You wrote it down? he’d asked Haj Harun.
The old Arab had waved his arms in circles. He couldn’t remember whether he had or not but to Joe the implication was that he had and later lost or misplaced it, this real or secret history of the riches he’d discovered in the caverns beneath Jerusalem, in the Old Cities he’d explored down there and then mixed up in his mind with tales from the Thousand and One Nights and the other fancies that obsessed him, a detailed guide to the incalculable wealth brought to Jerusalem over the millennia by conquerors and pious fanatics.
He’d pressed Haj Harun about it.
Are you sure you don’t have any idea what you could have done with it?
With what?
The story of your life.
Haj Harun had shrugged helplessly and wrung his hands, certainly wanting to please his new friend by recalling this or anything else yet simply unable to, his memory slipping as he said and the years all sliding together, pumping his arms in circles and sadly admitting he just couldn’t be sure, just couldn’t say, the past was too confusing.
Was he forgiven? Were he and Prester John still friends?
That they were, Joe had answered, nothing changed that. But the treasure map had never left his mind and now he wondered whether to mention it to his new employer, who seemed to know a good deal about Jerusalem. Why not chance it? Carefully, without enthusiasm, he asked the man if he had ever heard of a document that supposedly included three thousand years of Jerusalem’s history, written by a madman and worthless, thought to have disappeared not too long ago.
The man studied him curiously. Was he referring to the myth of an original Sinai Bible? An original version totally unlike the forgery later bought by the czar?
The czar. Even the czar had been after it. So eager to get his hands on the map he’d been going around snapping up forgeries.
That’s it. What do they say happened to it?
Supposedly it was buried. But no one has ever seen it and of course it’s all nonsense, the fabrication of a demented mind.
Demented certainly, nonsense of course, buried assuredly. Haj Harun unlocking his antique safe one evening and putting a foot on the ladder, a short time later padding stealthily away down a tunnel fifty feet below the ground for a long private night in the caverns.
What do they say was in it exactly?
The man smiled. That’s the point. Supposedly everything is in it.
Everything. Persian palaces and Babylonian tiaras and Crusader caches, Mameluke plunder and Seleucid gold. A map so valuable the czar had been willing to trade his empire for it.
When do they say it was buried?
In the last century.
Yes that would be right, Haj Harun would still have had his wits about him then. He’d have written it and hidden it and then forgotten where he’d hidden it when he was seized by the idea of his holy mission. He saw the old man stumbling around the walls of his empty shop staring into corners. Mission to where? The moon. Residence? Lunacy. Occupation? Lunatic.
Jaysus that was his Haj Harun all right. Explorer of secret caverns and discoverer of two dozen Old Cities, mapmaker of the centuries, the former King of Jerusalem now reduced to peering at blank walls and absentmindedly adjusting his helmet, which released a shower of rust to fill his eyes with tears and blur the figure he’d hoped to see in his nonexistent mirror.
The man on the other side of the table was talking about routes from Constantinople. Trails, roads, paths, English border posts and sentries, defiles to be crossed at night. Joe held up his hand.
Here now, aren’t we talking about the first arms ever to be smuggled to the Haganah? What’s an everyday wagon with a false bottom doing on such an occasion? Figs for cover? I have a better idea. There’s a giant stone scarab I happen to know about, hollow inside so that it could hold a lot. A scarab, I said. A giant Egyptian stone scarab.
The man gazed at him. Joe lowered his voice.
Picture it now. From the heart of the enemy’s camp a huge beetle inches across an ancient parched homeland one day to be fertile again. A relentless scarab creeping forward, an Egyptian scarab as patient and hard as stone because it is stone as still stone. A scarab as old as the pyramids, as determined as the people who will now escape those pyramids, a giant stone scarab scaling the slopes of the mountain to reach Jerusalem at last in the first light of a new day, an Egyptian stone beetle and great secret scarab stuffed with the first arms for the future Jewish underground army.
O’Sullivan Beare leaned back and smiled, suspecting this man Stern might pay him well.
He had the baking priest’s papers and Stern’s instructions, now all he had to do was get Haj Harun to agree to the trip, since there was no hope of parting him from the scarab. This morning, he said, I overheard someone mention a man named Sinbad. Who is he anyway? A local trader?
Haj Harun abruptly stopped pacing along the walls.
A local trader? Do you mean you’ve never heard of Sinbad’s mighty adventures?
No. What were they then?
Haj Harun took a deep breath and launched into a headlong account. Twenty minutes passed before the sundial chimes struck, causing him to pause.
Midnight though the sun’s out, said Joe. When was the last time you went to sea?
Haj Harun’s hands hung in midair.
What?
To sea.
Who?
You yourself.
Me?
Yes.
Haj Harun lowered his head in embarrassment.
But I’ve never been to sea. I’ve never left Jerusalem except to make my annual haj.
The hell you say. Sinbad did all that and you’ve never been to sea even once?
Haj Harun covered his face, overwhelmed by the pathetic failure of his life. His hands shook, his voice quivered.
It’s true. How can I ever make up for it?
Why we’ll make a trip of course. We’ll follow resolutely in the wake of Sinbad.
I can’t. I can’t leave my treasures unprotected.
No need to. No one can make off with the safe, it’s too heavy or too deeply rooted or both. Your helmet you can wear, Sinbad probably wore one himself. And the scarab we’ll take with us.
We will? Would a ship captain allow it?
We’ll tell him it’s cargo. We’ll say we’re in the antiquities business and we’re lugging it to Constantinople to sell for some lighter pieces. He’ll understand. Who wants to own something that heavy? Then when we come back we’ll say we couldn’t get a proper price for it, all neat and tidy and no one suspecting a thing. What do you say?
Haj Harun smiled dreamily.
Resolutely in the wake of Sinbad? After all these years?
The same afternoon the sea voyage was proposed Haj Harun noticed something that bewildered him. All at once his new friend had begun to refer to his past as a Bible. More specifically he called it the Sinai Bible.
What did it mean? Why was his past a Bible to his friend and what did it have to do with the Sinai? Was he being accepted as Moses’ spiritual companion and brother in the wilderness because his name was Aaron?
He pondered the problem as best he could and kept returning to Moses. After forty years of wandering Moses had arrived somewhere, and although he had been wandering about seventy-five times that long he hadn’t gotten anywhere at all yet. But in the near future? Did his friend have faith in the eventual success of his mission? Was that what he was saying?
Haj Harun peeked shyly at the crumbling plaster in his nonexistent mirror. He straightened his helmet.