“Tell me what your archaeological friend said,” he demanded.
“There are caves under the north end of the city, near the Damascus Gate. They’re called Solomon’s Quarries by the guidebooks, but their other name, the one they’re known by to the locals, is the Cotton Grotto.”
His eyes glittered. “Suggestive.”
“I thought it was. There’s an iron gate that may be buried in rubble—he thought the cave hadn’t been used since before the war. It’s a big cave, extending about two hundred yards underneath the city.”
“That still leaves quite a way to go to the Cotton Bazaar. Four, five hundred yards I believe.”
“Funny, the coincidence in names, though,” I said provocatively. Holmes does not believe in coincidence. He did not respond, just sat. After a minute he pulled out his pipe, which always made the thinking process go more quickly.
“We need to see some maps,” he said. I waited. “Father Demetrius is certain to have among his maps one that shows everything underground in the city.”
“Is it too late to go and knock him up?”
He scowled. “Demetrius is a fine old man, but he had some questionable dealings with the Turks.”
“Oh, surely not.”
“The welfare of his people is the only thing that matters to him. Even his passion for old stones takes second place to the Armenian community. Twice for certain, possibly several times, he gave the Turks… someone they wanted, in exchange for which they freed Armenian prisoners. One can understand it, I suppose. After all, the Turks were aiming at genocide, and when a million of one’s people are killed, it is apt to make one view outsiders with a different eye. What, after all, is an Englishman or two compared to a trainload of your countrymen?”
“He’s not to be trusted, then?” I asked bluntly.
“He’s not to be tested. He might have the ear of the wrong man for our purposes, and we’ve shown ourselves quite enough in that quarter. There are,” he noted, “a fair number of Armenians still rotting in prisons.”
“What about Government House? The army has undoubtedly done a survey of every inch of the city, above and below ground.”
He puffed furiously on his pipe. “I am wary of Government House,” he said finally, sounding not happy.
“Ellison.”
“A good clerk is like a servant, invisible and all-seeing. Still, I find myself unconvinced about Ellison. For one thing, I cannot imagine why Haifa would have notified Jerusalem that they were reaching out for Ali and Mahmoud, allowing Ellison to overhear.”
“You think there is another informant, one in Haifa?” God, I thought; the holes in British security are like Swiss cheese. “What about the driver, was he then killed to cut the tie, or because he had outlived his usefulness?”
“That is possible. Probable, even. However…”
“You do not wish to chance bringing Government House in, even if we could keep Ellison from knowing.”
“Not until we are more certain. Not for something as important as this.”
“So what comes next?” I asked, although I thought I knew.
He held his pipe away and examined the tobacco in the bowl. “Did you notice the lock on the door of Father Demetrius’ study?” he asked.
“It is a very old lock.”
His head came around and he shot me a grin. “That’s my Russell,” he said, as if everything had been decided. But then, it had.
We let ourselves out the small door set into the inn’s heavy gates and turned down the black alleyway towards the Armenian Quarter. “Just one thing,” Holmes breathed into my ear. “It is assumed in the city that anyone walking through the dark streets without a lantern is no better than he should be, and wants arresting. We can’t very well take a lantern, but if we are caught, you are to get away. Do you understand? They will be satisfied with one of us, and I’ll come to no harm sleeping in a cell overnight, but I’ll not see you in a man’s prison, even for a few hours. Do what you have to do, but get free.”
I had to agree that the thought was not a happy one. “All right.”
“I have your word?”
“I said so.”
“Good.” He slipped away down the alley and I followed, out to the open area in front of the Citadel, a maelstrom of activity during the day, now deserted but for rats and one scrawny cat. We skulked after the cat, around the sides of the echoing emptiness, over the entrance to the silent David Street bazaar, between the gates to the Anglican church compound and the steps of the Citadel (where the humble victor General Allenby had given his victory speech to the city), past the barracks, and into the Armenian Quarter. Twice we heard noises and plastered ourselves against the walls, but the only living things we saw had either wings or four feet. We came to the church, we went around it, and we eased our way through the gate and the garden to the door of Father Demetrius’ study.
My shiny new picklocks, a Christmas present from Holmes, were in Mycroft’s flat in London. Holmes’ old ones did the job, and in minutes we were inside the room, which smelt comfortingly of books and faintly of coffee and incense.
Holmes stretched to remove the tube of maps from its high shelf, and carried it over to a wall of books, where he seemed to be perusing the titles. He moved, and after a while I heard a click, and a bank of shelves opened. We went through, he closed the door, and only then did he turn on his electrical torch.
We were in a tiny closet of a room perhaps eight feet by four, with a thin mattress on the floor and a couple of pots. The only air came from a ventilation grid the size of a hand. I tried not to feel claustrophobic.
Holmes had the maps out and was spreading them on the floor. I held the sides flat, and he paged through them until he came to what we sought, when he removed the others from the top of the stack and let them curl up tightly.
The city walls and a few landmarks were the only familiar shapes on this map. The Dome of the Rock, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Armenian monastery were there; the Tyropoeon Valley that had once bisected the city was sketched in with a pencil, a north-south dip that cut along the edge of the Temple Mount before the city literally grew up and filled it with the rubble and débris of its earlier incarnations.
And here, drawn in clear, sweeping lines, were the aqueducts. The major one came from the south out of Bethlehem, taking a wide loop along the sides of the Hinnom Valley, around the Sultan’s Pool to the south-west of the city walls, following the topographic lines back along the walls until finally, not far from the Dung Gate, its route crossed under the walls and into the city proper, following the curve of the Tyropoeon Valley until it reached the eastern half of David Street, one of the old boundaries of the changing city. There the line ducked due east, under the Bab es-Silsileh: under the Temple Mount. According to the map, before reaching the Dome of the Rock the aqueduct divided, one arm reaching down to fill the fountain known as the Cup, the other reaching up to trickle into the Birkat Yisrael, now a dry rubbish tip, once, perhaps, the miraculous Pool of Bethesda.
That upper arm excited my interest, for after the split at the gate to the Haram it turned due north, running between the Western Wall and the Dome of the Rock, less than fifty feet from where the Souk el-Qattanin became the Bab el-Qattanin, the Gate of the Cotton Merchants, which was the Haram entrance closest to the Dome itself.
Furthermore, there was another aqueduct, coming not from Bethlehem but from the Mamilla Pool to the west of the city. It ran under the Jaffa Gate, pausing to replenish the Patriarch’s Pool near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre before continuing east in the vicinity of David Street towards the Haram. It too split, the northern half joining up with the upper arm of the Bethlehem aqueduct on its way to the Birkat Yisrael, the southern half crossing the Souk el-Qattanin and debouching into a bath just below the souk, the Hamman es-Shifa. This too was noted as a possible candidate for the Pool of Bethesda, in Father Demetrius’ neat, tiny writing.