The Last Secret Of The Temple

by Paul Sussman

  'Help me,' he croaked, craning his head up to stare at Ben-Roi. 'Do whatever you want to me outside, but for God's sake help me save the Menorah.'

  Ben-Roi stared down at him, hand trembling, face sheened with sweat from the ever-increasing heat of the fire. Then, with a hopeless growl, he pulled the gun away. Har-Zion immediately started to pull himself to his feet, choking in pain.

  'We'll have to hoist it up,' he coughed. 'We need cable or rope. Where's the Arab?'

  Ben-Roi looked around. He had assumed Khalifa was right behind him, had followed when he had first charged the elevator. The Egyptian had indeed tried to do just that. As he had emerged from his hiding place, however, a thunderous explosion – the same one that had almost knocked Ben-Roi off his feet – had sent half a dozen crates tumbling down on top of him, knocking him unconscious. He was lying now in the middle of the aisle, face down, a large crate pinning his legs. Ben-Roi sprinted up to him and heaved the crate away, dropping to his knees.

  At first he thought he was dead. He managed to find a pulse, however, and with no time to worry about broken bones he hoisted the Egyptian roughly onto his shoulder and hurried back to the elevator, coughing with the smoke. Har-Zion had found a length of rope and was wrapping it around the stem of the Menorah.

  'We'll get the Lamp out and come back for him,' he said. 'Help me.'

  Ben-Roi shook his head. 'I'll take him up first.'

  'No! We have to save the Menorah!'

  'I'll take him up first,' repeated Ben-Roi, heaving Khalifa onto the platform, climbing onto it himself and hoisting the Egyptian back onto his shoulder. As he did so the muzzle of a pistol was jammed hard into the back of his neck.

  'It's reloaded,' growled Har-Zion. 'Now, put him down.'

  There was a fractional pause, another oil drum exploding at the far end of the cavern, a geyser of flame shooting upwards almost to the level of the ceiling, engulfing and vaporizing the giant Nazi flag; then, shrugging the gun away, Ben-Roi stepped up to the nearest of the elevator tracks. Har-Zion raised the pistol and fired off a shot into the air.

  'Drop him!' he yelled. 'You understand? We have to save the Lamp. Drop him and help me!'

  'If you kill me you'll never get it out,' shouted Ben-Roi, eyes scanning up and down the track. 'I'll take him up and come back.'

  'No!' screamed Har-Zion, firing off another warning shot. 'We have to save it now! Now! Do you understand?'

  The detective ignored him, stepped over Steiner's bloodied corpse, grasped one of the horizontal metal bars that ran upwards between the tracks like the rungs of a ladder and started to climb, Khalifa's body dangling from his shoulder like a giant rag doll. Behind him Har-Zion was screaming, waving his gun.

  'We have to save it! Don't you understand? It's your faith! Your faith!'

  Ben-Roi just kept going, all his attention focused on the task in hand, ascending one rung at a time, eyes bulging with the effort, wafts of blazing embers swirling around him, burning his arms and cheeks. The first quarter of the climb went just about OK, but by halfway he was flagging badly, vicious shafts of pain spearing through the muscles of his legs and arms, his progress getting slower and slower as his burden sapped more and more of his strength. He tried to think of Galia, his family, Al Pacino – anything to take his mind off the agony in his limbs, to trick his body into thinking it wasn't quite as drained as it was. He managed to drag himself up to the three-quarter-distance mark, three metres below the ledge, but there he came to a halt and knew he wasn't going any further, that there was no more gas in the tank, not even enough to get him down again.

  'I'm going to have to drop him,' he thought, hands trembling with the effort of holding onto the track, legs buckling. 'I'm going to have to drop him or I'm going to fall.'

  Why, in that moment of drained desperation, he suddenly started reciting the shema, he had no idea. He wasn't even aware he was doing it until he'd got a few lines in. It just seemed to well up from somewhere deep inside him, like water from a parched spring. Before Galia's death he used to recite it every day. This last year it hadn't even passed his lips. Yet now he was mumbling it to himself again, the great prayer of the Jewish people, his people, the proclamation of their faith in God.

  Hear, 0 Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. . .

  His voice grew louder, the mumble swelling into a chant, and the chant into a song, just as old Rabbi Gishman had taught him in Hebrew classes all those years ago.

  And you shall love the Lord your God,

  With all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.

  And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart.

  And as he sang, he felt the strength returning to his limbs, slow at first, but then more forcefully, power swelling and coursing through his body, so that without even realizing he was doing it he had moved up another rung, and another, and another, and then suddenly he was on the ledge and running – literally running – down the first of the tunnels back towards the outside world. He reached the gap in the wall, clambered through, started along the main shaft, Khalifa bumping and slapping on his shoulder, the distant echo of explosions rumbling behind him, on and on until eventually he stumbled through the mine doorway and out into the night, his feet crunching on the pristine snow, the sky overhead ablaze with stars.

  He stood there gulping down air – deliciously cold and clean after the smoke-filled interior of the cavern – then he carried Khalifa across to the small stone cairn at the side of the clearing and laid him on the ground beside it. He groaned and mumbled something, but Ben-Roi didn't have time to linger, just rubbed a handful of snow on the Egyptian's face to try and revive him and, turning, sprinted back into the mine.

