by K. T. Tomb
“He was pretty nasty this weekend at the club and when I left and went to the beach instead, he came after me there. Wouldn’t bother you with this, you know, but if you can’t talk to him, I’ll have to call the cops.”
Softly, she promised him she would deal with her husband. Jack asked her about how things were going and she immediately began telling him everything that had happened so far.
When she hung up, they were close to their building and she found Makeda smiling at her.
“What?”
“You look happy,” Makeda stated, as she began rummaging in her purse for her keys. “That was the bloke you like?”
Cash did not say a word. She simply did not know the answer. She felt happy to hear Jack’s voice, Tim’s voice had meant trouble. For months now, Tim’s presence had meant unhappiness; Jack had made her feel good. He had been a great friend, but since that evening at the party she had thought about him more and more. She just didn’t know.
“Right, council of war.” Makeda brought in two mugs of tea, as they sat down in the living room. “You want to go to Damascus, how do you want to get there?”
Cash thought for a moment, blowing into her mug, helping the tea to cool down a bit.
“You’ve got a car, can I borrow it?”
“You want to drive from here into Jordan and then into Syria, which is in uproar?”
Cash nodded fervently.
“Unless you think it is easier to cross straight into Syria, or drive through Lebanon?”
Makeda gave a snort of laughter. The border with Lebanon was closed and had been for years, and to drive directly into Syria would mean going through the Golan Heights.
“You sure you want to go to Damascus?”
Cash nodded again, smiling. She was adamant. Makeda shook her head.
“I’m not lending you my car to drive to Syria.”
Cash’s face fell. She had assumed Makeda was as intrigued by this whole affair as she was.
“But since I do want to see where this ends, I will just have to drive you.”
Cash lit up again and she set down her cup and stood, giving Makeda a hug.
“Just think of it as a road trip!”
Makeda shook her head, but still laughed. She knew this was a bad idea, but her curiosity had gotten the best of her.
***
Slowly Makeda pushed the pedal down, starting the car onto the bridge across the Jordan. Behind them Israeli pop music blared from the stereo in the terminal. A young soldier, a woman of barely eighteen had checked their car for explosives and weapons, made them change the license plates and then allowed them to move onto the bridge. They drove slowly across the bridge, towards the Jordanian side. It was quiet there. Not many people were crossing into Jordan at this time of day, though plenty were crossing into Israel.
The Jordanian side of the bridge was far less strict than the Israeli. The Jordanians were not concerned about Israelis crossing into their country, so long as they did not come in tanks. As soon as they were through the checks, Makeda began to relax. Jordan was a peaceful country. There had been some protests in Amman, according to CNN, but she had learned to ignore CNN; in her estimation, most of the time the channel seemed more interested in drama than the truth. Other news channels had mentioned protests as well, but mainly they focused on the trouble in Libya and the protests in Damascus.
“You know this is a stupid idea, right?” Makeda asked again.
“Yup!” Cash smiled and looked at the GPS. “Right in a few, onto Route 55. We can make it to the border in about two hours.”
Makeda nodded and then turned on the radio.
“Some driving music then.”
The playlist was actually driving music too, Cash mused. It started with Radar Love and the second song that came on was Don’t Stop Me Now. She settled down in the passenger seat as they turned onto the road towards Irbid and Al Ramtha. It had been early when they left Tel Aviv and it had been a late night of packing and planning. Cash had made sure she had a second passport when she knew she would be going to Israel, so there was no problem, but Makeda had to locate her other passports. She held an Ethiopian and a British passport, and had left Israel on the British one. She planned to enter Syria on the other one. It was a strategy they had to devise because Israeli authorities would be reluctant to let them back in if they knew they had been to Syria, even if Makeda was an Israeli resident.
Cash had fallen asleep quite quickly. Every time she woke up from her doze, she felt guilty. Makeda was driving all this way, into a possibly dangerous situation and she was no sort of company. There were few cars on the road, so Cash woke up every time a car passed them. In an hour several passed by, most of them jeeps. Quite a few of the jeeps had logos on them that she recognized from television. Plenty of aid organizations and United Nations related NGO’s were present in the area. There was always uproar, and now that there was trouble, they all flocked here.
Cash was cynical at the best of times, but when it came to this, she was convinced they had all arrived expecting trouble. There’s nothing quite like pictures and film of people in misery to get the donations coming in.
They passed through several towns; most of them sprawled along the road side. The houses were mainly located in the valleys, but several farms and orchards lay spread across the hills. Some tractors drove around in the fields, and some horses and carts. There was plenty of activity here, and it looked almost exactly the same as the part of Israel they had just left behind.
Within sight of Irbid, a car with a logo of a white cross on a red shield passed them. Cash woke up and heard a soft noise of metal hitting the tarmac as the car sped away from them.
