Damascus Gate

by Robert Stone

  "Too bloody clever," the man's voice said. He was speaking to someone else. It was as if she weren't supposed to hear him.

  Suddenly she heard a serpentine hiss cast its weird sibilant echo in the same room she occupied.

  "Sonia!" Now she heard what sounded like the voice of Fotheringill. He spoke softly, without dentalizing, as though he were communicating in a mode of speech to which he had been trained. "Stay wi' me. Back toward the wall."

  It was Fotheringill. She froze in her tracks, uncertain whether to answer.

  "I'm lost," she said. The unseen Fotheringill hissed at her, demanding silence. She began to edge toward the nearest wall.

  Coming under Fotheringill's mercy, she felt like the prey turned over to a predator for protection. But out of panic, fearful loneliness, unreasoning hope, she could not resist doing it.

  "You're not lost," the other voice, the one from above, declared. "You're in the temple of Sabazios."

  At the same distance, through the same stone filter, she heard laughter and mutterings of affirmation. There were men with him. It sounded as though there were more than a dozen, but all the clues were unreliable.

  "Why are you here?" she whispered to Fotheringill. "Do you know there's a—"

  Another quick, viperish rush of breath cut her off.

  "Sonia?" asked the voice from overhead. "Is someone with you?"

  She did not answer but only kept backing toward the wall.

  "Your king has become a Muslim, Sonia," said the voice close by. "Did you know that?"

  "Well," she said to the voice, "it's all the same to him."

  Still hidden, Fotheringill hushed her again.

  "Is it?" said the other unseen man. "You'll have to explain that."

  When she felt the dusty wall behind her she edged along it, trying to find a door to the next chamber, deathly afraid of encountering Fotheringill. She was trying to keep track of both of the men's locations and figure some concept of her own. It was more than she could handle.

  At last she felt a turn in the wall. It seemed to be an opening and she crouched and rushed through it.

  "But you know how he thinks," she called out to the secret speaker. "That it's all the same."

  She decided to repeat her technique of moving along the walls. With her flashlight off, she had to take each step into utter darkness. There were only sinister, ambiguous voices, somehow promising common humanity in that place, so far from everywhere.

  "Who are you?" she called out. Another sibilant silencing from Fotheringill. Wherever he was, he was tracking her, like a cat, in the blackness.

  There had to be a pattern to the maze of chambers, and someone confined here long enough, she thought, might work it out. She had no idea whether Fotheringill knew his way around the passageways or not. She knew, she realized, very little about him. She also had the feeling he was much closer now than he had been before.

  Then, again from above, she made out a buzz of small curses and comments that seemed to accompany the second voice.

  "I'm here to learn," she shouted. Perhaps, she thought, she was discovering something about herself—that, at any risk, she could not abandon herself to darkness and silence. This time Fotheringill did not interrupt her.

  "You're nothing but a black drug addict," the voice above her said. It was just a bit clearer now. European, accented. "The country's full of people like you. In the Negev, with your fucking soul food. You're not Jews."

  There was a subdued mutter of anger overhead. It was as though some kind of justice was descending on her. In that darkness, full of unseen men, she was tempted to call on Fotheringill. One of the gang.

  "I've got as much right here as you," Sonia called. In this particular place, it seemed a questionable assertion. This time Fotheringill hissed at her again.

  Someone was going to hurt her, Sonia reasoned. She had lost all sense of where anyone stood, what the plot had been about. She had expected the police or Shin Bet or Mossad. Someone.

  "Aren't the police here?" she shouted. Shouted it at the top of her voice.

  "Sonia!" she heard Fotheringill whisper at close quarters. "Don't."

  It sounded as if he were offering support. But surely, she thought, he was part of Raziel's disastrous plot. He was not alone; he was doing something illegal and desperate. Most likely, she thought, he was planting the bomb.

  From somewhere outside she heard noises she could not interpret. A crowd. Machinery. The sounds were impossible to track; at times they seemed to come from overhead, other times below. Occasionally they seemed to approach, then withdraw, infinitely.

  They'll hurt me, she thought.