  By the time he came out onto the stone ledge again the entire cavern seemed to be ablaze, great twisters of flame rearing and swirling everywhere he looked, devouring the crate stacks, clawing at the walls and ceiling. In his absence, Har-Zion seemed somehow to have climbed all the way up onto the ledge and left the free end of the rope there before for some reason descending again. He was now standing below on the elevator platform as though on a tiny island in a sea of fire, looking wildly around at the fast approaching wall of flame. Ben-Roi called down to him.

  'I tried to get it up myself but it was too heavy!' screamed Har-Zion as soon as he heard the detective's voice. 'Start pulling! I'll have to support it from underneath.'

  Shielding his face against the heat, which was now nigh on unbearable, Ben-Roi grabbed the rope and, moving back a few metres, started heaving, slowly inching the Menorah off the platform and up while Har-Zion grasped its base and lifted. When it was high enough he got himself underneath it and, supporting it with his shoulders, started climbing the elevator track, rung by rung, wailing in agony as beneath his jacket his skin split and tore like a tissue-paper shirt, rivulets of blood streaming down his arms and legs and into his gloves and shoes.

  'Oh God,' he screamed, 'oh please God!'

  They got the Lamp about three metres off the cavern floor before a huge explosion sent a billow of heat pulsing into Ben-Roi's face, knocking him backwards and over, the rope sliding uselessly through his hands as the Menorah crashed down onto the platform again. He lay where he was for a moment, dazed, then stumbled to his feet and staggered back to the edge.

  'Oy vey,' he whispered.

  Beneath him, Har-Zion was lying prone underneath the Lamp's stem, gazing up through its branches as though through the bars of a cage, a trickle of blood oozing from the corner of his mouth, although he was clearly still alive because his lips were moving, his gloved hands clenching and unclenching around the outermost of the Menorah's curving arms. Flames were now lapping right up against the platform, and as Ben-Roi watched in horror, they slowly rolled forward and engulfed it, the Menorah buckling and twisting in the heat, its arms bending this way and that, its gold seeming to shrivel away from it like flaking skin to reveal something dull and black beneath until eventually the whole thin
g melted, slumped and liquefied over Har-Zion's jerking body.

  He watched until it was gone, then, unable to bear the heat any longer, he turned and moved back into the tunnel. As he did so another huge explosion rocked the cavern behind, and another, and another, the blasts gradually seguing into a single deafening roar, a thick fist of flame punching down the corridor at his back. He broke into a sprint, diving through the hole in the wall, barrelling along the mine's main shaft and out into the night again. He just had time to get over to Khalifa and drag him round to the far side of the cairn before there was an almighty boom and, like an express train hurtling from a tunnel, a surge of flame burst from the mine entrance and fired all the way across the clearing, smashing into the trees on the edge of the pine forest and settling them ablaze. It seemed to go on for ever, the ground beneath them quivering and trembling, debris dropping all around, before eventually it subsided again, the flame slowly retracting itself until it was no more than a hesitant flicker around the shattered mine entrance.

  Behind the cairn, Khalifa, conscious again, fumbled out a hand and grasped Ben-Roi's arm.

  'Thank you,' he croaked. 'Thank you.'

  The Israeli was shaking his head, arms flung out to either side of him as if he was floating in a pool.

  'It was lead,' he whispered. 'It was made of lead. Gold covering, lead underneath.'

  He snorted and, scooping a handful of snow, held it against his cut ear.

  'Typical bloody Jews, eh? Never miss a chance to save money.'

  They thought the best thing would be to get out of Germany as quickly as possible. Ben-Roi made a few calls on his mobile, couldn't get a flight to Israel, but did manage to find one to Cairo – a charter from Salzburg, direct, leaving at six a.m. He booked tickets.

  'I'll get a connection to Ben-Gurion from there,' he said. 'Better than waiting around here.'

  They drove in convoy to the airport, dropped off the cars, got a wash and a few hours' sleep, departed on schedule. Once they were airborne, Ben-Roi dropped off again immediately. Khalifa tried to do the same, but exhausted as he was he couldn't manage it, so he just sat there sipping his coffee and staring out of the window, watching as away to the east a faint rim of red slowly seeped its way into the sky, gradually strengthening and spreading until the whole horizon was ablaze with light.

  Something was bugging him. It shouldn't have been. The events of the previous night had brought the whole Schlegel case to about as definitive a conclusion as it was possible for an investigation to have. Despite that, he couldn't shrug off a niggling feeling – not even a feeling, really, more a sort of vague flicker right at the very back of his head – that there was still some loose end to be tied up, some final tiny detail to fill in before the picture could finally be declared complete.

  He finished his coffee, fought the urge to sneak into the toilet for a cigarette, and gazed out at the expanding dawn, his mind drifting in a disjointed way over everything that had happened these last few weeks, flitting to and fro through the confusion of people and places and events before eventually ending up back in the Valley of the Kings where the whole business had started. Ginger, Amenhotep II, little Ali chattering away about pharaohs and treasure and booby-traps. What was that name he'd come up with? Horrible Inkyman. He smiled. Horrible Inkyman indeed! Priceless.

