by Linda Stasi
“Such a shit. Yes, I know who Maxentius was,” I lied. “Why the beggar getup?”
“He’s eccentric,” he lied.
I let it drop, knowing I’d get nowhere fast. Instead I asked, “So … what’s it worth, that coin?”
“One eight, maybe two.”
“Two—what? You mean two hundred thousand? That’s not baksheesh, that’s a fortune!” I continued without waiting for an answer. “You just gave a slob in a bad suit lying in an alley a medallion worth two hundred K that we could have used as bail?”
“No.”
“What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“No, I gave him a coin worth two million.”
23
I stopped short. “You just gave up something worth two million for … for … information?” I sputtered.
“I said, maybe two million. Maybe one eight.”
“What. Is. Wrong. With. You?”
“Wrong with me? Hmm. Nothing that I know of. OK, my eye is not what it used to be and these scars make me not quite as attractive as I once was, I realize, but all in all, I’m in good shape. I have a resting heart rate of forty-five…”
“Is this a joke to you?”
He didn’t like that. “Listen, Russo,” he said sharply, almost raising his voice, but not quite. “Nothing about this is a joke. But I know what I am doing. It’s not my first time at the rodeo, as you Americans like to say.”
“No, we Americans do not like to say that.”
He cut the banter off and gripped my arm until it smarted, although to an observer it would look like he was just a guide steering a tourist in the right direction, again pointing out nothing.
“I don’t see anybody looking at us. I’m a reporter, remember?”
“You never let me forget it, remember? And they are watching us. Especially after that transaction.”
“Jesus. You are not easy. Why the hell I ever got involved…”
“I do. Remember why, I mean.” He shrugged and laughed. Then, “OK, first we go to this address,” he said as though he hadn’t just had a laugh, all business again. “The thing I thought was code? They’re coordinates.” Then, tapping his pocket, where he’d put the piece of paper for which he’d exchanged the two-million-dollar coin. So far we’d accomplished nothing. I had to stifle my frustration because frankly there was nobody to guide me but this man—who was pretending to be a guide.
The Christian Quarter, when it’s not full of rapturous tourists, is a nasty-looking place, all ancient narrow stone streets and dark alleys. You won’t find the kind of lively exchanges here—not on weekdays and out of season, or we didn’t, anyway—that you find in the Jewish and Muslim Quarters. Its stone walls are drab, with mold, some littered with graffiti. The other quarters, even though dark, crowded, loud, and scary as they could be to a foreigner, had somehow, I remembered, always felt nicer than these somewhat-deserted alleyways. But the circumstances were much different now, of course.
We walked down a few steps and everything lightened up. We were entering the fancier Christian tourist attraction area, the Via Dolorosa, where Jesus had carried the cross. Apparently Jesus wasn’t the only one to carry crosses around here, because out of nowhere, to the right, a youngish, bearded man dressed as Jesus was also carrying a full-sized one. Not exactly Jesus of Nazareth, more like Jesus of Newark. From the opposite direction, a group of German tourists heading our way were doing the same. However, unlike Jesus of Newark, these German tourists and their escorts—two monks—were dressed in ridiculous shorts, complete with cameras around their necks and rosary beads around their waists. Worse, they were chanting “Hosanna” while carrying their giant cross though the streets. I briefly wondered if these crosses were rented out by the hour and returned to docking stations. The Citi Bikes of religion. So bizarre.
Since we had come from the direction we had (which didn’t house any rent-a-cross shops), we arrived first at Station Eight, the Eighth Station of the Cross. Pantera touched the wall. “These are the actual marks that used to be outside the gate,” he said. He ran his fingers around the stone cross carved out of the wall and said what sounded like, “Icy, ecky, nikita,” then, “Nike—victory.”
“Like the shoes?”
“Nike, the goddess of victory.”
I always vaguely assumed somewhere in my brain that “Nike” was a Japanese word, like konnichiwa or Yamaha, or something.
