by Linda Stasi
“It’s complicated. And illegal.”
“Who are you also doing this for then?” I demanded. “I won’t be duped again by you. Who is it for?”
“I need to make sure the thing can never harm you or the baby,” he said. “And yes, your friend will profit handsomely.”
“And you? You won’t?” I asked sternly.
“I’m not the issue here,” he answered, heading toward the door. “Roy will get his money. And more. Trust me.”
I just shot him a look that said: “Seriously?”
Pantera asked me to wait—and not run off—and twenty minutes later he was back, knocking like a human being this time. He walked in wearing a yarmulke, an official Israeli guide badge with the name Avi Schulman on his jacket pocket, sunglasses, and his eye patch. “You look very Moshe Dayan.” I chuckled.
He must have been told that many times but all he said was, “Ready?” I nodded. “OK, you need to put your passport in the wall safe,” he said, handing me a false one, which ID’d me, complete with photo, as Maryellen O’Connor.
“For security.”
“Nobody can get away with these things nowadays,” I said, shaking my head. Again he just looked blank. “Anyway, what’s the problem? You think we’ll be robbed by Hasidic gypsies looking to steal my identity?”
I saw he was carrying a gun in a shoulder holster under his jacket.
“Anything’s possible,” he said, one-up snarking me in that superior way only he could.
He handed me a plastic bag. “You need to put these on.”
I looked inside. It was a Yankees baseball hat, terrible sunglasses, and a pin-on ponytail.
“Hello?”
“I want you to look like a clueless tourist, not like a hot reporter with a stolen relic.”
Don’t even think about what he just said. Who cares if he thinks you’re hotter than Emily Ratajkowski? Well, he never said that.
“Oy vey,” I said instead, and he smiled at me like he meant it. I wasn’t in any mood to smile back. “A fake ponytail? Seriously?”
“You have a relic worth ten million dollars. Someone’s already been murdered and another is sitting in jail. Just put the wig on, please.”
“Then put the freaking gun away, please,” I mocked him as I pulled my hair back and pinned the ponytail on, slipping it through the back of the cap. “The last thing Avi Schulman and I need is to end up in jail on a weapons charge.”
He opened the door. It was useless to argue.
“Wait. Let me try my parents one more time before we leave.”
“Use this,” he said, handing me his satellite phone.
“Why?” I asked. “I bought a package.”
“It’s safer. You need to keep yours off. Period.”
Dad picked up after a few rings “Dad, it’s me.”
“Ali! Hi, honey! Didn’t know it was you. Came up as ‘unknown caller.’ Anyway, we’re just coming out of the Midtown Tunnel. Should be at your place in ten minutes tops. Can’t wait to see the little fella. How are things there?”
“Complicated, Dad, complicated. I just wanted to make sure everything was on track. My keys are with security and I’ve left a page of instructions for Terry on the table.”
“Ali, I think Mom knows how to take care of a baby.” We both laughed.
“Daddy? Just call me when Terry comes back. He’s off with my neighbors at a brunch. OK?”
“Sure bet.” We hung up. I would feel a thousand times better once Terry was back in the arms of the Russos. I would tell them to get rid of that terrible Voynich Manuscript, too. Perhaps Mr. Engles had been right to warn me to burn the damned thing. I didn’t want any of that ugly, filthy, evil stuff around Terry ever again.
Pantera was waiting impatiently. “I asked you to put the gun away,” I said, fighting again for the upper hand. Of course, he completely ignored me. Where was he supposed to put it? In the plastic bag? Instead he opened the door and stood there until I followed him out.
Here we go again!
22
We walked through a lower-level exit, bypassing the front desk, thank God. Who knows what the hell they must have thought, what with security having been sent up, then as quickly sent away from my room not five minutes after I had checked in.
We began to walk. I was once again reminded of how Jerusalem is like no other city in the world: ancient, modern, the sacred site of three different religions, home of endless warring and countless deaths because of those three different religions.