  'Coffee?'

  The air hostess was leaning over him with a flask. He held out his cup, sat back, picked up his chain of thought.

  Horrible Inkyman. Hor-ankh-amun. Vizier to the pharaoh Tuthmosis II. His tomb had been discovered only a few months ago, at Saqqara, its burial chamber still intact, crammed to the rafters with a fabulous array of grave goods, including a magnificent sandstone sarcophagus. That alone made it one of the most important finds of recent years. What was unique about it was that beneath the main chamber the excavating team had stumbled on a carefully concealed subsidiary chamber containing an even more extraordinary array of artefacts, and an even more spectacular sarcophagus, the latter containing the tomb owner's actual body. The upper room, it turned out, had just been a blind, a perfect facsimile to fool robbers into thinking they'd found the main prize when in fact that prize was directly beneath their feet. Extraordinary.

  He blew on his coffee and stared out of the window – the entire sky was now a glittering sheet of red and gold – his thoughts zig-zagging around again before eventually homing in on that curious meeting in Old Cairo, in the Ben Ezra Synagogue. What was that guy's name? Shobu Ha-Or. Shobu? No, Shomu. Shomer. That was it. Shomer Ha-Or. Odd man, weird. The way he'd seemed to be expecting him, had told him all about the synagogue menorah.

  Like all reproductions it is but a shadow compared to the original . . . That was very beautiful. Seven branches, capitals shaped like flowers, cups like almonds, the whole of it beaten from a single block of solid gold – the most beautiful thing that ever was.

  He could certainly attest to that. It had been beautiful. A fabulous piece of work, even if it was lead underneath.

  In Babylon, that is what the prophecy tells us. In Babylon the true Menorah will be found, in the house of Abner.

  Behind him they were starting to serve breakfast, the hostess's voice drifting down the aisle as she asked passengers whether they wanted cooked or continental.

  Babylon. Single block of solid gold.

  Something was bugging him.

  Hor-ankh-amun. Fake chamber. Fooling robbers.

  Really bugging him.

  The food trolley came level with their row and the woman started serving. Ben-Roi grumped himself awake, asked for the cooked breakfast. Khalifa went for the continental.

  'Shomer Ha-Or.'

  'What?'

  'The name Shomer Ha-Or?' asked Khalifa. 'Does it mean something? In Hebrew.'

  Ben-Roi was picking the foil off his plastic plate, ripping his cutlery from its cellophane wrapper.

  'Guardian of the light,' he replied. 'Guardian, protector, something like that. Why?'

  The Egyptian didn't reply, just stared down at his tray. A few moments ago he'd been starving. Now, suddenly, his appetite seemed to have fallen away.

  CAIRO

  They landed just after eleven, a warm, clear morning with a blue sky and a fat yellow sun floating in the centre of it, like a lump of tallow.

  Ben-Roi wanted to get a connecting flight immediately. There was nothing till that evening, however, so he agreed to share a cab into town where he could go to the Israeli Embassy and get a shower and a change of clothes, have his ear looked at by a doctor. Khalifa gave the driver instructions in Arabic, and they set off.

  They didn't talk during the journey, just sat staring out of the windows as the metropolis swiftly enveloped them. When they hit the Nile they turned south along the Corniche, following it for a couple of kilometres before veering inland again, back into the thick of the town, weaving through the chaotic surges of traffic before eventually rounding a corner into a broad, empty street with a Metro station on one side and, opposite, some sort of walled enclosure full of trees and churches. They pulled over.

  Ben-Roi had never been to Cairo before, but he was pretty certain this wasn't the Israeli Embassy. Annoyed, he asked Khalifa what was going on.

  'I just need to check something,' replied the Egyptian, getting out. 'It'll only take a few minutes. I think you should come as well.'

  Ben-Roi grouched and grumbled, but Khalifa was insistent and eventually the Israeli got out too, muttering to himself. They paid the driver, crossed the road and, descending a set of stone steps, passed into the interior of the enclosure, emerging onto a narrow paved street between high walls of red and yellow brick. It was very still in here, and very quiet, the atmosphere dense and musty.

  'What the hell is this place?' asked Ben-Roi, gazing around.

  'It's called Masr al-Qadima,' replied Khalifa, removing his cigarettes and lighting one. 'Old Cairo. The most ancient part of the city. Parts of it date right the way back to Roman times.' He took a drag. 'Although I
seem to remember it had a different name then.' He flicked a glance at Ben-Roi. 'It was called Babylon. Babylon-in-Egypt.'

  The Israeli raised his eyebrows, as if to say 'Is that supposed to mean something to me?' Khalifa didn't respond, just wedged the Cleopatra in his mouth and, with a wave of the hand, led the way down the street. Every now and then they passed a doorway or a shuttered window, but they saw no other people, nor heard any sound save for the slap of their feet and, once, a faint waft of song, soft and ethereal. The street doglegged right, then left, then right again before issuing into the open, tree-fringed space in front of the Ben Ezra Synagogue.