Jack raised his eyebrows as O’Connor extracted a photograph from the envelope and slid it across the table, his hand remaining on it for a moment as he looked at Jack. “It’s not only my job that’s on the line here. It’s more, much more.”
Maria and Jeremy craned their necks as Jack lifted the picture. It showed a flashlit image inside a small chamber, its smooth walls discoloured by streaks of brown and green. On the floor were mounds of decayed matter, peppered with fragments of wood and fabric. It looked like an Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb, opened for the first time after having been looted long ago in antiquity.
“I managed to reach in and take a handful of that stuff, which I then had analysed in secret,” O’Connor said quietly. “The wood is shittim, acacia, the hardwood mentioned in the Old Testament. It was probably used for making a bier, something that required a lot of load-bearing strength. And the fabric’s silk, coloured with Tyrean purple, the prized dye derived from the murex shell found off the coast of Lebanon.”
“My God,” Maria murmured. “The Temple Veil, the sacred curtain of the Holy of Holies, used to conceal the sanctuary from the rest of the Temple.”
O’Connor nodded. “Probably used by the Romans to wrap up the menorah and the golden table.”
“So they were inside the arch all that time, directly above the symbol of the menorah on the relief carving.” Jack shook his head in amazement. “The priests must have had them moved under cover of darkness from the Temple of Peace, only a stone’s throw away.”
“And then hundreds of years later one of the custodians let the secret out, maybe using the treasure as a bargaining chip to save his own skin when the barbarians invaded,” O’Connor said. “Rome was devastated by the Goths under Alaric in AD 410 and then again by the Vandals in 455. According to Procopius, the Vandal king Giseric seized the Jewish treasures and took them to Carthage in North Africa, and after the Byzantine general Belisarius captured Carthage from the Vandals in 533 he had the treasures shipped to Constantinople. Procopius tells us that the Byzantine emperor Justinian was overcome by piety and had the treasures returned to Jerusalem, but I don’t believe a word of it. There’s no reliable record that the treasures of the Temple were ever again in the Holy Land.”
“So the menorah really was in Constantinople.” Maria looked keenly at O’Connor. “Could the story of their return to Jerusalem have been a cover-up, a false trail?”
“It’s very possible,” O’Connor replied. “Procopius became prefect of Constantinople, and was a member of Justinian’s inner court. The rituals and superstitions of pagan Rome continued well into the Christian period, and emperors of the Golden Age were revered. Perhaps Vespasian’s instructions to conceal the menorah still had potency through the centuries, and the story of the return of the treasures to Jerusalem was a way of keeping their presence in Constantinople secret. And just because the Byzantines were Christian doesn’t mean they were any more sympathetic to the Jews than the Romans of Vespasian’s day. I believe the menorah was locked away for another five hundred years, perhaps deep in the vaults of Justinian’s new cathedral of Hagia Sofia in Constantinople.”
“There are some who believe the Jewish treasures never made it out of Rome at all, that they were secretly taken by the papal authorities and lie hidden to this day in the Vatican.” Jack looked penetratingly at O’Connor, uncertain how much the other man might reveal. “Even before the barbarian invasions, the Church had begun to appropriate temples in Rome and cleanse them of their artefacts, starting soon after Constantine’s conversion to Christianity in the fourth century.”
O’Connor paused for a moment before replying, his voice hushed but deliberate. “It is true that the Vatican conceals untold treasures, priceless works of art unseen for generations. There are sealed passageways in the catacombs under St. Peter’s that even I haven’t seen.” He looked solemnly at Jack. “But I can assure you the menorah is not among them. If it was I wouldn’t be here now. I would have been sworn to secrecy by the papal authorities. Remember our history. The treasures of the Jewish Temple would represent the ultimate triumph of Christianity, retribution for the complicity of the Jews in Christ’s death. If we held them it would have to be the world’s best-kept secret. Any word and there would be war.”
“War?” Jeremy said sceptically.
“Total breakdown in relations between the Vatican and Israel. Age-old animosities between Jews and Christians reignited across the world, fuelling anti-Semitism and ultra-Zionism on a horrifying scale. And if the treasure was ever returned to Jerusalem, it would spark the final showdown in the Middle East we have long feared. Some orthodox Jews believe the restoration of the menorah to Jerusalem would be the first step in rebuilding the Temple, on the site now occupied by the Al-Aqsa mosque, one of the holiest sites of Islam. The menorah would give Israel total confidence in its destiny, empowering fundamentalists and persuading waverers. And the Arab world would know once and for all that their demands would never be achieved by negotiation.”
“It’s curious that the Nazis never came looking for it in Rome,” Jack said.
“The Second World War was a dark period for the Church,” O’Connor said grimly. “The Pope never gave Hitler an excuse to plunder the Vatican. But there have been plenty of others knocking on our doors since then. Zionist fantasists, conspiracy theorists, treasure-hunters who believe they’re halfway to finding the Holy Grail. I can assure you they have all been on a dead-end trail.”
At that moment there was a bustle of activity outside and Costas burst into the room. “Sorry to interrupt,” he said breathlessly, “but I thought you should see this.” He hurried over and handed Jack a piece of paper. “Remember those timbers with the chain in the Golden Horn? You thought they looked a little odd.”
“Overlapping strakes, attached with iron rivets.” Jack struggled to take his mind off the menorah and focus on their remarkable find of two days before. “More in the northwest European tradition of shipbuilding in the early medieval period. Odd for a Venetian galley of 1453.”
“Well, there’s your answer.” Costas leaned forward excitedly, his hands on the table. “The sample we brought back’s just been analysed. It’s Scandinavian oak. And it’s from the prow of a longship, not a Mediterranean galley. It looks as if it broke off in the chain, probably without sinking the vessel. And check out the tree-ring date.”
“Ten forty-two, plus or minus a year,” Jack read, his mind reeling with astonishment.
Jeremy let out a whoop and stood up, unable to contain himself. “It fits perfectly! Harald Hardrada fled Constantinople in 1042. His ship could have been built the year before, on the shores of the Baltic. You haven’t found the chain from the Sack of Constantinople in 1204 at all. You’ve found the chain sunk by a band of Viking mercenaries a century and a half earlier, as they powered their longship out of the Golden Horn.”
Costas glanced at the image of the soldiers burdened with loot in the triumphal procession on the arch. “And now we know what could have given their ship the weight to smash that chain.”
“The menorah.” Jack shook his head and then grinned broadly at Costas. “I’ve got to hand it to you. Another one for science.”
5
Jackpeered out the window as the aircraft banked to starboard and the full expanse of the ocean came dramatically into view. It had been a cloudless early morning, and the sun shimmered off the waves more than thirty thousand feet below. For half an hour since their refuelling stop at Reykjavik they had been out of sight of land, but after passing over the Arctic Circle the sea had become increasingly speckled with white. Some of the shapes were huge slabs of white surrounded by turquoise where each iceberg continued for hundreds of metres underwater. Now the bergs were joined by sea ice, a fractured mosaic of white that extended as far as the eye could see, and Jack could make out the first fingers of land ahead of them to the west. He leaned towards the occupant of the seat opposite him and pointed through the window.