The Last Secret Of The Temple (26 page)

'To be a Muslim is to submit to the will of the Almighty,' he said, closing the Koran and running a hand gently over its cover. 'This is the meaning of Islam. If you do not submit you cannot be a Muslim. It is one thing or the other. Black or white, light or darkness. There is no middle way.'

He touched the book to his lips and laid it in his lap.

'Now, you said you wished to talk about
sais
Jansen.'

Khalifa dragged a sleeve across his sweat-stained forehead, struggling to gather his thoughts. After what had just been said the investigation seemed curiously distant, part of a separate reality.

'Mr Jansen died two weeks ago,' he mumbled, the fly still circling above him, its buzzing unbearably loud, filling his head. 'We are investigating certain . . . irregularities in his lifestyle. I found your flyer in his house. It seemed an unusual thing for a man like that to be sent. A
kufr.
Not your average follower.'

The Shaykh said nothing, just leant forward and began massaging his ankle, gazing up at the dome overhead with its inset circle of coloured glass bricks.

'So?' pushed Khalifa. 'Why did you send it to him?'

The old man continued to knead his bony limb, fingers digging into the cracked, powdery skin.

'Courtesy.'

'Courtesy?'

'Sais
Jansen had been extremely . . . generous. It seemed polite to let him know we were thinking of him.'

Khalifa's mind was starting to clear now; the case was coming back into view. As if put off by this sharpening of his focus the fly swung away and started banging itself against a small window at the far end of the room.

'Generous how?'

'He had given a donation. To one of our projects.'

'What project?'

The Shaykh released his ankle and folded his hands in his lap, his eyes revolving downwards until they were staring directly at Khalifa.

'To help those of our people who are suffering under the oppression of Zionists,' he said, a faintly accusatory tone to his voice, as if by failing to admit to an unqualified hatred of Jews Khalifa had in some way allied himself with the enemies of Islam.

'Help in what way?'

The Shaykh was still staring at him.

'We collect money. Send it to Palestine. For food, clothes, school books. Charitable causes. Nothing illegal.'

'And Jansen was a contributor?'

'He contacted us. Six weeks ago, two months. Gave a one-off donation.'

'Out of the blue?'

The Shaykh shrugged. 'We too were surprised. For a
kufr
to come to us like that. He approached one of my men in Luxor, said he would like to help us. Asked if he could talk with me. Normally I would not mix with such people. In this case, however, he was offering a very substantial sum of money. Fifty thousand Egyptian pounds.'

Khalifa let out a low whistle. What the hell was Jansen doing giving that sort of money to a man like the Shaykh?

'You met him?' he asked.

The old man nodded, reaching up a wrinkled hand and scratching at his beard.

'And?'

'And nothing. We spoke. He said he had heard of our work with the Palestinians, admired it, would like to help us. Handed over the money there and then. In cash. Who was I to refuse?'

Khalifa's legs were starting to ache after squatting for so long. He levered himself into an upright position, stretching.

'But why come to you? There are dozens of organizations that raise money for the Palestinians. Established charities. Legitimate charities. Why approach—'

The Shaykh smiled. 'A man with my reputation?'

'Exactly. Jansen must have known the risks involved, that to be seen with you could have got him in a lot of trouble. And yet he pops out of the blue, gives you all this money, doesn't want anything in return.'

Khalifa continued stretching for a moment longer, rubbing his knees, then, struck by a sudden thought, stopped.

'Did he want something in return?'

The Shaykh said nothing, just gazed up at him, a faint smile still lingering around the corners of his mouth, like the ripples left on sand by a receding wave. Khalifa squatted down in front of him again.

'Did he want something?' he repeated.

Again, no reply. The detective's pulse began imperceptibly to quicken.

'He did want something, didn't he? What? What did he want?'

The Shaykh tilted his head first to one side, then the other, the vertebrae of his neck clicking like a key in a lock, his gaze never leaving Khalifa's face.

'My help in contacting al-Mulatham.'

