Jerusalem Poker (The Jerusalem Quartet Book 2)

by Edward Whittemore

  In 1934, the Subject crossed into the United States from Canada, in disguise once again, using forged papers. After spending a brief period of time in Brooklyn, organizing an illegal business, he traveled west and ended up on the Hopi reservation, where he became chief medicine man of the tribe. When entranced by firelight he is said to mutter in Gaelic, which his untutored parishioners take to be some mysterious tongue of the Great Spirit.

  What kind of illegal business in Brooklyn? asked Ming.

  Garbage, replied Little Bill. At least that’s what it says here, but what’s it supposed to mean?

  Sometimes, explained Big Bill, the garbage or carting businesses in New York are controlled by mobsters.

  Ming looked mystified.

  You mean to say there’s money in garbage in Brooklyn?

  It’s possible.

  Money in dustbins, mused Ming. How very odd indeed. Even though you Americans are our cousins, it does seem you’ve been strangely affected by these wild dreams of the promise to be found in the New World.

  Well that brings us up to date, said Big Bill. What do you think?

  Good man to have in a scrape, commented Little Bill. Resourceful, independent, capable of thinking on his feet. And above all, experienced. The disguises and so forth. I like that.

  Knows his own mind, added Ming. But with no use for politics, left that behind long ago. Twelve years playing poker in Jerusalem, only to give it all up because Roosevelt happens to announce a New Deal on the other side of the world? A romantic, an idealist. Yet right after that there’s this dustbin episode in Brooklyn. Mobsters, you say. So a romantic with a twist, an idealist with a touch of cynicism. There are contradictions here, conflicts in the man’s makeup. And then after that we have seven years out in this desert as a recluse, a hermit totally cut off from his own kind. But what is his own kind? That’s the point. On the face of it, there’s no way to know.

  Strictly his own man though, concluded Ming, and I like that. I’m just not sure how we can appeal to him.

  Nor am I, said Big Bill. But I do think our important card, perhaps our only card, is his feeling for this man Stern. The curiosity he may have about Stern, what has happened to Stern and why. It’s not that Stern might be secretly working for the Germans when he appears to be working for us. We know Stern deals with everybody, that’s his value. And our Hopi medicine man may no longer care about our side and their side, but I think he may care about Stern’s dozen sides. Why Stern is doing whatever it is he’s really doing. I suspect an unusual bond still exists between the two of them, a unique bond even, despite the years that have passed since they’ve seen one another. And that might cause him to go, for his own reasons. We’ll just have to explore it when we sit down with him. Get him to talk about Stern and see where it leads.

  And let’s not forget the American woman, added Little Bill. I’ve found it’s best never to overlook the woman in a case.

  Big Bill tipped his head.

  Is that so?

  Little Bill smiled.

  Quite. Now let’s just peruse the facts. Our man on the Hopi mesa that lies ahead was quite a remarkable revolutionary once, and although the romanticism may have worn a bit thin since then, or become a mite twisted as you call it, we have to consider what the Middle East must have meant to him once. A young Irish lad suddenly cast into the Holy Land and living in mythical places with names like Jericho and Jerusalem? It must have been pure magic for him after growing up on a deathly poor little rainy island in the Atlantic. The sun and the desert and Maud? Love in the Holy City? A son born in Jericho? Dreams come from the likes of that.

  Ming, intent on his knitting, glanced sideways at the ice-cold martini perched on his friend’s knee, the delicate stem of the glass lightly held between Little Bill’s thumb and forefinger.

  You’re a romantic yourself, he said dryly. With a twist, of course.

  Of course, agreed Little Bill, smiling. Then too, there’s the fact that our Joe is still in the desert. Or once more in the desert, which should tell us something.

  But what? murmured Ming, as much to himself as to anyone else.

  So when you put it all together, continued Little Bill, it wouldn’t surprise me if our Hopi medicine man turned out to be willing to leave the safety of his kiva for a journey halfway around the world. There’s Maud and there’s also his mysterious friend, the enigmatic Stern … A journey into his own past, perhaps?

