The Tower

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  The old man lowered his head. ‘Since the dawn of time, his body has always been preserved in different places, each time within the domain of a powerful civilization. Whenever this power went into crisis and was no longer able to ensure the secrecy and inviolability of his tomb, he was transferred to a new mausoleum, watched over by obscure forces, guarded by a new, rising power . . .’

  The rays of the setting sun that entered from the window lit up the jet from the fountain, while the rest of the square was in shadow. The gurgling of the water was the only sound to be heard as the clamour of the bazaar faded into a distant buzz, like the droning of a swarm of bees in its hive.

  ‘But . . . who was that being? Who was the man of the seven tombs? A great king, perhaps? A cruel tyrant cursed by his people? There must be some meaning at the heart of the legend,’ said Philip, as if talking to himself. He then stared straight into the eyes of the old man in front of him and said, ‘Baruch bar Lev. Does this name mean anything to you?’

  The old man started, as if taken by complete surprise. ‘How do you know that name? Where did you find it?’

  ‘On an old piece of paper, found by chance in a buried city.’

  Enos considered him with a solemn expression. ‘Nothing happens by chance. Baruch bar Lev was one of the hunters of that monster . . . a long time ago.’ He began to read from the scroll that he now held open on his knees. ‘The first tomb was destroyed by Simeon ben Yehoshua, a high priest at the time of King Solomon. Baruch bar Lev, rabbi of the great synagogue of Alexandria, found and destroyed the second and the third. Levi ben Aser destroyed the fourth at the time of Diogenes, Roman emperor of Byzantium. I, Enos ben Gad, am the last. I have found the fifth tomb and I have indicated it to your father, because my strength no longer sustains me. He has asked you to follow him so that, if he should fail, you can complete the task. That is why, I believe, he wants you to find the trail he has left for you.’

  ‘The fifth tomb,’ said Philip. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Here. In Aleppo.’

  ‘Where, exactly?’

  ‘You will see it this very night. If you feel up to it.’

  ‘I’m ready,’ said Philip.

  ‘Then come at midnight to the courtyard of the Great Mosque. I’ll be waiting for you there.’

  Philip nodded. The old man led him through the house and out through a door that gave on to the coppersmiths’ market. The young man walked down a long corridor that resounded with the deafening din of dozens and dozens of hammers rhythmically beating shining sheets of copper. He disappeared into the blinding light of the western exit.

  8

  PHILIP GARRETT MADE HIS WAY through a maze of city streets lit by the full moon and cut by the long shadows of the minarets. He emerged into a vast square where the portico of the Great Mosque stood. A series of arches and columns portioned the nocturnal light and framed the inner courtyard with the font for the rite of ablution at its centre. Philip entered into the large silent space dominated by the looming dome and by the daring elegance of the minarets and a profound sensation of peace came over him. The white glow of the marble and the soft murmur of the fountains entered his soul like gentle music and the supreme harmony of the architecture engaged the moonlight like a sublime song in the darkness.

  The barely perceptible sound of footsteps reminded him that he had an appointment. He turned in the direction of the scuffing noise and made out Enos.

  ‘Shalom,’ said the old man in a low voice, without stopping. ‘Follow me. I’ll take you to the place I told you about.’

  Enos led Philip along the eastern portico to another exit and from there they went back into the labyrinth of narrow, curving streets of the old city.

  ‘But if you’ve failed after trying for so many years, how can I possibly succeed?’ asked Philip, as he kept up with Enos’s surprisingly quick steps.

  ‘It may not be necessary. Perhaps your father has already succeeded. But if you want to know what awaits you, you must pass where he has passed. I’m sorry, that’s all I know.’

  ‘I understand. I’m ready to do whatever I can. But tell me, if the place is here in Aleppo, why is it so hard to get to it?’

  ‘You’ll understand when you see it,’ said Enos.

  They silently continued along the porticoes where beggars slept curled up in their rags until finally, at the end of a winding street, they found themselves facing the dark bulk of a hillside topped by a fortress.