Two tires exploded and Makeda hit the brakes. She swore loudly and then calmly drove the car off the road. She got out and checked the tires.
“Fuck!”
Cash got out as well and walked onto the road.
“Look at this!” Makeda came over as Cash picked up something from the road. “Caltrops!”
Cash threw the metal spikes over towards the ditch and looked up at the four by four disappearing in the distance.
“Who were those buggers?”
Makeda picked up another caltrop with an incredulous look.
“Why would they do something like that?”
Cash shook her head and kicked at more spikes on the road.
“No idea. Maybe they want to stop us finding the Holy Grail?”
She was not even serious when she said it, but she felt her brain whirring the moment she had.
“Did you see the logo on that car?”
Makeda’s eyes narrowed and she shook her head.
“Red Cross?”
“They don’t operate here; Red Crescent does. It looked like a white cross on a red field. Some sort of Templar cross.”
Makeda snorted.
“Yeah right. Templars? They were destroyed centuries ago.”
“Not Templars.”
Cash thought for a moment. “Can you get online here?”
Makeda checked her phone.
“No. You?”
Cash held up her old Nokia and returned her gaze to the two flat tires.
It was an hour before another car passed them. The driver spoke English and was quite pleasant. He said he had lived in San Francisco for a few years and asked Cash heaps of questions about the city when she told him she lived there now. He had a spare tire for them, which was not really well suited, but would allow them to make it to Irbid where they could probably find a more suitable one.
He told them they were lucky as he helped change the wheels, two foreign women alone, stranded in the desert. It could end a lot worse. They agreed with him.
He followed them on the road to Irbid and said goodbye to them that evening as they left the car in a garage and returned his spare to him. Cash and Makeda found a room in a hotel in town and immediately after setting their bags down, Cash pulled her laptop out. Logging on to the hotel network, she immedia
tely began searching for the logo.
“Mak...” She looked up from the screen and beckoned Makeda to come and look. “Isn’t this the logo on that car?”
Makeda yawned. She was tired from the long day’s drive and the eventful afternoon. She got up and came over to look at what Cash wanted to show her. She frowned as she saw the logo.
“I think that’s what it was, yeah.” She rubbed her eyes and looked again. “What logo is that?”
“Malteser International.”
“Like the chocolates?” she asked instinctively, then immediately felt silly.
Makeda thought for a while. The name was familiar. She could not place it.
“What are they exactly?”
Cash bit the inside of her lip.
“They are an international aid organization connected to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.”
Her friend shook her head, as though trying to clear her thoughts and make sense of what she had just heard Cash say.
“What?”
“They are the modern continuation of the Hospitallers.”
Makeda sat down. She was suddenly convinced Cash had lost it. Must be a sunstroke from that long time in the desert.
“You’re saying the Knights Hospitaller are trying to prevent us going to Damascus?”
Cash shook her head.
“No. Remember that monk in the church? He had the logo of the Order of Malta on his robe and there was this bloke eavesdropping at the university, had the same logo on his jacket. This is not some aid organization trying to stop us getting to Damascus, it’s the Knights of St. John trying to stop us finding out about the Grail.”
Makeda stood there looking dumbfounded, the penny had obviously just dropped.
“The Knights Hospitaller are trying to stop us from discovering the Holy Grail,” she repeated.
She was silent for a while.
“Wouldn’t that imply they want it themselves?”
Cash thought for a moment.
“No. They know about the people who know about it. They’re not following us to take it from us, they’re trying to stop us. They know what happened to it.”
Chapter Seven
The next morning the car had new tires and they left just after breakfast. Cash drove them now. She had insisted after waking up to a number of voice mails and texts from Tim. He was telling her how much he missed her and how sorry he was. She listened to the messages on speaker and showed the texts to Makeda. They had talked a lot about what had happened between Tim and Cash in San Francisco and Makeda had been full of understanding.
Driving towards the border, Cash tried to figure out what she felt and what she wanted and the more she thought about it the more she felt she was better off without Tim. She did not miss him now. She missed Jack, but this morning she was more certain than ever that she missed him as a friend.
They reached the border not long after and crossed into Syria around noon. The first town across the border was called Daraa. Traffic was congested around the town and the moment they closed on the centre, they heard why. They heard shouting and sudden bursts of gunfire. Cash and Makeda looked at each other and Cash, who was driving now, immediately turned the car into a side street. She doubled back and drove back to the main road.
The traffic eased as they went West, finding a road around the town, but all the time there were the threatening noises of shouting and gunfire. Both women were silent. They could tell from looking at each other what the other felt. Fear.
The road from Daraa to Damascus was good. The surface was smooth and well maintained. For many miles there was little traffic, but as they neared the city an hour after crossing the border they saw buses; convoys of buses and trucks bringing people into the city. Many of the men in the buses and trucks looked rough, and most of them had guns.
Cash was truly doubtful about their expedition now.
