A Long Way to Shiloh (7 page)

Ben Matthias was there, too. He had gone along with Titus, still his bosom pal. Vespasian was so taken with the young man that he adopted him. Ben Matthias took the emperor’s family name, Flavius; and while he was at it, dropped his Hebrew name Joseph in favour of the latinized Josephus. As Flavius Josephus, historian, he began to write the history of his
interesting
life.

*

That was it: the story of a hopeless revolution and of a
hopeful
young man. But was it only this young man’s winning ways that had saved him in his hour of peril?

Agrot, when he’d recapped the story at Ein Gedi, had
presented
another theory. The consignment that had included the Menorah had also included nearly two tons of gold. And the Governor of Northern Command, according to the priest’s scroll, had got wind of it … A lot of gold in one handy parcel for a man who didn’t expect to win. A handsome bribe for an impecunious general who still had lingering ambitions and friends to be won …

Certainly there was much in the historical record to support the theory. There was an element almost of gratitude in the way Vespasian, in his hour of triumph, had adopted his young friend. And he had not stopped short at the adoption papers. The young man had become a pensioner for life. He had died a rich and respected Roman.

How right of the young man’s rival, ben Levi, to be suspicious of him; and how derelict of the Jerusalem junta to send only 2,500 men to bring him back; and how audacious of ben Matthias himself to recount the incident even though, as he wrote ‘the reason (for the rumours about him) was not
explained
’. Or was this ingenious man simply coat-trailing to see if there were any of his countrymen yet alive who knew enough about the matter to postulate a reason? For although he might have got the gold, it did not seem that he could have got the Menorah. And perhaps he still wanted the Menorah. Perhaps he had gone on wanting it, years and years after, in his prosperous Roman respectability. He’d certainly, years later, acquired titles to land in Judea. Why should he want land there, in a country he was glad to see the back of, where his name was detested?

Supposing he
had
tried to look for the Menorah, how far would he have got? He’d know the area where it was buried, because the gold had been buried in the same area. But
without
any more definite indication, he’d be looking for a needle in a haystack. Unless he made a regular expedition of it – which in the nature of things he couldn’t – he’d have to wait until specific information turned up. And the
only
information was in the three coded scrolls written by the priest and his humble amanuensis. One of them was hidden at Ein Gedi, another a few miles away at Murabba’at, and the third high in a rock known as The Curtains. Unless he’d chanced upon that one – surely very unlikely – we were relatively in a much better position.

It seemed to be an idea to try and identify The Curtains.

In the hotel I started on my notes.

*

The phone went while I was still at it.

Agrot sounded cheerful.

‘Be ready at six in the morning,’ he said. ‘Everything’s
working
out wonderfully. I’ve managed to lay hands on an old student of mine – absolutely first class. It was a matter of
getting
the army to play. We’re going to need a driver anyway, so I thought we’d better have one who understood the subject – a sort of assistant. I am going to have to leave you on your own for a short while. I have to be back in Barot on Thursday night. How are you shaping with your notes?’

‘Fine: Who’s the ex-student – a soldier?’

‘Yes. An officer, of course.’

‘Of course. Nothing but the best,’ I said, and hung up and looked at my notes again. I’d written:

The Police Station at Nazareth had once been a Turkish police headquarters, and still looked it. A somewhat ominous high wall surrounded a group of galleried buildings built round a courtyard that retained a flavour of First World War cavalry and of Lawrence of Arabia. We went through a malodorous outer room in which a few Arabs sat drowsing on wooden benches, to the first-floor office of the three-star Pakad in charge, and in a couple of minutes were drinking Turkish coffee while I looked through the dossier of the infiltrators of last December.

It was a large one. There were depositions from Kibbutz Gesher and from the Border Police post at Ashdot Ya’acov. There was a large-scale map of the Mount Tabor area with several places pinpointed. There were photographs and
fingerprints
of the two men. And there was an autopsy report on Sidqui which revealed that he had been suffering from chronic bilharzia which had led to his frequent visits into the bushes and thus (as Agrot’s half truth in London had indicated) to his death.