Khalifa's eyes widened in astonishment.

'You're serious?'

'Why should I lie? This is what he asked me.'

Khalifa sat back on his heels, head shaking. Every time he felt himself inching closer to Jansen some new piece of information seemed to emerge that left him further away from the man than ever, like a hunter who, after careful stalking, gets to within striking distance of his prey only for it to suddenly bolt out of range again.

'Why?' he asked. 'Why did he want to contact him?'

The Shaykh shrugged. 'He said he had something that could help him. A weapon he could use against the Jews. Something that would cause them great hurt.'

Outside there was a sharp clanging as someone began hammering a piece of metal. Khalifa barely registered the sound.

'What sort of weapon?'

The Shaykh raised his hands. 'This he wouldn't say. He told me he was a dying man, he didn't have long left to live, wanted this thing to go to someone who would use it well. Use it to hurt the Jews. That's what he said. Someone who would use it to hurt the Jews.'

The clanging stopped for a moment, then started again, even louder, the sound echoing around the interior of the mosque.

'And did you help him?'

The Shaykh snorted. 'What, you think I have al-Mulatham's address? His phone number? That I can just call him up? I admire the man, inspector; I rejoice every time he takes an Israeli life; if we met I would embrace him and call him my brother. But who he is and where he is, I have no more idea than you.'

He removed his glasses and began polishing them on the hem of his
quftan,
circling the material gently around the glass of the lenses. Outside, the hammering stopped again, flooding the mosque with a dull, watery silence.

'I gave him the names of some people I know in Gaza,' said the old man eventually, having finished his polishing and replaced his spectacles. 'It was the least I could do after the donation he had made.'

'And? Did he contact them?'

'I have no idea. Nor do I wish to know. I had no dealings with him after that first meeting. And in case you ask, I will not betray the trust of my Palestinian friends by giving you their names.'

He stared at Khalifa, then, uncrossing his legs, took his walking stick in one hand, his Koran in the other and began struggling to his feet. He got about halfway and stopped, clearly in pain. Standing himself, Khalifa took the old man's elbow and helped him the rest of the way, respect for his elders getting the better of his distaste for the old man's opinions. Once upright, the Shaykh brushed down his
quftan
and started hobbling across the room. At the doorway he turned.

'Remember, inspector: there is light and there is dark, Islam and the void. No middle way. No compromise. It is time you made your choice.'

He held Khalifa's eyes, then left the mosque. The interview, it seemed, was at an end.

As he had been instructed, Yunis Abu Jish went to the Kalandia checkpoint at midday wearing his Dome of the Rock T-shirt, taking up position beneath a giant dusty hoarding advertising Master Satellite Dishes.

For the past twenty-four hours, since receiving the phone call from al-Mulatham's representative, his mood had veered wildly between abject terror and giddy euphoria. One moment he would be trembling all over as if freezing, stunned by the enormity of what he was being invited to do; the next he would be swept away in an intoxicating surge of joy, like the time he had visited the seaside as a child and been rolled over and over in the warm, frothy waves, sputtering and laughing and thinking that this was the best feeling in the whole wide world.

Now, as he stood gazing at the lines of stationary traffic snailing their way towards the Israeli roadblock further along, he felt neither fear nor ecstasy, nor, indeed, anything very much at all – just a blank, emotionless conviction; a steely acceptance that this is what he had to do; that this was the destiny prescribed for him. What else was there, after all? A lifetime of subjugation and bitterness; of watching helpless from the sidelines as day by day the Israelis clawed away more of his people's lands, scraped away another layer of their self-respect? The ceaseless cycle of humiliation, shame and regret?

No, he could not bear that. Had been unable to bear it for a long time now. This was the way. The only way. The one path that conferred strength and dignity, permitted him to influence events rather than forever being ground down by them. And if it led to death . . . well, what was his life anyway but a sort of living entombment?

