The Last Testament

by Sam Bourne

  And then she heard it again, the voice of Shimon Guttman, as clear she had heard it twelve hours ago in Rosen’s office.

  You shall see me in the other life, not this one but the next one.

  Of course. She was meant to enter Second Life not as Lola Hepburn, the big-breasted party girl created by her sister, but as Shimon Guttman himself. That was surely how the coding worked: the island in Geneva would open up to no one but him.

  She hit the search button, aiming to trawl through the directory of names. As she typed his first name and then his last name, she hoped that, just this once, the old man had made it easy.

  Invalid username and/or password, please try again.

  She tried different variations. ShimonG, SGuttman, and half a dozen other permutations. There were a handful of Shimons, but the rest of their names made no sense. And, when she tried the passwords that had worked on Guttman’s home computer, she was blocked every time.

  Uri arrived with an oversized cup of steaming coffee. Merely inhaling its aroma made Maggie realize how tired she was. She had been living on adrenaline for days now, and her body was feeling it. Her neck ached where Uri had hit her and her right arm had become tender, around the spot where the masked men in the market had grabbed her.

  Uri watched what she was doing. ‘Why don’t you try the name my father used to email that Arab guy?’

  Maggie gave Uri a downturned smile, as if to say, not a bad idea. She searched for Saeb Nastayib and beamed when the computer came back with just one result: a single avatar of that name. She repeated the password as before, Vladimir67, and, before her eyes, a lean male figure, materialized on the screen, naked at first, like a mannequin or a statue made in cool, grey stone, then gradually clothed.

  She hit Map, typed Geneva, hit Teleport and, after the few seconds it took the machine to load, she was back, hovering over the bright blue water and green banks of the lake. She searched for Guttman’s uniquely-contoured island.

  Her first inspection made her anxious: no sign of it. That would make a grim kind of sense. If her pursuers had had no use for Liz’s avatar once she had led them to the island, then surely the island itself was just as dispensable, once it had yielded its secrets. What better way to ensure no one else discovered the last resting place of the Abraham tablet than to destroy the only clue to its location?

  So she had to fly low, hovering over the blue water, her bearings skewed by the undulating, computer-generated landscape which, on this slower connection, was only forming partially on the screen. But finally a green stain appeared on the blueness of the lake which, as the Guttman avatar drew near, revealed itself as the replica Greater Israel Uri’s father had created in the heart of virtual Switzerland.

  Maggie approached, bracing herself for the no entry tape and error message. But this time there was no such obstacle: the electronic cordon didn’t even appear. Clearly, it was designed to pop up only at the approach of outsiders. The Guttman avatar was allowed to stroll onto the island as easily as Maggie had visited the red-light district all those hours ago. There wasn’t even a password.

  ‘We’re in,’ she said, relieved that the old man had not planted another tripwire in their path.

  ‘Now what?’ said Uri, leaning forward, cradling his cup of coffee, enjoying its warmth on his hands.

  ‘Now we look.’

  They didn’t have far to go. The island had only one structure, a simple glass-and-steel box. Inside it was nothing but a chair and a desk with a virtual computer. Maggie pushed the Guttman avatar forward and had him sit on the chair. The instant he did a text bubble appeared.

  Go west, young man, and make your way to the model city, close to the Mishkan. You’ll find what I left for you there, in the path of ancient warrens.

  ‘So, Uri. What do we have here?’ She looked to her side, expecting to see Uri peering at the words with her. But he was gone, vanished as rapidly as one of the anatomically impossible creatures that still flickered on the screen.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  K HAN Y UNIS , G AZA , F RIDAY , 2.40 AM

  He was not asleep. He was not even lying down. He was, as so often these days, sitting bolt upright, turning over one scenario after another in his head. Moves, counter-moves, his mind never stopped churning, least of all at night. He would have so many plans, he would grow impatient for the morning prayer. He would want dawn to come so that he could emerge again into the daylight and get back to work.

