The Last Secret Of The Temple (9 page)

At the bottom, set slightly apart and in larger writing, were the initials GR, which meant no more to her than the confused sequence above them.

She gazed at it for a while, eyes narrowed, confused, then she returned to the covering letter. The interview it referred to was one she had published over a year ago. It had attracted considerable interest at the time for it was the only occasion on which its subject, the Palestinian terrorist al-Mulatham, had parted the obsessive veil of secrecy in which he shrouded himself and consented to speak publicly. The Israeli security services had shown particular interest, impounding her notepad and laptop and bringing her in for extensive questioning. She had been able to reveal little of any use – as she had explained in the article, the interview had taken place in a secret location and she had been blindfolded throughout – and her suspicion now was that the curious letter and photocopy were a not very good Shin Bet ruse to find out whether she knew more about the terrorist leader's whereabouts than she had been letting on. It certainly wouldn't be the first time they had tried to trap or discredit her. A few years back she had been approached by a man purporting to be a Palestinian activist and asked if she could use her press status to help run guns through the Erez checkpoint into Gaza – a case of agent-provocateuring so transparent she had burst out laughing and replied in Hebrew that she would be delighted provided Ami Ayalon took her out for dinner afterwards.

Yes, she thought, the letter was definitely some security service stunt. That or an elaborate prank. Either way it wasn't worth wasting any time over. Taking one last look at the photocopied document, she consigned it and the accompanying letter to her wastepaper basket and left the flat.

'You're a dreamer, Khalifa! Always have been, always will be! A bloody dreamer!'

Chief Inspector Abdul ibn-Hassani slammed a meaty fist onto his desk, stood and clumped over to his office window, staring angrily out at the first pylon of Luxor Temple, where a crowd of tourists were gathered around the obelisk of Ramesses II, listening to their guide.

A broad-shouldered, overweight man with heavy eyebrows and a flattened boxer's nose, he was renowned both for his bad temper and his vanity, the former manifesting itself, as it was doing now, in a raised voice, red face and a small pulsating vein beneath his right eye; the latter in all manner of little indulgences, the latest being an exquisitely coiffured wig that sat atop his balding head like a clump of tangled Nile weed. The desk-banging had dislodged it slightly, and, pretending to scratch his forehead, he nudged it carefully back into place, leaning slightly to his left to check his reflection in a mirror hanging on the wall.

'Bloody ridiculous!' he growled. 'I mean, for God's sake, man, it was twenty years ago.'

'Fifteen.'

'Fifteen, twenty – what does it matter? Too long to be worrying about it, that's the point. You spend too much time with your head stuck in the past. You should come up for air once in a while.'

He turned to Khalifa, glowering, an expression that, topped as it was with the toupee, didn't quite come off, like someone trying to be serious with a flattened rodent sitting on his head. In any other situation Khalifa would have struggled to contain his laughter. Today, he barely noticed the wig, so focused was he on what he was trying to say.

'But sir—'

'The present!' Hassani shouted, striding forward and positioning himself, arms crossed, beneath a framed photograph of President Hosni Mubarak, a stance he always adopted when he was about to deliver a homily. 'That's where our work is, Khalifa. The here and now. There are crimes being committed every day, every hour of every day, and those are what we should be concentrating on, not something that happened a decade or more ago. Something that was solved at the time, I should add!'

His brow knitted momentarily, as if he wasn't quite convinced this last sentence made sense. It passed almost immediately and, puffing out his chest, he jabbed a finger at Khalifa, who was sitting on a low chair in front of his desk.

'It's always been your problem. If I've said it once I've said it a hundred times – a complete inability to focus on the present. Too much time poking around in museums, that's what does it. Tutankhamun this, Antenaben that—'

'Akhenaten,' corrected Khalifa.

'There you go again! Who cares what his fucking name was! The past is over and done with, finished, irrelevant. Today, that's what's important.'

Khalifa's fascination with the ancient past had always been a bone of contention between the two men; that and the fact that he was one of the few policemen in the station who refused to be intimidated by Hassani. Why the chief should have such a disregard for history, an aversion even, Khalifa had never discovered, although he suspected it was because he knew nothing about it and was therefore at a disadvantage whenever the conversation turned that way. Whatever the case, it was always the thing Hassani brought up whenever he wanted to browbeat Khalifa, as if detective work and an interest in his country's heritage were somehow incompatible.

