As soon as the labourers had gone on their way, the Russian took a last look around the unfinished church and then made his way over to the Temple Mount.
Throughout the entire digging operation, he had kept an accurate note of both the tunnel’s length and the direction in which it was heading. That afternoon, he’d spent some time checking the figures – it was a fairly simple geometrical calculation – and now he knew, with a reasonable degree of accuracy, where his men had broken through into the ancient workings.
He came to a halt on the ground below and to the south-east of the Temple Mount, and for a few moments just stared at the massive stone wall which supported the southern side of the Mount, and at the Dome of the Rock which reared above it, the rays of the evening sun seeming to make the massive golden dome glow as if illuminated from within.
People bustled around him, but Pedachenko ignored them, concentrating on his location, on the landmarks he had picked out, and trying as far as he could to ensure that he was standing on the ground above the entrance to the ancient tunnel. In his left hand, he held a small compass, a device he hoped would help him navigate his way through the underground labyrinth later that night.
Pedachenko regarded the Dome of the Rock almost with amusement.
He had never understood how any rational person could give a moment’s credence to the idea of any kind of a god or supreme being, and it was a constant source of amazement to him that there were so many different religions in the world, all with different ideas and beliefs, and all with adherents who absolutely knew that they were right and that, by definition, all the other religions had to be wrong. Bloody wars had been fought for such beliefs, mostly in the name of some god or other who was believed to preach peace, and he had no doubt that other, equally bloody, wars would be fought in the future for the same reason. Personally, Pedachenko believed that human beings were simply a kind of highly evolved ape, the first creatures on the planet to have mastered the twin arts of communication and adapting their environment to suit themselves, rather than having to adapt or evolve to suit the environment. As far as he was concerned, man had no more need of any kind of a god than did a dog or a cat or a donkey or any other animal on the planet.
Churches and other places of worship were, to him, nothing more than a testament to man’s folly and gullibility, and to the entirely erroneous belief that human beings were in some way special and different. Though it was undeniably true, he thought as he looked up again towards the Dome of the Rock, that some of these buildings were rather impressive.
He looked down again at his compass, checking the reading once more. One of the problems he knew he would face underground was that nobody actually knew where either the First or Second Temple had been located on the Mount. Most people seemed to be of the opinion that the Dome of the Rock had most likely been erected directly on top of the foundations of the Second Temple, in a deliberate attempt by the Muslims to obliterate all traces of the earlier building, but there were Jewish scholars, he knew, who had proposed slightly different locations.
The other side of the coin was that the people who had concealed the menorah in the tunnels beneath the Temple Mount would also not have known the precise location of the Temple, any such knowledge having been lost centuries earlier, and would probably have just positioned the relic in whichever tunnel or chamber they believed lay closest to the centre of the Mount. But the compass would certainly be a help. At least it would ensure that when he began his explorations in the tunnel system under the Mount, he would be heading in more or less the right direction. After that, it would simply be a matter of looking in every chamber and room he discovered until he found the object he sought.
Pedachenko took a final glance around him, then headed off towards his own lodging, where he’d instructed one of his men to prepare a good meal for him, because it looked like being a very long night.
* * *
Over five hours later, just after midnight, Pedachenko once again stepped inside the partially finished church on the side of the Mount of Olives. He’d seen nobody since he left the outskirts of the old city, and was confident that he was unobserved. He was dressed in a dark coloured flowing robe topped with an Arab headdress, a keffiyeh or ghutrah, which had almost replaced the turban in the area about half a dozen years earlier, to ensure that he blended in. If anyone did see him, the fact that he was wearing Arab dress, rather than the European-style clothes he wore every day, should serve to divert suspicion away from him.
In his hand, he carried a small brown leather case, inside which he had placed three oil lamps, their reservoirs filled to the brim, a spare bottle of oil, an airtight metal tin containing a dozen phosphorus matches and sandpaper to light them, and a piece of chalk. In themselves, these items were perhaps unusual, but not in themselves suspicious. The only other thing in the case was a large piece of sacking, which Pedachenko hoped would be big enough to conceal the menorah when he found it, but which he’d arranged in the case to keep the oil lamps and the bottle upright.
He had no tools with him, and he hoped he wouldn’t need any. He expected that when he found the correct chamber under the Temple Mount, the menorah would be placed in an obvious position, perhaps even standing on a stone altar or a niche in a wall, and all he would have to do would be to wrap it in the length of sacking, tuck it under his arm and then retrace his steps back down the tunnel.
If he was wrong, and the relic was placed behind metal bars or secured in some other way, he would be able to examine it and decide then what tools he would need to remove it and carry those with him the following night. Time was on the Russian’s side: if it took him a week or even two or three weeks to find and recover the menorah, it really wouldn’t matter.
He opened the case, lit one of the lamps and then descended to the crypt. He lifted away the wood which concealed the tunnel entrance and stepped inside, removing his robe and headdress moments later. Under his basic disguise he was wearing a pair of old trousers and a woollen shirt, clothes which would allow him the freedom of movement he would need in the cramped tunnels and chambers he would be exploring.
