O Jerusalem (34 page)

hree days until Allenby’s little party,” Holmes said thoughtfully. “I require information. The
Palestine News
is out-of-date before it reaches the printer, and at that it seems to be primarily home news, recipes, and advertisements. Is there any way of obtaining fresher news, in detail?”

“There are dispatches, of course. What kind of news do you wish?”

“Everything. Anything. A stabbing, a burglary, Major Thing’s dalliances and the Cairo shopping trip of Sheikh Hakim’s second wife and the odd disappearance of Mrs Abdullah’s son.”

Mahmoud gave that odd sideways shrug of the East, and said, “When there is a thing I wish to know, I attend a barber shop, and there is a professional beggar I know. And there is always the bazaar.”

“The bazaar,” said Holmes with a wry smile. “Of course. I am getting old, and
no doubt stupid as well. Still, I should like to see any of the official communications you might lay your hands on. Who is Joshua’s man in the city?”

“A clerk by the name of Ellison, at Government House. He has a house, and a woman, in the Russian Colony. He tells me, by the way, that Joshua has traced all six Turkish officers whose names we gave him: five are dead, the sixth is in prison. There are, of course, any number of others still unaccounted for, but then that is only to be expected in the wake of a spectacular defeat.”

Holmes nodded absently at this news. “You trust this clerk Ellison?”

“With my life, more than once.”

“There may be more at stake here than your life, before this ends. We may also need an expert in explosives, if we find something that wants disarming.”

“Ali and I can do that.”

Holmes eyed him, saw only quiet confidence, and nodded briefly. “Now,” he said, “I believe we have given you all that we know. I shall take up my place in the bazaar, imbibing many pints of coffee and smoking far too many cigarettes, while you two search out the precise details of Allenby’s schedule and listen for words of strangers asking about those same details.”

“Do you know nothing solid about this Turkish opponent of ours that you have created in your mind?” Ali asked, careful this time not actually to sneer. “You say he likes to hurt people, he has several men working for him, including an Englishman in the government, he stole a monk’s robe and an ikon, and he has a motorcar and some horses. He could be anyone.”

“He thinks he is omnipotent. He is not, but he is clever and sly and completely cold-blooded when it comes to disposing of life. He knows the land intimately enough to be invisible and he has, as you say, resources, both men and equipment. He knows enough about explosives to work a bomb into his plan. All of which fits a hundred men between Cairo and Damascus,” Holmes
agreed, before Ali could repeat his objection. “I should tend to agree with Abbot Mattias’ assessment of the man, that he has worked with the Turks, and that his area of expertise was probably interrogations.” Holmes added the last without expression.

I thought it might be helpful to add other, more concrete details. “Holmes thought his accent was not that of a native of Palestine, although he speaks Arabic flawlessly, and he was educated in Turkey and Germany. According to the abbot, the man is perhaps forty, only slightly shorter than Holmes although heavier and with darker skin. He has black hair, dark eyes, a mole on his throat beneath his beard and a scar next to his—” I had reached up to lay a finger of my right hand next to my eye, a duplication of the gesture Abbot Mattias had used, when the words strangled in my throat.

“Wallah!”
Ali exclaimed, jerking back from me as if he had been shot. His hand clapped onto his knife and his eyes flew around the room, from Mahmoud back and forth between the two doors, as if he expected the enemy to burst in then and there. Mahmoud, on the other hand, moved only his hand—his left hand, mirroring my own as he unconsciously reached up to finger the long scar that ran down the side of his face. He looked pale, his cheeks gone suddenly gaunt, and there was on his face an expression I had never imagined I might see there: I saw fear.

“You know him,” Holmes said, somewhat unnecessarily.

“That devil!” Ali cursed, and spat on the floor. “He was reported to be dead. We thought he was dead. If I had known that
he
was in that house where we found you …”

“Who is he?”

“Karim Bey was the name he called himself.” Mahmoud’s voice was without inflection. “He was here in Jerusalem during the war. Most of the city had no idea what he was, just another Turkish officer. He was
known to be friendly with children. When he was not helping with the orphanage, however, he was the special interrogator first for the Turkish police, and then during the war with the army. Bey was brought in when others failed. He did not often fail.”

“I see,” said Holmes. An uncomfortable silence fell for a moment. “Was he then clean-shaven?”

“Clean, yes,” Ali answered, nearly spitting the words. “His face, his nice clothes, his hands, always clean.”

“He has a beard now, and is certain to have disguised himself in other ways as well, particularly if, as you say, he spent some years here. He may wear spectacles, darken his skin, change his fez for a
kuffiyah
, that sort of thing. Chances are good he will be dressed as a monk at least some of the time. If he is as concerned with hygiene as you say, it would explain why he wished to have two habits.” Holmes started to rise, then paused to address Ali. “Shall I take it that you are now convinced of the need for this operation of ours?”

“If the monk in Wadi Qelt saw a man who looked as he described, by God, yes. Most certainly, there is urgent need.”

Holmes nodded, and stood up. He ducked across the corridor to his room and came back in a moment pushing his tobacco and rough papers into a pocket and carrying his sheepskin coat, which he proceeded to put on.

“I expect I shall be back before dark,” he told me. “If anything comes up, I shall try to send a message.”

“Wait and I’ll get my coat,” I said, getting to my feet.

