The Last Testament

by Sam Bourne

  When did they let you go? What time did the phone call come?

  Uri looked puzzled for a second, then wrote down a guess at the answer. Maggie looked at the clock on the wall in the café. It was hard to work out with any accuracy, but if Uri was right, he had been released just minutes after her. The phone call must have come from Miller. We’re letting her go; now let him go, too.

  Maggie pulled back the piece of paper. ‘So, Uri, I need to eat. What do they have here? I need to have something hot.’ As she spoke, she was writing furiously.

  They set us free to follow us. They haven’t given up. They want us to lead them to it.

  ‘Well,’ said Uri, reading Maggie’s note and nodding. ‘The eggs are not bad. And the coffee. They serve it in big cups. Almost like bowls.’

  They carried on like that, chatting about nothing. They spoke about what had happened, knowing it would sound strange if they didn’t. But of what they would do next, they said not a word. At least not out loud.

  There were fewer cars on the road now: Shabbat was coming, Uri explained. Jerusalem was getting more and more orthodox these days which meant driving from Friday afternoon till sundown on Saturday was frowned upon. Another reason this place could make you crazy.

  Uri hailed a cab, speaking to the driver who promptly cranked up the volume on the radio.

  ‘OK, Vladimir Junior,’ said Maggie. ‘What’s going on?’ She made a dramatic face before quoting his message: ‘“I know what we have to do.”’

  Uri explained that he had worked it out as the pain had intensified; he was sure it came to him right then. They were torturing him for information he didn’t have. But by the time they were ready to let him go, he had something. My brother, his father had said. Who else could he mean?

  He had gone back to the internet café, logged on as his father once again and found that email Ahmed Nour’s son or daughter had sent. Who are you? And why were you contacting my father? In their haste, Maggie and he had done nothing about it, assuming that Nour Junior knew as little about his father as Uri did about his.

  This time Uri had replied and, not long afterwards, there had been a response. Uri had been careful to say little, just that he had information on the death of Ahmed Nour and was keen to share it. The two bereaved sons, Israeli and Palestinian, agreed to meet at the American Colony Hotel, just fractionally on the eastern, and therefore Arab, side of the invisible seam that divided Jerusalem. They would be there in just a few minutes.

  Maggie nodded. She had stayed there once, the last time she had been here. Nearly ten years ago, but she remembered it: the place was a legend. Watering hole for visiting journalists, diplomats, unofficial would-be peacemakers, assorted do-gooders and spies for all she knew. They would sit in the shaded courtyard, sipping mint tea and trading gossip for hours. In the evening, you would see the news correspondents come in, the dust of Gaza on their shoes. After a day seeing Third-World poverty and often bloody violence, coming back to the Colony was like returning to a safe haven.

  That’s how it seemed now, too, as they paid the taxi and walked in. The cool stone floor of the lobby, the old-world portraits and drawings on the wall, the bowing welcome of the staff. ‘Colony’ was right; the place could have been air-dropped straight out of the 1920s. It came back to her now, a memory of the room she slept in nearly a decade earlier. Above the desk had been a black and white photograph of the British General Allenby, entering Jerusalem in 1917. Modern Israel might have been just outside, but in here you could find the Palestine of long ago.

  Uri didn’t linger. He headed through the lobby and down the stairs, limping heavily. It was hardly a precaution-he knew they were being followed-but he told Nour to meet them by the one place the Colony’s guests rarely used. If there was anyone else but Nour’s son around, they would know just how closely they were being pursued.

  Sure enough, the swimming pool was desolate, surrounded by a few unused sunchairs. Even when the weather was good, no one really sunbathed in Jerusalem. Not that kind of city. There was only one person here.

  When he saw Uri approach, followed a pace or two behind by Maggie, he stood up. Against the bright sunlight, Maggie couldn’t make out much more than an outline at first. But as she got nearer, she could see that he was tall, with hair cut short, almost shaven. As her eyes adjusted, she registered that he was probably in his early thirties, with sharp, clear green eyes. He wore jeans and a loose T-shirt.

