True Raiders

by Brad Ricca

  You should not ignore that I have been arrested for more than four months in my capacity as secretary-interpreter for the Honorable Captain Montagu B. Parker and his union in London, and this according to a contract in good standing.

  My current situation has become shameful and untenable and I can no longer bear this pitiful existence, I find myself very seriously ill and I am in the last despair and the Honorable Mr. Montagu B. Parker is solely responsible for everything that can happen to me, because for more than three years that I have been under his orders I have rendered irreproachable services to him and his union. Here I am today; I am a victim of my duty, and the Honorable Mr. Montagu B. Parker shines with his silence. I also sent him the following telegram:

  “I am still in prison; regret silence; are responsible for me materially, morally; shameful situation; untenable; wire back wages and expenses.”

  Macasdar and the others were eventually sentenced: the sheikh to twelve months; the others, to three years each. With time served, they were set free on August 16, 1911. Monty offered to pay for their traveling expenses back to Jerusalem, but they refused.

  Mehmet Cavid Bey was appointed minister of finance in the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) in Turkey. When Monty wished to return to Jerusalem in 1911, Cavid again took the position of minister of finance and nominated inspectors to approve of Monty’s return. Because of his family lineage, schooling, and place of burial, Cavid is widely considered to have been a dhome, a cryptojew, which meant he practiced Judaism in secret in Turkey. When he used his influence to approve the Parker Expedition in 1909 (which he was paid for), he was still grieving over his wife, who had died of tuberculosis in March.

  Cavid still held his position when the CUP began the genocide of ethnic Christian Armenians in 1915, though he seemed to have been deliberately left out of the decision-making process, having been sent to Germany to negotiate a railroad contract when the order was discussed and given. Cavid was later accused of plotting the assassination of President Mustafa Kemal Pasha, who many held responsible for being part of the genocide. For this crime, Cavid was convicted and hanged in 1926. Though the actual number of dead will probably never be known, the number of people who were murdered during the Armenian genocide is somewhere around 1.5 million. Turkey denies that it ever occurred.

  Captain Hoppenrath returned to the Belgian Congo and his steamship. He was never made a member of the Syndicate.

  Father Vincent finally wrote his account of the expedition, Underground Jerusalem: Discoveries on the Hill of Ophel, 1909–11. The book, which was well received, first appeared in French but was translated into English and printed by Horace Cox in 1911. Father Vincent’s account is full of personality but also unabashedly scientific. He claimed that the members of the expedition “wanted their work to be presented by a witness who was not suspect and would not be biased.” In his book, Father Vincent makes no mention of the Ark—there is no proof he ever knew their true plans—and concludes that the expedition was a great success. He promises a second volume that never arrives. He went on to become one of the most highly respected biblical scholars in the world. He was an honorary member of the British Academy, the Order of the British Empire, Cross of the Order of Leopold, and the prestigious French Legion of Honor. He died on December 30, 1960, and is buried in the courtyard of his order in Jerusalem.

  After his lecture, Johan Millen published his own book on the expedition, Pa Ratta Vagar (“On the Right Track”), in 1917. The cover depicted a single eye on a red pyramid with strange beams radiating from it. In the book, Millen built on the racist theories of his lecture, in addition to providing alleged examples from the Bible predicting the machinery of the Great War. Millen’s notes and papers were deposited with the Swedish Theosophical Society, to be opened at his death. When he died in 1932, the safe deposit box was bare.

  Forty-Four

  Charles Warren

  After he returned from Singapore, Warren was inducted as the first master of a new Freemason lodge, the Quatuor Coronati Lodge number 2076, in 1884. Though Warren had been a Freemason since 1859, this new lodge’s focus was on rigorous scientific and historical research into the origins of Freemasonry, as well as the long-term aim of rebuilding the Temple of Solomon. Freemasonry, a fraternal society of hierarchy, secret handshakes, and charity, definitively traced its origins back at least to the Middle Ages, when a workers’ organization of stonecutters and masons was formed—although some believe the group may have formed even earlier. It was rumored that some lodges asked members to believe in a Supreme Being with a secret name, or to avoid any talk of religion at all.

