The Last Ember (23 page)

“And, of course, it’s no coincidence that the Bible’s topographical descriptions suggest that the precise spot where Isaac was bound to the altar stood not only on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, but at the very place where the menorah’s flame burned inside the Solomonic Temple one thousand years later.”

“But why would other empires care about the flame?”

“Well, if you were them, wouldn’t you?” Chandler laughed. “Imagine that the year is 1290 B.C., and the Hebrews leave Egypt as a ragtag group of slaves, but suddenly they’re winning unexpected military victories against larger and better-equipped armies across the desert. By the time they settle Jerusalem a few hundred years later and Solomon fortifies his Temple to protect the flame, the once outlandish promise to grow the Hebrews like sands on the seashore is starting to worry the magicians of surrounding empires who had heard of the perpetual fire of the menorah’s lamp and feared its significance. No operation was too elaborate to attempt to extinguish the menorah’s flame. The Assyrians attacked Jerusalem in the seventh century B.C. to extinguish it, and they failed. The Babylonians made the same attempt in 586 B.C., this time capturing the Ark of the Covenant, but not the menorah’s flame. It was kept alive in a hidden location even as the Persians invaded fifty years after that.”

“So before the Roman sack, the flame had never been extinguished?” Emili said.

“Right, and the closest call is justifiably still the most celebrated,” Chandler answered. “Four hundred years after the Babylonians, the Greek empire attacked Jerusalem. The five sons of Mattathias, a Temple priest, repelled the Greek invasion with such force, they were called ‘the hammers, ’ or, as the word is translated in Aramaic,
maccabas
, and we know them as the Maccabees.”

“As in
the
Maccabees?” Emili said. “Their name comes from the word for ‘hammer’?”

“Gives the phrase ‘tough as nails’ a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?”

“Chandler—”
Jonathan rolled his eyes.

“Fair enough, Marcus, but my point is that by the time the Maccabees regain control of the Mount, the desecrated Temple contains only enough oil to keep the hidden flame alive for one day. The problem is, preparing the sanctified oil for the menorah takes
seven
days. To keep the flame alive they need that little bit of oil to last seven days, or else.”

“Or else what?”

“Or else the flame would extinguish for the first time since its kindling by Moses in the desert tabernacle a thousand years before. Miraculously, though, the day’s worth of oil burned for not one, but eight nights, just in time for more oil to be pressed and the flame to be saved. It was the miracle of the Temple’s rededication, or as the word is in ancient Aramaic,
hanukkah
, which is still celebrated by symbolically lighting the lamp that the Greeks tried to extinguish.”

“So by the time the Romans surrounded Jerusalem in the first century A.D.,” Jonathan added, “the story of the Maccabees was well known to Josephus, as was the preeminent significance of the menorah’s fire inside the Temple.”

“Not only that,” Chandler said, “Josephus knew it was Titus’s superstition that drove him to sack Jerusalem’s Temple. After all, Titus knew its sanctuaries were not brimming with the golden statues of neighboring pagan provinces. He was not even after the menorah’s eight feet of solid gold. What he was after”—Chandler paused dramatically—“was
its fire
. The menorah’s flame threatened his divinity. That’s why even after his legions stormed Jerusalem’s inner walls and set fire to the Temple, Titus still ran through its burning walls into the Holy of Holies and thrust his sword through the sacred tapestries. Both Talmudic and Roman sources report that the tapestries miraculously began bleeding on the floor. Titus pointed to them, shouting, ‘This is the blood of your god.’ ”

“And all the while,” Emili said, shaking her head, “the authentic flame—”

“Was smuggled out,” Chandler said, nodding solemnly. “Just think of the importance of a flame that has burned continuously since
Moses
tended it alongside the Ark of the Covenant during the Exodus.
I mean, can you imagine?
” Chandler leaned back in his chair, eyes up at the ceiling as though taking in the scale. “Even today, two thousand years later, the notion of a perpetual fire is more a part of our modern traditions than we realize. Nearly all synagogues keep an electric flame ‘ lit’ above the sanctuary’s ark at all times, often even connecting its trip wire to a separate generator in case the local electricity fails. Most Catholic and Lutheran churches display a continual fire kindled from the candles of older churches. The Daisho-in Buddhist temple’s flame in Japan has burned continuously since the eighth century.”

