Jerusalem Poker jq-2

by Edward Whittemore

  Agriculture no longer interested her so she turned her attention to the problems of energy, opening several low-quality lignite mines on her estate. Then when the British navy switched from coal to oil in 1911, Sophia decided she should go to Constantinople and learn what little was known about oil in the Middle East. She studied diligently there and became convinced that oil could be found along the Tigris.

  In 1914 she executed the second most brilliant maneuver of her career by putting together a syndicate, in Constantinople, of English oil companies and German banks to exploit the oil along the Tigris, obtaining a charter from the Ottoman government for that purpose.

  As broker of the agreement, Sophia retained for herself a share of seven per cent of all future profits.

  Because of the war the syndicate was inactive for the next five years. Then in 1919 Sophia convened the highly secret meeting of its members.

  The English responded eagerly and so did the French, new partners in the syndicate, Sophia having cleverly transferred to them the shares formerly owned by the defeated Germans. England and France now administered the Middle East through various mandates. And the oil companies of the two countries, at her insistence, had successfully persuaded their governments that the syndicate's charter should apply not just to the Tigris valley, but to all the lands that had previously been a part of the Ottoman Empire.

  The meeting was to be held on a barge in the middle of Lake Shkodër, on the Albanian-Yugoslav border, thereby allowing members to approach the meeting from different countries for added diplomatic security. Sophia herself spent the night before the meeting in the city of Shkodër.

  So as not to arouse suspicion by her presence in the city, she had arranged to dine with the archbishop and formally announce her endowment of a chair of moral metaphysics at the Jesuit college there. But she retired from the banquet early, telling the archbishop that her kidney stones were bothering her.

  Well before dawn a fishing boat, with rags tied around its oars, was carrying Sophia across the dark lake toward the barge.

  The barge had formerly been used to transport lemons from the lake down to the Adriatic. Its old worn planks were deeply impregnated with a rich lemon smell, and in fact Sophia had sentimentally chosen the barge for that very reason.

  For nearly seventy years she had treasured the smell of lemons above all others, ever since that distant afternoon in her youth when she and her Skanderbeg had wandered hand in hand through the lemon groves beneath his castle, smiling and laughing and finally sinking into the grass to become lovers, both of them knowing another for the first time in the heady perfume of that blossoming Mediterranean spring of long ago.

  The exterior of the barge had been disguised with earth and bushes and vines to make it look like a small island, but inside it was nothing less than lavishly decorated. Magnificent Oriental rugs and tapestries abounded, giving the chamber an opulent Levantine atmosphere. Instead of a conference table there was a circle of thick satin pillows where the syndicate representatives could lounge comfortably while sipping cups of strong Turkish coffee. The soft flickering light cast by the tapers along the walls, together with the dishes of delicate incense and the sweet all-pervasive smell of lemon trees in bloom, added to the sense of Oriental ease.

  Above the circle of pillows a small yet particularly splendid Oriental rug had been cleverly suspended on thin wires, the wires invisible in that dim light, which gave the impression that the rug was a flying carpet from one of the traditional Arab tales of romance. On this Sophia had positioned herself to meet her guests, standing on the flying carpet which had been raised to a height where she could greet the men eye to eye.

  The English and French representatives began to arrive, dressed as gentlemen on a fishing holiday, rowed to the barge by Sophia's servants dressed as local fishermen. They presented their credentials to Sophia, who indicated the circle of pillows. When everyone was comfortably stretched out she sat down on her flying carpet and gave a short welcoming speech, emphasizing that the syndicate now owned all the oil reserves in the former Ottoman Empire. She then asked for presentations from the floor.

  It was immediately apparent the other members of the syndicate had no idea what the boundaries of the former Ottoman Empire enclosed. Maps were spread out in the middle of the circle and consulted, but none of the maps agreed with one another. The extent of the former Ottoman Empire was utterly confused by its long history of decay.