  Warren was still in the army during the Second Boer War in 1899 and was made general of the Fifth Division of the South African Field Force. His actions at the Battle of Spion Kop, a barren hilltop in Ladysmith, were looked on with great criticism. Warren, who was nearly sixty and had little experience handling troops, made several errors throughout the battle. His division had slow mobility because of unnecessary encumbrance (including a cast-iron toilet), and he mismanaged basic reinforcement maneuvers, contributing to an overall lack of communication and eventual Boer victory. After the battle, the bodies of Englishmen destroyed by machine-gun fire lay in heaps across the grass. Nearly three hundred were killed, and over a thousand wounded. English sons were buried in mass graves in Africa. Warren was summoned back to Britain and never commanded troops in the field again. In his later years, he worked with Robert Baden-Powell to help found the Boy Scouts.

  Warren always stayed active in the PEF, often publishing comments and analysis in their trade journal, the Quarterly. When the news of the riots in Jerusalem came, the Quarterly was shocked by the news of the treasure hunters. When Father Vincent’s book arrived to speak to the Parker expedition’s scientific value, Charles Warren, in his seventies, wrote a response.

  It was not kind.

  In a far-ranging and truculent article, Warren attacked Father Vincent: “The statements of Father Vincent,” he writes, “do a grievous injustice to the work of the Palestine Exploration Fund in recent years.” Warren listed, point by point, a series of claims made by Father Vincent in Underground Jerusalem that diminished Warren’s own work in the tunnels and “cast [them] aside.” Moreover, Warren thought that Father Vincent’s maps looked suspiciously like the maps he had done for the PEF. Warren accused le petit saint of plagiarism. His criticism was scathing, and his grievances many.

  Father Vincent wrote back.

  In a subsequent issue, Vincent defended his work, finding it “ïnconceivable” that Warren would accuse him of such things. On the contrary, Father Vincent named Warren’s findings as “heroic operations” and “precise references.” “So little have I ‘cast one one side,’ minimized, or passed over in silence his Survey,” wrote Father Vincent in response, “that my two chapters devoted to the Ophel and the Siloam conduit commenced with a tribute to his works.” Father Vincent was adamant that he had not “taken from Charles Warren’s drawings,” but that he was only attracted to take up “a new survey” of the same tunnels—and did so with the work of others at his back. Father Vincent saw archaeology as work built upon slow layers, not individual competition.

  Warren wrote back again, assuring readers that he had “loyally accepted his assurances that nothing had been taken” from his maps. Warren pointed out some helpful areas that Father Vincent might revisit, including the chasm at the bottom of the stairs. But overall, all was fine. “I must express my delight,” wrote Warren, “that this incident would have been the means of bringing me into close acquaintance and friendship with a gentleman so distinguished as an archaeologist and so highly esteemed by all who know him.”

  At the end of his letter in the Quarterly, a small footnote read:

  Sir Charles Warren wishes it to be understood that the above observations are not made as a reply to Father Vincent’s defence, but in acknowledgment of his expression of goodwill.

  Sir Charles Warren died in 1927.
Very few papers ran his obituary. A man named J. W. Ibbotson wrote into his local country gazette:

  I could not but draw attention to his passing, as many of your readers must have known him.

  Forty-Five

  Dr. Juvelius

  Before he began his life’s work, Valter Juvelius was a surveyor, following in the steps of his father, who was a towering figure in his life. Juvelius’s mother had died when he was in his twenties, leaving his father in charge. His father drank. As a surveyor, Juvelius would go on long trips into the Finnish countryside, among the grass fields and tall pines, spending his nights alone in rustic cabins. Juvelius began to read the Bible. He felt like he was seeing something that others could not and that he must do something about it. He was accepted to the doctoral program at the Imperial Alexander University. With a family and a good job, this was a choice of tremendous risk and uncertainty.