Pantera knew his way around—what a shock—as he did everywhere it seemed. We passed the entrance to something called the LOWER COURT OF ISRAEL with its massive security, and then another called UNDERGROUND PRISONS, which weirdly enough was a new building. We turned and found ourselves on a huge shopping street. Old buildings, new merchandise, and then a modern street, no cars but with a sleek twenty-first-century rail train running down the middle. Jewelry stores, outdoor cafés. My stomach was beginning to growl—out loud—so when we turned onto Heleni HaMalka, Pantera plopped me down on a chair, walked into The Coffee Bean (yes, they have one there, too), and brought me out a double espresso with plenty of sugar and two croissants. I guess he remembered how I could chow down.
“Just wait here a second,” he said and walked down a few doors to a bar called the Voice of Free Jerusalem, of all things, and came back out and walked into a tailor shop you’d never notice if you didn’t know the city. Thank God he didn’t go into the tattoo and piercing joint as well.
The Coffee Bean was full of Hasidim, hipsters, and fashionistas in equal number. I felt like I was in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
He came back as I finished off the second croissant, not even embarrassed that I could eat like I had two stomachs. Was it the fact that I was back together with Terry’s presumed dad or was it just that I was nearing starvation—as usual?
I got up and we started walking on Heleni HaMalka once more, this time on a narrow sidewalk until we came to the Russian Compound. Again, he stopped and he spoke to someone who must have been waiting for him because he handed him a slip of paper. We proceeded on, passing the huge Russian Orthodox church. Everything religious was bigger here.
“Why are we walking instead of driving or taking a cab?”
“You really need to stop questioning every single thing.”
“No. I’m a reporter.”
We walked on, and he stopped to point out the Mount of Olives in the distance.
“Who cares?” I said. “This is not a real guided tour.”
“For the purposes of those who are most probably watching us, it is.”
“Right. OK, then,” I said, going along with it. “So that’s where Judas did—or did not—betray Jesus. The Garden of Gethsemane,” I said, pronouncing it “Geth-sem-a-nee.” He started to smirk.
“What?”
“Gest-ta-meen, is how you say it,” he said, putting in all the Hebrew guttural sounds. Or at least that’s what it sounded like.
“Sorry. I don’t speak Hebrew,” I said sarcastically. Then, “Let me guess, you do.”
“Not well.”
“Pantera? Shut up in every language. Anyway, now that I’ve read the published version of what’s left of The Gospel of Judas, I’m not so sure which version of the betrayal is even true. Nor do I care. What I care about is that selling the missing pages can get Roy sprung, and it will get the thing out of my life.”
“I can foresee a battle ahead,” he said. “The pages rightfully belong to Egypt—although Israel will lay claim to them and so will the Vatican. It’s kind of like trying to sell a stolen masterpiece from the Louvre. Make no mistake, though, the bastards who killed Paulo are only interested in the information on those pages, not just the dollar value of them alone.” Then he stopped dead. “Alessandra…”
I stopped him. “I know what you’re about to say. Those pages may contain the most important, most dangerous information imaginable. It’s vital that it’s put into the right hands.�
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He looked out at the view, not at me. “Correct. But unless they are destroyed and unless you are no longer associated, then you and the baby are not safe.”
“But how do we do that? Where the hell is that other key?”
He started pointing out monuments as though he was a real guide. “Neither of you can be exposed to it any longer. The temperature changes you experienced are usually followed by—well, some people start speaking in tongues. Some we believe have had visions. Some see the past, some the future.”
I asked, “We? Who is ‘we’?” He, of course, didn’t answer.
“All right then,” I said, also pointing to things like a tourist. “But clearly a baby can’t even speak, let alone speak in tongues, but Terry had started speaking—at a crazy pace—as soon as I came into possession of that goddamned tube. And there was an inexplicable cold that would fill my apartment…”
Panic rising, I tried to say as calmly as possible, “But he’s safe now that it’s out of there?”
“He—baby Pantera—is safer spiritually, at least, with the pages out of there than he was with them in your home.”
