True Raiders

by Brad Ricca

  Cyril heard later that when Duff had gone up, he saw the slope and deemed it impossible. Like Cyril, it was only pure shame that induced him to leave the ladder. But halfway up the slope, the rope got loose from a rock, and the slack let him down toward the abyss. Cyril asked Duff what passed through his mind during those brief but awful seconds before the rope got taut again.

  “I thought of Juliet,” said Duff.

  Cyril smiled. “How loyal and wonderful we men are, are we not?”

  The new man, Ward, had followed him next, but he got violently sick when he joined Duff at the top. Ward had been a middy in the HMS Victoria disaster and had sunk—twice—before finally being rescued. Cyril imagined that Ward would probably rather go through another shipwreck than ascend the Bat Passage again. He made a mental note to tell the poor man to avoid the Water Lily by all possible means.

  Twelve

  Father Vincent

  JERUSALEM, 1909

  Father Vincent tested his sandaled foot on the first step of a staircase that seemed to fade into the ground. Monty Parker was a few steps in front of him. The edges of the steps were smooth and rolling, capable of holding four, maybe five, people across. Father Vincent picked up his habit and moved slowly down. It was easier to go down in a kind of sideways manner. He was very excited.

  “I am very excited,” he said.

  “Did you know the Arabs call this Um ed-Derej, the Mother of Steps?”

  “I did not,” said Monty.

  For nearly a month, Father Vincent had been waiting patiently around the dig, watching the daily routine of hauling. Father Vincent’s initial hypothesis had been proved correct. These Englishmen knew what they were doing. After opening Warren’s Shaft, they moved to another site down the hill that Father Vincent knew quite well, the very stairs they were descending. They labored day and night in four-hour shifts under the light of gas lamps to get rid of the debris that had choked the opening.

  Within days, Father Vincent was being enthusiastically greeted with handshakes each time he visited. Mostly, the Englishmen would watch the workers and sometimes laugh at their own stories and jokes. Sometimes they would jump in and help pull out a particularly irregular boulder. The presence of the Ottoman delegates seemed only to ensure that the workers did not confiscate any treasures for themselves. Father Vincent sometimes saw one of the Englishmen talking to the Turks, but they never entered the tunnels themselves.

  Sometimes, at night, the workmen used the magic of the magnesium wire that burned like a tiny, angry star. They chanted their strange, wonderful songs, meant to counteract the monotony of the mysterious passageways that seemed to stretch endlessly into the very heart of the mountain.

  By September 26th, Monty had returned from England. He summoned Father Vincent to show him what they had uncovered at the bottom of the steps they were now descending. With Monty at the lead, lamp in hand, they made it to the bottom. Father Vincent looked up at the arch above him. His eyes widened as it passed over him, monumental and heavy. With its delicate curve, it was a most curious construction.

  As Father Vincent passed under the arch, he found himself on a spacious landing under a vaulted ceiling. The walls were the familiar sandy yellow of Jerusalem limestone, curled and balled up in spots like it had been boiling, though it had, as Father Vincent knew, formed slowly over an endless span of years. He looked down. At the end of the natural platform, veering to the right, were more steps, steeper this time, and then darkness.

  “We finally cleared it out,” said Monty. “A start, at least.”

  Father Vincent followed silently. His eyes saw what perhaps others did not—that something was very strange about these steps. He had seen them before, but not like this. They had cleaned away the garbage of the ages. But Father Vincent also saw, or perhaps “felt” is the better word, what this place really was. He heard a small noise. A gurgling sound from the blackness below.

  “The Virgin’s Fountain,” he said.

  “Yes,” Monty nodded.

  “It was here,” said Father Vincent, with a gesture, “after the birth of Jesus, that Mary herself washed her son’s swaddling clothes!” Monty nodded and looked down. “It is known as the Gihon Spring, of course,” said Father Vincent, “but everyone calls it the Virgin’s Fountain.”

  He looked around for signs of water. The spring would bubble up from time to time, and the people from Silwan would come. There were other stories, too. Father Vincent stopped on the landing and began to recite Scripture as effortlessly as if he were talking about the weather.

