The Last Gospel (47 page)

Helena seemed rooted to the stool, and had gone pale. ‘You’re kidding me. Wait till you hear what I’ve found. Who was this guy?’

Jack took out a sheaf of papers from his faded khaki bag, and laid them on his knees. Costas leaned over from where he was sitting and shut the door. ‘That’s what we couldn’t tell you about on the phone,’ Jack said.

For the next forty minutes he quietly ran through everything: the shipwreck, Herculaneum, Rome, the London tomb, the clues they had found the day before in the nunnery in California. At the end he glanced at Helena, who was staring speechless at him, and then he placed a photograph on her desk of Everett’s wall painting with the chi-rho symbol and the Greek letters. ‘Does this do anything for you?’

Helena looked straight at the bottom of the photograph. She seemed stunned, and remained motionless.

‘Well?’

She cleared her throat, and steadied herself on the side of the desk. She blinked hard, then peered closely at the image. ‘Well, that’s an Armenian cross. The lower shaft is longer than the arms and top, and those are the distinctive double tips.’

Jack nodded. ‘Does that help us?’

‘Well, if you’re looking for something Armenian inside the Holy Sepulchre, you’d be thinking of the Chapel of St Helena, below the church in the ancient quarry. It’s one part of the church the Armenian monks are responsible for.’ She stopped abruptly, gripped the table and whispered, ‘Of course.’

‘What is it?’

Helena spoke quietly. ‘Okay. Here’s my take. My particular interest is what lies under the church. Everything above, between the bedrock and the roof, is encrustation, that word again, Costas. A fascinating record of the history of Christianity, but encrustation on any truth this place may have to offer on the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the man.’

‘Go on,’ Jack said.

‘It’s what Dr Morgan said about Herod Agrippa, the idea of a first-century shrine. Ever since first standing in that underground chapel, I’ve been convinced there’s more Roman evidence buried under the church, from the time of Jesus and the Apostles. From everything you’ve just told me, from what you’ve managed to piece together about the events of 1917, it turns out we’ve been following the same leads.’

‘Explain.’

‘You say this man Everett was here during the First World War? A British intelligence officer? A devout man, who spent much of his time in the Holy Sepulchre? An architect by training?’

Morgan patted his bag. ‘He’s the one who wrote the architectural treatise I mentioned. I’ve got a CD copy you can have.’

‘I didn’t know the name, but I know the man,’ Helena murmured. ‘I know him intimately. I feel his presence every time I stand in that underground chapel.’

‘How?’ Jack exclaimed.

‘Three years ago, when I first arrived here. The key to the main door of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is held by two Muslim families, a tradition that goes back to the time of Saladin the Great. One family takes care of the key, the other opens the door. They’ve been more sympathetic to the Ethiopians on the roof than some of our fellow Christian brethren, and I became close to the old patriarch of one of the families. Before he died he told me an extraordinary story from his youth. It was early 1918, when he was a boy of ten. The Turks had been evicted, and the British were in control of Jerusalem. His grandfather remembered from decades before that British officers often had a great interest in the history and architecture of the place, engineers like Colonel Warren and Colonel Wilson who mapped out Jerusalem in the 1860s. Because of this, the caretakers were better disposed towards the British occupiers than the Turks, who were fellow Muslims but had no interest in the Holy Sepulchre. The old man told me that a British officer who spoke Arabic came with two army surveyors and spent many days in the church, mapping out the underground chapels and exploring the ancient quarry cuttings and water cisterns. Afterwards the officer came back many times by himself, and befriended the boy. The officer was sad, sometimes tearful, said he had children of his own he’d not seen for years and would never see again. He’d been badly wounded and gassed on the Western Front, and had difficulty breathing, coughed up blood a lot.’

‘That’s our man,’ Jack murmured excitedly.

‘Apparently on his last visit he spent a whole night in the church. The caretakers knew he was a very pious Christian, and left him alone. When he emerged he was muddied and dripping, shivering, as if he’d been down a sewer. He told them they had a great treasure in their safe keeping, and they must guard it for ever. They knew he had been badly traumatized in the war and thought he was probably delirious, and was referring to the Holy Sepulchre, to the tomb of Christ. He disappeared, and they never saw him again. With his lungs being so weak, they thought his final night’s exertions might have killed him.’