'Wouldn't they just love it!' Hassani was shouting, working himself up into a lather. 'The pimps and the thieves and the fraudsters. Wouldn't they just be so happy if we spent all our time pissing around with cases that were finished fifteen years ago while they were left in peace to get on with their pimping and thieving and . . .' He paused for an instant, searching for the right word. 'Fraudering!' he cried eventually. 'Oh yes, wouldn't they just love it! We'd be a fucking laughing stock!'

The vein beside his eye was pulsing more furiously than ever, a plump green worm wriggling about beneath his skin. Khalifa pulled out his cigarettes and, bending forward, lit one, staring down at the floor.

'It's possible there might have been a grave miscarriage of justice,' he said quietly, drawing on his cigarette, craving the nicotine, the focus and clarity it gave him. 'Not definite, but certainly possible. And whether it was fifteen years ago or thirty years ago I think we have a duty to investigate it.'

'But what evidence have you got?' cried Hassani. 'What evidence, man? I know you've never been one to let facts stand in the way of a good conspiracy theory, but I'll need more than just a "possibly maybe".'

'Like I said, there's nothing definite—'

'Nothing at all, you mean!'

'There are similarities.'

'There are similarities between my wife and fucking water buffalo, but that doesn't mean she sits in a pool of her own shit eating palm leaves all day!'

'Too many similarities for it to be mere coincidence,' continued Khalifa, speaking over his boss, refusing to be beaten down. 'Piet Jansen was involved in the murder of Hannah Schlegel. I know it. I know it!'

He could feel his own voice rising and, clenching his knee with one hand, took a deep pull on the cigarette to steady himself.

'Look,' he said, trying to keep his tone slow and measured. 'Hannah Schlegel was murdered at Karnak. Jansen lived beside Karnak.'

'So do a thousand other people,' snorted Hassani. 'And five thousand people visit the place every day. What are you saying? They're all involved?'

Khalifa ignored the question and pressed on.

'The
ankh
and rosette decoration on the pommel of Jansen's cane match the impact-marks that were found on Schlegel's face and skull. Those marks were never properly accounted for.'

Hassani waved his hand dismissively.

'There are thousands of objects with that sort of design on them. Tens of thousands. It's too tenuous, Khalifa. Too tenuous by far.'

Again, the detective ignored his boss and pressed on.

'Schlegel was an Israeli Jew. Jansen hated Jews.'

'For God's sake, Khalifa! After what they've done to the Palestinians everyone in Egypt hates fucking Jews. What are we going to do? Bring the entire population in for questioning?'

Still Khalifa refused to be deflected.

'The guard at Karnak said he saw someone hurrying away from the scene with something strange on his head. "Like a funny little bird" – that's how he described it. When I was in Jansen's house I found a hat that matched that description hanging on the back of his cellar door. A hat with feathers sticking out of it.'

Hassani exploded into a gale of derisive laughter.

'This is getting more ridiculous by the minute. That guard, if I remember right, was half fucking blind. He could barely see his hand in front of his face, let alone someone fifty metres away. You're clutching at straws, Khalifa! Or feathers, more like. A funny little bird? You're losing the plot, man!'

Khalifa took a last puff on his cigarette and, leaning forward, tamped it out into an ashtray on the edge of the desk.

'There was one other thing.'

'Oh, please tell me,' cried Hassani, clapping his hands together. 'I haven't had a laugh like this in ages.'

Khalifa sat back again.

'Before she died, Schlegel managed to say two words: Thoth, which is the name of the Egyptian god of writing and wisdom—'

'Yes, yes, I know!' huffed Hassani.

'And
tzfardeah,
which is apparently the Hebrew word for frog.'

Hassani's eyes narrowed.

'So?'

'Jansen had a genetic condition that gave him webbed feet. Like a frog.'

He spoke quickly, trying to get the words out before the expected hoot of ridicule. To his surprise Hassani said nothing, merely crossed back to the window and stood looking out, his back to Khalifa, hands clenched at his sides as if he was holding a pair of invisible suitcases.

'I know that individually none of these things means very much,' Khalifa continued, trying to press home his advantage, 'but when you take them all together you have to stop and think. It's too much of a coincidence. And even if it is all circumstantial there's still the matter of the antiquities in the man's basement. Jansen was dodgy. I know it. I can feel it. He needs to be investigated.'

Hassani's fists were clenched so tight his knuckles had turned white. There was a long pause, then he turned towards Khalifa.

'We are not going to waste any more time on this,' he said slowly, deliberately, the controlled fury of his voice more threatening than any amount of shouting. 'Do you understand? The man is dead, and whatever he was involved in, whatever he's done, it's over. There's nothing we can do about it.'

Khalifa looked at him incredulously.

