‘I thought it was just an H,’ I said. ‘Who the hell uses Heth these days? Are you sure it’s not just an H?’ I couldn’t imagine Canaanites coming back to put their mark in a modern apartment.
‘The upward angle on the middle line gives it away. As for who uses Heth now, that’s a different question.’ He drank from his cup, finished it and put it down on the long, rough wooden coffee table that looked like an ancient door.
‘I’ve seen references to Heth in a book from the 1920s,’ he went on. He moved forward in his chair.
‘Jerusalem was going through a spiritualism fad then. This letter became a symbol for the parties that a German baron used to hold here. He and his mistress, an Austrian beauty, would invite all the expatriates who were hiding out here; ruined Russian counts, Armenian dilettantes, wealthy Lebanese apostates. Actually, they were more orgies than parties. The Mufti found out about them and the two of them were run out of town by a Muslim mob. It almost started a revolt against the British. You could say that was the seed for the Arab uprising in ’29. The Mufti thought the British weren’t clamping down hard enough on European hedonists.’
‘So it’s a symbol of hedonism?’
‘Laughter and hedonism was what it was associated with, but it was used for other purposes before that.’
‘Such as?’
‘It was an ancient curse symbol. It might have been put there to jinx any investigation.’
There was something nagging me about the symbol. I turned my phone on again and looked at the picture. There was something familiar about it. But what? I turned the phone off.
‘I’m worried about what’s happened to your friend Susan Hunter. Seeing this sign makes me fear for her even more than before,’ said Simon.
He settled back in his chair. It was my turn to move forward. I reached for the vodka bottle, poured myself an inch. I would need something strong to help me sleep after being at Kaiser’s.
‘That’s gold standard vodka from Moscow. My friend in the apartment next door brings it back. Go slow with it.’
I nodded. ‘Tell me, why does this Heth sign make you fearful for Susan?’
And then it came to me, where I’d seen the sign before. It was on the t-shirts of the young men who’d interrupted us at the dig. Underneath it had been the words Heaven’s Legion. Was someone trying to implicate them? I couldn’t imagine any reason why an organisation would put its own symbol at a murder site.
‘I’ll tell you, but pass me that bottle first.’
I passed him the bottle of vodka. He put it away in the glass cabinet, then turned to me. His skin looked white and sickly in the dim light from the lamp in the far corner of the room.
‘It provides an explanation for Max Kaiser’s death.’ He was staring at me, as if I’d brought a smell into the room.
I opened my hands. ‘Which is?’
‘He was a sacrifice, a human sacrifice.’
I could feel my face changing. First I felt a warm flush, then a quick coldness spread through me. I’d heard about human sacrifice, of course, but that was hundreds of years ago, wasn’t it? Such things didn’t happen anymore, did they?
‘What the hell would you sacrifice a human for?’ I blurted out.
‘There were three reasons in the early Canaanite tradition,’ said Simon slowly. ‘To ask the goddess to change the weather, for someone sick to be made whole, or for someone to be resurrected from the arms of the Queen of Darkness, and be brought back to life.’
‘The Queen of Darkness? Are you serious?’
‘Yes. She was the goddess who the Canaanites believed controlled the underworld, the land of Mot. It’s all on clay tablets from Ras Shamra in Syria. They were translated a few years ago.’
‘They believed in a Queen of Darkness?’
‘Yes, I have a picture of her.’ He went to his bookcase and took down a pile of academic papers. He spent the next few minutes leafing through them. Finally he pulled out a thin journal.
There was a black and white image of an oblong cuneiform tablet with an aluminium ruler beside it. The tablet had a series of marks on it surrounding a large image made from indented lines at its centre. The image was of a thin girl with prominent breasts. In her hands was a skull.
I handed him back the journal.
‘I need to sleep,’ I said. The day had caught up with me.
‘There’s a camp bed in the wardrobe, if you don’t want to disturb Isabel,’ he said.