  An hour passed. The English representatives were still mumbling repetitiously, the French still jabbering passionately, but nothing had been jointly discerned. Throughout this time Sophia had remained absolutely silent, sitting on her flying carpet overhead, chain-smoking cheroots and watching the proceedings. At the end of an hour, however, she apparently said something in Tosk or Gheg to her servants, because the flying carpet suddenly began to move.

  Everyone in the room stopped talking. The men lounging on the pillows watched in wonder as the flying carpet slowly descended into the middle of the circle, coming to rest a few inches above the floor, Sophia sitting rigidly in her flat black hat and her black gloves, her thin black veil with the cheroot sticking through it. They could now see she was holding something in her left hand, what looked like an exquisite porcelain cup.

  Sophia raised the cup in front of her and leaned out over the edge of the flying carpet. She studied the large map laid out on the floor and dipped her right forefinger into the cup. She touched the map.

  The men gasped. A heavy black viscous substance spread where her finger had been. Pure crude.

  Sophia nodded to herself and blew a smoke ring in the air. She had touched Constantinople, obliterating it with oil. Now the flying carpet moved gracefully around the circle, still hovering inches above the floor, and the steady black line traced by Sophia's finger began to lengthen.

  From Constantinople she was floating with conviction down the coast of the Eastern Mediterranean.

  The flying carpet paused. Sophia again dipped her finger in the milky white porcelain cup. The spellbound delegates leaned forward on their pillows, holding their breath, as Sophia arrived at the Red Sea and banked to the left, speeding east around the tip of the Arabian peninsula, heading now across the water toward the Persian Gulf, the line of crude advancing with her.

  Their eyes narrowed. The flying carpet drifted over Abadan and floated inexorably north in the direction of the Black Sea, the space enclosed by Sophia's black line gradually taking on the shape of an ellipse, an enormous area that would contain all the future oil-producing lands of the Middle East except for Persia.

  A final dip in the cup of crude and the ellipse was closed. The line had returned to Constantinople, the former capital of the Ottoman Empire.

  Sophia triumphantly raised her veil, the only time the men in the room would ever see her face. She was smiling happily and puffing her cheroot, but perhaps what they would all recall later was the dreamy quality of her eyes. It was true she looked no more than half her age, if that, which was astonishing in itself. But it was the softness of her eyes that held them, not at all what they would have expected at a time like this.

  It was almost as if she had created the drama of this momentous occasion with the guileless simplicity of a child.

  Yes, they were sure of it. Innocence. That's what they saw.

  Sophia smiled shyly, then all at once her face was serious. Another command in Tosk or Gheg and the flying carpet floated to the middle of the circle above the map. She put her tiny right fist in the fragile porcelain cup of crude, wiggled it around and brought it out dripping. With a gesture of authority she flattened her hand in the very center of the map.

  An unmistakable black handprint on the heart of the Middle East. Sophia blew a smoke ring. The men on the pillows gasped.

  Now the flying carpet gently rose in the air, withdrawing to a position of height just outside the circle.

  After fixing each man in the room with her eyes, Sophia lowered her veil. She waved her ch
eroot commandingly and spoke in a quiet voice.

  Yes, gentlemen, there you see it This is the former Ottoman Empire for our purposes, and this is the area covered by our charter. We have the agreement of your governments and I now solemnly declare the syndicate in operation. You will return to your countries and issue the necessary orders. We begin digging, pumping and distributing at once.

  Thus the most brilliant moment of her career. Speeding on an exquisite flying carpet, tiny Sophia the Unspoken had silently circled the entire Middle East in minutes and transformed herself into Sophia the Black Hand.

  From an opulent Oriental chamber on a lemon-scented barge, a vast international cartel had been launched. And the tiny Armenian woman in black would thereafter be known, among the very few men in the shadowy upper reaches of power who were aware of her true role in the world, as the phenomenal Madame Seven Per Cent of the earth's richest oil fields.

  Oil and immense wealth.