  All at once she heard a rustling and scuffing somewhere in the darkness, the rattle of metal gear, weaponry, faint but audible.

  "Sonia," Fotheringill called, "stay where you are. We'll find you." Along with the threat was a fearful reassurance in the way he said it.

  To hide or to run? She was afraid to turn on her flashlight; she had no idea how far away Fotheringill and the others were. On the other hand, she could see absolutely nothing, and the only way for her to get into a different chamber was to feel along the wall for it.

  The sounds were so confusing now, and she didn't know whether she would be moving toward or away from them. George and his light, if he was not somehow part of the plot, might as well have been miles away.

  She decided to try and move away from where she thought the men were. It stood to reason that they knew their way around the warren, and that if she tried to hide, they would find her.

  Facing the wall, she slid her way along its damp, uneven surface until her hand encountered vacancy or an angle. Then she would step into whatever opening offered itself. Sometimes it would be only a niche in the chamber, sometimes a low door that led to an adjoining chamber. The scuffle of boots and packs and weaponry sounded farther off now. There was still a distant roar from somewhere outside. Her only concern had become escape.

  When she had made her way through about four separate chambers, she came upon one that struck her as special. For one thing, the tiniest sound created a disproportionately long echo, which made her think the place was uniquely spacious, floor to ceiling. For another, it had a peculiar smell, one different from the ancient stone dust she had been inhaling for the past hour or half hour or however long she had been in the tunnel. She had lost all sense of time.

  The smell in the chamber was compounded of metal, chemicals and sweat. Her sudden sense of it made her freeze in her tracks and hesitate in her manual soundings of the walls. But she stayed at it until she felt a niche again and reached out before stepping into it. Her hand brushed something smooth. Unlike the walls, it was not coated with dust or sand. It seemed, she thought, to be a figure made of metal, and it represented a form that was somehow familiar to her. She needed both her hands to encompass it.

  Reaching behind the figure, she felt a ceramic shape that was detectably a human form. It seemed composed partly of folds that were those of a garment, and there were odd excrescences around it, but whatever it was, it was intended to represent something human. She turned on the flashlight.

  She was in a chamber with a ceiling about eleven feet by fifteen. Its walls were decorated with frescoes she could not make out but that appeared immeasurably old. The foremost figure she had felt in the darkness was the metal working of a human hand. The hand's last two fingers were curled against the palm; the first three were raised as in benediction.

  The statue behind the hand was a figure like Hermes. In its left hand it held a staff around which two snakes curled. Its face, carefully worked, had a beatific smile, reminiscent of a bodhisattva's. It wore a cap, like the figure of Liberty in the Delacroix painting of the Revolution of 1830. Its right hand was extended in a gesture identical to the lone hand that stood in front of it. On the wall behind it was an inscription in Greek.

  "This," the voice from above her declared, the soft, cultured European voice, "is where you belong."


  65

  SALMAN RUSHDIE!" the old guide Ibrahim was intoning, like a muezzin. "Rushdie has come!"

  "But that's utter rubbish," Sally Conners repeated.

  "It's arrant nonsense," said Lestrade. His sense of security seemed to have renewed his attempts to bring the funny side to bear. "It's poppycock."

  "I think you're Salman Rushdie," Lucas told Lestrade. "I think the CIA has disguised you. Planted a homing device in your socks. I think you're going to die. Look at his hooded eyes," he told Sally Conners, pulling on Lestrade's boozy underlids. "Look at his receding hairline. His shifty eyes. Behold," he shouted to the crowd. "Behold..." He had no idea how to say "behold" in Arabic, but it sounded appropriate.

  "All right, all right," said the terrified Lestrade.

  "If I get killed out here," Lucas told him, "you're getting it first. You think my Jewishness is amusing? How'd you like to sample Christian martyrdom?"

  "See here," Sally Conners said. "Leave him alone."

  Everyone was asking Ibrahim where Salman Rushdie was. He seemed to have gone into a trance state, like a psychic, to locate the accursed one.

  "Maybe we can surprise him," Lucas told the gifted ancient, "at the Bab al-Hadid. His guards may have taken him there."

  "No!" announced the guide. "He is atop the Mount of Olives. He comes by helicopter."