“You have some sleep,” he said firmly. “If Mahmoud rounds up any newspapers or dispatches, go through them, see if anything catches your eye.”

“I don’t need any sleep.”

“Bazaar talk is a job for one person” (“one
man
,” he said in Arabic) “and I may need you tonight.” He left before I could formulate any lucid objections, a sure sign of my fatigue, so I went across to my own airless
cubicle, jammed a wedge beneath the door, wrapped myself up on the mat, and so to sleep.

I
awoke to the harsh, flat clang of bells. The crack of light around three sides of my door was dim, but natural, not from a lamp. I stretched, scratched myself thoroughly (the room had not been as free from insect life as I had optimistically thought), knotted my hair securely into my turban, and kicked away the wedge.

It was still daylight, but only just. There was no sign of Holmes, Ali, or Mahmoud, and no indication they had been back since I had gone to sleep. I felt logy, my bladder was full, and my teeth were covered with fur. I took up my
abayya
and made my way downstairs, used the privy and ran some water from a spigot to wash out my mouth and splash my face, and began to feel human again. I have never been one for naps in the afternoon.

As I walked back into the courtyard, a voice hailed me from one of the open doors, asking if I would drink tea. I agreed, with pleasure, and I did so, squatting against the sun-warmed stones with the young boy who brought it. Daylight was little more than a deepening blue in the square of sky over our heads, but the tea was flavoured with mint, hot and sweet and revitalising. I blew and slurped at it with pleasure indeed, and ate a handful of the candied almonds he offered me as well. When we had each asked politely half a dozen times how the other’s health was, and reassured each other that the tea was most agreeable, thanks be to God, I asked if he had seen my tall friend with the blue
kuffiyah
. The boy was heartbroken to admit that he had not seen the man since he had been seen walking through the gates into the street some time since, but he assured me that my friend would undoubtedly return soon, if it were God’s will. As I suspected that even Allah had little influence over the actions of Sherlock Holmes, I thought I might go out and see for myself.

I thanked the boy for his hospitality and we wished each other peace and good fortune. As I went out the gate, adjusting my
abayya
across my shoulders, it occurred to me that I had just conducted my first true conversation with a native speaker.

Our inn was at the edges of the Christian Quarter, a place well supplied with pilgrim hostels. I walked back towards the Jaffa Gate, and in the open place before the Citadel I turned past the Grand New Hotel and dived into the bazaar, picking my way cautiously down the slippery, uneven stones that were more stairway than street. On either side of me the sellers of carpets and clothing, mother-of-pearl knick-knacks, copper pots, and
narghile
s kept watch. When a European woman and her lieutenant escort approached, the raucous calls of
“Bakshish!”
and “See my carpets, madam, finest quality!” and “Olive-wood crosses from Bethlehem,
effendi
!” merged into a single sound which heralded their progress like the voices from a flock of crows. They passed by without noticing me, the woman looking harried and the officer furious, and for the first time I was truly grateful for my occasionally inconvenient disguise: No man there gave this dusty Arab youth a second glance, save to be sure I did not come within snatching distance of the wares.

With growing confidence I walked on, down the shop-lined alleyways, through the merchants of grain and seed and into an area where the streets were so narrow that the wooden lattice-work boxes over the upper windows nearly met in the middle. Then the vaulting began, and the open street became a stone tunnel. When a cart or a laden donkey came along (and once a mounted police constable) pedestrians had to squeeze to one side. I paused at a book-stall and made two small purchases, and wandered on until I came to a meat market. There I held my breath and scurried through the foetid air and the flies, slowing again when I came to tables heaped high with fruit. I bargained for a couple
of withered apples at one stall, a clot of dates and a handful of sweet almonds at another, and nibbled at them as I passed through a baffling variety of hats, caps, turbans, and scarfs, long black robes and dust-coloured khaki, a Scotsman in a kilt and a Moroccan in his embroidered robes, a Hasid dressed in his best silk caftan and a wild-eyed ascetic wearing almost nothing at all. I listened to the rhythm of Arabic (understanding a great deal of it) punctuated by the cries of children and a waft of Latin that smelt of incense and the occasional murmur of Hebrew, breathed the scents of freshly watered dust and old sweat and young bodies, of gunpowder and petrol, turmeric and saffron and garlic, incense and wine and coffee, and everywhere the smell of rock, ancient stones and newly crushed gravel and recently hewn building blocks.

At the far end of the
souk
I perched on a high doorstep and ate the second apple while watching the residents of Jerusalem go about their business. Half a dozen urchins screamed up and down the steps after a fraying golf-ball; two oblivious grandfathers in gleaming white robes sat in an inner courtyard, playing chess and rubbing their long beards in thought; a trio of adolescent girls with demurely hidden faces huddled together and giggled madly when a pair of handsome young boys went past them. A police constable strolled by me, followed by a small group of fashionably dressed tourists searching for the place (forty feet above what would at the time have been street level) where Jesus stumbled and put out his hand.

A few minutes such as this could almost make a person forget the lives that had been lost on these stones, the Nazarene Jesus two millennia before, the British Tommy bare months ago. It was a precarious peace that a handful of us were fighting to maintain, a foothold of good-will and security that future generations might use to rise above the bloody past. If we failed, if Karim Bey had his way, the fragile structure of government would
collapse, anarchy would reign, and tyrants would again walk these stones. Hell lurked just outside the city gates.