  Uri offered a hand, which the Palestinian took hesitantly. Maggie remembered the famous Rabin-Arafat handshake on the White House lawn back in 1993, how awkward Rabin had seemed, his whole upper body clenched into a posture of reluctance. The media had made so much of it, but the world fraternity of mediators had given it a familiar nod: they saw similarly constipated body language all the time.

  ‘I realize,’ Uri began, ‘that I don’t even know your name.’

  ‘It’s Mustapha. And you’re-’

  ‘I’m Uri.’ They were speaking over each other. Nervousness, Maggie decided, and unfamiliarity: Israelis and Palestinians might live yards away from each other but, she knew, they hardly ever did anything as simple as talk.

  Each gestured for the other to continue. Then Uri remembered himself, dipping into his shoulder bag to produce the portable radio he had picked up that morning. He turned it up loud, before mouthing, by way of explanation, the single word: bugs. Then he began again, first introducing Maggie, then getting to business.

  ‘Mustapha, thanks so much for coming here. I know it’s not easy.’

  ‘I’m lucky to have Jerusalem residency. Otherwise, from Ramallah, it would have been impossible.’

  ‘Look, as you know, our fathers knew each other.’ Uri went on to explain the discovery of the anagram and the coded emails. Then, taking a deep breath, as if girding himself, he explained everything else: the tablet, the videomessage from his father, the tunnels. How Uri knew they were close, but not close enough.

  ‘And you think my father knew where this tablet was hidden?’

  ‘Maybe. After my father, yours was the very first killed. Someone thought he knew something.’

  Mustapha Nour, who had been holding Uri’s gaze, now looked over at Maggie, as if for validation. She gave a small nod.

  ‘You know,’ he said finally, looking down at his fingers, ‘I always stayed out of politics. That was my father’s business.’

  ‘I know the feeling,’ said Uri.

  ‘We went through his emails and notebooks. We didn’t see anything about this. There was a lock on his phone, so we couldn’t check that, but his assistant went through his computer thoroughly.’

  ‘Did he talk to you, in the last few days? About some kind of discovery?’

  ‘No. We didn’t talk much about his work.’

  Uri leaned back, exhaling noisily. Maggie could tell that he was about to give up; this had been his last good idea.

  I have put it somewhere safe, somewhere only you and my brother could know.

  A wheel began to turn slowly in Maggie’s brain. She thought of how Shimon Guttman’s messages had worked so far, urging Uri to remember things he already knew. What did we do on that trip, Uri? I hope you remember that. Perhaps, Maggie thought now, he had done the same with his ‘brother’, Ahmed Nour. He had passed on no new information to his Palestinian colleague. Nour merely had to remember something he already knew.

  ‘Mustapha,’ Maggie began, placing a hand on Uri’s forearm, gently but firmly telling him to give her a moment. ‘Did it come as a complete surprise to you that your father knew an Israeli?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, looking up at her, the green eyes piercing. Maggie was disappointed, thinking of a new line of inquiry, when he spoke again. ‘And no.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Well, it did when I first heard from you,’ he nodded towards Uri. ‘But the more I thought about it, the more it kind of made sense. I mean, he knew a lot about Israel, my father. He was an expert in the languages of this region, includi
ng, by the way, the script those ancient tablets are written in. And of course he knew Hebrew. He knew a lot about the way this country worked.’

  ‘Know your enemy.’ It was Uri, speaking just before Maggie had a chance to stamp on his foot. She was nodding more energetically now, hoping that she could keep Mustapha’s eyeline from straying over to Uri.

  ‘So he was a real expert,’ she said. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, it makes sense that he couldn’t only have got that from books. I realize that he probably spent more time here than he ever said. And that maybe he had someone to show him around.’

  ‘OK. Did he ever mention-’

  ‘Like I know he went to the tunnels, under the Haram al-Sharif. Not many Palestinians have done that. But I know he did it, though he never said so publicly. He disagreed with them passionately. “They’re a Zionist attempt to undermine the Muslim Quarter,” he said.’

  ‘But he went anyway.’

  ‘He was curious.’

  ‘He was an archaeologist,’ Maggie said with a sympathetic smile.