“Maybe we shouldn’t have come here.”
Makeda just stared blankly at the nearest truck loaded with gunmen.
“Just keep going. We’ve come all this way.”
Damascus was in uproar. Protests were going on in the streets. People fed into the crowd from everywhere, arriving in their buses and trucks. Many people seemed to be from in and around Damascus itself and as they saw the masses pass through the road before them, they thought the whole city must have poured into this protest. Nothing was further from the truth. As soon as they had found a hotel in the centre of Damascus and headed out towards the museum, they saw the city as they had both thought it would be. Like Jerusalem there were broad roads in the newer parts, narrow alleys with shops all around the old city. This city too was a holy place. Damascus had been a holy place and a capital of the Arab world for centuries, and she showed it. Her buildings were well taken care of, her streets full of life. Even the rattle of gunfire in the distance could not change that about one of the greatest cities on earth.
To their surprise the museum was open. If they were surprised, it was nothing compared to what the receptionist felt when he saw a tall, willowy Ethiopian woman and a confident, pretty, blonde western woman walk into the museum. The place had been empty for days now. Most of the tourists had cleared out days ago, when the riots first broke out in Daraa. The rest had gone when the trouble started in Damascus. They asked him about a man working there called Chiya, but the receptionist shrugged. He did not know anyone by that name. At that point, Makeda wanted to go back to the hotel, but Cash walked into the museum. Like her friend had said earlier, they had come all this way and might as well go on.
There were many objects from Syria’s near and distant past in the museum. One section they walked through held archeological finds from the Roman times. They spent a lot of time looking through the section containing items from the medieval Islamic period, but found nothing that could help them find what they were looking for. Cash felt her heart sink and was about to give in to her friend’s demand to go back to the hotel when they walked into the old synagogue that formed a part of the museum now. Makeda let out a gasp and immediately walked through, instantly enchanted by the temple.
“It is a beautiful thing, is it not?” a heavily accented voice said quietly behind Cash, as she entered the old temple.
She nodded and looked around the walls and ceiling.
“It is.”
She turned around and saw the voice that had spoken belonged to a janitor. The man had a big belly, dark hair and a bushy moustache.
“There’s not a lot of people that come here now. Not many women, not many like yourselves.”
The janitor sat down by the door and scratched himself.
“Not many at all.”
“I suppose not. You must have scared them off, mate.” Cash said casually.
The man looked up at her and grinned.
“Good one!” He said offering his hand.
Cash frowned at his hand and refused to shake it.
“I’ll shake your hand if you wash it first.”
The janitor laughed again, realizing he had just inserted that hand into the back of his trousers before offering it to the woman.
“Chiya,” he said, introducing himself.
“Cash,” she replied, before she had heard the name properly. “Chiya, you said?”
He frowned at her.
“Yes?”
Cash smiled brightly.
“We’ve been looking for you.”
He gave her a blank look.
“You were?”
Cash nodded.
“We were told you could help us with something.”
The blank look remained.
“Father Michael?”
Cash nodded and he said something that sounded like a curse.
“That man never could keep his mouth shut about anything.”
“Including the Holy Grail?”
Suddenly Chiya looked angry.
“Don’t talk about that. Don’t ever mention that.”
He stuck his head out the door
and scanned the corridor.
“Not here anyway. Where are you staying?”
“Al Iwan in central Damascus.”
He looked down the corridor again.
“I’ll come to see you half an hour after the call for evening prayers.”
With that he got to his feet and marched down the corridor. Within seconds he was gone.
***
They stayed in the hotel that evening, having dinner there as well. The ruckus had grown louder, the protests fiercer, the gunfire more common. Cash had seen the footage of men discharging guns in joy, in grief or in protest many times. Many people around the world had seen that. It always seemed rather innocent, but right now it frightened her. The guns themselves did not frighten her, but the crowds did. They were nasty. There seemed to be no cohesion or purpose, just anger. She stood by the window and looked at the people who still flocked to the central squares in Damascus. There were still people arriving in buses and cars, but there was also a steady flow of women and children going back to their houses now. Just outside the hotel heavily armed police had been placed to protect the very few foreigners left there.
She knew there was a shady American guy in the room next to them, and an elderly Middle Eastern looking couple who spoke French down the hall. There had been a handful of people at dinner, several of whom had sat at the American’s table, but the dining room had been nearly empty. She mused on it in the relative silence of the room while trying not to hear the loud noise of the crowds outside.
Just then voices rose from the minarets. It was a strange, yet familiar singing noise, repeated from all corners of the city, calling people to evening prayers.
Makeda broke the silence.
“How are we going to get out of here?”
Cash turned around and looked blankly at her friend who lay on the bed.
“I don’t know. But I reckon we’ll just have to worry about that when we leave.”
“You reckon that bloke is going to show up?”
Makeda sat up straight.