'And Mohammed Gemal? An innocent man might have been wrongly convicted.'

'Gemal's dead too. There's nothing we can do.'

'His family's still alive. We owe it—'

'Gemal was found guilty in a court of law, for fuck's sake. He openly admitted he'd robbed the old woman.'

'But not that he'd killed her. He always denied that.'

'He committed suicide, for God's sake. What more of a fucking admission do you want?'

Hassani came forward another step.

'The man was guilty, Khalifa! Guilty as sin! He knew it and we knew it. We all knew it. All of us!'

His eyes were wide with fury. There was something else there as well, however. An edge of desperation, fear even. It was not something Khalifa had seen before. He lit another cigarette.

'I didn't.'

'What? What did you say?'

'I didn't think Genial was guilty. I had doubts then, I've had doubts ever since, and now they're stronger than ever. He might have robbed her, but Mohammed Gemal did not murder Hannah Schlegel. I knew it at the time but to my lasting shame didn't have the guts to say so. I think deep down we all knew it – you, me, Chief Mahfouz—'

Hassani stepped forward and slammed his fist on the edge of the desk, sending a sheaf of papers tumbling to the floor.

'That's enough, Khalifa! Enough, do you hear?' His entire body was trembling. Flecks of froth had gathered at the corners of his mouth. 'Your psychological problems are your own business, but I've got a police station to run and I'm not going to re-open a fifteen-year-old case just because some spineless idiot is having a crisis of conscience. You've got no evidence, nothing whatsoever to suggest that Mohammed Gemal did not murder Hannah Schlegel, except in your own mind, which from what you've just been saying about feathers and frogs would appear to be in a far from stable condition. I always knew you weren't made of the right stuff, Khalifa, and this just confirms it. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Piss off and become an archaeologist or whatever it is you always wanted to do and leave me to get on with the job of catching criminals. Real criminals, not imaginary ones.'

Forgetting he was wearing a wig, he reached up and vigorously scratched the top of his scalp, dislodging the hairpiece, which slipped halfway down his forehead. With a furious growl he ripped it off altogether and threw it across the room, stomping back to his desk and sitting down, breathing heavily.

'Just drop it, Khalifa,' he said, his voice weary suddenly, subdued. 'Do you understand me? For everybody's sake. Mohammed Gemal murdered Hannah Schlegel, Jansen died accidentally, and there's no link between the two. I am not re-opening the case.'

His eyes flicked up and then down again, refusing to hold Khalifa's stare.

'Now, there's some
hawagaya
at the Winter Palace who thinks her jewellery's been stolen and I want you to go and look into it. Forget Jansen and do some proper police work for once in your life.'

He shuffled a pile of papers in front of him, jaw clenched. Khalifa realized it was pointless continuing the argument. He stood and moved towards the door.

'The keys,' growled Hassani. 'I'm not having you nosing around Jansen's house behind my back.'

Khalifa turned, removed Jansen's keys from his pocket and threw them across the room to Hassani, who caught them one-handed.

'Don't cross me on this one, Khalifa. Do you understand? Not on this one.'

The detective paused, then opened the door and strode out into the corridor.

Layla could never pass through the Old City's Damascus Gate, with its imposing, twin-towered arch, grime-blackened flagstones and crush of beggars and fruit sellers, without recalling the first time she had come here with her parents, when she was five.

'Look, Layla,' her father had said proudly, squatting beside her and stroking her waist-length black hair. 'Al-Quds! The most beautiful city in the world. Our city. See how bright the stone looks in the morning sunshine; smell the
za'atar
and the newly baked bread, listen to the call of the muezzin and the cry of the
tamar Hindi
sellers. Remember these things, Layla, keep them inside you. Because if the Israelis have their way we will all be driven out and al-Quds will become no more than a place we read about in history books.'

Layla had thrown an arm protectively around his neck.

'I won't let them, Daddy!' she had cried. 'I'll fight them. I'm not scared.'

Her father had laughed and, sweeping her up into his arms, pulled her tightly to his breast, which was flat and hard, like marble.

'My little warrior! Layla the Invincible! Oh what a daughter I have been given!'

The three of them had walked right the way around the outside of the city, following the line of the walls, which at the time had struck her as immeasurably huge and threatening, a great tidal wave of stone rearing overhead, and had then passed through the Damascus Gate into the bustling labyrinth of streets beyond. They had drunk Coca-cola at a small roadside cafe, her father puffing on a
shisha
pipe and talking animatedly with a group of old men, before wandering down al-Wad Road towards the Haram al-Sharif, stopping every now and then so he could point out a bakery where he had eaten cakes as a child, a square where he had played football, an old fig tree growing out of a wall whose fruit he had used to pick.