“Terry! His name is Terry. So don’t ever call him Pantera again.”
“Jesus, sorry, he was named after me.”
“Not as sorry as I am.”
He started walking, as though he hadn’t just taken a shot to the gut.
I decided I had to bring the temperature back down a few hundred degrees. Only this man could make me behave this irrationally.
“So,” I started, “you don’t have to be brought up to speed on the Gospel? Or why or how in hell it ended up in a bank vault in my old hometown of Hicksville, Long Island?”
“It’s a well-known story,” he answered vaguely. I decided to believe him because, well, it had been written about—including the bank, and Morris Golden’s name was easy enough to trace back.
Anyway, whatever transpired in the Garden of Gest-ta-meen,” I said, making fun of his pronunciation, “is key, I think. Which reminds me…” I reached into my bag and hauled out the ancient key with the modern glitter glued to it.
“What the hell is that?” he asked.
“It’s a key on a chain…”
“I know that.”
“I don’t know what it’s for, but I had to decorate it,” I answered, brushing loose glitter off my hands. We were passing behind the Jerusalem police headquarters with its high barbed wire, unmarked white cars, and guard booth. I was surprised he didn’t stop to pick up something from an Israeli secret agent or someone here, too.
“You should be imprisoned for that alone,” he said, looking at the key. I let it pass. He obviously did need to be brought up to speed on some things.
We kept rushing along and he said, “You have no idea what it is, but you felt the need nonetheless to decorate it with briller?”
“Does that mean ‘glitter’?”
“I guess.”
“Jesus. You are such a pretentious ass.”
“No, I just don’t do arts and crafts in my spare time. I haven’t done any gluing since cours élémentaire in France.”
“Like I said, such a pretentious ass.” Despite the horror of what we were living through, without any preamble—Paulo’s and possibly Mr. Engles’ murders, the knock-down, drag-out, call-the-cops hotel room battle—we had fallen into the same smart-ass repartee as we had before we fell into each other’s arms last year. Was it only last year that we had made wild, unbridled, insanely passionate love in Carcassonne? After I lost him I couldn’t imagine feeling like I wanted anyone to touch me ever again. Now that included him. Mostly him.
“Enough sweet talk,” he said, managing to be sarcastic without any nastiness to his tone. Damned French. Or whatever the hell he was. “Where did you get this key and why did you bring it with you? I won’t even ask you why you saw the necessity to decorate it, if that’s what you insist on calling the disgraceful mess you’ve performed on this antique.”
“We’re passing another prison,” I said. “Watch your ass. Maybe it fits the keyhole to a cell. This country has more prisons than people.”
“It’s actually called the Russian women’s hostel,” he said, “so you should be the one watching your ass. I speak Russian.” We dropped all conversation about the key, and for spite I made a big gesture of putting the chain with the key around my neck. When he didn’t react, I hung it inside my shirt. No sense attracting attention by looking like a brillered horse’s ass.
“Oh, Jesus. Let’s just stop talking, sweet and otherwise.” We turned left and passed a huge number of gray stone government buildings and apartments. Hard to imagine that these currently peaceful streets so often erupted in such tremendous violence. Yet amid the stone edifices there were lovely personal gardens and flowers. We passed the mikvah for handicapped women, an anonymous-looking building amid the ancient ones, and some other modern buildings with solar boilers and panels on top. I couldn’t help but notice how many buildings had plaques dedicated to people killed in terrorist attacks.
He paused and rubbed his chin, and said, “OK, there are two options to approach the Damascus Gate. My instinct says to go right into the new gate—opened after the war to allow Christians to enter.”
So we did, passing first the Notre Dame of Jerusalem with huge figures of Mary and the baby Jesus atop. We waited for the Jerusalem Light Rail train to pass, crossed the street, and entered the gate he suggested into the Christian Quarter. Immediately, the hipsters and the Hasidim disappeared and Franciscans miraculously took their place. O! Jerusalem!
“Are they following us?” I asked, looking around.
“Perhaps … and don’t do that! Look around like that.”