  He was awake, so he heard the footsteps himself. Instinctively, he removed the safety catch on his pistol and waited in the dark. He saw a curve of candleglow before he heard a voice.

  ‘Psst. Salim, it’s Marwan.’

  ‘Come in, brother.’

  Warily, the younger man tiptoed into the room where Salim Nazzal was bedded down for the night. He looked around, counted three teenage boys, all fast asleep on a single mattress, and lowered his voice still further. He had no idea whose house he was in, which family had opened its doors to their leader for tonight.

  ‘Salim. They say they have something. A sighting, in Jerusalem.’

  ‘Of this tablet?’

  ‘Of the Zionist’s son. And the American woman.’

  Nazzal replaced the safety catch on his gun. He wanted time to think.

  ‘The unit on the ground want to know whether they should strike.’

  ‘They weren’t meant for this!’

  ‘But your orders: that recovering the tablet was the highest priority.’

  One of the boys on the bed stirred. Salim waited until he was sure he had gone back to sleep.

  ‘Tell them,’ he said eventually, ‘that they are free to act-’

  ‘OK-’ He strode away at once.

  ‘Marwan! Come back here. Tell them they are free to act, but only if by acting they either secure the tablet or discover, for certain, its location. No point killing these two, Guttman and the American, if we don’t get the tablet. Do you understand?’

  ‘I understand, Salim.’

  ‘I mean it, Marwan.’ And he cocked his weapon once more, just to leave no doubt.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  J ERUSALEM , F RIDAY , 5.23 AM

  She wheeled around, searching among the blissed-out faces and strumming guitars for Uri, but he had vanished. She stood up, walking towards the entrance. Then she saw him, his forehead lined with anxiety. He was in the doorway, staring hard into the street.

  ‘Uri, what is it?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I heard something. Could be a car. We’ve got to get out.’

  ‘Yeah, but first you have to work out-’

  ‘Maggie, if they’re onto us here, they could kill us.’

  ‘Just tell me what this means!’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Maggie, there’s no time.’

  ‘Uri, I’m not leaving here until you work this out.’

  Shaking his head he strode over to the machine, bent down to peer at the small bubble of text on the screen and repeated the riddle his father had hidden there. Then he said simply, ‘All right, let’s go.’

  The nose-studded barista had appeared and was now murmuring in Hebrew to Uri, pointing to an exit at the back end of the café-and also, Maggie couldn’t help noticing, widening her gorgeous brown eyes for his benefit. Apparently impervious to her charms, he thanked her, grabbed Maggie’s wrist and made a dash into the dark.

  They had already pushed open the fire door, to reveal a narrow, five-step basement staircase which would lead them back up to street level, when Maggie realized they had left the computer on, Guttman’s avatar and his message still displayed. If they were being followed, their pursuers would simply have to stroll into the café, order themselves a latte and pull out a notebook.

  She turned on her heel, feeling her wrist twist in Uri’s grip. ‘Let go of me. I’ve got to go back.’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘The computer’s still on. They’ll see everything!’

  ‘Too bad. We’re going,’ he said, still stri
ding upward, determined to get out onto the street.

  ‘Get off me! Now!’

  He refused to loosen his hold. She was being pulled up this tiny stone staircase whether she liked it or not. She began tugging at his arm, like a recalcitrant toddler refusing to be dragged to her first day at nursery. But he was stronger than she was. She hated herself even for imagining what she would do next, let alone actually doing it, but at that moment, she was certain she had no choice. She had to bend her head to do it, and to find the right angle onto his flesh, but once she had it was a single, quick movement. She simply bared her teeth and bit into his hand.

  He yowled in pain, letting only the first note of it sound and smothering the rest. But it did the job: reflexively, he had released her and she dashed back away. Her eyes darted, struggling to locate in the haze of smoke the computer she had just used. When she finally saw the glow, she was appalled to see that someone else was now hunched over the screen, tapping on the keyboard.