‘That sounds like a good idea,’ I said. ‘She needs a proper night’s sleep.’
He told me how to open it and gave me some blankets. I set it up quietly in the darkness under the window. Isabel was sleeping soundly.
I woke at four in the morning. I wasn’t sure what had woken me. Then I heard a rumbling noise. I looked out of the window. Below was a carriageway with two lanes on each side separated by a low concrete divider and scraggy bushes. The side of the carriageway heading for the centre of Jerusalem was filled with tank transporters moving forward purposefully.
I watched them go by. They were dark green. The tanks had their barrels pointed straight ahead. One of the transporter’s windows was rolled down. In the half light from the street lamps a young, determined looking, female driver no more than twenty years of age was staring at the road ahead.
It looked as if a war was starting.
33
Arap Anach pressed the encrypt call app. A dial pad opened up and he pressed Lord Bidoner’s contact number. Twenty seconds later he could hear the phone ringing.
‘Do you know what time it is in London?’ said Lord Bidoner.
‘Two in the morning,’ said Anach.
‘Is this conversation secure?’
‘Your encrypt call application is open on your phone, isn’t it?’ said Anach.
‘Yes. What can I do for you?’
‘There’s been a general mobilisation of Israeli Defence Force units this morning. Everything is proceeding as planned.’
‘Just make sure you do it right this time. That fiasco in London left me out in the cold.’
‘No one from the Security Service has approached you, have they?’
‘No, but they’ve been poking around.’
‘The chances of anyone figuring out what’s going on are close to zero.’
‘Make sure you deal with that woman as we agreed, when the time comes.’
‘I know what to do. She will wish she hadn’t been born.’
34
The following morning I woke feeling hungover and groggy. I didn’t think I’d drunk enough to feel that way.
Isabel was already up. Sunlight was streaming through the window. Simon’s ramblings about human sacrifice and the Queen of Darkness were far away night time subjects. I lay in bed thinking about the tanks. Israel was in an almost permanent state of readiness for war, but I guessed what had happened last night was something more.
There’d been a hell of a lot of them.
One thing was clear; whatever was going on, those idiots working at that dig had to be investigated. Isabel’s idea of getting pictures of them was good. She could probably get Mark to run the images through their database to see if he could attach names to them, establish backgrounds and look for dodgy characters.
I got up and went looking for her to see if that was what she’d been planning. She wasn’t in the single bed.
Simon was in the main room. The curtains were pulled back and he had coffee and plates on the wooden dining table at the far end of the room.
‘Where’s Isabel?’ I said. I wasn’t worried at that point.
‘She went across the road to get some fresh bread. She insisted on going. I told her I could do it, but you know what women are like.’
I opened my mouth to say something, then I stopped. Something didn’t feel right.
‘Don’t worry. I watched her going into the shop only a few minutes ago.’ He must have seen anxiety in my expression.
‘It’s over there, straight across the road.’ He poi
nted at the door to the balcony. It looked down over the front of the building and the main road.
‘Why don’t you grab a coffee, go out onto on the balcony, and watch her coming back.’
I poured myself a cup and gulped some. Then I did as he’d suggested. The store’s name above the door was in Hebrew. It was on the corner of a block.
I waited, expecting at any moment to see her come out of the shop. I still wasn’t panicking. There was no way that anything could have happened to her. But the seconds ticked on.
And she didn’t appear. I checked my watch.
After ten minutes with no sign of her, and with anxiety gathering fast inside me, I went back into the apartment. I rang her mobile phone. I heard it ringing from the bedroom. She’d left it behind.
‘I’m going to see what’s happened,’ I said.
‘She must have gone to the shop behind it. If they don’t have fresh bread in, they tell people to go to the next shop.’ He looked at his watch, seeming puzzled. ‘They should have had their deliveries by now,’ he said. Then he waved his hands in the air.
‘Maybe the bakeries are slow today. What with everything that’s been happening.’