  He was a mere youth when he gave up on war and revolution, said Ming. That was twenty years ago and it’s been almost that long since he’s seen the woman. Men change their ways with time.

  Or grow in their ways? said Little Bill. Just possibly his romanticism is incurable, despite two decades of this or that. Who’s to know what to expect from an Irish-Hopi?

  Ming nodded and held up his knitting. The three men stretched the black shawl across the rear seat. Big Bill read the tape measure.

  Just right, he said. I’m told the Hopi take ceremonies very seriously.

  Ming put his knitting needles away and Little Bill busied himself clipping the loose ends off the shawl with a small pair of scissors. On the horizon ahead several puffs of smoke had appeared. Ming pointed.

  The Hopi signal corps announcing our arrival?

  He fitted another strong Turkish cigarette into his holder and inhaled deeply three or four times, then crushed the unlit cigarette in the ashtray that was already full.

  But this is preposterous, he suddenly roared. An utterly absurd situation. Leaving our three services to dither among themselves while we fly all the way out here for this?

  Big Bill laughed.

  Mostly it was an excuse to get you away and give you a feeling for the size and scope of our continent, your new ally.

  Large, muttered Ming. But all the same, you two should be much too busy for this sort of thing.

  We are, replied Big Bill. Still, it seemed only appropriate that the three of us, just once, should have the opportunity to recruit an agent together. Just once, as a matter of ritual.

  A unique moment in the history of the great democracies, murmured Little Bill. If the Germans should win, it will all be over, all of it, because there’s a streak in man that simply can’t abide what freedom requires. So it does seem appropriate for the three of us to mark the moment in our little way…. And to hope.

  Ming turned and gazed at the two of them.

  All of that’s true, I daresay, and I’d be the last man to say there’s no meaning in rituals. But what could anyone make of this, when you look at it? The chiefs of our three secret intelligence services, at a moment like this in the history of the West, contemplating Hopi smoke signals at sundown? It’s a ritual all right, but it’s also a piece of secret intelligence I don’t intend to report to anyone at home, and certainly not to Winston.

  Little Bill smiled.

  Then I will, he said at once. He’d love it.

  Ming looked out the window and lapsed into silence.

  Yes, he murmured after a time, that’s true, Winston would love it. And that may be one of the quieter differences between our side and theirs.

  Darkness was rising from the wastelands by the time the automobile left the road and slowly began to climb a stretch of hard-baked desert, heading now toward a huge lone mesa that soared above them in the twilight, the pink and purple hues of its lower reaches giving way to sheer golden cliffs in the sky. At last the automobile glided to a stop and the driver switched the headlights off and on three times. The three men stepped outside and gazed up at the awesome cliffs of gold.

  Sunset and the myth of the Seven Lost Cities of Cibola, murmured Little Bill. The conquistadores must have kept their eyes on the ground. No wonder they were never able to sort out the dreams and realities of the New World.

  Big Bill cleared his throat. No more than ten yards away a silent Indian was standing on one leg, his other leg drawn up beneath him in the timeless pose of a watchman in the wilds, his somber presence as immutable as the vast
monoliths soaring majestically above the wastes. The Indian showed no sign of recognition, no sign of even being aware of their presence. He seemed to be as alone out there as he had always been, mysteriously rooted to some secret spot of sand and stone assigned to him at the very dawn of creation. He stood like that for some moments and then his eyes abruptly flickered and he raised his head toward the mesa, as if hearing a whisper descending from the massive walls of gold. The three men followed his gaze upward but heard nothing, not even a touch of wind that might have been caressing the towering dream above them.

  The Indian turned and walked away. They followed him a short distance and came upon three burros standing behind a boulder, the creatures as immobile in their solitude as the Indian had been before them.

  Preposterous, muttered Ming.