There was nothing else on Sidqui, but much more on his companion. His name was Ta’an Naif Jabel, and he’d been a member of the Hamduni tribe which had wandered in the Nebi Yusha area of Upper Galilee until the Arab-Israel war of 1948 had sent them fleeing over the Lebanese border. Naif himself had been back to Israel several times since, on cattle-rustling trips. In 1960, while serving a term at Yagur Jail near Haifa, he’d earned himself a remission of sentence by volunteering information about the Syrian Deuxieme Bureau. He’d
apparently
been recruited into the Bureau in Lebanon. There were transcripts of all previous interrogations, but nothing on that of last December. I asked the pakad why.

‘He didn’t say anything.’

‘Nothing at all?’

‘Not a word. Not even his name.’

‘He spoke freely enough about the earlier espionage
business
.’

‘Oh, yes. This time he had the fear of God in him. I think we’d better have the interrogation officer in,’ he said, and picked up the phone.

The interrogation officer, an Arab of sallow, dyspeptic
countenance
and brooding eyes, tended to regard Naif’s mute
performance
of the previous December as a personal rebuke. ‘If I had here the latitude of my opposite numbers in Syria and Lebanon,’ he said, ‘this man would gladly have told me
everything
in a quarter of an hour.’

‘Why do you think he didn’t?’

‘He was frightened what his friends would do to him.’

‘He must have known he’d be safe enough in custody.’

The Arab smiled sourly. ‘Adon,’ he said, using the honorific rather formally, ‘the types we deal with here aren’t fools. They know the routine. We can only hold a suspect for two days, and by getting a Court Order, for another fourteen. After that he has to be charged in Haifa. It’s a matter of simple artithmetic. On the seventeenth day he has to be taken out of here in a van. On the way the van has to slow down maybe ten times. In Haifa he has to be taken out of the van. At any one of these points someone can get him. And someone did.’

‘We didn’t of course realize,’ the pakad said quickly, ‘that he had such good cause to be frightened. Or precautions would have been taken.’

A few minutes later we strolled back to the jeep.

‘Nothing startling,’ Agrot said, ‘but a useful session all the same. At least you’ve made contact. You might need them when I have to leave you on your own.’

‘Which brings us to another matter,’ I said. ‘When you have to leave me on my own. There is the question of the driver.’

‘What’s up with the driver?’

‘You didn’t explain she was a female.’

‘What’s the difference?’

‘
Vive la difference
,’ I said. ‘But I’d like to have known. What’s her story?’

‘No story. She’s just an old student, a brilliant one. I got her deferment from the army to finish her course. Now she’s doing her service and when it’s over I hope she’ll come back to me. I mean, of course, come back to the university.’

‘I know what you mean,’ I said. He’d sat next to her in the front seat. I’d sat by myself behind.

Agrot looked at me. He said mildly, ‘Don’t get any wrong ideas. She’s a serious young woman. Also a Yemeni. And they tend to be old-fashioned.’

‘So am I. Which leads to another point. I took it my mate would be a man and that I’d be sharing a tent with him.’

‘There’s no need. She can run you to an hotel every night and go to an army camp herself.’

‘How old is she?’

‘I don’t know – twenty-one, twenty-two. Ask her.’

‘Is she married, engaged, what?’

‘Ask her that, too,’ Agrot said; and just then we brought her in view. She’d been heavily shrouded in an army tunic, cap and dark glasses when I’d spotted her first at 6 a.m. Tunic, cap and glasses were off now. She was sitting in the jeep reading a book in the shade of a tree.

She was a precise, delicate, petite little thing, a fine shade of coffee all over, like some figurine of The Arab Maid. Her
heart-shaped
face supported a small tip-tilted nose and longish
doe-like
eyes, both of these features restrained from getting above themselves by a large and rather heartening mole on her right cheek. Her black hair was straight, curved under her chin, arms and legs as they should be, khaki shirt suitably filled. The only thing I could see against her was a rather tuned-in look. As Agrot had said, this girl was a thinker.

She looked up as we approached.

‘Did you make useful discussions?’ she asked rather intently.

‘The pakad was able to answer a few questions,’ Agrot said. ‘And now, Shoshana, Dr Laing has some for you.’

His off-centre nose was twitching slightly.

I said, ‘Oh, mine can wait.’

The girl put a marker in her book and closed it ‘Why wait,’ she said, ‘if I can answer now?’

Her voice, which carried twangy cadences of Brooklyn, was less pleasing than the rest of her. I ground my teeth a little. I said, ‘I was simply wondering – how old you were.’

‘How old I am? I’m twenty-two.’

‘Ah.’