  The king also said unto them, take with you the servants of your lord, and cause Solomon my son to ride upon mine own mule, and bring him down to Gihon.

  And Zadok the priest took a horn of oil out of the tabernacle, and anointed Solomon. And they blew the trumpet; and all the people said, God save King Solomon.

  “First Kings,” said Father Vincent, with a wink. Not only had the clothes of the baby Jesus been washed here, but nearly a millennium earlier, King Solomon himself, the son of David, was anointed in the same waters.

  As Monty began to explain how they had rid the stairs of the debris, Father Vincent’s eyes lit up again behind his lamp. He was seeing strange things that were far from easy to explain. The very entrance into the fountain was fraught with mystery.

  “There were some bits of pots here,” said Monty. “We have them outside for you to examine.”

  Father Vincent nodded. He had already seen the small bits of ceramic flake that remained in the corners of the landing. Father Vincent ambled down the next set of shorter stairs, leaving Monty on the landing, a little amused at the petit saint.

  “Look out!” said Monty. Father Vincent looked down.

  The second set of stairs, which were much steeper, ended with a gap of two feet or so. Father Vincent teetered for a moment, but then half stepped, half jumped over the gap. Monty followed, then pushed his light forward.

  At the bottom of the stairs, there was a cave that was about the size of an ordinary dining room. Father Vincent looked at the broken rocks on the floor; which appeared ragged in the light. This is where the water sometimes flowed, swelling to fit the cave and cascading down the slopes into the Kidron Valley. This was where the people of Mary’s time would come get their water or wash their clothes. Father Vincent looked around. He took out his notebook and began sketching.

  He marked the tunnel he could see on the western end and made notes for two more openings. One was quite low and seemed to be in the shape of a large rectangle. At the end of the cave was another tunnel, veering to the left. Father Vincent turned around: to the west was a small oval cavity that dipped below the surface of the floor.

  “Shhh!” he put his finger to his mouth and dropped his head. “There! Can you hear it?”

  His face was beaming with discovery. Father Vincent dropped to his knees and placed his head against the smooth floor, listening for something. At the bottom of this opening was where the spring emerged. He could hear it. He turned his head back. Now he was trying to see.

  “This is surprising,” said Father Vincent. “There is a slight slope here.” His eye followed the floor down to the stairs he had just stepped over. There was a gap between the stairs and the floor. There was something behind them.

  He stood up again, pushing off one knee. Above him, the ceiling was elegant, forming a natural cupola. He saw little cavities everywhere. He knew they probably led to further tunnels and no doubt an entire hidden labyrinth. Father Vincent again felt the swell of the place. But he was a man of science as well as faith; they existed in the same soil that was dirtying his hands. As Father Vincent made his way through the water and mud, he became aware of something very profound.

  “We are not alone,” he said.

  The presence he felt was not of a ghost or spirit or even God, not entirely, but someone else—the person who had designed the construction of these mysterious tunnels. Though the caves were natural, someone had molded and conn
ected them to a higher purpose. Father Vincent was seeing the evidence of one very human, very gifted man. He had no real name or face, not that he knew, but Father Vincent was beginning to make his acquaintance. He called him the Master Architect.

  Father Vincent turned to Monty, with an immense smile on his face.

  “Thank you for showing me this,” he said.

  “We have much work to do.”

  Thirteen

  Dr. Juvelius

  JERUSALEM, 1909

  Dr. Juvelius stared ahead, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. Directly across from him, a young lady was sucking sherbet out of her glass of burgundy with a bamboo horsetail straw. The woman, a brunette in stylish clothes, had a pretty face, he guessed, as it was mostly obscured by an enormous hat. She had asked their waiter to bring her the drink as a guard against climate fever.

  “Are the summers in Jerusalem always so blazing hot?” she asked, in French, to really no one in particular. She took another slow draw and seemed to look at Juvelius, who shifted again.