‘Did the old man talk about anything that Everett and his surveyors might have found?’ Jack asked. ‘Anything in the Chapel of St Helena? We’re looking for some kind of hiding place.’

Helena shook her head. ‘Nothing. But the custodians have always known there are many unexplored places under the Holy Sepulchre, ancient chambers that might once have been tombs, cisterns cut into the old burial ground. Entrances that were sealed up in the Roman period, and have never been opened up since.’

‘Then we’ll just have to trust our instincts,’ Jack murmured.

‘I’ve spent many hours down there, days,’ Helena said. ‘There are so many possibilities. Every stone in every wall could conceal a chamber, a passageway. And they’re almost all mortared up or plastered over. I know of at least half a dozen stone blocks in walls that have spaces behind them, where you can see chinks through the mortar. But doing any kind of invasive exploration is out of the question. The Armenians are going to take a dim view of me taking you down there in the first place, let alone unleashing jackhammers.’

Jack reached for the photograph of Everett’s wall painting from the nunnery, and opened his folder. ‘If we don’t try, someone else will. There are others who know we’re here, I’m convinced of it. We need to move now. Can you get the door to the Holy Sepulchre unlocked for us?’

‘I can do that.’ Helena caught another glimpse of the photograph in Jack’s hand, then suddenly reached out and grabbed his arm. ‘Wait! What’s that? Under the cross?’

‘A Latin inscription,’ Jack said. ‘It’s not clear in the picture, but it says
Domine Iumius
.’

Helena was still for a moment, then gasped. ‘That’s it! Now I know where Everett went.’ She got up, her eyes ablaze. ‘I need at least two of you with me. Two strong pairs of hands.’

Costas gave a thumbs-up. ‘I’m with you.’

‘Where?’ Jack demanded

‘You’re the nautical archaeologist, Jack. Ships and boats. What’s the most incredible recent discovery in the Holy Sepulchre? Follow me.’

H
alf an hour later, Jack stood near the main entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in the enclosed courtyard below the façade built almost a thousand years before when the Crusaders took Jerusalem. He had lingered behind talking quietly with Morgan as they made their way down from the Ethiopian monastery on the rooftop, and just before reaching the courtyard had handed him a compact disc from his khaki bag. He had already arranged with Helena for an escort to take Morgan out of the Old City, to the place where he would pass on the disc to Jack’s contact. At the bottom of the steps he and Morgan were met by a man in street clothes carrying an unholstered Glock pistol. The man had looked questioningly at Helena, who pointed to Morgan, and the man ushered him away across the courtyard. Ahead of them two Israeli policemen suddenly rushed by, in full riot gear and carrying M4 carbines at the ready. A burst of gunfire echoed through the streets, followed by screams and exclamations in Arabic. The bodyguard pushed Morgan against the wall on the far side of the courtyard. Morgan looked back, and Jack tapped his watch meaningfully. Morgan nodded, and then the bodyguard pulled him up and they both ran out of sight around the corner.

Jack glanced up at the sky. Everything was now in train. The sun had disappeared behind a bank of grey cloud, and the air had an oppressive quality, humid and heavy. He mouthed a silent prayer for Morgan, and then followed Costas and Helena to the doors of the church. Two men in Arab headdress appeared on either side. Costas stepped back in alarm, but Helena put her hand on him reassuringly. One man passed a ring of ancient keys to the other man, who then proceeded to unlock the doors. They pushed them open, just enough. Helena glanced at the two men, bowing her head slightly, then led Jack and Costas forward. The doors closed behind them. They were inside.

‘There’s been a power cut in the entire Christian quarter of Old Jerusalem,’ Helena said quietly. ‘The authorities sometimes flip the switch. Helps to flush out the bad guys.’ It was dark inside, and they remained standing for a moment, their eyes getting accustomed to the gloom. Ahead of them natural light was filtering through the windows that surrounded the dome over the rotunda, and all round them the shadows were punctuated by flickering pinpricks of orange. ‘Joudeh and Nusseibeh, the two Arab custodians who unlocked the door, came in and lit the candles for us after I told them we’d be coming.’