He remained beneath the hoarding for precisely thirty minutes, as he had been told to do, checking and rechecking his watch to make sure he got the timing just right. Then, with a nod of his head as if to say, 'You have your answer,' turned and set off back towards the refugee camp where he lived, its buildings eating their way across the landscape like an ugly grey fungus.

When Khalifa got back from his meeting with Shaykh Omar it was to find Mr Mohammed Hasoon, the Banque Misr official to whom he had entrusted Jansen's gold bullion bar, sitting in his office waiting for him. A plump, immaculately dressed man with oiled hair, wire-rimmed spectacles and startlingly shiny black shoes, he let out a muffled cry as the detective threw open the office door, clutching a silver Samsonite briefcase protectively to his chest, as though expecting someone to try and snatch it from him. He relaxed when he realized he wasn't about to be assaulted, although a nagging twitch in his left eye suggested he still wasn't entirely at ease.

'You gave me a fright,' he admonished, eye jerking open and shut like a car indicator. 'I've brought the . . . you know . . .'

He drummed his fingers on the case.

Khalifa apologized for startling him. 'Although I don't think anyone's going to mug you in the middle of a police station,' he added.

The banker fixed him with a disapproving stare.

'I have been mugged in many unlikely places and by many unlikely people, inspector, including once, I'm sad to say, by my own father-in-law. Where gold is concerned, you can never be too careful. Never.'

He held Khalifa's eye for a moment to emphasize the gravity of his message, then rose from his chair, crossed to Khalifa's desk and laid the case on top of it.

'Anyway, I've had a look at it for you. Interesting. Very interesting. Do you have time?'

'Of course.'

'Then if you wouldn't mind . . .'

He nodded towards the door. Khalifa turned and closed it.

'And the, uh . . .' The banker coughed nervously, winking at the lock. 'Just to be on the safe side.'

Khalifa turned again, this time twisting the key to lock the door.

'Would you like me to close the shutters as well?'

It was meant as a joke. Hasoon took him at face value and said that yes, in the circumstances it would probably be a very good idea. With an exasperated shake of his head Khalifa crossed to the window and creaked closed its iron shutters, plunging the room into semi-darkness.

'OK?'

'Much better,' said Hasoon. 'You really never can be too careful.'

He leant forward and switched on the desk lamp, casting a suspicious glance around the room as if, despite the evidence of his own eyes, he was still not entirely convinced that they were alone. He then unlocked the case, raised the lid and, reaching in, removed the ingot, still wrapped in the length of black cloth in which Khalifa had found it, placing it on the table under the light. Khalifa came up beside him and lit a cigarette, exhaling a dense cloud of blue-grey smoke.

'So, what did you find out?'

'Quite a lot actually,' said the banker, pulling aside the cloth, the lenses of his spectacles glowing yellow in the light reflected from the bar's glassy surface. 'Yes, yes, it's been something of an education. Even after thirty years in the business gold still retains the capacity to surprise. Extraordinary stuff. Truly extraordinary.'

He reached out and touched the bar reverentially, then straightened and, reaching into the case again, removed a typewritten report from a sleeve inside the lid.

'The basic details are all fairly obvious,' he began. 'Standard trapezoid ingot, twenty-six centimetres by nine by five, twelve and a quarter kilograms, nine-nine-five parts gold to the thousand, which is about twenty-four carats, maybe a little over.'

'Value?'

'Well obviously that fluctuates depending on the market, but at current prices I'd say about five hundred and twenty thousand Egyptian pounds. A hundred and forty thousand dollars.'

Khalifa coughed, the mist of cigarette smoke swirling in front of him like a torn curtain flapping in the wind.

'Abadan!
No way!'

Hasoon shrugged. 'It's gold. Gold's valuable. Especially when it's of this quality.'

He reached out his hand again and gave the ingot a satisfied pat, as though congratulating a pet that has performed a particularly impressive trick. Khalifa leant forward and stared down at the bar, hands grasping the edge of the desk.

'And the stamp?' He nodded down at the eagle and swastika hammered into the surface of the ingot. 'Did you find out anything about that?'

