The Last Gospel

by David Gibbins

  ‘In other words, there was something in them they didn’t want revealed,’ Costas murmured.

  Helena nodded. ‘They were afraid of proof that we were here at the site of the Holy Sepulchre a few years before them, that we could use our books to claim ascendancy. The tragedy is, we know some of those lost documents dated way before the foundation of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the fourth century. There were manuscripts on goat parchment almost two thousand years old. Some of them may still exist, locked away in the libraries of our rivals. My dream is to find just one of these manuscripts, something dating from the lifetime of Jesus and his followers, those who met him and actually heard his word, and to house it up here in a purpose-built library. Something that speaks to all the pilgrims of any denomination who come here seeking Jesus, not the bickering and rivalry you see below. Having that kind of treasure to show the world would put the Ethiopian community firmly on the map again, as something more than a bunch of oddballs camped out on the roof.’

  Jack shaded his eyes and glanced past the dingy grey structures of the monks’ cells to the holy cross on top of the dome over Christ’s tomb, rising behind the west range of the courtyard in front of him. The seeming purity of the scene, the whitewashed walls set against the sky, seemed to bely the complex history Helena had been describing, yet he knew they were standing on the accretion of centuries like an archaeological site. ‘I agree, he murmured. ‘This would be the perfect place. I’d love to help you.’

  ‘We don’t have much of a stake below, near the tomb, but up here we feel we’ve got the edge. Right over the spot where Christ rose, as high as you can get.’

  ‘You believe this is the place?’ Costas asked.

  She paused. ‘It’s like everything else to do with early Christianity. You have to cut away so much encrustation to reach the truth, and sometimes the truth you were seeking just isn’t there to be found.’

  ‘The encrustation of history,’ Costas murmured. ‘Funny, Jack uses that word too.’

  ‘Same school, I guess,’ Helena grinned. ‘The Church of the Holy Sepulchre wasn’t dedicated until three hundred years after Jesus’ death, at a time when the search was on among some Christian clergy for a fantasy past, one that fitted the political needs of the emperor Constantine the Great. The story of his mother Helena finding a fragment of the True Cross in one of the ancient water cisterns below the church is probably just that, encrustation. But there’s truth here too. This place where we’re standing really was an ancient hill, outside the city walls. There were tombs here at the time of Jesus, and it could have been a site for executions. It all adds up.’

  ‘You’re sounding dangerously like an archaeologist, Helena,’ Jack said.

  ‘It’s what lies under it all that I want to get at, the bare bones of history.’

  ‘They’re not always bare, in my experience,’ Costas muttered.

  ‘Don’t mind him,’ Jack said, smiling. ‘He’s recently traumatized.’ He turned back to Helena. ‘But I understand what you’re getting at.’

  ‘There’s something about spending time on this rooftop, Jack,’ Helena said. ‘It’s as if everything below is smothered under the great weight of the past. Up here, with nothing but the sky over us, it’s like being above a great bowl of history, radiating upwards to some distant focal point. And looking down, all the absurdities of humanity seem trivial, easily dispensable. You seem to see the shape of things for what they really are, the simple truths. It gives me hope that one day I will find the real Jesus, Jesus the man. That’s what makes this place precious to us. I sat beside the Sea of Galilee only a few days ago, just water and shimmering hills and sky, and I seemed to see it all so clearly in front of me.’

  Jack glanced at Helena. ‘I’d love you to share some of that. But first we need your help. Pretty urgently. It’s what I called you about. Is there somewhere we can go?’

  At that moment Morgan came up the stairs on to the rooftop courtyard. Like Jack and Costas he was wearing chinos and a loose shirt, but he was carrying a straw hat which he put on as he came out into the sun walking towards them.

  ‘Welcome to the kingdom of heaven,’ Costas smiled.

  ‘It’s hot enough to be the other place,’ Morgan said, then looked at Helena apologetically and held out his hand. ‘You must be Sister Selassie.’

  ‘Dr Morgan.’

  Helena gestured for them to follow her to a line of doors on the other side of the courtyard. The walls and upper structure of the church that surrounded the courtyard kept the noise of the city at bay, but there was a sudden sharp clatter from somewhere nearby followed by a series of percussive echoes. ‘Gunfire,’ Jack said. ‘Sounds like .223, M16. Israeli Army.’