He continued, “When Nike began infiltrating the Muslim market here they stupidly put the name ‘Allah’ on their shoes. Can you imagine? It would be like trainers for Jesus,” he said, using the British term for sneakers.
“Right,” I said.
“Anyway,” he continued, “when we enter the Arab Quarter don’t go trying to buy a pair of Nike knockoffs.”
“You’re showing off.”
“Correct.”
“Enough with the show-off talk. You need to come clean with me.”
“About?”
I stopped walking. “About your real involvement in this whole thing. I know Paulo brought you out of hiding or whatever you call it, but now Paulo’s dead. I don’t trust that you had nothing to do with that, but I’ve no choice right now. I don’t think you’d cheat me out of a dime. I think I know that about you, at least. I even get the part about you saying it was because the baby and I were in danger. But are you ultimately here because of that mysterious ‘Headquarters’ agency or whatever it is that you belong to? Are you on assignment?”
He hadn’t stopped walking, so I had to catch up to him, the bastard. “The key to unlocking these pages from the Gospel of Judas is here. But it’s held by very dangerous people. People who killed Paulo. As for your friend being charged with multiple murders?”
“Paulo?”
“Don’t know.”
“They need the keys and the pages?”
He didn’t reply.
“What’s your involvement—really?” I asked.
We were facing each other with swirls of bustling locals and tourists passing all around us, but suddenly it was as if we were alone.
“Are you asking me if I’m here because I’m part of the scheme? Or blindly following orders on an assignment?”
“I am.”
“You’re missing a third element,” he said, turning away from me. “That I’ve willingly been lured out of hiding.”
“Or were you part of my being lured here?”
“No.”
“Just no?”
“Just no.”
“You are really maddening.”
“It’s one way to make a living…” he joked, clearly trying to get me off the subject.
Since I knew he wouldn’t go any deeper into any of it, I changed the subject and started walking again.
“I don’t know if you know this,” I said, “since I didn’t tell you, but I have a small ruby earring. It opens one lock on the tube.”
“Yes, I know.” Paulo must have told him. Paulo had clearly trusted him, but then again Paulo was now dead.
I pushed. “And maybe my glitter key has something to do with it?”
“Don’t know. But I do know that Morris Golden came to Jerusalem for an extended stay in 1982. Stayed for a month. His wife came two weeks into his visit. Stayed at the King David in a big suite. Not the kind of trip your average suburban bank manager gets to take very often.”
The area we turned into was immediately livelier, the shops more crowded. “And you know this—how?”
“There’s such a thing as the Internet these days. Ever heard of it?”
“That’s not where you got your info. And by the way? Where the hell are we going?” I demanded.
He didn’t react, only nodded, and kept on walking as though I hadn’t asked. I had no choice but to catch up to him as he passed stall after outdoor stall filled with colorful jeweled scarves, electronic gizmos, small household goods, and antiques. Finally he stopped and I was so busy looking around that I crashed right into him.
I rea
lized then where it was we had stopped and why it was we had stopped: we had come to the place along the Via Dolorosa that had changed both of our lives forever just last year: the Sixth Station of the Cross.
Carved into the stone wall were the words: 6 ST/PIA VERONICA FACIEM CHRISTI LINTEO DETERCI. My Latin wasn’t great, even back in high school when it was supposed to be, but I could interpret that it meant: “Sixth Station, where Veronica rubbed the face of Christ on linen.” It probably was more profound in Latin. What it meant to him and to me in any language, though, was profound beyond words. It was my turn to touch the words, the carved cross, the wall.
We didn’t have to say anything. After all, without the Veil of Veronica—that piece of ancient linen cloth celebrated on this wall—Demiel ben Yusef, the second coming of Jesus Himself, could never have happened. If that hadn’t happened, I would never have met Yusef Pantera and Terry would never have been conceived.
“Ready to move?” he asked, pulling back to look at me.
“Yes, I’m ready.” I touched the wall again, and did something that no agnostic in my family had ever done: I made the sign of the cross.
