by Dan Sofer
Dave stuck his head out. The coast was clear so he joined Ben. They looked at the metal box.
Ben lowered the bag from his shoulder. “Hold it open.”
“Are you crazy?” Dave hissed. “They’ve got guns.”
“This is our history, Dave. Our heritage. The stone should be studied, and placed in a museum, not flogged on the black market. If they move it, we’ll lose the stone forever. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity.”
“Lifetime is the operative word.”
Ben sighed. “They’ll be back any second. Do you want to get out of here or not?”
Dave took the bag.
Ben lifted the box and eased it into the bag. He tightened the drawstring and strapped the backpack onto his shoulders.
“Not too heavy,” he said.
Dave felt the blood drain from his face. “Guns. They’ve got guns.”
“Kalashnikovs.” Ben grinned. “Ready?”
He poked his head through the curtains at the exit. Then the rest of him. Hearing no sounds of catastrophe, Dave followed.
They padded carefully down the corridor.
How did Ben plan on explaining their presence in the restaurant? Sorry, we lost our way. Can you show us to the nearest bathroom?
Unlikely.
Ben paused at the first arch and leaned into the opening. He signaled the all-clear. Another fifty meters and they would reach the landing. Up the stairs and they were home free.
Voices echoed down the corridor. Louder now.
Oh, crap.
Ben made a backward gesture with his hand and they retreated down the torch-lit passageway.
Boots clomped on stone. More than one pair.
Ben shifted from a careful walk to a brisk march. The backpack danced over his shoulders. The VIP room came into view.
Voices behind them. Louder now. The boots quickened their pace.
Ben broke into a sprint. Dave kept pace. Ben vaulted the safety rope. Dave did the same.
The passage curved to the right. The flaming torches ended. Ben ran on. Dave kept up. Their bodies threw long, wild shadows on the walls.
Ornan’s henchmen must be out of sight. Are they giving chase?
Dave looked back.
Then the floor disappeared beneath his feet.
Dave felt himself falling down, down into inky blackness.
Chapter 9
Jay parked the van on Graetz Street. John carried the black duffel bag; the handle of a cricket bat stuck out the zipper. Jay planned not to use it this time.
Stay invisible.
They walked down a quiet cul-de-sac called Moshe Gaster. Wild grasses sprouted along the roadside and between the low boundary walls of apartment blocks.
The alley ended in a clump of duplexes and a wall. An unlocked pedestrian gate stood beside a large number six.
No sign of the blue Yaris.
Jay unlatched the gate and padded down an L-shaped stairway into a private courtyard.
Perfect.
They could get to work without worrying about nosy neighbors.
The house mixed modern and ancient elements: large, uneven rocks; thick layers of smooth plaster; a domed roof alongside a belt of translucent square stones.
He crouched at the front door and rolled out his kit of long metal picks on the floor.
The lock gave little resistance.
Jay poked his head inside and listened.
Bird calls without. Silence within.
He held the door open for John and the equipment.
The narrow passage opened onto a modern kitchen in chrome and chocolate-colored wood paneling. Squares of light projected on the walls and floor.
The men split up.
Heavens knew why the Teacher wanted the clay jars. They were pieces of a puzzle and the third jar completed the picture. If Green yielded nothing, Jay would move on to Schwarz, orders or not. He was done with waiting.
Down three steps, he entered an oblong dining room. The walls were at least a meter thick. They curved upward and inward and met at a central square shaft. Hints of a former life.
The furnishings were stylish and expensive. Jay opened the cupboard beneath a buffet counter. Stacks of fancy dishes and crystal glasses. He uncorked a bottle of eighteen-year-old Glenmorangie and inhaled the pungent scent. Green knew his whisky.
Jay held onto the bottle for later.
In the lounge, a bulge of bedrock jutted from one of the walls. He eased back onto a brown leather couch.
The opposite wall contained a decorative niche. A spotlight illuminated an empty wire stand.
Jay stood and inspected the niche up close.