‘Does anyone else know we’re here?’ Jack asked.

‘Only my friend Yereva. She has the key to the next place we’re going. She’s an Armenian nun.’

‘Armenian?’ Costas said. ‘And you’re Ethiopian? I thought you people didn’t get along.’

‘The men don’t get along. If this place had been run by nuns, we might actually have been able to get somewhere.’

She led them forward to the edge of the rotunda. Jack looked up to where the circle of windows let in the dull light of day, and peered above that to the interior of the dome, restored in modern times to the same position as the dome of the first church built by Constantine the Great in the fourth century. He thought of the other great domes he had stood beneath in the last few days, St Paul’s in London, St Peter’s in Rome, places that suddenly seemed far removed from the reality of the life of Jesus. Even here the momentous significance of the site, the truths embedded in the rock beneath them, seemed obscured by the church itself, by the very structures meant to extol and sanctify the final acts in life of one who millions came here to worship.

‘I see what you mean about the encrustations of history,’ Costas murmured. He was staring at the gaudy structure in the centre of the rotunda. ‘Is that the tomb?’

‘That’s the Holy Sepulchre itself, the Aedicule,’ Helena replied. ‘What you see here was mostly built in the nineteenth century, in place of the structure destroyed in 1009 by the Fatamid caliph al’Hakim when the Muslims ruled Jerusalem. That destruction was the event that precipitated the Crusades, but even before the Crusaders arrived, the Viking Harald Hardrada and his Varangian bodyguard from Constantinople had come here on the orders of the Byzantine emperor, to oversee the rebuilding of the church. But I think you know all about that.’

‘I thought we’d left Harald behind in the Yucatán,’ Costas murmured. ‘Is there anywhere he didn’t go?’

‘The ancient rock-cut tomb inside the Aedicule was identified by Bishop Makarios in AD 326 as the tomb of Christ,’ Helena continued. ‘You have to imagine this whole scene in front of us as a rocky hillside, half as high as the rotunda is now. Just behind us was a small rise known as Golgotha, meaning the place of the skull, where most believe Jesus was crucified. The hill in front of us had been a quarry, dating maybe as early as the city of David and Solomon, but by the time of Jesus it was a place of burial and probably riddled with rock-cut tombs.’

‘How do we know the bishop got the right tomb?’ Costas said.

‘We don’t,’ Helena replied. ‘The Gospels only tell us the tomb was hewn out of the living rock, with a stone rolled in front of it. You had to stoop to look in. There was room inside for at least five people, sitting or squatting. The platform for the body was a raised stone burial couch, possibly an
acrosolium
, a shelf below a shallow arch.’

‘All of which could describe a typical tomb of the period,’ Jack said. ‘According to the Gospels, the tomb wasn’t custom-built for Jesus, but was donated by Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy Jew and member of the Jerusalem council. It was apparently a fresh tomb, and there would have been no further burials, no added niches as you see in so many other rock-cut tombs. It was never used as a family tomb.’

‘Unless . . .’ Helena hesitated, then spoke very quietly, almost in a whisper. ‘Unless one other was put there.’

‘Who?’ Jack exclaimed.

‘A companion,’ she whispered. ‘A female companion.’

‘You believe that?’

Helena raised her hands and pressed the tips of her fingers together briefly, then gazed at the Aedicule. ‘It’s impossible to tell from what’s there now. Constantine the Great’s engineers hacked away most of the surrounding hill to reveal the tomb, to isolate it. By so doing, they actually destroyed much of the tomb itself, the rock-cut chamber, leaving only the burial shelf intact. It was almost as if Constantine’s bishops wanted to remove all possible reason for doubt, any cause for dispute. From then on, the Holy Sepulchre, the identification of the tomb, would be a matter of faith, unassailable. Remember the historical context, the fourth century. When the Church was first becoming formalized, some things that were inconvenient, contradictory, were concealed or destroyed. Other things were created, spirited out of nowhere. Holy relics were discovered. Behind it all lay Constantine the Great and his bishops. Everything had to be set in stone, a version of what went on here in the first century AD that suited the new order, the Church as a political tool. They were editing the past to make a stronger present.’