24
We passed a restaurant with the ungodly name of Holy Rock Cafe. “You should eat,” he said.
“I don’t need to eat, don’t want to eat, and I’d rather eat my own shoes than eat somewhere called the Holy Rock Cafe. Whadda they have? Cheeses of Nazareth Burgers?”
“Yes. And Salome on rye,” he snapped back. OK, I’ll grant you, he could be quick. I still hated him. “But I wouldn’t eat there, either. But here’s the place,” he said. “Hummus Lina, best hummus in Jerusalem.”
“Is this necessary? I mean, why are we stopping?”
“Because you need to eat. I can’t have a partner who faints!”
“I’m not your partner and I won’t faint for Christ’s sake! I ate two croissants, remember?”
He shook his head and forced me inside and onto a chrome chair at a small table. Immediately a man came from behind the counter, wiping his hands on his apron. He had a big grin on his face and hugged Pantera.
“My friend!”
Another friend. How many “my friends” does this guy have?
“What can I get for you and your pretty lady?” he said, sounding more Greek than Israeli. Another bullshitter, I thought. I was anything but pretty at this point. I was sure the fake ponytail must have been hanging off the hat by now.
Pantera got up and walked to the counter and was back in a flash with a large bottle of chilled water and a big plate of spreads. There was hummus—the center scooped out and filled with olive oil—taramasalata, red pepper salad, Israeli salad, falafel, and hot crusty sesame-seeded bread.
“Dig in.”
“Well, maybe just the tiniest of bites.” I didn’t want to, but once I started, I couldn’t stop, lapping up the spreads with the bread and not coming up for air. I realized Pantera was laughing at me.
“What?”
“Nothing. I’m glad you’re eating.”
“No one has ever uttered those words to me before in my life. Even when I was a kid and didn’t want to eat my vegetables—and my mother’s a pediatrician!”
“My friend” brought out something made with cheese, semolina, pistachio, and honey. Even though I couldn’t, I did.
We got up and started walking again, although I now felt like I was seventeen months pregnant. The area abruptly changed. We had entered the Muslim section.
Immediately there were butcher shops with whole carcasses hanging up, fresh-caught fish, and thousands upon thousands of stalls with every kind of garment imaginable from burqas to yoga pants.
The women were either in burqas or modest clothing with head scarves, while most of the men were in regular western garb. Arabic music was pumping out of various stalls and everyone seemed to be hawking everything at once. Normally, I love walking the souks of the world finding crazy, exotic things that too often turn out to be stupid knockoffs. But now, the sights, the din, the insanity of women with nothing but eye slits sitting on the ground selling vegetables was sensory overload.
We stopped and he told me to stand aside while he spoke to someone at a stall. We continued on and reached an arched stairway with several dozen steps that led to another street, at the front of which was a small house covered in colorful paintings.
“It means the occupant is a Muslim who completed the hajj.”
“Meaning they’ve been to Mecca?” I asked.
“Actually, it means they walked around the Kaaba in Mecca. A Muslim must circumambulate the Kaaba, the most sacred site in Islam, seven times, in a counterclockwise direction.”
Like I cared at that point if the person had walked around the moon, but my reporter self couldn’t help but ask, “Why seven?”
“Muslims believe—like all other religions—in the metaphysical world. They believe it is made up of seven layers, or spheres. The universe we live in is the first … all sacred numbers. But then again, this also relates to what Jesus related to Judas. Sacred numbers are the secret codes in all religions.”
“I’m sorry I asked. Enough comparative religion for one day,” I sniped without understanding how important sacred numbers were about to become to us. “It’s a meteorite inside, that much I know.” Pantera shrugged.
Then he knocked on the door, which opened a crack. A few words were exchanged in Arabic and we continued on our way—to where, I couldn’t imagine.
“What was that about?” I asked.
“It was nothing.”
“It was something.”
“No. Listen, the less I discuss with you about what I do, the less information they can nail you on,” he said, taking my arm.