“Bingo,” he said aloud.
John joined him.
“What? A bottle of whisky?”
“No, you nonger. This. Look. Green was expecting us.”
“Crikey!”
“Took the word out of my mouth, John. Say, if you were an old jar, where would you hide?”
The doorbell rang.
He put a finger to his lips.
“Ben?” a woman’s voice outside called. The visitor knocked on the door and it creaked open.
Jay smiled. Soon he would have the answers to his questions.
Batter up.
***
One day he would die. Dave knew this. He had dropped the fact into a deep drawer of his mind and rarely reviewed it. When he did, he imagined a peaceful passing—in his sleep, at a ripe old age. Mourned by a tribe of children and grandchildren, maybe even a few great-grandchildren. At the present moment, a more likely and imminent scenario arose.
He was sprawled facedown in a foot of putrid mud at the bottom of a deep pit beneath the City of David in complete and utter darkness.
He lifted his head and gasped for air.
Thankfully, the mud had broken his fall. Death would come not by asphyxiation but, judging by the excited voices of the gunmen that echoed above, by bullet.
Soon Dave’s life would flash before his eyes. It would not take long. He would never see daylight again. He would die here. Single. Childless.
He pushed his arms out and raised his torso from the mire. He lost balance and rolled onto his side. He wiped grime from his face and spat mud. His chest stung. His legs hurt. His body was wet and cold.
“Ben?”
“Here,” Ben whispered. “Quick.”
Dave crawled in the dark. Hands gripped his forearm and pulled him onto a hard ledge. A small square of white light snapped on. Ben’s phone. His face was plastered with mud.
“You OK?”
“I think so. Where are we?”
“Some kind of tunnel. Come. We need to keep moving.”
Ben crawled away and his body blocked most of the light.
Dave followed. He bumped his forehead on a rocky outcrop and swore. The floor of the tunnel was smooth and pebbly except for the muddy trail Ben left. A few meters on, Dave fished his phone out of the back pocket of his jeans. It lived! The tunnel was only a few feet high. Ben had stopped some distance ahead. Dave’s phone displayed zero bars of cellular reception. So much for calling the police.
Were Ornan’s men following?
He caught up with Ben on his knees and elbows.
“Why have we stopped?”
“Ran out of tunnel.”
Oh, God. They were trapped.
“Wait,” Ben said. “There’s some loose dirt and rocks here. I’ll try to chip through.”
Stone scraped on stone.
Oh, thank God!
The sounds outside the tunnel were more distant and indistinct. Small patches of cobwebs hung between jutting edges in the tunnel roof.
“Turn off your phone,” Ben said.
“Why?”
“Save the battery. We might be here for a while.”
***
Mandy walked down Moshe Gaster and her heart thumped.
The Greens were Dave’s friends. Without him, Mandy had no business knocking on their door.
Ben
had sounded sympathetic on the phone. Mandy had shared few details. Enough to get her foot in the door. Not enough for Ben to file a restraining order.
She thought of Dave and the girl on Emek Refaim. Dave had no sisters. No female cousins that she knew of. But body language doesn’t lie.
He’d found another girl.
Mandy still found that hard to believe. They were meant for each other. Dave was her hero. He would never do that. There had to be more to it. And the wild-eyed King David was her only lead.
Mandy didn’t care if she sounded crazy. She feared only that the truth would be as simple and bitter as Shani had said.
Either way, at the end of the grassy backstreet—her last foothold in Dave’s life—closure waited.
Mandy unlatched the gate and descended the stone steps into the courtyard.
She rang the doorbell.
No movement inside.
She dialed Ben’s mobile.
Voice mail.
She hung up.
“Ben,” she called.
She knocked on the door. It moved.
A vision flashed in her mind: Dave waited for her inside with open arms. It was all a big misunderstanding.
Mandy walked inside.
The kitchen was empty. Yvette was overseas at work, Ben had said. Still no sound.
Why would Ben leave the door unlocked?