  ‘Can you see now why, for years, I was unable to get to the tomb?’ said Enos. ‘When I began my search, the castle was guarded by the soldiers of Emir Faisal and their vigilance was strict indeed. All of the servants were close relatives or friends and so it was impossible to infiltrate the staff.’ He looked at the gloomy bulwark admiringly, as if he were seeing it for the first time. ‘A tomb of stone topped by a mound as tall as a hill,’ he murmured. ‘Do you realize that this hill may be man-made? Can you believe how powerful the protectors of the tomb are?’

  Philip felt a chill run down his spine. ‘My God,’ he said, ‘how did my father manage to get in?’

  ‘With this,’ said the old man, and opened a package that contained a perfectly pressed uniform. ‘The citadel is now the general headquarters of the Foreign Legion in Syria and you speak French without an accent.’ He took a sheet of paper from his robe and unfolded it. ‘This is the map of the fortress and this marks the point where your father went underground. I know nothing of what happened afterwards, unfortunately. Take care. The new commander of the fort is a harsh and ruthless man. If he should discover you, you will be in deep danger. Farewell and good luck. I will wait anxiously to hear from you and I will pray that no ill befalls you.’

  Philip dressed and easily passed the sentry post, saluted by the two guards on duty. He crossed the courtyard and disappeared into the shadows of the walkway that lined the interior of the fort. At that time of night the parade ground was practically empty. Almost all the sentries were posted behind the battlements on the outer wall and the watch had just left the guardhouse to make their inspection rounds up on the rampart walk. Philip slipped behind a column and took out the map to check it in the lamplight. The path he was supposed to take led to the Ayyubite mosque incorporated into the Ottoman sector of the fort. He looked around to make sure no one had noticed him, then entered. The interior was lit by a couple of oil lamps but the dim light was sufficient to find the mihrab marked by a cross on his map.

  He felt uncomfortable treading on the carpets which covered the floor in his boots but he managed to cross in complete silence all the way to the marble pulpit, splendidly carved with geometrical motifs intertwined with flowering plants. He stopped for a moment to listen for intruders, but all he could hear were sentry calls in the distance. He carefully observed the floor behind the mihrab and noticed a marble square inlaid in a diamond-shaped black stone. He lit a match and lowered it to the edge of the marble slab. The flame flickered in the stream of air that filtered from an invisible crevice. There had to be a hollow below. He stuck the tip of his bayonet between the slab and the frame until he managed to lift it. An empty space yawned before him. He lit one of the candles that he’d brought and could just make out the top steps of a narrow staircase made of sandstone.

  He descended with great caution, repositioning the marble hatch behind him. He found himself in what seemed to be the crypt of a Byzantine church with two side aisles separated from the nave by rows of pale marble columns topped by sculpted blocks and curved lacy capitals. The small apse at the end had an altar at its centre. The altar facing was decorated with an elaborate carving of two peacocks in the act of drinking from a fountain that poured from the foot of a cross: symbols of the soul searching for truth. The walls were adorned with frescoes which represented angels and saints whose faces had been disfigured and scraped away by iconoclasts, Philip supposed, or Muslims, both averse to the culture of the image.

  The map took him directly to the altar. Could this be the fifth tomb
of the man of the seven tombs? He tapped it here and there with the handle of his bayonet but the sandstone block was unmistakably solid. He examined the base all around by candlelight and noticed a slight chip at the centre of the long end. The colour of the scratched stone was lighter, a sign that it had been recently scraped away.

  His father! This was the first physical trace he’d found of his father since he’d left Naples. It was evident that Desmond had used a lever of some sort to push back that mass of sandstone. Philip realized that his bayonet would break immediately; he needed something stronger. He projected the light from his candle onto the bare walls and found nothing there that could help him. He had no choice. He’d have to retrace his steps and return outside to find an object that he could use. He went back up the stairs and nudged the marble access slab with his shoulder but the sound of a voice made him freeze. A voice that sounded somehow familiar. The person who was speaking had his back turned to Philip but his uniform clearly identified him as a high officer of the Legion. Two bedouin tribal chiefs were facing him. They were armed and dressed in the same style as the bandits who had attacked the caravan between Bab el Awa and Aleppo.