'I most certainly did,' said Hasoon. 'And it's here that things start to get interesting.'

He stretched out his hands, clasped them together and cracked the knuckles, like a concert pianist about to begin a recital.

'I'd never come across that particular refining stamp before,' he said. 'So I had to do a bit of digging. I won't bore you with all the details.'

He said this rather wistfully, as though boring Khalifa with all the details was something that would have given him a great deal of pleasure. The detective sensed this and said nothing, anxious to get to the point.

'Anyway,' continued the banker after a momentary pause, realizing he wasn't going to get the hoped-for invitation to expound, 'it seems the eagle and swastika was the refining mark of the Prussian State Mint, which was, until the end of the Second World War, Germany's national mint. Based in Berlin.'

Khalifa stared at the ingot, lianas of cigarette smoke winding upwards from the corners of his mouth.

'That in itself wasn't too hard to discover. Just a quick flick through some standard reference books, a couple of phone calls. Where the story gets more complex' – he grasped the ingot in both hands and, with an effort, turned it over – 'is with these.'

He pointed to a row of tiny numerals, barely visible, incised into the metal at the top left-hand corner of the bar's underside. Khalifa let out a grunt of surprise. He had completely missed the numbers on his initial, admittedly cursory examination of the ingot.

'Serial number?' he asked uncertainly.

'Exactly. Some bars have them, some don't. When they do, it basically allows you to trace the bar's history – when it was smelted, where, that sort of thing.'

'And this one?'

'Oh, this one has been very informative. Yes, yes, very informative. But it's not been easy. The numbers aren't part of a universal system or anything. They simply refer to a paper record at whatever institution happened to mint the bar. I spent half of yesterday and most of this morning on the phone to Germany trying to trace it. The Prussian State Mint archives were either destroyed or scattered after 1945. The Bundesbank don't have any records. To be honest I'd just about given up, until someone in the Bundesbank museum suggested I try contacting . . .' He paused a moment, flicking through his report. 'The Degussa Corporation. In Dusseldorf. They used to be one of Germany's main smelting companies. Did a lot of work for the Nazis, by all accounts. Perfectly above board now, of course. Various diverse interests—'

'Yes, yes,' cut in Khalifa impatiently. 'But what did you find?'

'Well, the archivist at Degussa – nice fellow, very polite' – he put a slight emphasis on this last word, implying that the archivist at Degussa would never dream of interrupting anyone mid-sentence, as Khalifa had just done – 'had a trawl through their records, and amazingly he managed to come up with a serial number match. So efficient, the Germans.'

'And?' Khalifa's face was hovering directly above the ingot, a long cylinder of ash pivoting precariously at the end of his cigarette.

'Well, it seems that the ingot was one of a batch of fifty cast by Degussa in 1944. May 1944, to be precise. They were handed over to the State Mint on the seventeenth of that month and from there passed on to the Reichsbank, the forerunner of the Bundesbank.'

'And after that?'

'It seems that most of them got melted down and recast at the end of the war.'

'Most of them?'

'Well, this one obviously survived. And according to the Degussa man, so did at least two others.'

He paused for effect, drawing himself up like an actor about to deliver a soliloquy.

'They were found in Buenos Aires. In 1966. By Israeli secret agents. In the house of a man called . . .' He consulted his report again. 'Julius Schechtmann. A former Nazi army officer who had escaped to Argentina at the end of the war and lived there ever since, under an assumed name. The Israelis tracked him down and brought him and the bars back to Israel. They're now held at the Central Bank of Jerusalem.'

'And Schechtmann?'

Again that pause for dramatic effect, that drawing up of the shoulders.

'The Israelis hanged him.'

There was a sharp clanging sound as outside a gas vendor passed beneath the window in his donkey-drawn cart, banging the stacked metal cylinders with a spanner to alert potential customers to his presence. Khalifa's cigarette had burnt itself out and, flicking the butt into the waste-basket, he lit himself another, rubbing his eyes with his thumb and first finger. Everything about this case, every new piece of information – it just seemed to get more and more twisted and bewildering. He felt as if he was underwater, frantically trying to fight his way to the surface only somehow to drive himself deeper with every desperate sweep of his arms.

