Ziff held up a hand. ‘Mohammad, can you honestly say that if you were in charge, and the cameras were not here, you would not also want to open the secret door?’
‘I — no, no, I would not,’ he said, but his hesitation revealed his true feelings.
‘Look,’ Nina said to Talal, ‘I’m not here to step on anyone’s toes — and I’m grateful to both Israel and Jordan for being invited. But I know while we as professional archaeologists would all absolutely love to spend a week excavating each little corner of a site, I’m also a realist. I’ve run a major archaeological agency. And I know for a fact that the big, exciting finds finance the smaller ones, the ones that sometimes we care about more.’
Talal frowned. ‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m saying that something I’ve learned from dealing with Hollywood is that if you start with a bang, you get people’s attention. And the bigger your initial find is perceived to be, the more time and resources you’ll get to follow it up.’ A wry smile. ‘And the better it reflects on you. You personally, Mohammad. One big find can make your career.’
The Jordanian was still unconvinced. ‘That is how it works in America. We are not so… shallow.’
‘That’s how it works everywhere. You just haven’t been doing this long enough to see it.’
Ziff nodded. ‘That is the truth.’
Talal snorted. ‘I hope that when I am as old as the two of you, I am not so cynical.’
‘I’m not old!’ said Nina, affronted — though her recent fortieth birthday was something she had tried to downplay as much as she could. Another muffled chuckle came from Howie’s direction.
‘We will open the door,’ Ziff announced firmly. ‘Let us see what the priests were hiding from Nebuchadnezzar.’ He issued instructions to the other archaeologists. Talal scowled, but joined them.
She quietly sighed in relief. ‘That was good, Nina,’ said Fisher, giving her a thumbs-up. ‘Drama, conflict — that’s what people want to see. It creates a good narrative.’
‘The only narrative I care about is the one that ends with us seeing what’s behind that wall,’ she replied.
‘Yeah, sure. But if you can use a sledgehammer to make the first hole, that would be great. It’s more exciting. Remember, start with a bang!’
She gave him an irritated look for echoing her own words, then went to assist Ziff and the others.
‘Ready when you are,’ said Fisher eagerly. ‘Make it big!’
Nina tried not to let her exasperation show. The plaster covering the hidden doorway had been cleared away, the bricks blocking the entrance now fully exposed. More gaps were visible in the mortar, some of the roughly hewn stones actually loose to the touch. ‘Okay,’ she told Ziff and his team, ‘I think if we pull this out first, it’ll make it very easy to clear the rest.’
‘I agree,’ Ziff replied, prodding the brick she had indicated. It clunked against its neighbours. A long breath, then: ‘Raphael, the pry bar.’
The other Israeli slid the crowbar into a gap, then pushed. The stone ground out of its space with very little effort. Talal lifted it clear, then Nina and Ziff shone lights through the hole.
‘Definitely another room,’ the redhead reported. ‘A lot bigger than this one. I can see…’ She frowned. ‘A pit, but I can’t tell what’s in it.’
‘If you open that hole a bit wider, I could fly the drone in for a look,’ suggested Howie.
‘I’d prefer to see for myself, thanks,’ said Nina. She drew back to let Yaron continue his work.
The opening was soon wide enough for a person to traverse. ‘Are we going in?’ she asked Ziff, who nodded. ‘You first.’
‘No, you, Dr Wilde,’ he replied. ‘Without you, the First Temple would never have been found. It is only right that you should be first to see what is inside.’
She smiled. ‘Thank you.’ A quick aside to camera. ‘Let’s hope the priests didn’t leave any booby traps.’
Talal shook his head. ‘You have seen too many movies.’
‘I’ve seen too many booby traps,’ she retorted. ‘You wanna go first instead?’
He hesitated. ‘No. Dr Ziff is right. You should go.’
Her smile became more sardonic. ‘Okay,’ she told Rivero, ‘follow me and Dr Ziff inside. Everyone else, come through after the camera. You ready?’ The others acknowledged. ‘All right. Let’s see what we have.’
She stepped into the secret chamber.
The first thing that struck her was, to her relief, not some long-poised mechanism of death. Rather, it was the smell. The air felt much damper than in the outer room. But it was also stagnant, unpleasant.
Rivero entered behind Ziff, sweeping his light across the circular chamber. It was close to a hundred feet across, broad columns supporting a domed ceiling. A round pit occupied most of the floor. Its walls were stepped, forming an inverted ziggurat. She followed the beam as the cameraman tilted it downwards to reveal…
‘Wow!’ she cried, the exclamation echoing from the walls.
Ziff’s reaction was of equal astonishment, though more reverential. He murmured in Hebrew, putting a hand to his chest in wonderment.
A city was exquisitely rendered in miniature on the pit’s broad floor. The largest building — a temple or palace, Nina guessed — was an elaborate rectangular structure with twelve towers rising like battlements around its vaulted roof. Not just the city’s structures had been modelled; its landscape was also present, the palace sitting atop a jutting promontory with a near-vertical cliff dropping down to a river curling around its foot. The latter explained the smell. The channel had once had water flowing through it, but now only sludge remained.
The sight overcame even Talal’s dour mood. He exchanged excited words with his Jordanian colleague, then darted his flashlight beam over the model city. ‘It must be ancient Jerusalem!’
Nina shook her head. ‘The topography’s wrong. There isn’t a cliff like that on the Temple Mount.’
‘But what else could it be?’
Ziff noticed something on one of the lower tiers. ‘Look at this,’ he said, hurrying down a steep flight of steps. ‘There is text, all around the wall.’
‘Is that Old Hebrew?’ Nina asked as she followed.
‘I think so — yes, it is,’ he said as he reached the inscriptions. ‘The language of King Solomon.’
‘So what does it say?’ demanded Fisher as he descended behind Rivero and Lydia. The cameraman positioned himself to watch Ziff.
‘Wait, let me work.’ The elderly archaeologist studied a prominent section of text enclosed in a rectangle. ‘This is Solomon’s name, here,’ he pointed at a particular word, ‘and these first lines say… “The farthest reach of King Solomon’s realm.” Then there is a word I don’t recognise — it must be a name. Zan, hhet, el, kaph…’ He fell silent for a moment, combining the individual Hebrew letters into a word. ‘Zhakana, it says. “Zhakana, city of…”’
His eyes widened. ‘What is it?’ asked Nina.
Ziff turned towards her, Rivero’s camera catching his unnerved expression. ‘It says,’ he announced, ‘that this is Zhakana… City of the Damned.’
‘Well, that’s not ominous or anything,’ muttered Lydia.
Nina cautiously went to the bottom of the pit as Ziff continued reading. Talal followed her, as did Rivero. The turgid river’s outer bank marked the diorama’s edge. She stopped at it, trying to get a sense of how big the city would be in the real world. The palace on the clifftop had no visible doors or windows, nothing she could relate to a human scale.
The smaller buildings did have them, however — as well as a surprise. ‘They’re ruins,’ she realised. ‘The whole city’s in ruins, except for the palace.’ The models themselves were not broken, but had been carefully built to replicate how their originals had succumbed to the ravages of time.