  The officer was speaking in Arabic. He was giving them information about a shipment of arms due to arrive from the port of Tartous. The promised weapons would give the bedouins sway over a vast region and they would be allowed to split the booty from all their sacking and robberies. The two chieftains nodded in silence and the man spoke again. What he asked for in return was that they comb the area between Wadi Qoueik and the Khabour river in search of an infidel named Desmond Garrett. When he heard his father’s name, Philip recognized the voice: it was Selznick!

  He held his breath and stood stock still as the two chieftains took their leave with slight nods of the head and exited through a little side door. Selznick remained alone and Philip instinctively put his hand on his bayonet. He could creep up soundlessly from behind and stab him in the back, but the thought that he might fail stopped him. If he did, he couldn’t imagine what it might mean to fall into the hands of such a completely evil person, totally devoid of moral sense or restraint.

  Selznick was walking back towards the main door and was still in Philip’s field of vision when he suddenly slowed his pace and doubled over as if stuck by a blade. He fell to his knees and rolled onto the floor, writhing in seeming agony. Philip caught a glimpse of his face: he was as pale as a cadaver, his eyes mere slits in sunken orbs, sweat streaming down to his collarbone. He was trying to push himself off the floor, bracing himself on both arms, as if he were fighting against an immeasurable force that sought to crush him like a cockroach. He arched his back with his knees still on the ground, his forehead pressing the cold pavement. That tense bow of bone and muscle was like a steel spring tightly coiled to overcome the torment of his wounded flesh and to cram as much hate as possible into his mind. His voice came from between clenched teeth: ‘Damn you, you’ll pay for this wound . . . but first you’ll take me to our final tryst . . . and that will be the end of it, either for me or for you . . .’

  He spoke again, and it seemed to Philip that he was reciting a formula that he’d learned by heart. ‘“He has witnessed all the evil of the world, and revels in suffering and remorse. He knows the secret of immortality and of eternal youth.” ’

  The words of Avile Vipinas!

  Selznick continued in a low voice. ‘He is just like me . . . he knows that there is nothing above human intelligence. He knows that man can fathom every mystery of this universe, that he can create anything, even God. He will heal this wound and then he will crush you, Desmond Garrett, he’ll sweep you from my path for ever.’

  By the dim light of the oil lamps, it looked as though Selznick was praying, kneeling on the carpet of the mosque, instead of cursing in a fit of hate. He finally forced himself to get up and made his way to the door. On the other side his footsteps, regular again, rang out on the stone pavement in the corridor.

  Philip waited until the noise had completely faded away and then went to the exit himself. He considered searching the fort for an object he could use to force the altar stone, but thought it would be less dangerous to leave and then try again later. The guard had already changed and those who saw him leave had not seen him enter, but the captain’s stripes on his jacket protected him from being challenged. He left by the main gate and descended the steps without haste, trying to control the tension and fear that crawled down his spine like icy water. He crossed the square and disappeared into the labyrinth of the old city.

  He wandered at length without a destination for fear that someone might be following him, then sought shelter for the night at Enos’s house. The old man peered through the door anxiously and after checking in every direction, let him in by a side entrance.

  PHILIP APPROACHED THE FORTRESS again the next evening at dusk and waited for a group of legionnaires to enter so he could slip in with them. Under his coat he had hidden a steel crowbar that he’d had a craftsman in the market make for him.

  He reached the mosque and went down the narrow steps hidden behind the mihrab to the crypt. Now all he had to do was push back the altar stone. He set a candle down on the floor, fixing it in place with a few drops of melted wax, and stuck the lever end of his crowbar between the stone and the step, pushing forcefully. The altar slid back with such a regular, continuous movement that Philip realized it must be on stone rollers. When it reached the end it seemed to lock into place. Philip took the candle and went into the chamber beneath.