  Yet within the tiny old woman there still lived a haunting innocence, as witnessed by others on the lemon-scented barge where she had once floated on a flying carpet, the innocent simplicity of an eight-year-old peasant girl who had found a broken man lying at the gate of a ruined castle, the last of the Skanderbeg Wallensteins home from his unparalleled ordeal in the Holy Land, and with the perfect faith of her years fallen in love with him forever.

  Indeed, there were still mornings when Sophia rose long before dawn with a strange distant smile on her face, silently to descend the stairways of the castle to a small unused room in its foundations, a servants'

  kitchen where she had been born and lived in poverty with her mother during her first years, the room where the two of them had tenderly nursed the last of the Skanderbegs back to life on their bed of straw, while they slept on the stone floor.

  Sophia had kept the room exactly as it had been then, with its bare walls and its little hearth, the one or two pots and the bed of straw, the broom by the door.

  On those mornings she took the broom and proudly swept the floor of the little kitchen. Went down on her knees in her plain black dress and her flat black hat and her black gloves to scrub and scrub the worn stones. Chopped a few imaginary vegetables and kindled a meager imaginary fire, setting the pot to cook the morning meal for the lord of her ruined castle.

  Later she drifted up to the courtyard to gather imaginary firewood and tend the imaginary garden where imaginary vegetables grew, down on her knees once more washing out imaginary rags and hanging them up to dry, humming Armenian nursery rhymes as she did the chores of her childhood.

  It's on her, whispered the servants in awe, peeking out the windows.

  Sophia had broken her hip and the bones had mended poorly, causing her to totter when she walked, bent forward from the waist with her hands groping in the air for balance. And on those special days the bent old woman wandering in the courtyard, so tiny and frail, seemed at any moment about to grasp some passing breeze that would lift her above the walls and the lemon groves on the soft sunlight of her memories.

  It's on her, whispered the servants in awe, peeking out the windows to see whether their tiny mistress was still with them. Or whether she had already taken flight, and the strange distant smile of a child's dreams had finally found its way to heaven.

  In the dining room Bach's Mass in B Minor progressed from a chanted solo to a choral response. Sophia accepted two lamb chops, waiting until the empty place at the far end of the table had been served before she picked up her fork. Nubar was already chewing a slice of brown bread and cutting up boiled vegetables.

  I wish you'd have just one of these chops, she said gently, but Nubar ignored the comment.

  Vegetarianism was one of the important resolutions he had made on his twenty-first birthday.

  I've come across a fascinating historical study, he said to change the subject.

  Sophia sighed.

  What is it this time?

  It was written by a Scotsman. It's called, Proofs of a Conspiracy Against All the Religions and Governments of Europe, carried on in the secret meetings of Freemasons, llluminati, & Reading Societies.

  Sophia shook her head.

  Really, Nubar, spare me. What is that supposed to mean?

  Just what it says. It turns out, you see, that the Knights Templars weren't really exterminated in 1364 as everyone has always thought. They survived as a secret society dedicated to abolishing all monarchies and overthrowing the papacy in order to found a world republic under their control. From the beginning they were poisoning kings, slowly, so the kings would appear to be insane, as so many have. Then in the eighteenth century they captured control of the Freemasons. In 1763 they created a secret literary society ostensibly led by Voltaire and Condorcet and Diderot. But it wasn't really the Templars who were doing all this. They were behind it.

  Plots? asked Sophia. Still more plots? Who were they?

  The Jews of course.

  Oh Nubar, spare me. Not that kind of nonsense.

  But it's not nonsense, Bubba, it's fact. And it goes back much further than the Templars. I can prove it to you.

  Now Sophia tried to change the subject.

  What was in those crates the workmen were carrying up to your tower this morning?

  Cinnabar, Bubba.

  Cinnabar? More cinnabar? I thought there was a shipment just last week.

  There was, but my experiments use up a great deal of mercury.

  Tell me about the experiments. Are they interesting?

  Yes, but another time. Have you ever heard of Mani or the Old Man of the Mountain? Or of Osman-Bey?

  Sophia looked confused

  I'm not sure. Are they local people?