  ‘They’ve just called a curfew,’ Morgan said. ‘Apparently there’s been some kind of disturbance at the Wailing Wall, and it’s spread up to the Christian Quarter. A couple of tourists have been knifed. We got into the Old City just in time. They’ve shut all the gates. I’d only just started my recce of the Holy Sepulchre, and then they shut that down too, got everyone out.’

  ‘That’s another advantage of being up here on the roof,’ Helena said. ‘We’re above all that. But it’s pretty unusual for tourists to be attacked. The extremists here rarely resort to that. Doesn’t help any cause.’

  ‘Just what we need,’ Jack murmured, suddenly feeling uneasy. ‘Curfew, no tourists, police and army distracted. It leaves us vulnerable. I only hope Ben can get through.’ He glanced at Helena. ‘Our security chief. He flew out of London early this morning, and is due in from Tel Aviv about now.’

  ‘If anyone can get them to open the gates, it’s Ben,’ Costas said.

  ‘He’s already liaised with the chief of police here,’ Jack said. ‘They knew each other from Special Forces, some combined UK-Israeli operation even I don’t know about. Special Forces is a pretty small world.’

  ‘You guys sure do network,’ Helena said.

  Jack gave her a wry look. ‘Anyone thinks being Indiana Jones is a one-man show, forget it.’

  They reached a door, indistinguishable from others along the side of the courtyard. Helena unlocked it, switched on an electric bulb hanging just inside and ushered them in. ‘Welcome to my office,’ she said. They all squeezed in, Jack and Costas sitting on a bench and Morgan standing. It was little more than a monk’s cell, with the bench and devotional images on one side, but on the other side there were shelves brimming with books, architectural drawings pinned to the wall and a narrow desk with a state-of-the art laptop. ‘I steal electricity from the Armenians, and hack into wireless internet from the Greek monastery next door.’ She grinned, and sat down on a stool behind the desk. ‘You see, it’s really all a sharing community.’

  Morgan peered at one of the drawings, showing simple rectilinear structures surrounded by rocky outcrops and terrain contours. ‘The Holy Sepulchre?’ he asked. ‘Is this the early church?’

  ‘I’m doing an architectural history of the Roman Church,’ Helena said. ‘I’m most interested in what lies beneath, what can be found out about the site before the Constantinian Church was established in the fourth century. There was a lot more going on here in the early Roman period after the crucifixion than people have ever guessed. It’s been my secret after-hours project, but now you know. I reckon if I’m going to be sitting on top of one of the most complicated places in history for the next few years, I may as well do more than keep my monks in order.’

  ‘Then you’re going to love what I’ve got,’ Morgan said excitedly, patting his bag. ‘Someone else was doing the same thing almost a hundred years ago. His work was left unfinished, and has never before been published. It’s mostly a detailed record of the early medieval elevations, but there are some observations on the Roman stuff underneath that will take your breath away.’ Morgan lowered his voice. ‘He thought that when King Herod Agrippa rebuilt the city walls in the mid first century AD, he also put a shrine on this spot, only a few years after the crucifixion. If yo
u can help me follow his clues, we may have one of the most extraordinary revelations ever in the archaeology of early Christianity.’

  Helena seemed rooted to the stool, and had gone pale. ‘You’re kidding me. Wait till you hear what I’ve found. Who was this guy?’

  Jack took out a sheaf of papers from his faded khaki bag, and laid them on his knees. Costas leaned over from where he was sitting and shut the door. ‘That’s what we couldn’t tell you about on the phone,’ Jack said.

  For the next forty minutes he quietly ran through everything: the shipwreck, Herculaneum, Rome, the London tomb, the clues they had found the day before in the nunnery in California. At the end he glanced at Helena, who was staring speechless at him, and then he placed a photograph on her desk of Everett’s wall painting with the chi-rho symbol and the Greek letters. ‘Does this do anything for you?’

  Helena looked straight at the bottom of the photograph. She seemed stunned, and remained motionless.

  ‘Well?’

  She cleared her throat, and steadied herself on the side of the desk. She blinked hard, then peered closely at the image. ‘Well, that’s an Armenian cross. The lower shaft is longer than the arms and top, and those are the distinctive double tips.’