She slid her hand into her bag.
A few steps into the dining room, she stopped.
A short, stocky brown man stared at her. His chubby face was expressionless.
Her hand fished through tissues and lipsticks.
Why am I not more organized?
The man looked at her hand.
“Hi,” she said. “Is Ben here?”
He took a step toward her.
“Stay where you are.”
“No worries.” He spread his hands slowly like a hunter approaching a wary bird. “I won’t hurt ya.”
The accent was strong. Australian? A drop of sweat slipped down his brow.
Mandy’s fingers closed around the small, cool canister of the pepper spray, when an arm wrapped around her torso from behind. A hand gripped her elbow, trapping her arm in the bag.
“Hey!” A gauze cloth clamped over her mouth and nose. She gasped, inhaling a pungent, sweet fragrance. For what seemed a long time, she struggled inside the iron embrace. Then the world tilted sideways and faded to white.
***
The scraping continued. Debris trickled in the dark.
The time on Dave’s phone had read 10:13 AM. An hour had passed since then, although time was hard to measure in the darkness of the cramped tunnel.
The chill of wet mud and cold stone spread through his clothes, seeped through his skin, and invaded his bones. His stomach groaned. At least he didn’t need the bathroom. Yet.
Why had he ever listened to Ben?
They had narrowly survived Ornan’s henchmen and a free-fall into a slime pit, only to face a slow death in a damp, old worm hole.
“Any luck?” he said.
The scraping stopped. The pale glow ahead shifted.
“It’s almost large enough to crawl through. The tunnel we’re in seems to be a natural feature, like Warren’s Shaft in the COD. The other tunnel is definitely man-made. Very early workmanship, like the Canaanite aqueduct we discovered nearby a few years ago.”
“Ben,” Dave said through gritted, chattering teeth. “I don’t need a bloody guided tour. Just tell me when we’re getting out of here.”
“That’s what I’m trying to explain to you. If the second tunnel is man-made, it might be an escape passage.”
Dave brightened. “Escape passage?”
“King Zedekiah fled Jerusalem through secret tunnels and surfaced near Ein Gedi. Not that it helped. The Babylonians captured him, put out his eyes and dragged him to Babylon in chains. So cheer up, Your Highness. You might make it to the Dead Sea on time.”
Dave had been chased by armed thugs. He had sky-dived into a mud pool and spent hours trapped in a dark tunnel. He was in no mood to let that comment pass.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That means I don’t know exactly where we are and when or whether we’ll get out of here. We’ll have to wing it, OK? So grow up.”
“Grow up? Excuse me if I’m not overjoyed about being stuck here.”
The scraping continued.
“Here we go again,” Ben said. “Everything revolves around you.”
“Me? You got us into this, Ben. Just remember that.”
Ben laughed to himself. “You’ve had it easy all your life. Silver spoons. Trust funds. You whine whenever you don’t get your way.”
If the tunnel was any wider, Dave would have reached out and wrung Ben’s neck.
“I earn my own keep, thank you very much. Not like some people I know.”
“What exactly do you mean by that?”
Four months of paranoia boiled over. “I mean that you took Yvette to Ornan’s and now you’re set for life. Why else would she fell in love with a bald, crazy pseudo-academic?”
The scraping halted.
Brilliant, Dave. Ben is your only ticket out of here and now you’ve pissed him off.
When Ben spoke, his voice was eerily calm.
“We’re through, Dave,” he said. “Once we get out of here, you’re on your own.”
“Good.”
The scraping resumed.
No words passed between them for half an hour. Dave had been harsh. Ben was doing his best.
Ben’s phone beeped, almost out of power. Good thing Dave had turned his phone off.
By now Shira and his parents would be at the Dead Sea. How long would it take them to realize something was wrong? Nobody but Ben knew where he was. Would Shira think Dave had got cold feet?
“Ben.”
“What?”
“Can we go back the way we came? They must have left by now.”