  He found himself in a room that was completely bare, plastered with some kind of old fire-hardened clay. On one side of the room was a ramp that seemed to descend to the very core of the hill. Before starting down, Philip turned back to check the altar stone and noticed that there were words scratched into its undersurface. By the time he deciphered them, he would still have had time to heed the warning they gave: ‘Block the stone.’ The altar had begun to slip back on its rollers to its original position! But when Philip turned to grab the crowbar, the candle fell to the ground and went out. He blindly drove the bar into place, but failed on his first try. When he tried to jam it in a second time, the stone had already rolled back completely into its housing.

  ‘Block the stone’: the words inscribed on the bottom face of the altar taunted him. He cursed under his breath, feeling like he did when his father used to correct his homework as a boy; he’d make Philip feel like an idiot every time he misinterpreted a phrase or miscalculated an equation. He took another candle from his pocket and lit it, recovered the crowbar and tried to prise it between the stone and the flooring, but the space was so narrow that he couldn’t wedge the lever in. He examined the grooves and saw that for the first two-thirds of their length, they were on a barely perceptible incline, while the last third was horizontal. This last section was not quite long enough to provide a solid base for the stone, which thus remained for a short time in what seemed to be perfect equilibrium, only to roll back on the cylinders as its own weight took over.

  Philip was consoled by the thought that his own father must have been fooled by the mechanism himself, otherwise he would never have left that message. He picked up the candle that had fallen to the ground and took the crowbar with him as well as he began to cautiously descend the ramp that had rough-shaped steps carved into it. He made his way down a long tunnel, at the end of which he found himself in a second chamber, this one adorned with Aramean sculptures. A cuneiform inscription was carved on the back wall and at the centre of the room a huge stone sarcophagus lay broken into pieces.

  ‘You succeeded, then,’ he murmured. ‘You destroyed the fifth tomb. Only two are left. But where are you now? Where have you gone?’ He walked all the way around the room, holding his candle high to examine the walls. ‘You must have left me a sign . . . somewhere.’ The candle had melted down to a stub and Philip lit another, which spread a slightly brighter light through the little room. He inspected the walls centimetre by centimetre and the fl
oor as well, but found nothing. And yet his father had certainly made it this far, and he must have found his way out as well. But how? And why hadn’t he left a single sign?

  Discouraged, Philip sat down on the floor. An oppressive sense of despair threatened to overwhelm him in that airless chamber. He could feel the weight of the whole hill on top of him. What would happen when he ran out of candles? What chance of escape would he have in total darkness? He watched with anguish as the candle burned down to the wick. He had no choice: he would go back to the top of the ramp and yell for help until someone heard him. He’d rather be found by Selznick than die like a mouse in a trap.

  He lit his fourth candle and started to walk back up the ramp, but as he lowered his head he saw what he’d been searching for. A phrase was scratched into the wall: ‘Follow the air when the prayer starts.’

  He realized then that his father had found himself trapped under the Byzantine crypt just as he had; then, just like Philip, he had found no exit and was forced to retrace his steps. In both situations he had anticipated that his son would be going through the same experience, to the point of knowing where his gaze would rest.

  As Philip tried to puzzle out what the words meant he thought he heard a cry, distant at first and confused, but then much clearer and distinct: ‘Allah-u-akbar!’ It was a call to prayer! But how could he possibly be hearing it? According to his calculations, he was at least twenty metres down, in the core of the hill. Yet this must be the prayer his father had been referring to. As he was considering what to do next, he felt a strong gust of air which put out his candle, and then again heard the call of the muezzin: ‘Allah-u-akbar!’

  He relit the candle and began to make his way up the ramp, shielding the flame with his hand so the draught wouldn’t put it out again. When he was about halfway up, he realized that the air was being sucked towards the left wall of the tunnel, which led towards the Byzantine crypt. He turned in that direction and saw an open loophole, through which the muezzin’s voice rang out loudly.