  He wrote imagistic poetry about village life and love that was published. He did translations of other poets, under the name “Valter Juva.” He experienced intense depression and suffered headaches. He kept reading and writing. For his project, Juvelius tried to make sense of the chronology of the Bible. He completed his dissertation over a long and arduous journey of several years. He called it “a nightmare.”

  Meanwhile, he was working on a secret project. As he studied and read, he noticed a kind of invisible framework to some of the Scripture. Parts were repeated, in sequence, and seemed to provide a glimpse into a secret page just beneath the real one. He began work on a cipher to understand it. He believed that he could understand this himself, a hidden message between him and the words, between him and God.

  Juvelius read books about the lost Ark by a man named Henning Melander and thought his own work might be aiming at a similar target. In 1907 Juvelius was reacquainted with his childhood friend Pertti Uotila and began to meet others who would steer him toward people willing to fund his idea.

  When he finally reached Jerusalem, Juvelius had his photograph taken at a local studio. After taking a more formal picture, he put on silks, wrapped a turban around his head (with some help), and slid two curved pistols into his belt. His face in the picture, a mixture of smugness and utter happiness, is the result of having imagined something almost unbelievable, and working to make it real.

  In 1916, Juvelius wrote the book Valkoinen kameeli (“The White Camel”), a collection of three extended short stories written by Heikki Kenttä, a pseudonym. The middle story, “The Truth of ‘The Shame of the Omar Mosque,’” is Juvelius’s only firsthand account of the events—the ones depicted in this book—hunting for the Ark in Jerusalem. Although the short story is ostensibly a work of fiction, Juvelius believed that fiction conveyed truths. After all, he wrote his dissertation and indeed devoted the great work of his life to the single belief that the Bible—a collection of stories of the supernatural—could be studied as is for real historical truth. Whether the events of Juvelius’s story contain true and factual details of the events or reflect the truth of his emotional response to the experience, they are an important piece of the story, if not a darker puzzle itself.

  In 1918, Juvelius became the head of the city library in Viipuri. There, among his beloved, quiet books, he continued his work. He died on Christmas Day in 1922 after suffering from throat cancer. He was fifty-seven years old. His Bible, overstuffed with his own notes and questions to the small words within, was buried with him, placed on his chest like the shield of Moses. There was never any direct evidence of him, or any of the expedition members, being poisoned by radium.

  His personal papers remained with his family until they were tracked down by a historian named David Landau, who wrote a small biographical article on Juvelius that debunked nearly all of the existing stories about him. In late August of 1996, Landau met with Tom Hilli, Juvelius’s great-grandson, at a coffee shop outside Helsinki. There, on a café table among the butter and crumbs, Hilli produced the lost papers of Valter Juvelius.

  David Landau described what he saw:

  The documents were stored in envelopes and on each of them there was the name of the Biblical figure who’s grave Juvelius drew precisely. Included were the names of the prophets, possibly all of them. Tom opened another envelope and spread its contents; here in front of us was the drawing of—Moses’s catacomb. Juvelius seriously was planning to go back and continue the excavations.

  “What we have in front of us is science fiction,” Landau told Hilli. It could “serve as a manuscript for a new movie by Steven Spielberg!” After they were done, the great-grandson of Dr. Valter Juvelius took the papers and left. Landau was satisfied but felt there was more work to do:

  On their own merits, Juvelius’ papers are no doubt worthless. Nevertheless, they should be studied more closely because they are connected to archeological excavations which were conducted in a scientific manner and produced important results.

  Forty-Six

  The Competition

  In 1910, the Baron Edmond de Rothschild helped purchase valuable cemetery space on Mount Olive for the residents of Silwan. The next year, he bought up land around the Parker excavation site. He funded the work of archaeologist Raymond Weill, who in 1913 dug on Mount Ophel but accidentally destroyed two caves that he claimed were royal tombs of the House of David.