‘Is that all?’

Agrot’s eyes were on me. I said doggedly, ‘And whether you were married or anything.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Dr Laing asks if you are married,’ Agrot said in Hebrew. ‘She reads English better than she speaks it,’ he said courteously to me.

The girl was looking at me blankly. ‘Married? No, I’m not married,’ she said.

‘I see.’

‘Was it for some purpose of the mission?’

‘No, no. Not at all.’

‘I am single and twenty-two years old,’ she said, to get it quite right.

‘Well. Jolly good.’

A certain silence developed. The girl remained tuned-in,
waiting
for further inquiries to deal with. I couldn’t think of a single one.

‘Is this all you wish to ask?’ Agrot said at length.

‘For the moment.’

‘Then we’ll go now, Shoshana, to Beit Shean,’ Agrot said, and turned round to face front. But his nose, I saw in the
rear-view
mirror, still twitched slightly from time to time.

*

Beit Shean was the Area HQ of the Border Police, a trim little outpost run on military lines with a flagstaff and transmitting aerial in the centre of a three-sided compound of prefab
buildings
. The C.O., a young Oriental Jew not unlike Marlon Brando in some leaner and more frenetic version, smoked tangy cigarettes and showed steel teeth in an alarming smile. But he very amiably gave us lunch, and turned over all the items that Agrot requested. These consisted of a more detailed survey of the Mount Tabor area, a duplicate of the Nazareth file, and a report on the activities of subsequent infiltrators. After lunch we signed for a couple of mine detectors, stowed them in the jeep, and set off for Mount Tabor.

‘I only want to demonstrate our sweep procedure,’ Agrot said as the familiar rounded hump came in view. ‘We’ll do one specimen area. I don’t want to spend much time here today.’

We didn’t spend much time there. At four o’clock we knocked off and ran into Tiberias, where the girl dropped us at the Galei Kinneret hotel and took off herself in the jeep for an army camp. By five Agrot and I had bathed, changed, and were sitting out on the lakeside terrace with a couple of drinks.

‘The best thing I can do,’ he said, writing himself a note and not looking up, ‘is to continue making introductions and
putting
you in touch with the sources of information.’

I didn’t answer. The best thing he could do, of course, was to put me in touch with Isaac Isaacs, and Ike in touch with the unreadable skin. If only a few words could be brought up, in the right places, they would obviate the need for many more elaborate measures. In their absence we were being forced to deduce what Sidqui had found on his skin; always a tricky operation. There was something peculiarly nerve-racking in having to plan, from a reading of his apparent mental processes, a laborious series of investigations that might screw me up for weeks. There was no certainty, for a start, that he’d even hit on the right area. Scroll locations always needed ‘
interpretation
’ and it was on just this kind of point, where judgement or inspired hunch were required, that Sidqui had so often come a cropper.

A consideration of these factors had inclined me to test first, from other evidence in the scrolls, whether this area should be regarded as feasible at all. Agrot, who had no doubt about it, was somewhat heavily humouring me in this.

‘So,’ he said, looking up and crossing my line of thought at this point. ‘With regard to your feasibility tests. I think that for the perfumery, the best source of information will be the
curator
of the Tiberias museum. He’s an excellent man, the
outstanding
authority on this area. Then for The Curtains we’ll have to organize the Topographical Survey people. And at the same time we can attend to the geological thing, although you know what I think about that.’

The geological thing was the layer of blue marble chips used to cover the Menorah, and I knew what he thought about it. He thought it had been brought from Jerusalem with the consignment for some priestly reason. I thought otherwise. It struck me as unlikely for any reason that heavy stone would have been carried on such a journey. In my view, if marble had been used, then geological deposits of it would be found
in situ.
And if they couldn’t be, then there was something wrong with the
situ.

We had another drink and discussed it while the light faded from the sky. A scent of lemon and eucalyptus wafted up from the hotel gardens below. Away to the left, the old Turkish black basalt fort leaned drunkenly into the water. A few fishing boats puttered past it making for the Tiberias jetty. All of the lake – the biblical Sea of Galilee – was in Israeli hands; but only just. Immediately over the brow of the purpling Syrian hills across the water were the big-gun installations that could blast half Galilee.

The whole lake darkened as we sat there, and we sat in the dark and watched it; till the dining room, behind us, livened up with the sound of diners. Then we went in and joined them.