  Seated next to the woman was her husband, Captain Hoppenrath, who laughed loudly at the display. They were seated in the lounges outside the German hotel where Juvelius had been staying, far from the noise of the Englishmen. They met here most every day, to exchange information and talk, away from the cloudy dust of the dig. Hoppenrath was also staying in the city, at a different hotel, with his wife, though Juvelius could not directly remember her name. They were joined by Pertti Uotila, a childhood friend of Juvelius who had lately arrived in Jerusalem. Juvelius was overjoyed about this. Uotila had studied ethnology in Paris and Berlin and would be a great help to him. Uotila had known about the cipher for years and had always been a great supporter of his friend’s work.

  Juvelius took a long drink himself. He smacked a bug biting at his neck. The days had become long and hot: endless in their repetition. Juvelius would watch as the rope ladders clunked down, wooden planks were passed along, and lines of workers came in and out of the earth. He watched from afar, just in case there were falling rocks or radium traps. Juvelius kept his precious cipher on his person. He held it close enough that when he felt the papers bend, he relaxed his grip to keep them safe.

  When workers needed instructions in the tunnels—right or left, north or south—Juvelius would join them. He would leaf through his papers in the candlelight, often in silence, as he read the cipher aloud, incanting it as if it were some sort of magic spell. Juvelius would then come out and find Hoppenrath to translate his instructions to Mr. Parker. Hoppenrath would nod, then turn to Monty and say words in English with a great flourish: “Six spear lengths forward!” “Disturb the water!” Juvelius could only recognize some of the words. Sometimes Hoppenrath’s version seemed longer than his own—or far shorter—but he supposed that was the nuance (or lack of it) of English. Juvelius was very appreciative of Hoppenrath. He was a good friend. Hoppenrath was Swedish but, for one reason or another, had resigned from the military to serve instead for various other states, in Algiers, Tunis, and even Turkey. He spoke a great many languages. That was another reason why Juvelius liked him—he could speak to him—but it also highlighted why Juvelius was, most days, very much alone.

  Hoppenrath was the opposite sort of man: he was big, kind, active, and ingenious. Never was the job going better than when Hoppenrath was in the tunnels. If a vertical shaft had to be emptied from the bottom up or if a bursting water vein threatened to drown everyone, Hoppenrath was the resourceful and quick-witted one who came to the rescue. He had unmatched physical power, which aroused awe in the Bedouins. He even knew their language.

  One day at a café, on the way back from their first trip to Jerusalem with Mr. Parker, Juvelius and Hoppenrath were alone. Hoppenrath raised his glass—not his first—and said, “Be wary! In the eastern countries, you should never be with an Arab or Jewish woman! It can produce twenty centimeters of cold steel between the ribs!” Here the man downed his latest sip and paused.

  “Fortunately, there are always plenty of Italian women!” He laughed and finished the glass. Juvelius looked on. He was disgusted by the man’s cynicism, but then again maybe he had misunderstood him.

  Juvelius took another drink. He was frustrated. They had been excavating for weeks, chipping away at the hidden tunnels under the mountain. Juvelius knew they had only barely penetrated the hidden surface of the network. The complex corridors were artificially filled, tightly closed with rocks and gravel. Even the new man, Father Vincent—whom Juvelius quite liked—seemed confused by the interior of the maze. Were they going hunting for the great treasures of Solomon only to find bits of broken pots? The cipher was clear, but the stopped-up tunnels had made it difficult to determine how long their work might take, an especially important question given the amount of time and money they were putting into the enterprise. Juvelius had lately felt the stares and heard the snippets of hastily ended conversations in his vicinity. Mr. Parker had even suggested that Juvelius pay a visit to a local rabbinical scholar for direction. Even Father Vincent had agreed this would be a good action. But Juvelius felt as if he was being challenged. The cipher was clear.

  Juvelius took another drink. He had already circulated news that he would have to be leaving soon anyway.

  The next day, Hoppenrath arrived at the hotel on a new horse, a beautiful half-Arabian that he had just purchased. The look on his face was glowing. The animal was a deep brown color and seemed of exceeding grace. But as it clopped forward, the beast’s back legs stopped, then wavered a little, startling Hoppenrath, who quickly tried to explain it away as the presence of a most uneven, sharp ground. Juvelius realized that the horse must have been more affordable than he had previously thought.