  She inched closer, staying in the shadows. Eventually she saw who was there: the nose-stud girl. Maggie exhaled her relief, marched towards the machine and, just as the woman was beginning to say how cool Second Life was, she hit the computer’s off button.

  ‘Hey-’

  But Maggie was already gone, out the back entrance, up the stone stairs and into the alleyway. She stood, alone, looking left and right before she felt a hand grab her arm and tug her along first right, then left, then down a cobbled slope and eventually to a main street where a silver Mercedes was parked and ready. They got in.

  ‘I swear if they don’t kill you, I will.’

  ‘Uri, I’m sorry. But I couldn’t just leave it there, for anyone to-’

  ‘Were they there?’

  ‘Not that I could see.’

  Uri shook his head, in furious disbelief at the maniac he had somehow landed up with.

  ‘I’m sorry, I really am.’

  ‘No, you’re not.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘I don’t know. Away from them, away from Jerusalem. We’ll go back when it’s clear.’

  Maggie looked out of the window, watching the first glimmers of a blue, hazy light over the horizon. Jerusalem was barely waking up: all she had seen so far was the odd beggar. ‘What about this message of your father’s?’

  ‘I don’t know any more.’

  ‘Come on. He said, “Go west, young man and make your way to the model city, close to the Mishkan”, whatever that is. “You’ll find what I left for you there, in the path of ancient warrens.” So what do you think?’

  Uri took his eyes off the road, to fix Maggie with a glare. ‘Do you have any idea how much I hate my father right now? All these chickenshit games he’s putting me through? As if it wasn’t enough that all this madness has already killed my mother.’

  ‘I know, Uri-’

  ‘You know nothing, Maggie. Nothing! He had my mother killed, I’m running for my life and for what? What? For some fucking biblical relic that will prove that he and all his right-wing nutcase friends were right all along! He could never make me join him when he was alive, but somehow he has me working for him, like some fucking disciple, now that he’s dead.’

  ‘Is that where he’s hidden it? In some right-wing nutcase place? On the West Bank?’

  ‘No. It’s in a much more obvious place.’

  ‘You’ve worked it out already?’

  ‘What’s this whole thing about? It could only be in one place.’

  ‘You mean it’s on the Temple Mount.’ Maggie smiled at the ingenuity of it. Of course he would bury the tablet there. Where else did title deeds for a house belong, except in the house itself?

  ‘That’s the Mishkan: the Temple, the palace. It refers to that whole area. Except whatever he’s left is not on the Temple Mount. Jews hardly ever go there: too holy. He’s hidden it underneath.’

  ‘Underneath?’

  ‘A few years ago, they excavated the tunnels that run alongside the Western Wall. My father and a few other archaeologists. Not the famous part of the Wall, where everyone prays and sticks those cutesy notes to God in the crevices. But a whole stretch of wall that was buried under the rest of the city. Under the Muslim Quarter, to be precise. Everyone went nuts.’

  ‘You mean the Palestinians?’

  ‘Of course. What did my father expect? The Arabs said the Jews were trying to undermine the foundations of the Dome of the Rock, you know the big building with the gold dome?’

  ‘I know, thank you, Uri.’

  ‘It’s where they think Mohammed ascended to heaven. And here are the Jews tunnelling underneath. And then my dad and his friends make matters worse. They decide it’s not enough that tourists can go into the tunnels. No, the tourists need an exit at the other end, rather than having to walk all the way back through the tunnels. So they build one. And it pops out right in the Muslim Quarter.’

  ‘A provocation.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘So that’s what he means by “ancient warrens”: the tunnels. “Go west”, the Western Wall. Clever. And of course Jerusalem is the model city; it’s the holiest place on earth. But what-’

  ‘Oh fuck.’

  Maggie could see Uri suddenly transfixed by his rear-view mirror. She looked over her shoulder and could see a car behind, its lights set to full beam. They had left the city behind now, descending instead on a mountain road that seemed to be unwinding. On either side were steep rocks, broken up only by the occasional car wreck-ruins of military vehicles, the marine had told her that day, which now felt ten years in the past-relics of the 1948 war that greeted the creation of the state of Israel.

