just a little bit of clay, Mr Miller. Not much bigger than a credit card. What could be so important about that?’

Uri was boiling over. ‘Tell him!’

‘Are you bluffing, Costello? You playing for time, ’cause you been had? Is that some dummy tablet in your hand? ’Cause if it is, you ain’t got nothing. No bargaining chip, no leverage, not a bean.’

‘Oh, I’ve got the real thing here, Bruce Miller, believe me. The last will and testament of Abraham the patriarch. That’s what you’re looking for, isn’t it?’

‘Maggie!’ Uri was getting desperate, but she wasn’t done yet.

‘And that’s why Rachel Guttman had to die. And Baruch Kishon. And Afif Aweida and God knows who else. You got your men to kill those people, just because of this, didn’t you?’

‘Maggie, come on. You know why we had to take those people out. If we didn’t get that tablet into safe hands, many more would die. Thousands, maybe even millions.’

‘So you’re not ashamed of killing those people, even though they were innocent? You’re not ashamed of assaulting me and torturing Uri Guttman? Tell me honestly, Bruce Miller. Look me in the eye and tell me.’

‘Ashamed? I’m proud of it.’

‘All right. I’ll give the tablet to you,’ she said, doing her best to keep her voice steady. She had heard what she needed to hear. But the guns remained locked on her.

‘But there’s something you ought to know, Mr Miller. You’ve just made what could be your greatest ever TV appearance. There’s a camera on you right now, relaying this whole conversation onto the internet. Call the consulate. Get someone to log on to www.uriguttman.com. Ask them to describe to you what they see. Go on. If I’m lying you’ll soon find out and then you can do what the hell you like to me.’

She saw Miller pull out his mobile phone and whisper into it.

Uri spoke again. ‘Tell him to wave for the camera.’

Maggie could hear the confidence in Uri’s voice. ‘Come on, Bruce Miller, Political Counsellor to the President of the United States of America, give us a wave,’ she called out.

She heard two words of confirmation, from Miller’s own mouth. They were said quietly, but their meaning was unmistakeable.

‘Holy shit.’

God only knew how, but Uri had not been bluffing. He did indeed have Miller on camera; it had held steady on his face as he had identified himself and confessed everything.

‘That’s mighty clever, Miss Costello. I’ll hand it to you. But with the greatest of respect, who cares about some no-name website? No one was watching that. It went into the ether and now it’s vanished.’

‘Not quite. We’re recording this as it goes out. People will be able to play it again and again.’ It was Uri’s voice, except this time it was not coming through the phone. He was emerging from the hillside, climbing back up through the trees-with a small, hand-held video-camera at his eye. Walking beside him was Mustapha. Maggie could only smile at the sheer cheek of it.

‘Right now, we’ve got the news editor over at Channel 2 looking at these pictures. And who was it you just phoned, Mustapha?’

‘Al Jazeera. Ramallah bureau.’

‘They’re all watching this little scene. And before you get any ideas, Mr Miller, this is only a second camera. Getting what we call B-roll. The main camera is down there, safely hidden from view. You blast me now and my friend there will capture it in glorious Technicolor.’

Maggie could see Miller paling. He tried a smug smile, one of his characteristic TV expressions, but it came out crooked. Finally he stammered out some words. ‘Who’s going to believe this cock and bull story of yours?’

‘No one would have believed it, Bruce,’ Maggie conceded. ‘Not until you confirmed every last detail just now. For which we are eternally grateful. You know, when this bit of video finds its way onto YouTube and CNN and ABC and all the rest, I don’t think even you will be able to talk your way out of it.’

A mobile phone rang. Miller’s. He answered, only to turn from pale to transparent. He swivelled around, showing his back to Uri’s camera, though his voice was still audible.

‘Yes, Mr President. I can hear you clearly, sir. I understand: you can see me too. I agree, technology is an incredible thing, sir.’ He said nothing for a good half-minute, then spoke again. ‘I will draft the letter of resignation immediately, sir. And yes, I will make clear that this was a rogue operation, wholly my own initiative. Goodbye, Mr President.’