  The three of them mounted the burros and the ascent began up a path cut into the face of the cliff, led by the Indian on foot. Higher and higher they climbed, the twisting ledge often no more than a few feet wide, the drop to the side falling off hundreds of feet to the desert below. As they worked their way upward the golden sheen of the rocks receded and the dark vistas beneath them spread out with ever greater mystery, until by the time they reached the summit of the mesa the faint glow on the horizon, the last of the dying sun, had left but a shadowy dimness to the air.

  They slid to the ground amidst low adobe shapes built one on top of another, in what appeared to be the central courtyard of the pueblo. While they were dusting themselves off and straightening their clothes, their Indian guide drifted away with the burros. There was no sign of life anywhere in the village.

  Not exactly what you’d call being piped aboard, whispered Ming. Is it possible we’ve come several hundred years too late?

  They may all be at vespers, whispered Little Bill. In a setting such as this, a huggermugger at sundown would definitely seem to be in order.

  But why are we all whispering? whispered Big Bill.

  He squinted through the darkness and pointed.

  Isn’t that the kiva over there?

  In the center of the courtyard a mound of fitted stones rose four or five feet above the surface of the ground, what appeared to be the roof of an underground chamber. Protruding from an opening in the top of the mound was the end of a ladder. They climbed up to the ladder and lowered themselves, one by one, down through the opening into the interior of the mound.

  The underground vault they had entered was round and spacious with smooth walls of stone. In the middle of the chamber stood a low unadorned altar, and in front of the altar a lone Indian sat crosslegged on the ground, cloaked in a blanket. The chamber was roughly divided in half, the semicircle where the Indian sat having a lower floor level than the side where they had descended and now found themselves standing awkwardly, their disheveled linen suits filthy from the climb up the face of the cliff, their Panama hats bashed and askew. Here and there torches hissed on the walls, casting uneasy shadows.

  The Indian watched them impassively, his dark skin deeply etched with lines. His hair was long and greasy, what little of it showed beneath a thick wool hat squashed down to his ears, a hat that might have been bright red once but was now badly faded by time and the elements. Although crudely woven by hand, the hat didn’t seem to be of local manufacture. Instead it gave every appearance of being the product of some hovel-industry in the Old World, the meager handiwork of an aging peasant laboring in perpetual rain and twilight. In Ireland, perhaps.

  The impression given by the hat was vaguely disquieting to the three visitors. Peaked front and back and pulled down over the Indian’s head at a raffish angle, it suggested nothing so much as the shoddy costume of an itinerant frontier trickster eager to unload worthless bottles of some all-purpose health tonic, fortified with gin and laudanum, in exchange for valuable furs.

  As for the Indian’s outer garment, the threadbare khaki blanket covering him from neck to ankle, it was so worn and tattered it looked like a campaign relic from another century, and indeed, a legend stamped on its edge stated that it had originally been issued for use among Her Majesty’s forces in the Crimea, 1854. Of course the blanket was immediately recognizable to the three men, having been prominently mentioned in their intelligence files as a souvenir from the Home for Crimean War Heroes in Jerusalem.

  As soon as they were off the ladder and standing together, the Indian made a gesture commanding silence. Another gesture and the three of them were sitting in a row facing him and the altar, higher than he was both because he was such a small man and because of the lower level of the floor on his side of the chamber. They watched him as he reached under his blanket and brought out something in a closed fist. Solemnly the Indian thrust his fist in the air and muttered a guttural incantation, then dropped his fist and moved it sideways with a tossing motion.

  From up to down. From left to right. The Indian was throwing cornmeal at them, sprinkling them with cornmeal. And as he did so, strangely, he seemed to be making the sign of the cross in the air.

  His face still stern, the Indian reached under his blanket again and this time brought out a flat papery corn husk, together with a handful of rough homegrown tobacco. Deftly he rolled a thick cigarette, struck a wooden match on the sole of his bare foot and put the flame to the end of the cigarette, which flared briefly. The Indian puffed several times and handed the loose cigarette over to his three visitors, who drew on it in turn, coughing and sputtering. The Indian nodded and took the cigarette back. Abruptly he smiled, speaking in a soft Irish voice.