'Not to eat,' he had explained. 'It was way too hard and bitter. We used to throw them at each other. I got hit right on the nose once. You should have heard the crack! There was blood everywhere!'

He had burst out laughing at the memory, and Layla had laughed too, told him how funny she thought it was, even though the story had horrified her, the thought of her father being hurt. She had loved him so much, so wanted to please him, show that she was not weak or afraid, but strong like him – rave, a true Palestinian.

From the fig tree they had weaved up into a maze of narrow side streets, eventually coming to a spot where the buildings on either side arched right the way over their heads, forming a tunnel. A group of Israeli soldiers had been standing just inside the entrance and had stared at them suspiciously as they walked past.

'See how they look at us,' her father had sighed. 'They make us feel like thieves in our own house.'

He had taken her hand and steered her towards a low wooden doorway surmounted by a lintel carved with an intricate design of grapes and vine stems. A brass plaque declared that it was the Alder Cohen Memorial Yeshiva; a
mezuzah
was screwed onto the stone jamb to its right.

'Our house,' he had said sadly, reaching out and touching the door. 'Our beautiful house.'

His family – her family – had fled during the fighting of June 1967, leaving the city with just a few treasured possessions and taking refuge in the Aqabat Jabr camp outside Jericho, forty kilometres away. It was only supposed to have been a temporary measure, and they had returned as soon as the fighting had stopped. By then, however, the house had been taken over by the Israelis and no amount of complaining to the city's new masters could get it back again. They had lived as refugees ever since.

'I was born here,' her father had said, running his hand lovingly over the door's gnarled wooden panels, touching the carved lintel. 'So was my father. And his father too, and his father before him. Fourteen generations. Three hundred years. All gone, just like that.'

He snapped his fingers into the air. Looking up, she had seen tears welling in his huge brown eyes.

'It's OK, Daddy,' she had said, hugging him, trying to squeeze all her strength and love into his thin, hard body. 'You'll get it back one day. We'll all live here together. Everything will be OK.'

He had leant down and run his face back and forth through her long black hair.

'If only that was true, my darling Layla,' he had whispered. 'But not all stories have happy endings. Especially for our people. This you will learn as you grow older.'

These and other memories scudded across her mind now as she passed through the gate's gloomy dog-leg and out onto the paved slope of al-Wad Road.

Normally this part of the city would be bustling, with multi-coloured stalls selling flowers and fruit and spices, throngs of shoppers jostling back and forth, boys whizzing past on wooden barrows piled high with meat or refuse. Today, everything was unnaturally quiet – a result, no doubt, of the Warriors of David stand-off further into the city. A couple of old men were sitting beneath the corrugated tin awning of a deserted cafe; to her left a peasant woman was squatting in a shuttered doorway, a forlorn pyramid of limes piled in front of her, her face buried in her wrinkled brown hands. Otherwise the only people present were Israeli military and police personnel: a trio of young Giv'ati brigade conscripts hunkered down behind a sandbag emplacement; a unit of border police in green berets lounging around on the steps in front of the cafe; a gaggle of regular police patrolling just inside the gateway, their blue flak-jackets melding into the shadows so that their heads, arms and legs seemed to disappear into an empty hole where their torsos should be.

Layla flashed her press card at one of them, a pretty girl who could have passed as a model had she not been a policewoman, and asked if she could get through to the occupied house.

'The road's blocked further down,' said the girl, eyeing the card disapprovingly. 'Ask there.'

Layla nodded and continued down into the city, passing the Austrian Hospice, the Via Dolorosa, the alley containing the fig tree her father had pointed out all those years ago – it seemed hardly to have grown in all that time. As she went she heard shouting up ahead and the police and military presence steadily became heavier. She started to pass straggling groups of
shebab,
Palestinian youths, some wearing black and white Fatah headbands, others carrying the red, green, black and white Palestinian flag, the groups coalescing into a crowd and the crowd into a crush, the narrow street echoing to the sound of their chanting, a forest of clenched fists punching the air. Israeli troops were massed in every side street, preventing the protest fanning outwards across the city, the soldiers' expressionless faces contrasting with those of the protesters, which were twisted in fury and defiance. Smudges of ash and charred cardboard stained the cobbles where makeshift fires had been lit; Israeli surveillance cameras dangled from their wall-brackets like the carcasses of dead animals, their lenses smashed.

