“I know,” Tre said.
He faced his friend.
“I read in the journal we found in Cuba, the one from Luis de Torres, how this place was chosen as the cripta.”
“A vault?”
Tre nodded. “A hiding place. Columbus himself came, inspected, and chose it. They hid something away here. Something of great value, or at least that’s what de Torres wrote.”
“Like crates of gold from Panama?” he asked.
Tre shook his head. “I don’t know. He talked of this mine and three paths. He wrote that to know where to go is to know where you are from. Then he rattled off a list of things. ‘The number of vessels for the altar of burnt offerings, the altar of incense, and the Ark. The number of sections for the blessing. The number of times the word holy is repeated in the invocation of God. And the percent the Holy of Holies occupied in the First and Second Temples, per God’s command.’ ”
None of which meant anything to him.
“You have to be Jewish to know the answers,” Tre said. “I looked them up. There were three vessels for each altar. Three times the word holy is repeated. And one-third, .33 percent, is the amount of space the Holy of Holies occupied. That was the Jews’ most sacred spot in the world.” Tre pointed to the third opening. “That’s the way.”
Clarke nodded.
“What’s down there?” Béne asked.
“Something that is not Maroon or Taino.” Frank approached the doorway and shone his light inside. “Maroons discovered this cave long after the last Taino died. We respected them. So we protected this.”
Béne wondered who Clarke was speaking to. Him? Or the ancestors? If duppies did in fact exist, this would be their home.
Frank led the way into the cavern, its walls the same coarse stone. He wondered about gold veins since he’d seen little evidence of any mining. He asked Clarke about them.
“In the other tunnels there are offshoots that lead to crevices. In some the Tainos found gold. Not much ore, but enough to attract the Spanish.”
The duct meandered in a straight line, the air becoming progressively more stale. Béne felt light-headed. “Why is it hard to breathe?”
“That sound you heard when we entered from the pool, like the earth sucking lungfuls of air, then exhaling? It creates a suction. More bad air here than good, which was why the Tainos chose this place to die.”
Not comforting, and he saw Tre was likewise concerned. But with his eyes he said to his friend, You chose to come. And he could understand why. For an academician this was the ultimate experience—a chance to see firsthand something history could only talk about.
His head began to hurt.
But he said nothing.
“The Tainos knew religion,” Frank said, “in every way the Spanish did. They just didn’t think themselves superior to everyone. They respected their world and one another. Their mistake was thinking white men felt the same way.”
They’d walked maybe fifty meters, as best he could estimate. And they’d risen slightly. Their three lights revealed only a few meters ahead, the darkness around them absolute. No moisture anywhere, which was unusual for Jamaica’s caves, which were generally saturated from underground lakes and rivers.
Then he saw something.
In the first wash of Frank’s light.
Ten meters before them.
A wooden door, the planks warped and misshapen, blackened from time. No hinges lined any side. Instead the rectangle simply fit into an opening carved from the stone. Chunks of rock and boulders lay scattered on the tunnel floor, nearly blocking the way.
Béne stepped forward, intent on climbing over the debris and seeing what was there.
Frank grabbed his sweaty arm. “You sure you want to go in there?”
“Try and stop me.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?” ALLE ASKED ZACHARIAH. “I thought you wanted me to handle this.”
Her anger toward Berlinger and her father was now spilling over. Did anyone think her capable of anything?
“I am here because it is necessary. I’ve learned more about the Americans. They are definitely trying to stop us.”
“Why would they care about finding Jewish religious objects?”
They stopped walking, not far from the house where she and her father had been taken. The street here was not as crowded with visitors.
“Alle, American foreign policy has long included active intervention in everything associated with Israel. They provide billions in aid and military support, and think that entitles them to tell us what to do. Our current situation is directly their fault. I am assuming that obtaining our Temple treasures works into their plans in some way.”
She would ordinarily think him paranoid, but Brian Jamison had been real.
“Who was the woman you were talking to?”
“Someone providing me information on the Americans. What have you learned?”
“That my grandfather told my father a lot more than we thought.”
She told him what the message from the grave actually said, as best she could remember. “Berlinger and my father are in the ceremonial hall.”
She pointed to the building fifty yards away, around a slight bend in the street.
“How long have they been in there?”
“An hour.”
“I was in the cemetery, behind the hall. Was there any mention of seeing me?”
She shook her head. “They told me little. I was dismissed to the synagogue for prayers.”
She heard a hum and watched as Zachariah found a cell phone in his pocket.
“It is Rócha.”
He answered, listened for a moment, then said, “Keep me posted.”
He ended the call.
“Your father is on the move.”
———
TOM TROTTED DOWN THE STREET TOWARD THE OLD-NEW SYNAGOGUE. From the map on the placard he knew he had to round the block, circling the cemetery’s outer wall and an array of buildings. The woman he sought was exiting from the entrance to the cemetery and, if he hurried, he could catch her.
He’d slipped away from the ceremonial hall without Simon or Alle seeing him. They’d disappeared around a bend in the street that led away from him. He was moving as fast as he could without drawing attention. At the end of the street, he turned right and passed more souvenir shops. Sidewalks here were less congested, so he ran.
Who was this woman? How could she possibly know what had happened to him? At first, he’d tried to tell people that he’d been manipulated. But the effort had been futile. He was saying exactly what they expected to hear and, without proof, he sounded even more guilty.
Which had surely been the idea.
That was when he disappeared, went silent, stopped defending himself. Newspapers and television shows across the country filleted him. His silence only added to their furor, but he came to discover it had been the right response.
Especially after that visit in Barnes & Noble.
He kept moving, turning another corner, now headed back parallel to the cemetery wall up an inclined street toward the Pinkas Synagogue, which sat at the cemetery entrance. Buses lined the curb, people streaming toward a concrete ramp that led down to the original street level. Signs indicated the cemetery’s entrance was there.
He spotted the woman.
Coming up the incline, against the wave of visitors, making her way to the sidewalk.
He slowed his pace.
Stay calm.
Don’t blow this.
She turned away from him and walked up the sidewalk, paralleling a wrought-iron fence that guarded the synagogue. The street to his left was one-way, but a busy boulevard could be seen at its end, past the synagogue, maybe a hundred feet away.
Then he saw the car.
A black Mercedes coupe, parked at the curb, engine running, wisps of exhaust evaporating from its tailpipe.