“Underground,” Rebecca said. “That’s where you need to go. Everything’s just under the surface here: war, the truth behind religion, the reality of history. Jerusalem’s riddled with natural caves and man-made tunnels, a honeycomb beneath your feet almost everywhere you step. Some archaeologists I’ve spoken to say there’s nothing more to be found here, that every last fissure has been scraped clean by treasure hunters over the centuries. Others believe that the ban by the mosque authorities on exploration beneath Temple Mount has concealed untold treasures, the sacred relics of the temple and much else besides.”
“The stuff Abdullah really wants to get his hands on,” Jeremy said.
“Abdullah was being disingenuous when he lamented the ban. For him, the possibility of undiscovered treasure boosts the mystique of the place and keeps his customers coming back for more. Buy a coin or an oil lamp from Jerusalem and you buy into that dream. And there may be a blanket ban on official exploration beneath the Temple Mount, but those who supply him with antiquities operate outside the law and will always be trying to find a way in. Once they’ve gotten there, it would be a free-for-all, but with Abdullah poised to stake the biggest claim.”
Jack peered at Rebecca. “And he’s canny enough to know that someone like you might be able to go to places along the temple precinct that would be denied to his people, and that you might be able to unlock vaults that would make him richer than his wildest dreams. That’s what those Russian oligarchs really want — the real treasure, not pots and coins — and they’d compete with one another to own it. Abdullah truly would become the new caliph of the Jerusalem underworld, and you would have been his unwitting pawn.”
“But I’ve used him, not the other way around. Let’s move. We’ve only got a few hours until you have to leave.”
They came out in front of the Western Wall precinct, the midday sun after the gloom of the alleyways reflecting blindingly off the white surface of the rock and making Jack squint and shade his eyes. A pair of Israeli Air Force F-16s shrieked overhead, banking right in the direction of the southern border with Gaza and Egypt. The police and army presence was stronger than he had ever seen it before, and the worshippers were limited to a few groups of Hasidic Jewish men with black hats and long hair who were bobbing and praying in front of the wall. Jack found himself hoping that the twelfth-century poet Yehuda Halevi of the Geniza letter had gotten here, that he had broken the Crusader ban on Jews entering the city and had touched the wall before he died, and had found the spiritual revelation that had eluded him in his life in Spain. The wall itself seemed impermeable, as if the shaped masonry were a natural extension of the bedrock, and Jack had to remind himself that like the mosque above it the wall was an accretion on a rock that had a far older history of human occupation than either of the two religions that claimed it.
Rebecca veered to the left to head back toward the city and the conjunction between the Western Wall and the medieval structures that abutted it. Jack followed, and caught up with her. “Isn’t the Temple Mount excavation to the right, at the City of David site?”
Rebecca waved her hand dismissively and flashed him a smile. “Been there, done that. I’ve got a new project.”
Jack stared at the wall ahead. He remembered what Rebecca had said: underground. He had an ominous feeling, but one tinged with excitement. He had guessed where she might be taking them. Any political storm that he might have provoked by transgressing on forbidden territory in Egypt and Sudan would be nothing compared to the one Rebecca might be risking now.
They came to a halt in front of a stone archway, and Jeremy walked up alongside. “Any hints, Rebecca? Any special equipment needed?”
She hitched up her rucksack, kicked back on the heel of one boot, and stared determinedly at a man-sized crack in the wall in front of them. “All I can say is, you haven’t seen anything yet. Follow me.”
CHAPTER 17
Jack squeezed sideways through the crack in the masonry and came out on a boardwalk that ran the interior length of the wall, at least twenty meters in either direction. They were inside a cavernous enclosed space between the outer medieval wall they had just penetrated and a continuation of the Western Wall of the Temple Mount. Its huge blocks were visible some ten meters in front of Jack and disappeared to the left under accretions of later structure.
On the ground in front of the wall was the exposed rock that formed the edge of Temple Mount, an area previously covered over with paving slabs of Roman appearance that were now stacked around the edges. Pockets of the rocky ground were under excavation, with hard-hatted archaeologists visible where the dolomite had been cut in prehistory to form tombs and underground dwellings. Rebecca beckoned Jack and Jeremy forward along the walkway to a table covered with files and cameras. A bearded man with a skullcap was working at a laptop. He smiled when he saw Rebecca, and then sprang to his feet when he saw Jack following. Rebecca quickly kissed his cheeks and took his hand. “Shalom, Danny. My friend, Dr. Jeremy Haverstock, and my father.”
Danny shook their hands, and spoke quietly to Jack. “It’s an honor to meet you. Let me know if I can help in any way.” He watched them as they each took a hard hat and a torch from the table and Rebecca led them along the final length of the boardwalk. She turned to Jack. “Danny’s the assistant director, in charge for today. I told him I wanted some time alone with you in my excavation, and he agreed not to broadcast your presence. It’s a good thing the director’s not around as he’d have been all over you. The rest of the team would have been clamoring to meet you, and we’d never have gotten anywhere.”
The boardwalk ended where the outer wall and Western Wall began to converge, and the area of exposed bedrock reduced in width to less than five meters. They were a good twenty meters from the nearest excavator and well beyond the temporary lighting that had been set up over the main area. Rebecca led them out of sight behind a rocky knoll and then down an ancient rock-cut staircase some fifteen steps into the gloom. They passed several burial niches, rectilinear recesses cut into the rock, and then turned a corner in the passageway and came to a halt in front of a hole in the lower side wall only a little wider than Jack’s body. Rebecca sat down, poked her legs inside, and then switched on the headlamp on her helmet. “Okay,” she said. “Here goes.”
She disappeared down the hole, followed by Jeremy. Jack eased himself behind, holding the rim of the rock with his fingers and feeling for the floor with his feet. “Another six inches, Dad,” Rebecca called up, her voice resonating in the chamber. Jack let himself slide down, twisting sideways to prevent his spine from being scraped, and landed in a low crouch. He looked around, his headlamp beam joining the other two, and could see immediately that they were inside an ancient rock-cut tomb, the walls showing some erosion from rainwater percolation but overall in a good state of preservation. One wall was partly covered by a hanging sheet and still had large sections of its plaster facing intact. A foldable plastic chair lay in front, and an array of cleaning tools and brushes were set alongside as well as a bucket half-filled with debris. The opposite wall from the entrance tunnel, in the direction of the Western Wall, was not rock-cut but instead was made up of a precarious-looking jumble of rubble, more like a rockfall than a deliberate construction.
Jack looked at Rebecca. “Okay. Fill us in.”
Rebecca nodded, and knelt beside the rubble wall. “When I saw those initials on that artifact in Abdullah’s storeroom and identified them as Charles Wilson, I immediately thought of Wilson’s Arch, the feature abutting the Western Wall that was above us when we came into this place. It’s named after Wilson because he uncovered it in 1867. If he was working there then, this seemed a good place to begin my search for places underground where he might have found that artifact, places dating to the later second millennium BC. By good fortune the Israelis have been carrying out extensive excavations and clearance as far as they can along the length of the Temple precinct at this point, so my next step was to get myself on the excavation team.”