Without another word, Miller gestured at the armed men. Their weapons still raised, they slowly withdrew back up the steps, away from the model, forming a kind of protective cordon around Miller’s retreat. A few seconds later and they were gone.

Uri lowered his camera and walked over to Maggie. As they hugged, he pointed towards the trees. ‘That’s who I was calling from the car. An old cameraman friend of mine who lives in En Kerem. I told him to get in position, hide himself and aim his longest lens here. Oh, and to bring his smallest microwave transmitter with him. With the sound from your phone, I’d say it was my best work.’

Maggie suddenly broke off the hug, seized by a thought.

‘Is that thing still on?’

Uri nodded.

It was the object in her hand that made her do it. It felt like an explosive, primed to go off at any moment. So many people had already been killed for it; she and Uri had been chased, beaten and shot for it. No one who held its secrets was safe.

‘Point the camera at me,’ she said to Uri. ‘Right now.’

He brought the viewfinder to his eye, steadied himself, then gave her a thumbs up.

‘My name is Maggie Costello. I’m a peace negotiator working for the United States government in Jerusalem. This,’ she held up the tablet, just as Shimon Guttman had done in the video-message they had seen yesterday, ‘this tablet is nearly four thousand years old. Over the course of the last week, Bruce Miller and an American covert-ops team have bugged, burgled and murdered their way across this country and beyond trying to get hold of it. You heard Mr Miller confess to that a moment ago. He wanted to keep the fact of this tablet’s existence, and above all its contents, a secret. And here’s why.’

At last she took a good look at the object she had peeled from its hiding place by the miniature Warren’s Gate, gripping it tightly ever since. When she finally saw it up close, she was almost disappointed. It was so small, the characters etched on it so tiny. The whole thing was no bigger, and much slimmer, than a cigarette packet, hewn from rough, earthen clay. And yet her own government had been prepared to kill for it-along with any number of fanatics among both the Israelis and Palestinians. The words carved here, so many thousands of years ago, would have the power to unleash a war of wars, one that would never stay confined to those two sides. What if Abraham had given Mount Moriah to Ishmael but the Israelis refused to hand it over? The world’s Muslims would insist they had been cheated of their birthright. The clash of civilizations would be made terrifyingly real. And if Abraham had bequeathed the Temple Mount to the Jews, would the Muslims simply give way, letting go of the site where Mohammed rose to the heavens? Whatever this small chunk of clay said, it could only spell victory for one side and disaster for the other.

As she turned it over, she looked for a small piece of tape on the bottom edge which she had noticed when she pulled the tablet from the ground. She had assumed it was part of the fixing that Shimon Guttman had cleverly devised to keep this treasure hidden in the shadows of the model city. But when she brought it up to her eye she saw that it was not just tape, though it was sticky on one side. It was instead a tiny clear plastic envelope, a small-scale version of the kind traffic wardens put on car windscreens to keep a parking ticket dry. Carefully, she peeled it away from the tablet. Then she removed from it a small white square of paper bearing three neat, if tiny, blocks of print. The first was in Hebrew, the second in Arabic and the third in English.

She skimmed the English paragraph and began to read aloud, into the camera.

‘This is a tablet dictated to a scribe by Abraham the patriarch, shortly before his death in Hebron. It is in cuneiform script, in Old Babylonian language. The translation of his words reads thus:

‘I Abraham, son of Terach, in front of the judges have attested thus. The land where I took my son, there to make a sacrifice of him to the Mighty Name, the Mountain of Moriah, this land has become a source of dissension between my two sons; let their names here be recorded as Isaac and Ishmael. So have I thus declared in front of the judges that the Mount shall be bequeathed as follows-’

She fell silent the instant the shot rang out. When she hit the ground, her hand stayed tightly wound around the tablet, clinging on to it, as if to life itself.