  Jack nodded. ‘Does that help us?’

  ‘Well, if you’re looking for something Armenian inside the Holy Sepulchre, you’d be thinking of the Chapel of St Helena, below the church in the ancient quarry. It’s one part of the church the Armenian monks are responsible for.’ She stopped abruptly, gripped the table and whispered, ‘Of course.’

  ‘What is it?’

  Helena spoke quietly. ‘Okay. Here’s my take. My particular interest is what lies under the church. Everything above, between the bedrock and the roof, is encrustation, that word again, Costas. A fascinating record of the history of Christianity, but encrustation on any truth this place may have to offer on the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the man.’

  ‘Go on,’ Jack said.

  ‘It’s what Dr Morgan said about Herod Agrippa, the idea of a first-century shrine. Ever since first standing in that underground chapel, I’ve been convinced there’s more Roman evidence buried under the church, from the time of Jesus and the Apostles. From everything you’ve just told me, from what you’ve managed to piece together about the events of 1917, it turns out we’ve been following the same leads.’

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘You say this man Everett was here during the First World War? A British intelligence officer? A devout man, who spent much of his time in the Holy Sepulchre? An architect by training?’

  Morgan patted his bag. ‘He’s the one who wrote the architectural treatise I mentioned. I’ve got a CD copy you can have.’

  ‘I didn’t know the name, but I know the man,’ Helena murmured. ‘I know him intimately. I feel his presence every time I stand in that underground chapel.’

  ‘How?’ Jack exclaimed.

  ‘Three years ago, when I first arrived here. The key to the main door of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is held by two Muslim families, a tradition that goes back to the time of Saladin the Great. One family takes care of the key, the other opens the door. They’ve been more sympathetic to the Ethiopians on the roof than some of our fellow Christian brethren, and I became close to the old patriarch of one of the families. Before he died he told me an extraordinary story from his youth. It was early 1918, when he was a boy of ten. The Turks had been evicted, and the British were in control of Jerusalem. His grandfather remembered from decades before that British officers often had a great interest in the history and architecture of the place, engineers like Colonel Warren and Colonel Wilson who mapped out Jerusalem in the 1860s. Because of this, the caretakers were better disposed towards the British occupiers than the Turks, who were fellow Muslims but had no interest in the Holy Sepulchre. The old man told me that a British officer who spoke Arabic came with two army surveyors and spent many days in the church, mapping out the underground chapels and exploring the ancient quarry cuttings and water cisterns. Afterwards the officer came back many times by himself, and befriended the boy. The officer was sad, sometimes tearful, said he had children of his own he’d not seen for years and would never see again. He’d been badly wounded and gassed on the Western Front, and had difficulty breathing, coughed up blood a lot.’

  ‘That’s our man,’ Jack murmured excitedly.

  ‘Apparently on his last visit he spent a whole night in the church. The caretakers knew he was a very pious Christian, and left him alone. When he emerged he was muddied and dripping, shivering, as if he’d been down a sewer. He told them they had a great treasure in their safe keeping, and they must guard it for ever. They knew he had been badly traumatized in the war and thought he was probably delirious, and was referring to the Holy Sepulchre, to the tomb of Christ. He disappeared, and they never saw him again. With his lungs being so weak, they thought his final night’s exertions might have killed him.’

  ‘Did the old man talk about anything that Everett and his surveyors might have found?’ Jack asked. ‘Anything in the Chapel of St Helena? We’re looking for some kind of hiding place.’

  Helena shook her head. ‘Nothing. But the custodians have always known there are many unexplored places under the Holy Sepulchre, ancient chambers that might once have been tombs, cisterns cut into the old burial ground. Entrances that were sealed up in the Roman period, and have never been opened up since.’

  ‘Then we’ll just have to trust our instincts,’ Jack murmured.

  ‘I’ve spent many hours down there, days,’ Helena said. ‘There are so many possibilities. Every stone in every wall could conceal a chamber, a passageway. And they’re almost all mortared up or plastered over. I know of at least half a dozen stone blocks in walls that have spaces behind them, where you can see chinks through the mortar. But doing any kind of invasive exploration is out of the question. The Armenians are going to take a dim view of me taking you down there in the first place, let alone unleashing jackhammers.’