About ten minutes after he entered the tunnel, Pedachenko reached the point where it intersected with the ancient workings, and he immediately stepped through into the open space which lay in front of him. This tunnel looked as if it was a natural fissure in the rock, widened and expanded by the efforts of workmen perhaps two or three millennia earlier.
According to his compass, the old tunnel ran more or less north-east to south-west. Neither was exactly the direction he wanted to go – he knew from his measurements and calculations that the Temple Mount lay to the north-west of his present position – but he turned to the right to follow that arm of the tunnel. After about twenty metres, he encountered a branch and unhesitatingly took the left-hand fork, pausing only to use the chalk to mark a large cross on the side wall of the tunnel, because he had no intention of getting lost in the myriad passages of the underground complex.
When he had visited the tunnel his recruited labourers had been constructing – something he had done every couple of days since his unauthorized project had started – he had always been struck by how warm it was underground. But that, Pedachenko now realized, must have been because of the very restricted space, the fact that the tunnel wasn’t very far underground and, more prosaically, at least partly because of the heat generated by the four men working together in such cramped conditions.
That thought had been sparked by the fact that the air in the tunnel system he was now exploring was cool, if not cold. He knew this had to be because the underground labyrinth was both much deeper underground, probably under several feet of rock, and simply because the tunnels and chambers were so much bigger. Pedachenko guessed that the temperature would probably remain constant for most of the year, the labyrinth insulated from the heat of the sun by the earth and rock which covered it.
In fact, it was quite difficult for the Russian to even get an appro
ximate idea of the size of the complex he was exploring, because the light from the oil lamp cast only a fairly dim circular glow, which was barely bright enough to illuminate both sides of the tunnel at the same time. He was having to proceed slowly and carefully to ensure that he didn’t miss any chambers or junctions in the system. And also, of course, he was having to mark the walls at regular intervals to ensure that he would be able to retrace his steps.
Alexei Pedachenko was not a nervous man, but the thought of being lost in that cold and pitch-black darkness, deep under the earth, was enough to send shivers down his spine. A short way down the tunnel he stopped for a moment and, just as an experiment, extinguished the flame of the oil lamp he was carrying. Even after he had allowed his eyes to get accustomed to the dark, he quite literally could not see his own hand in front of his face: the blackness was absolute. The relief he felt when he lit a match to rekindle the flame of the oil lamp was almost overwhelming.
And it wasn’t just the darkness. It was, he knew, completely irrational, but the open spaces he was walking through seemed to simply swallow the sound of his footsteps, the noise not echoing or reverberating from the walls but simply dying away, like the sound of a stone dropped down a deep shaft. Every time he stopped walking and stood to listen, he heard absolutely nothing. Every noise he made, even the faint sighs of his breathing, seemed to be swallowed and deadened by his surroundings. There was no noise whatsoever. It was almost as if the very walls themselves soaked up everything. And the air – which had a musty and unpleasant odour, for some reason faintly reminiscent of decay – was absolutely still.
He shook himself mentally, and walked on, deeper into the labyrinth.
A couple of chambers came into view in the flickering light of the oil lamp, and he entered and carefully explored both of them in turn, but neither contained anything of interest. That was not entirely surprising, because he knew that he could not yet be under the Temple Mount itself.
He moved on through the darkness, the leather case clutched in one hand and the oil lamp held aloft in the other, stopping periodically to check his compass to ensure that he was still heading in approximately the right direction. The rough-hewn tunnel gave way to something more like a passageway, the sides reinforced with masonry, which in turn led into a large open space, the ceiling so high above him that he could barely see any of its details, or even make out its shape.
Pedachenko had been keeping a very rough count of his steps ever since he’d entered the ancient tunnel system, and now he estimated that he must have walked far enough to have passed under the southern wall of the Temple Mount and be somewhere close to his goal. He was still carefully marking the tunnel at regular intervals so that he would be able to find his way out again, but as he lifted the light close to the right-hand wall at yet another junction in the tunnel system, and prepared to mark another cross with his piece of chalk, he saw something which stopped him dead.
Almost exactly where he had intended to place his mark, there was already a chalked symbol on the wall. Not a cross, but an arrow, pointing in the direction he was walking. And that, Pedachenko knew immediately, could only mean one thing. Somebody else had been down there, inside the tunnel system, and probably fairly recently. The wall was slightly damp and chalk marks, he knew, degraded in the presence of moisture. Then he spotted something on the ground, an object which provided an immediate and irrefutable confirmation of his suspicion. It was the remains of a match, quite similar to those he was carrying in the airtight box in his case.
Pedachenko felt a sudden surge of doubt and despair. Had he been beaten to the relic? Or was it still hidden away in one of the chambers, overlooked by whoever had explored the tunnel system before him?
There was only one way to find out. He turned in the direction that the arrow was pointing, lifted his oil lamp above his head and began walking forward.