  "Look," said Sally Conners, "the rest of the press is following the army through the streets. That's what we should be doing. There'll be shootings. Atrocities."

  "He is not atop the Mount of Olives," Lucas told the guide. "He is in the Bab al-Hadid. If you want to be paid, you better fucking look for him there."

  Ibrahim checked to see if anyone was in earshot. "But the bomb...?"

  "We have professors who can unmake bombs."

  Ibrahim looked grave.

  "Do you want to make money tonight or just get blown to shit?" Lucas asked him. "If you don't help us get there you'll regret it."

  "I fear no threats," said Ibrahim. "I am old."

  "Good," Lucas said. "Do it for the money. And to save the holy places."

  Clearly, the old man did not trust him. Nonetheless, he announced that Salman Rushdie was lurking in the Bab al-Hadid.

  The crowd cried out for Rushdie's blood. Outside the walls there was more rather than less commotion, and the intensity of the gunfire inside the Old City seemed to have increased. Had Hamas or the PLO gone over to armed resistance?

  "You must pay me," Ibrahim said, taking Sally Conners aside, "much more than agreed to go to Bab al-Hadid."

  "But I don't want to go to the Bab al-Hadid," she said. "Or the fucking Mount of Olives either. I want to follow the Golani Regiment from the Palestinian point of view."

  Lucas looked around him to make sure that Lestrade had not escaped in the confusion. But the professor's instincts had kept him among fellow Franks.

  "Lestrade," Lucas said, "tell her she wants to go to the Bab al-Hadid."

  "Well, you see," Lestrade said, "there's a tunnel there. A new excavation."

  "Don't you get it?" Lucas asked Sally Conners. "They got a Western fall guy to excavate, then they planted the bomb. It's going to be another number like the mad Australian."

  The young woman absorbed this information.

  "Won't it blow up?" she asked. "I mean us too?"

  "Probably," Lucas said. "But you'll get a look at the tunnel. And we have experts working on it already. For example, the professor here is an expert. And so am I."

  "What are you," she asked, "the CIA or something?"

  "I'm a religion major," Lucas told her.

  "Death to the blasphemer!" the guide was shouting. "Death to Salman Rushdie!"

  He could speak without fear of contradiction. So they all hurried off down El-Wad toward the Bab al-Hadid, Lucas and Lestrade and the old guide Ibrahim and the young English reporter—who did not for one minute believe that Salman Rushdie had been brought to Jerusalem to see the holy places explode—all followed by a crowd of nearly a hundred shouting Palestinian men and boys.

  One street they attempted to traverse was in a state of war. Hastily made Molotov cocktails sailed down from the rooftops like ravioli malfatto, exploding in air, in the streets or in the hands of their makers. There were cries and flaming trellises in the rooftop gardens and the smell of burning lemons. Golani gunners were laying down fire along the walls while their snipers tried to pick off would-be Davids among the enemy host. A young man fell screaming onto the street, his kaffiyeh and Oakland Raiders sweatshirt on fire.

  Lucas and his party tried another street. Lucas pulled Lestrade behind him. The English reporter did the same with Ibrahim, who nonetheless attempted to assume a proprietary attitude.

  "The north and west side of the blessed Haram," he shouted, "forms best-preserved medieval Islamic complex in this world."

  There was a burst of what sounded for all the world like Thompson submachine-gun fire. Ibrahim pressed his face to the street and covered his head with his hands.

  "Christ," said Sally Conners. "A Thompson gun. It sounds like Belfast used to."

  "Belfast without the Guinness," Lucas said.

  "Oh, please," she sighed with girlish disdain.

  The crowd of Palestinian youths behind them advanced, gathering enthusiasm as they came. One waved a Palestinian flag. Again Lucas was reminded of Gaza.

  "Look," he said to the guide, "we've got to get to the Bab al-Hadid. There must be a shorter route than through the streets."

  Without raising his head, the guide spoke in a croaking voice. "Over the rooftops," he said. "From Bab al-Nazir."

  "But the army will take the rooftops," the English reporter said. "It's the first thing they'll do."