  Jack reached for the photograph of Everett’s wall painting from the nunnery, and opened his folder. ‘If we don’t try, someone else will. There are others who know we’re here, I’m convinced of it. We need to move now. Can you get the door to the Holy Sepulchre unlocked for us?’

  ‘I can do that.’ Helena caught another glimpse of the photograph in Jack’s hand, then suddenly reached out and grabbed his arm. ‘Wait! What’s that? Under the cross?’

  ‘A Latin inscription,’ Jack said. ‘It’s not clear in the picture, but it says Domine Iumius.’

  Helena was still for a moment, then gasped. ‘That’s it! Now I know where Everett went.’ She got up, her eyes ablaze. ‘I need at least two of you with me. Two strong pairs of hands.’

  Costas gave a thumbs-up. ‘I’m with you.’

  ‘Where?’ Jack demanded

  ‘You’re the nautical archaeologist, Jack. Ships and boats. What’s the most incredible recent discovery in the Holy Sepulchre? Follow me.’

  23

  Half an hour later, Jack stood near the main entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in the enclosed courtyard below the façade built almost a thousand years before when the Crusaders took Jerusalem. He had lingered behind talking quietly with Morgan as they made their way down from the Ethiopian monastery on the rooftop, and just before reaching the courtyard had handed him a compact disc from his khaki bag. He had already arranged with Helena for an escort to take Morgan out of the Old City, to the place where he would pass on the disc to Jack’s contact. At the bottom of the steps he and Morgan were met by a man in street clothes carrying an unholstered Glock pistol. The man had looked questioningly at Helena, who pointed to Morgan, and the man ushered him away across the courtyard. Ahead of them two Israeli policemen suddenly rushed by, in full riot gear and carrying M4 carbines at the ready. A burst of gunfire echoed through the streets, followed by screams and exclamations in Arabic. The bodyguard pushed Morgan against the wall o
n the far side of the courtyard. Morgan looked back, and Jack tapped his watch meaningfully. Morgan nodded, and then the bodyguard pulled him up and they both ran out of sight around the corner.

  Jack glanced up at the sky. Everything was now in train. The sun had disappeared behind a bank of grey cloud, and the air had an oppressive quality, humid and heavy. He mouthed a silent prayer for Morgan, and then followed Costas and Helena to the doors of the church. Two men in Arab headdress appeared on either side. Costas stepped back in alarm, but Helena put her hand on him reassuringly. One man passed a ring of ancient keys to the other man, who then proceeded to unlock the doors. They pushed them open, just enough. Helena glanced at the two men, bowing her head slightly, then led Jack and Costas forward. The doors closed behind them. They were inside.

  ‘There’s been a power cut in the entire Christian quarter of Old Jerusalem,’ Helena said quietly. ‘The authorities sometimes flip the switch. Helps to flush out the bad guys.’ It was dark inside, and they remained standing for a moment, their eyes getting accustomed to the gloom. Ahead of them natural light was filtering through the windows that surrounded the dome over the rotunda, and all round them the shadows were punctuated by flickering pinpricks of orange. ‘Joudeh and Nusseibeh, the two Arab custodians who unlocked the door, came in and lit the candles for us after I told them we’d be coming.’

  ‘Does anyone else know we’re here?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Only my friend Yereva. She has the key to the next place we’re going. She’s an Armenian nun.’

  ‘Armenian?’ Costas said. ‘And you’re Ethiopian? I thought you people didn’t get along.’

  ‘The men don’t get along. If this place had been run by nuns, we might actually have been able to get somewhere.’

  She led them forward to the edge of the rotunda. Jack looked up to where the circle of windows let in the dull light of day, and peered above that to the interior of the dome, restored in modern times to the same position as the dome of the first church built by Constantine the Great in the fourth century. He thought of the other great domes he had stood beneath in the last few days, St Paul’s in London, St Peter’s in Rome, places that suddenly seemed far removed from the reality of the life of Jesus. Even here the momentous significance of the site, the truths embedded in the rock beneath them, seemed obscured by the church itself, by the very structures meant to extol and sanctify the final acts in life of one who millions came here to worship.