  ‘Always. So he wanted to see.’

  Maggie imagined these two old men, from opposite ideological poles, one an ultra-Zionist, the other a Palestinian nationalist, tagging along with a tourist party through the ancient tunnels she had seen that morning. Was it possible? Could Shimon Guttman have acted as a guide to Ahmed Nour, showing him the hidden reaches of the Western Wall? Had Nour perhaps done the same for Guttman, ushering him through the buried places of the Palestinian past? No wonder Guttman had wanted to speak to Nour about the tablet. They might well have been the only two people in this divided land able to read what it said-and to understand its true meaning.

  She let the silence hang a little longer. ‘Mustapha, I know it’s hard. But we really need you to think. Was there anywhere else, any other place, your father might have known of? That perhaps he had in common with Shimon Guttman?’

  ‘I really can’t think of anywhere.’

  Maggie caught Uri’s eye, full of resignation. This is not working. He began to get up.

  ‘All right,’ Maggie said. ‘Let’s try this. Can we tell you the exact message Shimon Guttman left behind? See what it means to you?’

  Mustapha nodded.

  Maggie repeated it word for word, from memory. ‘“Go west, young man, and make your way to the model city, close to the Mishkan. You’ll find what I left for you there, in the path of ancient warrens.”’

  Mustapha asked Maggie to repeat it, slowly. He shut his eyes as he listened to her. Finally, he spoke. ‘I think he has to mean the Haram al-Sharif, the exact place you went. Warrens are like tunnels, yes? And the model city. This is how we all speak of Jerusalem, Jews and Muslims.’

  ‘Sure, but where?’ Uri was showing his frustration.

  ‘When he says “Go west”, could that tell you the way to go through the tunnels?’

  ‘There is only one way through and I’ve done it.’ It was Maggie, her own exasperation no longer contained.

  ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘No,’ said Maggie, remembering herself. ‘It’s not your fault. We just thought there was something you might know.’

  They began to walk back into the hotel. Maggie and Uri kept their heads down until they were in the car park, for fear of being recognized. Once outside, under the covered driveway by the hotel entrance, Maggie realized that she had barely offered her condolences to Mustapha. Out of politeness, she asked after his late father, how many children he had left, how many grandchildren.

  ‘And he was still working?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, explaining about the dig at Beitin. ‘But that was not his life’s dream. His real dream, he will never see.’ His eyes were glittering.

  ‘And what was that, Mustapha?’ Maggie was aware that her head was cocked to one side, an amateurish bit of body language to convey ‘caring’.

  ‘He wanted to build a Palestine Museum, a beautiful building full of art and sculpture, and all the archaeological remains he could collect. The history of Palestine in one place.’

  Uri looked up, suddenly alert.

  ‘Like the Israel Museum.’

  ‘Yes. In fact, I remember him speaking about that place. He said that one day we should have something like this. In our part of Jerusalem. Something that would show the world what used to be here, so they could see it for themselves.’

  Uri’s eyes widened. ‘He said that?’

  ‘Yes.’ Mustapha was smiling. ‘A long time ago. “One day, Mustapha,” he said, “we shall build what they have, to show the world the history of our Jerusalem. Not abstract, but there to see and to touch.”’

  ‘My father must have shown it to him,’ Uri said quietly.

  ‘Uri?’

  He gave her a brief glance. ‘I’ll explain on the way. Mustapha, can you come with us?’

  Within a minute, the three of them were in a taxi, heading west across the city. The smile barely left Uri’s face, even when he was shaking his head, saying ‘of course’ to himself, again and again. When Maggie asked where the hell they were going, he looked at both Mustapha and her, his face breaking into a broad grin. ‘Thanks to our two fathers, I think our journey is about to end.’

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  J ERUSALEM , F RIDAY , 1.11 PM

  Uri kept his spirits high for most of the journey. Sitting in the front, alongside the driver, and against a pounding techno beat from the radio, he took delight in explaining his father’s clue.