When I exited Simon’s building, I noticed remnants of the graffiti he’d spoken about. I hadn’t seen it in the dark. Someone had painted over a section of the outside wall of the building already, but the colours didn’t quite match. You couldn’t exactly make out what the paint had covered, but you could see dark shapes, curved lines.
I didn’t bother examining them. I walked fast. I didn’t care what the shapes meant. I wanted to find Isabel. Simon’s ramblings the night before were echoing in my brain. Alarm signals were jangling through my mind. But another part of me was saying, stop, stay calm, she’s okay.
But she wasn’t crossing the road, as I’d hoped she might be. And she wasn’t outside the shop. A car beeped at me as I ran across.
And she wasn’t inside the shop. I raced down its two aisles, almost knocking over an old man in a baggy black suit carrying a giant bottle of water. He eyed me suspiciously. I wanted to explain what I was doing, but I didn’t have time.
Where the hell was she?
I spotted another exit. I ran out, started towards the next shop. It was fifty feet away down the side street. Then it came to me. I had to check if the first shop had fresh bread. If they hadn’t, I could keep looking for a shop that had.
I went back, feeling stupid. My heart was beating tightly in my chest, as if something was binding it. I headed down to the back of the shop again.
Yes, there it was. There were two tiered sections with a dozen different varieties of loaves. A heavy weight was crushing against my chest.
Why wasn’t she in the shop? I looked from left to right, wondering if my eyes were deceiving me. A small woman wearing all black was standing staring at me. She said something to me. It must have been in Hebrew. I couldn’t understand any of it.
I waved a rude no at her and ran for the door.
Maybe Isabel was back in Simon’s apartment waiting for me. She’d smile at my distress, then hug me. We’d talk about it over breakfast. I’d laugh at their gentle ribbing. But she’d be there.
She had to be.
I rang Simon’s doorbell and was buzzed into the building. I ran up the stairs, taking two at a time. My heart was thudding as I knocked on his door.
I heard him talking.
That meant there was someone with him. That meant Isabel was here. Thank God!
Simon swung open the door.
‘Where’s Isabel?’ he said.
‘She’s not here?’ My voice sounded odd, the words tumbling out too fast.
I stood there looking at him, fear spreading from my heart. My face felt odd, stiff.
‘She didn’t come back?’
‘No.’
‘Who were you talking to?’ Was he playing a game
with me?
‘A rabbi friend of mine, Jeremiah. He dropped by. Come in, meet him.’
I walked inside in a daze. It felt as if someone had knocked me over the head. I was listening for the doorbell, for me to have made a stupid mistake in that shop, for Isabel to arrive back. Simon was saying something. I only caught the end of it.
‘Jeremiah, you tell him,’ was all I heard.
Jeremiah was wearing a black suit. He had a thick black beard and ringlets of black hair running past his ears down to his shoulders. On his head there was a black velvet yarmulke. He was about my age, mid-thirties, but his skin was rough, as if he had eczema once for a long time. His eyes were electric blue.
‘We have watered the garden from a pool that is running dry,’ he said. His voice was low.
Was this guy for real? I looked at Simon. I didn’t need this.
‘Jeremiah is the most persecuted rabbi in the whole of Israel,’ said Simon, as if that explained everything.
‘You look unwell,’ said Jeremiah.
‘I’ve lost my girlfriend,’ I said. He smiled at me forgivingly.
‘You checked if the bread had arrived?’ said Simon.
I nodded. My throat was dry.
Simon shook his head. He looked worried now. Panic was rising inside me. I wanted to turn back time. Then I got an urge to run back to the shops, to check them again, properly.
No, maybe I should wait here a bit longer, stay calm. There had to be a rational explanation for this. I went out onto the balcony so I wouldn’t have to talk, so I could see the road, the shop.
I stared at it.
Simon was standing beside me.
‘I don’t think anything’s happened to her,’ he said. His words were calming, but there was a definite note of worry in his tone.
I was staring at the shop. Every time its front door opened my heart opened with it. Then another voice spoke behind me.