  Not at all. Mani founded Manichaeism in Persia in the third century. The Old Man of the Mountain was supreme ruler of the Assassins, the Moslem sect that was also founded in Persia. Both men were Jews.

  As for Osman-Bey, he fearlessly exposed the Jewish plot to take over the world.

  Oh Nubar. Why don't you try reading the Catholicos Narses IV instead of things like this? It's such gentle poetry. It would soothe your nerves.

  And the founder of the Freemasons, continued Nubar excitedly, was also a Jew and so are many of the cardinals in Italy. They're hoping for a majority soon so they can elect a Jewish pope. Didn't you know the French Revolution was a Jewish-Masonic conspiracy?

  That's ridiculous. And I thought you just said the Jews captured control of the Freemasons in the eighteenth century. Why would they have to do that if they'd already founded the Freemasons?

  It's the same thing. The Jews made a secret pact with the Templars and then took them over, later they did it again with the Freemasons. The grand master of the Freemasons has always been a Jew and every Freemason must assassinate anyone the grand master orders him to, even a member of the inner council.

  You can't become a Freemason of the thirty-third degree unless you're a Jew. The symbols they use in their lodges are the snake and the phallus.

  You ought to find a wife, Nubar.

  Have you ever heard of Sir John Retcliffe?

  No.

  He was an Englishman who wrote an autobiographical novel called Biarritz. There's a chapter in it that describes the secret meetings held in a cemetery in Prague by twelve Jews, representing the twelve tribes.

  The novel has two versions. In the first version Sir John is the chief rabbi at a meeting in the cemetery in 1880, when he delivers a speech calling for world domination by the Jews. He wrote that to try to fool them but it didn't work, so then in the second version he told the truth.

  What was the truth?

  That he was an English diplomat, a Catholic, and that he might well have to pay with his life for revealing, fictionally, the Prague cemetery plot.

  What happened to him?

  He paid with his life.

  Sophia shook her head.

  Such lurid fantasies, Nubar. And you've never even known a Jew, have you?

  No one who was openly
a Jew or admitted to it. But I have my suspicions.

  Oh dear, Nubar. I think it's time you took a vacation with the Melchitarists.

  Nubar scowled. The Melchitarists were a monastic literary order of Catholic Armenians, formerly in Constantinople and now in Venice, who published works in Armenian. Sophia admired their combination of monastic piety and literature, perhaps because it reminded her of his grandfather's labor in the Holy Land, and whenever she thought Nubar was becoming overexcited she suggested he go off and visit the Melchitarists. They would have been more than happy to welcome him, Sophia being their chief financial benefactor. But he had no desire to vacation with monks in Venice or anywhere else.

  I'll tell you one thing, he said. I'm never going to a city that has underground transportation tubes.

  Why not?

  Because that's the way the Jews plan to blow up cities when the time comes. They'll take over the subway trains and race around setting off bombs behind them.

  Is that bread really good for you, Nubar?

  Yes, it's a new kind of whole wheat.

  Won't you have even a small glass of wine? It helps the digestion.

  No thank you, Bubba. Teetotalism and vegetarianism must go together. Cleanliness within and without is of the utmost importance.

  Ah, sighed Sophia, I just don't understand you. But then, I'm old and the world is full of riddles.

  Nubar nodded enthusiastically. He leaned forward.

  Seemingly insoluble riddles?

  It would seem so. Digging for oil is so simple compared to understanding human beings.

  Let me quote something to you, Bubba. The whole truth is to be found in this formula, which provides the key to a host of disturbing and seemingly insoluble riddles. What do you think of that?

  I think it's nonsense. The whole truth can be found only in God, and He surpasses human understanding.

  What does the formula refer to, some Fascist or Marxist ideology?

  But Nubar was suddenly evasive.

  Not exactly, he said, and went on to ask a question about his grandfather, the spiritual presence at the end of the table whose plate of lamb chops was now being replaced by a bowl of fruit, a subject that was guaranteed to make Sophia forget everything else as she lapsed back over the decades.