  "They'll defend the Jewish Quarter first," Lucas said. "Then they'll occupy the Israeli establishments around the Muslim Quarter. They may take up positions around the digs."

  "Over the rooftops," Ibrahim insisted.

  "Yes, he's right," Lestrade said. "We can go by rooftops as far as the Haram wall. But the army will take all the buildings that command the wall plaza, the whole upper level there."

  "How do we get up there?" Sally Conners asked. "Knock on doors?"

  "We follow the shebab," Lucas said. "Don't you think?" he asked the guide.

  Ibrahim looked into the gloom ahead, rose from his haunches and shouted to the youths who lined the sides of the narrow street. There were no lights on anywhere. Only the helicopter beams that shot by overhead lit the alleys and arches of the Old City.

  "Al-jihad!" the old guide shouted. " Al-Haram. Itbah al-Yahud!"

  "Itbah al-Yahud?" asked the reporter. "What's that?"

  "Don't you speak Arabic?" Lucas asked.

  "I do somewhat," Sally Conners said. "But I don't recall the phrase."

  "We'll talk about it later," Lucas told her. "It's a patriotic song. Sort of like 'The March of the Men of Harlech' or 'The Wearing of the Green.'"

  "What?"

  "I'm sorry," Lucas said. "I'm a bit demented by the day's work. It means 'Kill the Jews.'"

  "Oh, I see," said Sally Conners.

  Someone, a woman, her head thickly covered, opened a door for them and everyone passed through—several dozen of the shebab, the guide, Lucas and his reporter colleague, along with Dr. Lestrade. They raced past landings that smelled of tahini and perfume, through someone's bedroom and onto the rooftop. Ibrahim, waving his cane, tried to make a show of leading the way, but the shebab raced ahead of him. He looked anxiously around for the foreigners who had contracted to pay him.

  "It is this way," he shouted. A helicopter's beam shone out of nothingness and clouds of gas blew from a neighboring roof, the stuff intensifying in seconds from a spice to a reek to a blistering of the sinuses. A rain of gas canisters descended one building away, their cylinders rattling and exploding under the monster staccato of the copter engines.

  Lucas took a last look at the stars—it was a cool, clear night—and covered his eyes with his forearm. With a st
iff wind from the east, the stuff might blow away. On a second adjoining roof, in the direction of the Haram, the shebab were blindsided again. The canisters caught them exposed, dosing the crowd thoroughly and cracking a few skulls and elbows with their weight. The young men moaned and cursed; the helicopter swerved and came back for another pass. Lucas and his party on the rooftop sat tight until the chopper found other prey among the stalls in the al-Quattanin souk.

  Ibrahim began to scream in classical Arabic about the day of sorting out and the evil angel Eljib and killing the Jews and the djinn.

  "Please, sir," said the English reporter, "may we proceed?"

  Struck dumb with wonder and gallantry, he leaned on his cane and bowed, one hand on his heart. A bullet, the real thing, whistled by within two feet of their rooftop position.

  "My God," said Sally Conners. "No wonder they kill six people a day in the intifada."

  "Six," Lucas explained to her, "is a strong number."

  66

  SONIA HEARD a noise above her and shined her light on a pair of army boots appearing through a passage that seemed to lead straight up into the ceiling. In the next moment, the wearer of the boots lowered himself through the hole and landed, knees bent, with massive grace right beside her. She turned her light on him, but the man had brought his own. He turned it on her.

  It was pointless to run, so she stayed where she was. In the light of the man's torch, she saw that at the statue's feet was a paratrooper's rucksack, looking at first like a packed parachute. But the top flap of the pack was partly open, and beneath it she could make out a complex of colored wires and bulky batteries. As a child of the revolution, Sonia knew a bomb when she saw one.

  A group of armed men were letting themselves down the passage through which the first man had come. A few of them landed with the same éclat as their leader, but most were non-professionals and failed to land on their feet.

  "Well, you found it, didn't you?" the leader said to Sonia while his men organized themselves. It was Janusz Zimmer.

  "Uh-huh," she said. "That's right, man. And I've called Shabak and I've notified the Border Police and they are about to come down on your ass."