‘She was in that shop?’ said Jeremiah.
‘We think so,’ said Simon.
That was it, I was going back to it. ‘I’m going there,’ I said.
‘I was in that shop five minutes ago,’ said Jeremiah.
‘Did you see anything suspicious?’ I said quickly.
Questions were spinning in my mind. Could she have gone off for some reason? Could she have been kidnapped? I felt ill. I wrapped my right fist in my left hand, made a conscious effort to gain control of myself. I would be no use to Isabel if I panicked.
‘No, no, nothing.’ He shook his head.
‘Did you see a European lady? Black hair, tall, slim?’
He paused. Come on, I wanted to shout, answer the question. I pressed my lips together.
‘I do not look at women. I am sworn against such things.’
‘Was there anyone in the shop?’ I was almost shouting. No, I was shouting. I put a hand out, felt for the balcony door, gripped it.
‘Yes, I am sure there was.’ He rubbed his forehead.
‘Do you remember who you saw?’ I knew Jeremiah wasn’t responsible for what was going on, but I was finding it hard to contain my frustration.
He looked sad as he looked at me. ‘I remember an American. A big man with a white t-shirt with something on it. He pushed past me.’
‘What was on his t-shirt?’ I said.
‘I don’t remember.’
A crazy idea came to me. I took my phone out, went to the photo of the burnt H sign. ‘Was it something like this?’
Jeremiah looked at my phone, his eyes were red-rimmed. Red veins ran through them as if he’d been up all night studying the Torah.
After what seemed like forever, he said, ‘I don’t remember.’ He shook his head.
‘But it could have been?’ I said.
‘Maybe. Maybe not.’ I wanted to shake him. Instead I pushed past him and headed for the door.
‘I heard her on the phone last night,’ said Simon.
‘What?’ I stopped, turning back.
‘I wasn’t going to say it, but it was a little odd. She was in the bathroom. It was in the middle of the night. I hea
rd her talking. That’s all. Maybe it means nothing.’
But maybe it did mean something.
Who had she be calling like that, from somewhere I couldn’t hear her? Was this why she’d disappeared? Had she made an appointment to meet someone? I felt disconnected from reality, as if I’d discovered her secret life.
‘Did you hear what she was saying, anything at all?’
Simon shook his head. Then something else strange about last night came back to me.
‘What were all those tanks I saw at 4 a.m.? There was a heck of a lot of them.’
Simon stared at me. It looked as if he knew exactly what was going on, but was struggling to find a way to phrase it.
‘There’s a storm coming,’ said Jeremiah. ‘They are its messengers.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’ I said.
Jeremiah recoiled from me, took a step back.
‘I speak what I see.’ His eyes were penetrating me, as if uncovering my faults. ‘Would you prefer lies?’
‘No, I just want to find Isabel.’ I put my hand to my forehead. I had to stay calm. I had to find her. Quickly.
‘Jerusalem is on the edge of a precipice, Sean,’ said Simon.
35
It was 11.30 a.m. on Saturday morning in London. Henry Mowlam’s weekend had got off to a bad start. And not just because of the monsoon-like rain. He’d been summoned.
The underground offices in Whitehall were relatively quiet on a Saturday, which was good, but the tea was still as bad as it had always been, and the reports from around the world didn’t stop coming in just because it was the weekend.
Henry had promised his wife that they would go shopping that afternoon in Oxford Street. He was hoping to confirm what time he would meet her in the next hour, as soon as he finished the handover report for the weekend monitoring unit.
And that was taking longer than it should have. Mainly because he was worried about what might happen over the next day or so.
It wasn’t that he had any doubts about the weekend unit’s efficiency. No, it was the implications of what the rising tension in Egypt might mean. You couldn’t watch as countries slid towards war without feeling apprehension. It was a very different thing watching war on TV at home. That was more like entertainment, war planes going out and coming back, politicians making rousing speeches.
The Jerusalem Puzzle Page 17