  Hoppenrath’s wife was delighted with the shiny horse. She wore new riding boots and carried a riding crop in her hand. She gave her husband an earful that she wanted a woman’s saddle. By the time Hoppenrath had slinked to the table and had his first drink, he had agreed to the saddle, along with some much-needed riding lessons.

  Later that day, one of the Englishmen, one of Mr. Parker’s men, appeared with a message for Juvelius from Monty. He needed help with part of the cipher and was riding his own new horse, a magnificent Damascus that must have commanded a lofty price. Hoppenrath made a sour face as his wife jumped to pet the beast’s nose. After yet more pleading, Hoppenrath had agreed to let her take a riding lesson with him right then and there.

  As Juvelius and Hoppenrath went over the clarification, the Englishman trotted his horse across the dusty commons with Mrs. Hoppenrath high in the saddle. “Very good, my dear!” said Hoppenrath from the table. Uotila excused himself for a moment.

  “So, you’re really intent on going then?” asked Hoppenrath, turning to Juvelius.

  “Yes,” said Juvelius, in his slight voice. “I must return to the school. But I will return once the tunnels are cleared, or at the end of the rainy season.” Hoppenrath didn’t agree, but he understood: Juvelius was recently been made director of the Vyborg Workers College and had been on leave but could take no more time.

  “Uotila will be able to use the cipher in my absence,” added Juvelius. “He has my most complete trust.”

  “What about your next report?” asked Hoppenrath. “Why haven’t you given it to me for translation?”

  Juvelius straightened up. He had planned on writing a final report for Mr. Parker to help guide the cipher’s use in his absence.

  “I am still formulating it myself.” Their usual mode was for Juvelius to write in Swedish, then hand it over to Hoppenrath to translate. He had not given him anything yet.

  “You know they will only keep it secret,” said Hoppenrath in a low voice. Out on the road, his wife screamed with delight as her instructor hoisted her off the horse by grabbing her waist.

  “Will Mr. Uotila get to see it?” said Hoppenrath, pointing to the man, who was returning from the hotel’s entrance.

  “Now you’re talking about things you don’t know,” said Juv
elius.

  Hoppenrath looked almost hurt. Juvelius knew that he had not liked that Uotila could speak to him just as easily. Juvelius felt some shame. Mrs. Hoppenrath giggled again. She was almost falling off the horse. The Englishman had to use both of his hands to support her. Hoppenrath looked on as she laughed. He sighed, then got up to intervene as Uotila returned to the table.

  Uotila leaned over to Juvelius and nodded toward Mrs. Hoppenrath.

  “Nemesis Divina!” He laughed. “It’s pretty clear who is teaching who.”

  The riding lessons stopped soon after.

  That night, in his room in the German hotel, with Uotila next door, Juvelius continued working on his report. It was very difficult for him. He wanted to convey his thoughts about the expedition’s next steps accurately to Captain Parker before he left for Finland. But since he wanted to touch on a number of sensitive issues, he did not want to show it to Hoppenrath, so he had been trying to write it in English. He was filled with the pangs of guilt at his actions. The man was his friend.

  The next day, at their customary table, Mrs. Hoppenrath was distraught over the sudden cancellation of her riding lessons with her handsome English teacher. “He’s simply too busy,” said Captain Hoppenrath, in a syrupy tone. After a few minutes of the usual news of the tunnels, Mrs. Hoppenrath smiled at Uotila.

  “Tell me, Mr. Uotila, do you ride?”

  She was crafty, thought Juvelius. Hoppenrath looked Uotila over—trim, handsome, but slight, with a philosopher’s pallor and a slightly expanding hairline—and agreed that Mr. Uotila might be a perfect instructor for a riding lesson the next day. Hoppenrath did not seem even remotely worried about him. Juvelius did not think that could be taken as a compliment.

  Over the next two days, Uotila rode with Mrs. Hoppenrath. On the evening of the second day, Juvelius was again at work on his report when Uotila burst into his room. He knocked off his heavy gloves and seemed highly excited.