The border guard glanced at their papers, and nodded them through.
They headed down Via Dolorosa into the Muslim Quarter, and met up with Tom and Genevieve who were waiting for them in the Austrian Hospice Café. It was a Viennese-style cafe renowned as being able to deliver a splendid combination of class, ambience, and delectable food.
A man greeted them at the door, and said, “You must be Mr. Reilly and Mrs. Jenkins?”
Sam nodded. “That’s right. How did you know?”
“Your dog,” the waiter replied. “A Mr. Tom Bower told me that you would be arriving shortly and asked me to send you up onto the private rooftop. I was told that I would recognize you easily as soon as you arrived, because you would be traveling with a golden retriever.”
Sam met his eye, the crease of a suppressed smile forming on his lips. “That’s right. He’s a specialist archeology dog, trained to search for certain scents centuries old.”
The waiter seemed uninterested by their story, his expression neither accepting or dismissing their ruse. The man nodded. “If you will come with me, I’ll take you to meet your friends.”
They followed the waiter through the garden terrace, and up three flights of masonry stairs, onto the rooftop, from which, Sam could see the outcrops of the ancient city. Behind them, and to their south, stood the golden dome of Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem’s most prominent feature of its Old City landscape. In the opposite direction Sam’s eyes spotted the Western Wall — AKA the Wailing Wall — and the Resurrection Rotunda in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Sitting, drinking Arabic tea at the other end of the rooftop, was Tom and Genevieve.
Tom stood up to greet them. “Ah, Sam… you made it. I hope you’re hungry.”
The dog tilted his head to greet them and mewled eagerly.
“It’s all right, Caliburn, we’ve already got food waiting for you,” Tom said, as he pointed to a bowl of water and cooked lamb beneath the table.
Sam looked at the food on the table. It was enough to feed an army. A rich combination of Viennese and Arabic food adorned the table, from goulash soup, schnitzel, sacher-torte, through to baklava.
All four of them sat down at the table, while Caliburn scoffed his brunch, and Tom brought them up to speed with their research trying to locate the burial site of Belisarius.
Tom said, “The good news is we’ve located in the archives a story about a grand marble tomb being built and an unnamed person being buried within it on the 4th of April, 565AD.”
Sam said, “That’s within a week of Belisarius’s death!”
Tom suppressed a smile. “Exactly. That’s what we thought, too.”
Sam put his Arabic tea down. “There can’t be that many grand burials in marble tombs during that period?”
“None quite that extravagant for the year.”
“But there was no record of his name?”
“No. According to the historical archives, the person had served Justinian the Great, but there had been a problem — something that had tarnished their friendship or soured the political relationship — either way, Justinian had refused to acknowledge the person’s friendship but had offered to pay for the tomb and burial. Shortly after that, Justinian died, and so whatever the secret, it died with him.”
“Where was the burial site?” Sam asked.
Tom replied, “A private necropolis near the Nea Church. It’s two blocks away.”
Guinevere said, “That’s got to be Belisarius! I mean, everything matches up perfectly. The secret friendship. Belisarius was tried by Rome, and sentenced to death, but Justinian the Great pardoned him out of respect for his battle achievements, but this in itself had caused political upheaval for Justinian. The time of the burial matches. Also, the fact that it came out in the region near the Nea Church, which Belisarius sponsored.”
Sam beamed with pleasure. “That’s great, let’s go there, and check it out now with Caliburn!”
“That might be a bit difficult. We have a sketch of the building, but most of the city was destroyed during the Siege of Jerusalem in 612AD. So, unless you happen to have a magic map, depicting the topographic regions and buildings around that time period, I think we’re all out of luck.”
Sam grinned. “Actually, there is. It’s called the Madaba Map.”
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Dexter Cunningham met his attacker with the unique dignity of someone resigned to die. After seven years of running, a certain calm came over him once he knew it was finally over.
“It’s been a while, Excalibur.” Dexter grinned. “I can’t say the years have been kind to you.”
Excalibur ignored his attempt to brush off the abject terror of meeting him in the Glastonbury Abbey. “I’ve heard it’s not how good you look over the years, but the amount of years you have… or something like that… I don’t know… but what I do know is soon, you’ll be dead, and I’ll still keep on doing what I’ve always done.”
Dexter said, “That’s not what I heard. I heard someone was coming for you.”
He threw his Walther P99 handgun into the nearby lake to stop Excalibur using his own handgun to kill him. Excalibur wasn’t even carrying a weapon. He knew he didn’t have to. The bullets couldn’t harm Excalibur, but they would end up killing Dexter.
Excalibur grinned wickedly. “Who tracked you down?”
“A man. His name was Sam Reilly. He said he was looking to find and rebuild Caliburn so that he could defeat you.”
Excalibur grinned. “Is it possible? Could Caliburn be put back together again?”
“Sure. But you would need to locate both shards of the sword.”
“If he does that… how would he fuse them together again?”
Dexter grinned. “You’re asking if a steel forge could join two of the hardest pieces of weaponry together?”
Excalibur nodded. “Can it be done?”
“No.”
“So, they’re on a fool’s errand?”
Dexter said, “No. There is a way.”
“How?”
“Why should I tell you?” Dexter asked, defiance trying to overcome the tension in his voice. “We both know you’re going to kill me, anyway?”
Excalibur bared his teeth in a Machiavellian grin. “Because I can kill you quickly or I can take my time and keep you alive for weeks. I have the time. My internal clock’s not ticking along like yours. I would do that, if you don’t tell me what I want to know.”
Dexter sighed.
There was no point considering if Excalibur was telling the truth. The evil had risen in him like a cancer. He’d tortured people when he was with MI-6, justifying the need to perform it secretly despite being against the Geneva Convention, but it didn’t take long for him to develop a liking for it, and like a drug, he soon became addicted. There was no doubt in his mind, since he’d undertaken the genetic procedure, he had become worse.
Dexter said, “There are two stones.”
“The serpent’s eyes,” Excalibur said, reverently.
“Yes. According to the legend, the stones belong in the hilt of the weapon, and are said to be the source of the sword’s power.”
Excalibur said, “But I heard the serpent’s stones were broken from Caliburn’s hilt during the battle of Camlann?”
“It was.”
“So, they’re lost for eternity. Probably buried under hundreds of tons of concrete and modern infrastructure by now.”
Dexter said, “You’re wrong.”