  The baron was not just interested in relics; he was a leading voice in the Zionist movement to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine that would include co-rulership with the Arabs. In a 1934 letter to the League of Nations, he stated that “the struggle to put an end to the Wandering Jew, could not have as its result, the creation of the Wandering Arab.” Known as “the Famous Benefactor” in Jerusalem, the baron gave tremendous amounts of money for settlements, lands, and Jewish businesses. He died in 1934. The foundation named after him continues to support worldwide programs in philanthropy, education, and the arts.

  Habib Allah, the man who shot two American women in the Well of Souls, was awaiting trial when the syndicated columnist Edward Sims Van Zile wrote Jacob Spafford in Jerusalem to see what was happening with the trial. Jacob replied with the full details of the case. When Allah was finally convicted, he was given eight years’ imprisonment.

  William Le Queux’s Treasures of Israel sold widely in several editions, including an American version titled The Great God Gold. Timo R. Stewart uncovered that Le Queux was an attendant at one of Johan Millen’s early investor meetings in London, before he met Fort or Vaughn. Le Queux appropriated the premise of the expedition—a cipher leading the way to the Ark—for use as the plot of his book. Le Queux made many claims over his years of best-selling work, including a letter that claimed Rasputin knew who committed the Whitechapel murders. His most famous book was The Invasion of 1910 about a fictional (and successful) invasion of England by the Germans, in the tone of War of the Worlds. The massive fear of German spies generated by this book and others helped contribute to the formation of Great Britain’s actual spy department, MI5.

  The “Friend” who acted as the source for the article by William E. Curtis remains anonymous.

  In March 1915, the people living outside Jerusalem watched darkness emerge from the ground. In pools of moving, clicking life, strange shapes stretched out in columns across the dirt, destroying every plant in their path.

  Locusts.

  The horde of millions moved. When one strayed far enough to be studied by the children, they were scared of its large eyes and two horns. The insects ate everything that was green. They claimed it as their own.

  Five weeks later, they could fly.

  As the plague took to the air, the black specks looked like reversed stars against the blue sky. Their thick bodies thudded off farmers. People hid and prayed. The flying clouds stripped whole areas of the cover of vegetation. Photographers from the American Colony helped document the event, the insects engulfing their cameras. The plague continued until October, when dead locusts dropped to the dry ground. By the time it was over, the locust armies had r
educed much of Palestine to dirt and rock. That year’s food supply was almost depleted. Though locust swarms are a recurring, natural event, many people wondered what Palestine had done to deserve such punishment.

  Forty-Seven

  Bertha Vester

  Bertha stopped for a moment, in the middle of the ward, and closed her eyes. For a moment there was nothing, just darkness, before she could hear the sound again. It was loud and unearthly, but it filled her entire being with happiness. There was no other noise like it, the unmistakable wail of babies. All these tiny little beings were trying to communicate something so simple—hunger, discomfort, need—and it came bursting out in the rawest song.

  Bertha opened her eyes and walked down the rows of cribs as the nurses and volunteers tended to the little ones’ needs. Bertha smiled at Arab babies and Jewish babies, some of them close enough to touch each other. Against the wall, a particularly pudgy infant with bushy black hair was being weighed on their brand-new scale.

  Bertha felt a tear in her eye. The Anna Spafford Baby Home had been in use since 1925, growing from a small room to a full-scale professional medical care facility and support home for new mothers. They had expanded, moved, and changed some things here and there, but essentially their mission had remained the same: to help those who could not help themselves. After a lifetime in Jerusalem following in her parents’ footsteps, Bertha had finally found her true calling. Her brother Jacob, of course, had been beside her every step of the way, and was instrumental in the home’s success and its ability to adapt to the individual cases that came to their doorstep.

  A boy with dark hair skipped by her.