“Not to mention the secular significance of eternal flames all over the world,” Jonathan added, “like the Eternal Flame on John Kennedy’s gravesite in Arlington National Cemetery—”

“Or the one in Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park to remain lit until all nuclear weapons are destroyed,” Emili added.

“And think of how extinguishing any of them would be the ultimate statement,” Chandler said. “Human rights protesters went so far as to climb the suspension cables of the Golden Gate Bridge to ambush the 2008 Olympic Torch en route to Beijing.”

“So Titus needs to get inside the Holy of Holies to put it out
himself
?” Emili asked. “Like some kind of deicide?”

“Exactly,”
Chandler answered. “And it’s why Josephus’s priestly lineage made him the perfect operative to get inside the Holy of Holies before Titus did. Remember, only a member of the
kohanim
, the priestly caste, could run into the inner sanctuary to smuggle out the menorah and its flame through the hidden gate.”

Emili thought for a moment. “So when Josephus added that line,
‘But someone ran in before them,’
he was talking about—”

“Himself,” Jonathan finished her thought. “Over the centuries, no one has realized he was talking about
himself
the entire time.”

“Now if only we had some idea where this gate was,” Emili said.

“Turns out, I think we do.” Jonathan reached into his jacket pocket.

“The manuscript page said where the hidden gate was?” Chandler leaned in enthusiastically.

“No,” Jonathan said, his voice distant, picturing the horrific photograph he had seen a half-hour earlier in Tatton’s office. “The location wasn’t written in the manuscript. It was written somewhere else.”

From his jacket pocket, Jonathan removed his BlackBerry and accessed the photograph he managed to take in Tatton’s office. The image spread to the four corners of the device’s screen. Its small size did nothing to lessen the macabre nature of the preserved corpse lying in the liquid.

“What the—!” Chandler stepped back, recoiling as though the digital image were contagious. “What the hell is that?”

“The carabinieri found this corpse in the warehouse, beside the pages of Josephus,” Jonathan said, and turned to Emili. “A preserved first-century Corinthian maiden.”

“Sick bastards.” Chandler leaned over to the image, pounced back, and then moved in closer. “What’s she floating in? Olive oil?”

“It’s probably amber,” Emili said, “or another natural preservative.”

“Did they cross-reference the photograph with Interpol’s missing-persons database?” Chandler said.

“Not sure they’ll have much luck there,” Jonathan said.

“Why not? That database goes back many years. She can’t be more than forty years old.”

“I think she’d be flattered, Chandler,” Jonathan said, “considering that you’re probably off by a couple thousand years.”

L
ate for his meeting at the offices of the Waqf Authority, Salah ad-Din moved with a clipped military gait through the narrow corridors of Jerusalem’s Old City.
I do not have time to talk politics over tea and dried fruit,
he thought. But he agreed to meet with the
mutwali
on short notice. He knew the Waqf’s support for his excavations had grown tenuous. Salah ad-Din must not let his pride endanger his team’s access beneath the Mount.
Not when he was so close.

In the arched doorway of the Waqf offices inside the Bab el Nadme Gate, two guards in traditional Islamic dress averted their eyes as they waved Salah ad-Din through. The imams appeared personally insulted that someone with his pedigree—a grandson of the Grand Mufti Sheikh al-Husseini—wore Western clothes and disregarded the Quran’s prohibitions daily.

I intend to honor the Mufti with more than empty words of prayer,
Salah ad-Din answered, but not aloud.

He stepped through the Waqf’s weather-beaten doors and into the two-story compound that had overlooked Haram al-Sharif since the fourteenth century. Salah ad-Din felt like a stranger among these imams, but he relished the Waqf’s history, how its jurisdiction dated to the expulsion of Richard the Lionheart and his Crusaders from Jerusalem by medieval Islamic warriors in 1192. It was then that the authority was created to administer the Islamic shrines of Haram al-Sharif through a
waqf
, or charitable trust.

A young imam escorted Salah ad-Din past renovated offices with granite floors, polished Herodian stone walls, and magnificent Iranian rugs that announced the trust’s recent prosperity. He knew of the large sums the al-Quds fund collected at the annual international Islamic conferences to support the Waqf’s maintenance and construction inside the Mount. Saudi Arabia alone had donated more than $100 million to the Waqf’s projects since 2000.