  ‘They’re getting closer, Uri.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What the hell are we going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know. Let me think.’

  He was being dazzled by the reflection in the mirror, which seemed to be filling the entire car with a searching yellow light.

  Uri accelerated but the car behind caught up effortlessly. Despite Maggie shielding her eyes, the light was too bright to see who was in the car, even what kind of car it was.

  ‘Can we turn off?’

  ‘Not unless we want to go tumbling down the mountain.’

  ‘Shit. Uri, we’ve got to do something.’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  After a few seconds, he spoke again. ‘OK. At the next bend there is a lookout spot. I can pull in there. When I do, you have to open your door immediately and slip out of your side. And keep very low. And you have to do it the instant the car is turning into the spot. Don’t wait for it to come to a complete stop. And then just run over the edge. It’s low ground there for a while, like a ledge. OK?’

  ‘Yes, but what about-’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. Once you’re out, I’ll be right behind you. Very low, you got that?’

  ‘I’ve got it.’

  ‘OK. Here it comes.’

  Uri began to squeeze the brake. Maggie unbuckled her belt, which set off an immediate loud dinging. She waited for her cue.

  Uri was looking in his rear-view mirror, then swerved into the space and yelled: ‘Now! And keep low!’

  Maggie pulled on the door handle, pushed it and ducked her way out of the car, tripping on the moving road, running in a crouch to the edge of the paved surface. Now, in one of those split-seconds where an enormous decision has to be made, she had to determine whether or not she truly trusted Uri. Instinct, in this half-light of dawn, told her this was a sheer drop and that to run off it was to guarantee death. Yet Uri had promised the view was deceptive, that the slope was gentle. Could she believe him? They had lived and breathed almost every one of the last forty-eight hours together. She had discovered his dead mother. She had told him about Africa. And just a few hours ago they had made love in a way both tender and fierce in its passion.

  And yet, who was he? This veteran of Israeli intelligence who had struck her unconscious with a single blow, who had stolen a car
and who had done God knows what else in his life. How could she trust such a man?

  All this ran through her head during the long second in which she teetered on the edge, before she finally stepped off. The drop came-but it was a tiny one, no more than a couple of feet, like missing the bottom stair in the dark. Stumbling, she ran on until she was out of sight of the road.

  As the sound of her breath quieted, she looked around to see that she was quite alone. A second later she heard a gunshot above her, from the road and knew, with an iron certainty that chilled her, that it was Uri who had been hit.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  J ERUSALEM , F RIDAY , 6.15 AM

  She held herself very still, wary even of her own breath. Her muscles were quaking, her face trembling. She could feel the tears trickling down her cheeks, but some instinct of self-preservation took over, forcing her feet to make no movement, determined that no one would hear so much as a crunch of a stone under her.

  She stood like that for seconds that stretched into long minutes, her eyes closed so that she could concentrate on her ears. In the seconds after the gunshot, as she played back the memory of it now, she had heard a thud and the sound of footsteps on the gravel above. Then, a minute later, car doors slamming shut and an engine roaring away.

  She had prayed then, as she prayed now, that she would soon hear something else: his footsteps coming towards her perhaps, or his voice calling out from the road above. The voice in her head was addressing God, the Father she claimed no longer to believe in, the God she had officially abandoned at convent school. She begged him, please, please, whatever else you do to me, don’t let him be dead. Please, God, let him live.

  How could she have allowed him to do that, letting her get away first? How could she have been so stupid, so selfish? Of course, there was no plan. Uri had simply wanted to save her life: she would get out of the car and away, he would provide the cover for her escape. The pursuers would aim their guns at him, while she crept away, saving her own skin. She pictured his body, unmoving and bloody, on the gravelled road, and her own body convulsed at the thought of it. She knew she had to keep quiet, but it was no good: she was sobbing noisily now, for the man whom she had held in her arms, pulsing with life, just a few hours ago. She had held him and now she had lost him.