It was a noisy, ugly area with a high school and a lot of parked cars on impossibly narrow, cobbled streets. We passed an old mission building; a million cheesy dying-Jesus-on-the-cross souvenir shops; cafés without the requisite charm; priests of all stripes on cell phones; graffiti on walls; small alleys with too many, too-loud Motorinos speeding past; tobacco shops; and yes, more crucified-Jesus souvenir shops. We climbed down a lot of stairs and through open tunnels that led back onto more tiny, covered streets, which got darker the farther in we went. I was glad that he hadn’t listened to me about carrying his pistol. I’d been in one gunfight with this guy and I was glad he was on my side—as much as I hated him.
We walked into archway number nine, written, he told me, in Aramaic and Greek. It was a deserted, stone-covered arched alley, narrow and dark. An old, banged-up homeless man, covered in a woven, tattered blanket sat on the ground, his head down, his hand out. I was thinking it was such an odd place for someone to try to collect money, seeing how it was so dark and not heavily trafficked, when at that same second, Pantera grabbed my hand and shoved me roughly behind him. In that same split second the old man jumped up quick as an Olympian with knife drawn.
A fast look at his face told me he was not old, and not banged up. He was not as tall as Pantera, maybe five nine, but every bit as wiry. “Den chreiázetai kan na to skeftó, Sas kátharma!” Pantera snapped.
The man stepped back, put the knife down, and broke into a grin.
“Gios tou vrómiko skylí!”
“Éna lyssalées vrómiko skylí ennoeíte!” Pantera replied. Dear Jesus. What the hell was going on?
“Pírate to mínyma mou í den tha ton gýro sto drómo sas gios enós vrómiko skylí?”
“Nai, vévaia, allá den boreíte na eíste pára polý prosektikoí.”
He turned to me. “The man’s an idiot. I tell, you a real idiot,” and then back to the man, “Poú boró na vro ta Korsikís?”
“Good! But first we drink, my friend,” the man said, inexplicably breaking into perfectly good English.
“Tin epómeni forá, pal,” Pantera answered.
Then he turned to me and said, not in a stage whisper, but out loud, “That’s all he can say in English. The sonofabitch can probably say ‘first we drink’ in sixteen l
anguages, but can’t say ‘it’s on me,’ in even one.”
The man threw off his dirty shawl to reveal his outfit-of-contradictions underneath: a cheap, short, gray suit; pricey linen shirt; and very expensive shoes. Vuittons were my guess. He needed a shave but had a very good haircut. My reporter’s curiosity was on fire. What the hell and who the hell?
The man reached into his lapel pocket and took out a slip of paper. Pantera went to take it. The man pulled it back.
“Prota na kouvediasoume to kerma!”
“Iisoús Christós. O gios tis leípei, ase me mai afta ta skata!” Then to me—I was tugging on his sleeve to find out what they were saying—“Baksheesh. We’re arguing about baksheesh,” he said disgustedly. “I saved his sorry ass once, and I’m not talking about when Greece went broke, either, but he doesn’t give a crap.” Pantera reached into a pocket and pulled out a gold coin. The man grinned. “Yeah, I’m glad you’re happy, you thieving bastard,” Pantera spat out.
The man handed him the paper. “Now we drink, my friend!”
“Go fuck yourself, my friend,” he answered back, shaking his hand nonetheless. As we walked back out of the alley, he repeated, “Bastard…”
“But my friend…” the beggar in the Vuitton shoes called after him.
“What was that about?” I implored, grabbing onto his sleeve.
“Nothing.”
“Something.”
“Jesus, Russo,” he answered. “I asked him a couple of things, he told me a couple of things. I gave him what he wanted and he told me what I wanted to know.”
“What did you want to know and what did he want for whatever he gave you?” Now I wanted to know, too.
“He wanted a gold coin. I wanted information.”
“What gold coin? What information?”
“He has been trying for years to get his hands on a Roman Emperor Maxentius gold medallion. OK? Does that mean anything to you? No? Shocker.” We kept walking.