“It is an honor to have you in the Waqf’s office,” the imam said, walking toward him. He did not attempt to cover up the falsehood, eyeing Salah ad-Din’s black wool slacks and white oxford with open disapproval.

“Chapter twenty-four of the Quran,” Salah ad-Din said with a polite smile.
Lying incurs Allah’s condemnation.

The young imam led Salah ad-Din into a sitting room adorned with two prayer apses facing Mecca. Between the apses hung a framed photograph of the grand mufti of Jerusalem. In the 1930s-era photo, the grand mufti was a young man, and the resemblance to Salah ad-Din was unmistakable. A dish of olives and dried fruit had been set on a low table between two chairs in the room’s center: a low red velvet armchair intended to accommodate the aging back of the
mutwali
, and a wooden chair for visitors. Salah ad-Din sat down and picked at the platter. It was a hospitality ritual and Salah ad-Din knew not to refuse. An engraved marble page of the Quran hung above an office desk.

A manservant opened the door and Tarik Husseini, the current
mutwali
of the Waqf, appeared in the doorway. For intricate reasons of Islamic law that Salah ad-Din did not care to learn, the Waqf remained technically a trust, and the chief trustee or
mutwali
administered its most delicate affairs.

The
mutwali
was a small, barrel-chested man who rarely removed his large tinted glasses. His ill-fitting dentures kept his lips permanently pursed, and his black mustache was so deeply dyed that it had long stained the skin above his mouth a cadaverous grayish blue. He walked across the room with a waddle, a constant reminder of the war injury that crippled his leg in 1948 as he fought alongside Jordanian snipers to keep the Israelis out of Jerusalem. He grandly lowered himself into the velvet chair and made a quick gesture.

A servant wearing khaki pants and a military jacket came in with a tray of black tea. As he leaned over, Salah ad-Din saw the man’s sidearm—a glinting black Beretta that announced his recent activity in Iraq. The gun was the standard-issue weapon of American soldiers, and among insurgents, wearing the weapon of a killed adversary hailed back to early Arab traditions of keeping the sword of the vanquished.
At least that was one lesson they managed to learn from my grandfather,
Salah ad-Din thought.
Keep the Mount protected, not with treaties, but with warriors.

The
mutwali
leaned forward, eyeing the door. The guard waiting outside sensed the silence within and closed the door completely.

“Our work is nearly done,” Salah ad-Din said.

The
mutwali
slowly poured the tea for them both.

“Not
our
work, young Salah ad-Din.
Your
work.” The
mutwali
sat back, sipping his tea. “Your efforts are not supported by the imams of the Waqf Authority. They think you have gone too far.”

“Too far? Two thousand years,
Mutwali
. And we are
hours
from finding it. Where the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, and the Romans failed,
I will not.
”

The
mutwali
nodded, staring out the window; the golden Dome of the Rock was brilliant even beneath the overcast sky. “You have not found the path beneath the Mount where Josephus escaped with the artifact,” he said.

Salah ad-Din was taken aback by the
mutwali
’s knowledge of his efforts.

“You think I haven’t been following your research?” The
mutwali
labored to stand. “I admired your grandfather, traveled with him throughout Berlin and the Balkans, seeking clues in the writings of Flavius Josephus. But we cannot risk the Waqf’s exposure because you inherited his obsession of controlling the past.” The
mutwali
’s expression hardened. “Your excavations must end, Salah ad-Din. The World Heritage Committee may vote to grant UN inspection privileges for the Haram any day.”

“Inspection privileges? But the Waqf has had complete sovereignty of the Mount for nearly a thousand years.”

“The imams now view the Mount as being more a part of . . .
of the present
.” The
mutwali
waved his hand abstractly. “Their intentions are to fill a large cistern inside the Mount with water from the Sacred Well of Zamzam in Saudi Arabia, thereby raising Jerusalem to the holiness of Mecca. If they begin construction
before
the UN inspection, they can argue that as a religious project already in progress, it should continue. Your efforts, they say, are too preoccupied with ancient history.”