Layla pushed her way through the throng, the crush growing tighter with every step, and it was starting to look like she might not get through at all until she was recognized by a young man she'd interviewed a couple of months earlier for an article she had been doing on the Fatah Youth Movement. He greeted her and, appointing himself her chaperone, forced a way through the mass of bodies until they reached the crash barriers the Israelis had erected across the street. There was a small group of Israeli Peace Now protesters gathered here among the Palestinians, and one, an elderly woman in a knitted hat, called out to her.

'I hope you're going to write about these bastards, Layla! They're going to start a war!'

'That's exactly what they want to do,' shouted a man beside her. 'They're going to kill us all! Settlers out! We want peace! Peace now!'

He leant forward and waved his fist at the row of heavily armed border police lined up on the far side of the barrier. Beyond them a scrum of journalists and TV crews, many wearing helmets and bulletproof jackets, was gathered outside the occupied house. Further down the street a second roadblock had been erected, this one holding back a crowd of Haredi Jews and Israeli right-wingers, there to show solidarity with the settlers. One was holding a placard reading KAHANE WAS RIGHT!, another a banner proclaiming ARAB MURDERERS OFF JEWISH LAND.

Layla showed her press card to one of the soldiers at the barrier and, after some consultation with his superior, she was allowed through, pushing her way into the pack of journalists where she ended up beside a paunchy, bearded man wearing wire-rimmed spectacles and a plastic protective helmet.

'The great Layla al-Madani finally graces us with her presence,' he snorted, his voice all but drowned out by the shouting of the crowd. 'I was wondering when you'd turn up.'

Onz Schenker was a political correspondent for the
Jerusalem Post.
The first time they'd met she'd thrown a glass of water at him for making a disparaging remark about Palestinian women, and that had just about set the tone of their relationship ever since. They maintained a frosty cordiality, but there was little love lost on either side.

'Dig the hat, Schenker,' she grunted.

'You'll wish you had one when your Arab mates start throwing rocks and bottles,' he retorted.

As if to emphasize his point a bottle came arcing over from among the Palestinian protesters, smashing onto the paving slabs a few metres to his right.

'Told you,' he shouted. 'But then I guess they'd never throw anything at you, would they, Assad-fucking-iqa. It's the proper journalists they want to hurt!'

Layla half opened her mouth to bat the insult back, but couldn't be bothered and instead just gave him the finger and moved away, working her way forward right to the front of the press pack. Jerold Kessel from CNN was struggling to deliver a piece to camera amid the mayhem; to her left the Israeli border police had lifted the crash barriers and were forcing the Palestinian protesters back, driving them further up the street. The shouting grew even louder. A tear-gas canister was fired. More bottles were thrown.

For a moment Layla stood motionless, taking in the scene, then swung her camera from her shoulder and started snapping, getting shots of the spray-painted menorahs to either side of the front door – the traditional Warriors of David calling card – the Israeli flag draped down the front of the building, the troops stationed on the roofs to either side, presumably to prevent locals storming the house from above. She had just turned to her right to photograph the pro-settlement protesters when she suddenly felt the pack around her tighten and surge forwards.

The door of the occupied house had opened. There was a pause, then the squat, cuboid figure of Baruch Har-Zion stepped out onto the street, accompanied by his crew-cut bodyguard, Avi Steiner. The pro-settlement protesters cheered and broke into a rendition of the 'Hatikva', the Israeli national anthem. The Palestinians and peace protesters, who had by now been driven almost a hundred metres up the street and couldn't see properly what was happening, rattled the crash barriers and raised their own song, 'My Homeland, My Homeland'. Steiner pushed angrily at the semi-circle of journalists, trying to keep them back. Cameras flashed like strobe lights.

For a brief instant Har-Zion's eye caught Layla's, then slid away again. Questions flew at him like gunfire, but he ignored them, turning his head this way and that, a faint smile creasing the edges of his mouth, before slowly raising his right hand, indicating that he wished for silence. The questions died away and the pack pressed forward a few more inches, a bristling hedge of tape-recorders held out towards him. Layla swung her camera back over her shoulder and pulled out her notebook.

'There is an old Hebrew saying,' Har-Zion intoned, speaking in heavily accented English, his voice gruff and low, like tumbling rocks. '
Hamechadesh betuvo bechol yom tamid ma'aseh bereishit.
God makes the world new every single day. Yesterday this land was in the hands of our enemies. Today it has been returned to its rightful owners, the Jewish people. This is a great day. A historic day. A day that will never be forgotten. And believe me, ladies and gentlemen, there are many more such days to come.'