Sam thought about it and grinned. “As a matter of fact, I do. We only need to get close to the burial site and Caliburn will get us the rest of the way. Why don’t we go beneath Beit HaBad Street?”
Tom said, “How?”
“Through Zedekiah's Cave.”
Chapter Seventy
Zedekiah's Cave was also referred to as Solomon's Quarries.
It was a five-acre underground meleke limestone quarry that runs the length of five city blocks under the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. It was carved over a period of a thousand years and is a remnant of the largest quarry in Jerusalem, stretching from Jeremiah's Grotto and the Garden Tomb to the walls of the Old City.
The entrance to Zedekiah's Cave is just beneath the Old City wall, between the Damascus and Herod Gates. Only the mouth of Zedekiah’s cave is a natural phenomenon. The cavern and miles upon miles of passageways were carved by slave laborers over thousands of years. Herod the Great used the main quarry at Zedekiah's Cave for building blocks in the renovation of the Temple and its retaining walls, including what is known today as the Western — Wailing — Wall.
From the entrance to the farthest point, the cave extends about 650 feet. Its maximum width is about 330 feet and its depth was generally about thirty feet below the street level of the Muslim Quarter, although there are several lower levels and blocked tunnels too, where few have ever explored.
Sam Reilly waited until five p.m. to meet Tom, Genevieve, Guinevere, and Caliburn at the mouth of the cave, matching their arrival with the nightly closure of the ancient cave and quarry system.
They bribed a local guard to leave the external gate open for them to have a private viewing for two hours. They then switched on their flashlights, stepped through the narrow entrance, and followed the cave as it sloped down into a vast three-hundred-foot chamber.
Drops of water, known locally as “Zedekiah's tears,” trickled through the ceiling on them as they walked.
They passed through the auditorium, heading south, through a series of artificial galleries hewn by ancient stonecutters into strange patterns and formations.
Sam checked his computer tablet.
On it, he had superimposed an image of the known Zedekiah’s Cave map with the modern-day map, and the presumed site of Belisarius’s secret tomb marked on the Madaba Map.
Using the three linked maps, Sam headed down the southern path deeper into the quarry system. Chisel marks were visible along the walls where slaves once cut away the stones that masons once used to build much of the Old City of Jerusalem. They passed a large gallery in which hundreds of nearly finished building blocks made out of meleke — the lithologic type of white, coarsely-crystalline, thickly bedded-limestone used throughout the Old City — which were once destined for some long-ago structures, are locked into the rock where the stonecutters left them centuries ago.
Sam glanced at the dog. “Are you sensing anything?”
Caliburn gave a disinterested bark.
Sam said, “All right, let’s keep going.”
Tom laughed and asked, “How do you know that was a no and not a yes?”
A moment later, Caliburn ran forward barking excitedly.
Sam grinned. “Because that’s what he does when he says yes!”
Chapter Seventy-One
A massive chockstone blocked an ancient passageway.
Caliburn barked wildly, as though his complaints might encourage the massive stone to make way for them. Sam checked his map of the quarry system. It showed the chockstone, but not the passageway beyond.
Sam studied the massive piece of stone wedged between two edges of a passage. It was similar to the ones he had seen in Derinkuyu, an underground city in Turkey. The wedge was nearly impossible to open from the outside, yet easily able to be shifted from the inside.
There was nothing they could do. No amount of leverage would allow them to get through it. They would need to head off and try again tomorrow with some sort of drilling equipment.
Sam said, “We’ll try again tomorrow.”
Genevieve met his gaze and said, “That’s it?”
“Yeah, unless you happened to bring dynamite, I think we’ll have to call it a night.”
Genevieve shrugged. “No dynamite, but enough C4 to blast a hole through this edge here.”
Sam met her eye. His eyebrows arched with disbelief. “You brought C4 into the Old City of Jerusalem?”
Genevieve nodded. “Among other things… hey I thought it might come in handy.”
Sam said, “How did you even get away with that? The security in Jerusalem is tighter than Fort Knox!”
Genevieve made a teasing smile and bit her lower lip. “I spent my youth working for my father, who was the boss of the Russian Mafia. I still have connections with some… bad people around the world. And some of them still owe me favors.”
Sam said, “All right. Do you think you can blast the edge of this stone wedge like a pair of masonry hinges?”
“No problem.”
Tom asked, “Won’t the guards hear you outside?”
Genevieve answered immediately. “No. We’re a quarter of a mile down here. It will be an isolated explosion. If the guards hear it at all, they won’t necessarily identify it as being down here. Besides, remember, we just paid them to look the other way. The last thing they’re going to want to do is keep an ear out for any explosions we might cause.”
“They might wonder?” Sam said.
“Sure. But it’s not like there’s meant to be anything valuable down here. It’s a quarry dug out over thousands of years. Anything of value that could be removed, had been centuries ago.”
Sam glanced at the rest of the team. “What do you think? Do we take the risk?”
Caliburn barked excitedly, his tail wagging fast. Tom, Genevieve, and Guinevere all followed with their agreement.
Sam said, “All right, set the C4 — let’s blast this thing.”
Chapter Seventy-Two
The blast from the C4 shook the cavern.
Its sound echoing throughout the ancient passageways of the quarry. Sam waited for the dust to settle and then examined the damage. The meleke limestone cracked under the explosion, leaving a jagged crack running along the side of the wedged stone, from the edge all the way to the center, like a giant scar.
He pressed his hand against the stone.
It didn’t budge.
He looked at Genevieve. “Any chance you brought some more of that stuff?”
She grinned. “You bet there is. I was just trying to avoid causing too much of a ruckus aboveground.”
Sam turned his eyes back to the door. The crack in the middle appears to be splintering outward. Like glass, the first crack is the hardest to produce. A second one might just cause the entire thing to shatter.
He said to Genevieve, “Why don’t you put it right there, smack bang in the middle of the door?”
She nodded. “All right. I’ll put it in the crack. How much do you want?”
Sam set his jaw firm. “As much as you’ve got.”
She nodded and emptied the contents of her backpack into the crack at the center of the door. She then turned to face the rest of the group. “You might all want to take a farther step back this time.”
No one needed to be told twice.
The group took cover in the vaulted room adjacent to the passageway.
Genevieve depressed the detonator.
This time, their whole world shook.
Sam didn’t wait for the dust to settle. A blast that size might just have notified half the world above them. If they were going to get answers, now was going to have to be the time. He stepped through the thick layer of limestone powder that wafted through the passageway.