  … takes getting used to, I guess, like life and a lot of things. And that business you’ve probably heard about Indians using peacepipes by way of welcome, well, it’s strictly that. The business. The Hopi have always smoked their tobacco in what we’d call cigarettes. And speaking of myths, the Hopi view of creation is that the first thing ever said by anyone in the universe was simply this. Why am I here?

  The Indian laughed.

  … makes sense, you say? Well you’re right about that, questions generally do. They have just a lovely way of being straightforward and to the point, I know it. It’s only when we try to come up with answers that we lose our way and wander, like the stars overhead. For the stars do that, don’t they? Forgetting what we’ve been told, I mean, isn’t that surely the way the heavens look? Astray and incomprehensible?

  … astray, muttered the Indian, and that’s the truth of it. Well according to the Hopi myth of creation, those were the very first words ever spoken in the universe. Why am I here? And just maybe the longer we live, the more we feel the sense of them.

  Nor do I need to tell you that this first and most basic query was spoken by a woman, the ancestress, don’t you know. For the Hopi believe the first life in the void was a woman’s, which also makes sense. No strutting males for them in the beginning, because no life ever comes from us, only the living and the observing of it. Descent among the Hopi remains traditional and matrilineal, as I’m told it does in some other old societies.

  Whereas my bare feet aren’t poking out this way because I’m a savage, but only to show humility. The same reason I’m expected to sit in the lower half of the circle of life down here in the kiva. Among the Hopi, the more powerful you are the more humble. But I guess that’s always the true way anywhere.

  So to bring you rapidly up to date then, still following the Hopi view of the matter, this ancestress went on to create twins as the next step, males this time for balance, and what do you suppose were the very first words that popped into the heads of those two fellows?

  That’s right, just what you’d expect, the same as hers but with that added yearning for identity so common to our sex. Why are we here, certainly, but quickly right on top of that the other card in the main male riddle, the question that’s always there worrying us to the grave, Who are we anyway?

  So the basic human enigmas seem to dip well back in time and a sound answer on the spot has always been tricky stuff, which brings me around to us. That adva
nce party of yours that climbed up here a couple of weeks ago didn’t really say much about who you’d be when you turned up, and moreover, why you’d be turning up in the first place. So I wonder if one of you might have some thoughts on the matter? Why we’re here together, I mean?

  The Indian reached under his blanket and scratched himself.

  Feel free to consult among yourselves, he said. I’ll just retire inside my head and you can give me a whoop whenever you’re ready.

  The Indian closed his eyes and began to snore. His three visitors exchanged glances and one of them cleared his throat. Instantly the Indian’s eyes flew open.

  How’s that? What did you say?

  We weren’t sure how to address you, answered one of the men.

  Oh is that all. Well as the wind carries you, is the answer. The Hopi are great believers in echoes. The way they hear it, everything in the universe is a sound coursing through everything else. So much so that most of my job as the resident shaman here is listening, no more. Straining to hear those echoes, don’t you know. But as for me, well … why don’t you call me Joe?

  Fine, said one of the men.

  The Indian nodded, smiling.

  Yes, simple but fine. And you needn’t bother to run out those cover names you must have packed along for yourselves, Gaspar and Balthazar and Melchior, or whatever strange ring the exotic names may have. Since we’re way out here in a desert of the West, I’ll just put you down as the Three Wise Men from the East, traditional figures that a man can comprehend and sense, if not know. So tell me, have you turned up bearing those merry gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh, as you are said to do in the traditional tales?

  We can provide gold, answered one of the men.

  And I’m sure that’s so, but unfortunately I don’t have any use for it. What a medicine man needs is medicine, the kind that helps the soul. Now then, with everybody’s credentials established, suppose we get down to the particulars of this era. You’ve made a long journey way out here because you must want me to do something for you. Where, I wonder?