There was a long silence.

'Anything else?' he asked eventually, a weariness to his voice, as if he was wondering how many more turns the investigation could possibly take.

Hasoon shrugged. 'Not really. There are a few technical details about the actual composition of the gold, but they're probably not of much relevance.'

He ran his hand over the bar again, wiping away the flecks of cigarette ash that had settled themselves on its shiny surface, then wrapped it back up in the length of black cloth.

'You want to keep it here?'

Khalifa pulled on his cigarette.

'Can you hold it at the bank for me?'

'Our pleasure.'

Hasoon locked the ingot back in the case, then crossed to the windows and heaved open the shutters, blinking in the sharp afternoon sunlight. From below came a discordant babble of voices and the receding clank of the gas-vendor's cart.

'Actually, there
was
one thing,' Hasoon said, his voice suddenly subdued, thoughtful. 'Odd. Upsetting, really. Rather spoilt the lustre.' He curled his right foot behind his left leg and rubbed the face of his shoe up and down the calf. 'As I said, the serial number allows you to trace the date and place of the ingot's casting. In some cases extra information is recorded: the name of the foreman in charge of the smelting, the person at the mint who commissioned it, that sort of thing. Minor details.' He changed legs, rubbing his left shoe against his right calf. 'The Degussa files didn't have any of that. What they did have was a record of where the smelted gold came from in the first place.'

He finished polishing and turned towards Khalifa, slowly, hand fiddling nervously with the windowsill. The detective raised his eyebrows questioningly.

'Apparently it came from Auschwitz. It seems, inspector, your ingot is made from gold extracted from the teeth of dead Jews.'

After the banker had left, Khalifa sat staring up at the office ceiling, legs crossed on the corner of his desk, wreaths of cigarette smoke winding themselves around his head like a turban. There were things he should be getting on with: Hassani was hassling him for a report on his progress so far; Jansen's friend in Cairo still hadn't got in touch and needed to be chased up; and it probably wouldn't hurt if he put in a phone call to that damned Israeli either, checked that he'd got off his fat backside and started making the requested enquiries into Schlegel's past. So much to do. So much ground to cover. And all he could do was sit staring up at the ceiling, thinking about gold fillings, and shattered teeth, and the procession of mould-coloured numbers tattooed on Hannah Schlegel's forearm.

He knew about the Holocaust, of course, about Auschwitz. General things, rumours, not precise details – it was never something he'd felt the need to look into. He certainly accepted it had happened, the Israeli detective had been wrong when he'd accused him of not believing in it. At the same time it seemed so distant, so abstract, not something that had any relevance to him or his world. Until now. Now it seemed to have become very relevant.

He dropped his head back and blew a succession of lazy smoke-rings, the doughnut-shaped hoops of vapour chasing one another upwards to the ceiling where they broke and disintegrated into a dim, lingering haze. Five minutes passed, ten, the clock on the wall clacking out the seconds like the beat of a mechanical heart. Then, as if coming to a decision, he swung his feet to the floor, grabbed his jacket and left the station.

On the street he turned right, then left, working his way through the bustling afternoon crowd into the heart of the town's souk, past cafes, souvenir emporia and spice stalls piled high with heaps of hibiscus petals and powdery red saffron, before finally ducking into a brightly lit internet cafe with half a dozen computers ranged along the back wall. He nodded a greeting at the owner, a boy with gelled hair and a belt-buckle fashioned in the shape of a motorcycle, who pointed him to the furthest computer on the left, next to a European girl with badly sunburned shoulders. He went over, sat down and, after a moment's hesitation, logged on to Yahoo! and typed 'Holocaust' into the subject field, wincing slightly as he did so, like a child flicking its hand into a fire – afraid, yet at the same time anxious to know what the flames will feel like.