  ‘You see, I read it too quickly. I assumed that ‘Go west, young man’ had to refer to the Western Wall. It was obvious. But why would my father go to all that trouble just to do something obvious? He meant go west across Jerusalem, to the west of the city. To the place that “my brother”-your father, Mustapha-would know. The clue was in the word Mishkan. It can refer to the Temple, but also this place, the Knesset.’ Right on cue, they passed Israel’s parliament.

  ‘What about the rest? The path of ancient warrens?’

  ‘Don’t worry, Maggie. We’ll see it when we get there. I’m sure of it.’

  He then turned back towards the driver, asking to borrow his mobile phone. He had done the same thing the instant they had left the Colony, then, as now, speaking intently in Hebrew for a while, before smiling and hanging up. Maggie wondered whether he had just phoned Orli: perhaps she was not as ex a girlfriend as Uri had insisted.

  She was about to inquire when Uri’s face seemed to darken. He began drumming his fingers on the hard vinyl above the glove compartment, urging the driver to go faster. When Maggie asked him what was wrong, he came back with a single word: ‘Shabbat.’

  They pulled into a car park, one that was worryingly empty. Uri did his best to bolt out of the car, hobbling over to the ticket office which consisted of a series of windows, all of them closed. By the time Maggie and Mustapha had caught up, Uri was already gesticulating desperately to a security guard on the door. As he feared, the Israel Museum was closed for the sabbath.

  After much pleading, the guard grudgingly passed Uri a cellphone, apparently already connected. Uri’s voice changed instantly, suddenly lighter, full of warmth and humour. Maggie had no idea what he was saying, but she felt certain that Uri was speaking to a woman.

  Sure enough, a few minutes later an attractive young woman carrying a walkie-talkie and with a name tag pinned to the front of her dark blue jacket, appeared at the gate. As she approached, Uri turned to Maggie and Mustapha and whispered: ‘We’re a TV crew from the BBC, OK? Maggie, you’re the reporter.’

  The woman had a quizzical look on her face, but it was not hostile and Maggie could only admire as she watched Uri go to work. He gave this girl, her hair pulled back into a ponytail, both barrels-the fixed eye contact and the occasional shake of the head, to get the long curls of hair out of his eyes, even the hand landing, as if inadvertently, on her forearm. It was a charm offensive that offended Maggie much less than it charmed the ponytail girl, at least if the sudden unlocking of bolts and cre
aking opening of the gate was anything to go by.

  As they were ushered in, the guard shaking his head in jobsworth disbelief, the woman pointing at her watch as if to say ‘just five minutes’, Maggie gave Uri a bewildered look.

  ‘Media relations officer,’ Uri said. ‘Told her we’d met a few years ago and how sad I was that she’d already forgotten me.’

  ‘And did you meet her a few years ago?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  Uri had played the film-maker, somehow persuading the young woman that he, Maggie and Mustapha were part of a documentary crew due to fly back to London tonight. They desperately needed to get one last shot. It was, Uri had explained, a long distance zoom, which is why there was no sign of a cameraman. He was, in fact, over there, Uri had said, pointing at the faraway trees just below En Kerem. The camera would begin with Maggie in shot, then pull out to show the whole, extraordinary panorama. Their colleague was in position now; the media relations officer could call him if she wanted. The whole thing would take just five minutes and they would be gone.

  ‘And she bought that crap?’

  ‘I think she liked that I still remembered her.’

  They were walking through what seemed like a university campus, or a private garden. There were neat rows of shrubs, each lovingly irrigated by lines of black hosepipe. All around was playful modern sculpture, including a giant steel column, painted red, that revealed itself as an oversized dog-whistle. There were signs off the main path, directing visitors to galleries, the gift shop or the restaurant. She could understand why Nour, exhausted by the dust and grime of Ramallah, would have dreamed of such a place for Palestine.

  Now they passed an enormous white structure, set in a square pool of shallow water. It was an extraordinary shape, like a sensuously moulded breast, its nipple in the dead centre, pointing skyward. The surface, Maggie could now see, consisted of a thousand tiny white bricks.

  ‘Shrine of the Book,’ Uri said briskly, marching forward. ‘Where they keep the Dead Sea Scrolls. You know they were found in, how do you say that in English? An urn? So that’s the shape of the lid.’