Almost immediately he saw the entrance to a chamber over to his right, crossed over to it and stepped cautiously inside. He’d seen evidence of a number of rock-falls in the tunnels since he’d stepped inside the old workings, and was keenly aware that if he suffered any incapacitating injury while he was underground – whether from a rock tumbling onto his head or even something as stupid as a broken ankle – the tunnels would become his tomb. Nobody knew he was there, and by the time any comprehensive investigation discovered the hidden entrance in the crypt of the church being built on the Mount of Olives and anyone traversed the cramped and claustrophobic tunnel to find out where it led, he would be long dead.
So he moved slowly and carefully, taking his time and making sure he could see where his next step would take him before he moved forward.
The chamber was, like all the others he’d investigated so far, a crudely hewn space cut from the rock, approximately square, and with a ceiling perhaps nine or ten feet high. It was also, as far as he could see, completely empty. He was looking for any niches cut into the rock walls or any other openings in which the menorah could have been concealed. But the walls he was looking at, though very rough and uneven, were completely solid. He made two complete circuits around the perimeter, raising and lowering the oil lamp to ensure that he was seeing the entire height of the walls, but without result. There was nothing in the chamber.
Pedachenko stepped back out into the tunnel, lifted the lamp above his head to ensure he could see where he was going, and continued his steady and methodical search.
Another rough-hewn entrance loomed up in the gloom, this one on the left-hand side, and he stepped across to it, checked that the roof looked solid, and then stepped inside. This room was a lot smaller, and with a much lower ceiling, and for a moment his spirits lifted, because on the opposite wall, almost in the centre, was a tall but narrow opening.
He lowered the oil lamp to make sure there were no obstructions on the floor, but it was just beaten earth and stones, then strode across to inspect what he’d seen. A few moments later, his shoulders slumped in disappointment. It was a niche in the rock, but it was entirely empty apart from a few slivers of ancient timber, possibly the remains of a shelf or perhaps even a box.
Pedachenko carefully inspected the rest of the chamber, but found nothing of any interest or significance. He turned back, retraced his steps to the entrance, and then resumed his slow and cautious progress deeper into the labyrinth.
In the next minute, he saw two things which concerned him. The first was another chalked arrow on the rock wall at about head height, and the second was the unmistakable signs of recent digging. On the right-hand side of the passageway, close to floor level, there were several pieces of masonry, apparently forming the top of an arch, the base buried deep in the earth below him. The opening below the masonry had clearly been deepened: soil and debris were scattered around the spot, and the space was big enough to allow a man to enter the hidden chamber, albeit only by crawling on the ground.
Of course, there was absolutely no way of telling whether or not the digging was recent. It could have been done the previous year or a millennium ago, but Pedachenko suspected the work was recent, and that was not good news for him.
He muttered a foul Russian curse, then bent down, slid the oil lamp through the gap, crouched down and crawled through the opening.
At first sight, the space didn’t appear significantly different to any of the others. A simple chamber, hacked out of the rock in antiquity for some unspecified purpose, and then abandoned for centuries. The only small distinguishing feature was a crevice, possibly just a natural crack in the rock, in the opposite corner, not even as substantial as the niche he’d already inspected in the wall of the other chamber. It didn’t look to him as if it was big enough to conceal something the size of the menorah.
The Russian walked over to it and lifted the oil lamp to illuminate the crack. At first, he thought there was nothing in the crevice at all, and the opening in the rock appeared to be just a natural fissure, not something man-made. Then he looked more closely and saw the unmistakabl
e marks made by chisels or possibly hammers on the sides of the opening. It was a natural gap in the rock, but somebody, at some time, had clearly attempted to widen it for some reason.
He lowered the oil lamp to rest it on the flattened rock at the base of the crevice, but as he did so the lamp toppled backwards and he only just caught it before it fell onto its side. He looked more closely at the bottom of the opening, and stretched out his hand to touch it. Then it was obvious to him. What he had taken to be a layer of uneven rock was actually some kind of cloth, black with the dust of ages.
Pedachenko was no expert on fabrics, and even if he had been, in the dim light available to him it was doubtful if he would have been able to deduce anything useful about the material. But to him it definitely looked as if it was old.
Why would somebody leave a length of cloth in such an inaccessible chamber, he wondered. He grabbed the fabric and lifted it out of the crevice, placing the oil lamp on the ground as he did so, and looked at what he’d found. The material was thin, but very long, and he immediately wondered if it was perhaps a burial shroud. Maybe the chamber he entered had been used to prepare bodies for burial. Or possibly the ground he was standing on was a kind of underground cemetery. He could have been walking on a floor of bones. He didn’t know enough about Jewish burial customs to know if that was even possible, but he thought it unlikely. The old priest had described a two-stage burial process, but he’d never mentioned the interment of bodies in a place like this.
Then another unpleasant thought struck him. The cloth he was holding his hands could have been a burial shroud, but it could also have been used to wrap something else, either to protect it from damage or to keep it hidden, or even both. Pedachenko dropped the cloth on the ground and stepped back to the crevice to carry out a thorough examination of the space. It was immediately obvious to him that there was nothing else concealed in the crack in the rock, because the sides and back of the opening were solid, but he looked closely, covering every inch of it.
The Ripper Secret Page 7