“Sí, Don Pantera.”
He grinned and kept walking, turning around to say, “You are such a wiseass.”
“Yes. Granted,” I wise-assed back, aping him with, “it’s not as exciting as being an international man of mystery, I know, but it’s a living.”
We approached something called the Prison of Christ, and he stopped. It was in an old, kind of banged-up Greek building. Very unprepossessing.
“The coordinates 31.780231° N, 35.233991° E? Right here.”
“Here?” I wondered.
“There has to be something here. What it is, I don’t know.”
“I can’t even imagine, but I’m pretty fair at puzzles…”
“Well, the sooner we figure this out, the sooner you’ll be back with your boy.” Since he did nothing without first having thought it through, I noted how he was sticking strictly to the more civilized “your” now.
“Ready?”
“Sure,” I said and I followed him down the old flight of stairs. The stairwell was narrow, dark, and nasty. The sides were sooty, the spaces between the ancient blocks of stone crudely filled in with black paint. One of the stones had rough, hand-painted lettering in both Greek (he said) and English, reading, PRISON OF CHRIST. Above the entrance to the stairwell was just a single painted icon of Jesus.
“Can you imagine a place of such significance being so open?”
“Not if the Vatican controlled it, that’s for sure,” he said.
This was the prison where the Greeks believe Jesus had been held prior to the crucifixion, although it had never been proven. St. Peter’s Basilica, on the other hand, merely held the tomb of St. Peter and it was worth billions and guarded as closely as the White House. This was probably because this prison was Greek Orthodox territory. If it wasn’t Greek, the Catholic Church would have gilded it in gold and turned it into a giant basilica/cash cow a long, long time ago.
The prison’s stark, unremarkable, unmolested, uncommercialized appearance reminded me of the House of the Virgin Mary near Ephesus, Turkey. These were two of the most important sacred sites in all of Christendom, yet each remained untouched and unclaimed by the Church.
A single bulb illuminated the cave-like hole of a prison hewn out of the rock. We were completely alone. It was a
tiny space, the ceiling barely taller than a man’s head. Pantera took a flashlight out of his jacket and shone it into the darkest areas. “The lucky few got to sleep in those,” he said, shining the light onto a few rectangular, trunk-sized holes cut into the rock.
There were also, every few feet along the rough cave walls, “handles” carved out of the stone, but they seemed to be handles that held nothing. “What are they?” I asked. I wished I hadn’t asked.
“That’s where the others, who weren’t so lucky, got to live—attached to the wall. The prisoners were lashed to the walls on those with their arms up.”
“How long did they stay like that?” I asked, alarmed.
“Until they were tried, found guilty, and crucified … or died from starvation, thirst, dysentery, and don’t ask.”
I imagined what this place had been like two thousand years earlier. Dank, dark, covered in feces, blood, vomit, and urine. The stuff of life, the end products of death. Why do these handle things remind me of something? What?
He shone his flashlight around the walls and you could practically hear the screams. I was getting light-headed from the lack of air and the tightness of the area. The spirits of the tortured dead haunted this place; you could feel it on your skin, banging in your brain, pounding inside your heart.
To think that this was where Jesus might have spent his last night on Earth was almost as incomprehensible as the crucifixion itself. How many thousands of people had ended their lives in this terrible dungeon below the earth, chained to the walls, beaten, screaming, dying?
I didn’t imagine it could still happen. I was wrong.
I had a little penlight attached to my key ring that I always kept as part of my life as a diligent New Yorker. I shone it up to the ceiling and was shocked by what I saw. “What the hell is that? Idiots have graffiti’d the ceiling! Look,” I added, moving the light around. “That part looks like ancient graffiti, though…” I pointed to carved ancient lettering on the ceiling. “Is that possible?”
“It certainly does,” he said. “Aramaic, by the looks of it.”
“The chains of our Lord did not bind Him!” I said excitedly. “The secret is above where He hung below! Could that be what Roy’s father’s note meant?”