“That depends. How are you with rock-climbing? In the dark. And mud. A smooth cliff-face about, uh, two floors high.”
“Right,” Dave said.
More scraping. Rubble crumbled in the semi-darkness.
“There we go,” Ben said.
He crawled ahead.
Dave sighed.
Thank God. They might get out alive after all.
“It’s a larger tunnel.” Ben’s voice echoed. “I can stand. Here. Give me your hand.”
He helped Dave through the hole.
Ben shone his phone about. The square, smooth hole stretched on beyond the light.
“This way,” he said. “I think.”
Then the light cut out.
Dave powered up his phone and handed it to Ben.
“Thanks.”
A blue haze of phone light wrapped Ben like an aura. The tunnel rose and fell, turned this way and that. Dave had lost his sense of direction long ago. Were they going deeper underground? Ein Gedi was by the Dead Sea, an hour by car. How long would it take by foot?
Dave’s stomach moaned again. His muddy shoes and socks squelched.
Ben halted.
“What’s the matter?” Dave asked.
“Look.” Ben pointed the light at the floor.
A large black hole blocked their path. Only a narrow ledge of rock remained on one side.
Ben picked up a stone and lobbed it into the hole. Dave counted seven seconds before he heard it clatter below.
“I think we can make it,” Ben said. “Here.”
Ben handed Dave the phone. He edged along the narrow strip of floor, his back to the tunnel wall, and reached the other side.
Dave handed the phone over and inched onto the ledge. He was not a man for heights but the darkness let him pretend the danger away. The ledge had held Ben’s weight.
Squelch. Squelch.
Ben gripped Dave’s arm and steadied him onto solid ground.
“Thanks.”
They plodded onward.
At least the w
alking warmed him up. The air had cleared of damp. His ears picked out the occasional drip of water along with the echo of their footfalls.
If they got out, he decided, he would live differently. For starters, he’d never listen to Ben again. He’d settle down. Get on with his life. Raise a family with Mandy. With Shira! Raise a family with Shira.
What was the matter with him?
Dave collided with Ben. “Sorry.”
The path had split into three. The tunnel was now a network of interconnected tunnels. A subterranean labyrinth.
“Which one do we take?”
Ben shrugged. “Got a coin?”
***
Jay rummaged through the girl’s handbag. Her auburn curls pooled on the floor as she slept. She had reached into the bag as if feeling for a weapon, so Jay had pinned her hand to her side before covering her mouth and nose with the pad of chloroform.
Instead of a gun and badge, he found a pocket pack of Kleenex, lipsticks, and a leather wallet.
He pulled the Texas driver’s license from the window pocket.
Mandy Rosenberg.
The name did not register in his memory but the chestnut curls drew him back in time.
A yellow print dress with small, blue flowers close to his face. The smell of soap and the pine scent of cheap gin. The rust-colored locks towered over him. You will do great things, my boy. Her large hand smoothed his hair. Great things.
John tinkered with the girl’s phone. “She called Green last,” he said. “And lots of calls to Schwarz.” He dropped the phone in her bag. “You OK?”
“Box a birds.” Jay cleared his throat. “Check the bedrooms. Beds. Cupboards.”
John trudged off.
Everything happened for a reason. He would not return to the Teacher empty-handed.
The wallet held a hundred shekels and a few cards: VISA, Mashbir. Jay found a square, wrinkled photograph. A man’s face. Early forties. Thick curly hair. Wholesome smile. Mountains in the background.
Daddy’s girl.
Jay considered the slender body on the floor, the bare legs protruding from the jeans skirt. The girl was there for a reason too. Another piece of the puzzle.
John reappeared. “Nothing.”
Jay tossed him a bunch of keys. “Bring the van out front. She’s coming with.”
Chapter 10
Dave’s phone bleated. Electronic death approached. Soon the darkness would swallow all hope. The tunnel walls closed in on him. Ben stood at the crossroads in the dim white light and scratched his chin. They had to find a way out and soon. But even Ben the Great was stumped.
