The Last Secret Of The Temple (42 page)

'That's fifteen pounds you owe me. You want another one?'

In response, Khalifa drained off the remainder of his tea and, getting to his feet, slammed the leaves of the backgammon box together, signalling that no, he didn't want another game.

'Coward,' said Ginger with a grin, puffing on his
shisha
pipe.

'Always have been, always will be,' replied Khalifa, opening his wallet and counting out his losses. 'Although right now it's not losing to you I'm afraid of but being late for Zenab. She's cooking, and I promised her I'd be home by eight.'

His friend exhaled a cloud of apple-scented tobacco smoke and, extending his thumb, drilled it into the table-top, the gesture indicating that he thought Khalifa was 'under the thumb'. There were loud chuckles from the other tea-drinkers sitting around them. The detective's devotion to his wife was a source of common knowledge, and general amusement.

'Time for Inspector Hen-Pecked to get off home!' one of them called.

'Pussy-whipped Khalifa!' yelled another.

'By day the police rottweiler,' chanted a third, 'by night

'Zenab's mouse!' everyone chorused, the refrain accompanied by a barrage of squeaking sounds.

Khalifa laughed. It had never bothered him, this sort of good-natured teasing, and this evening he actually rather enjoyed it, signalling as it did a return to normal life after all the upheavals of the last two weeks. He handed Ginger his winnings – he couldn't remember the last time he'd played backgammon with his friend and actually come out on top – and, telling everyone to go drown themselves in the Nile, picked up the two plastic bags he had leant against the leg of his chair and left the cafe, the squeaking sounds pursuing him for twenty metres down the street before dissolving into the more generalized babble of the evening souk.

He felt good. Great. Better than he had done for ages, as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He'd handed in his final report to Chief Hassani, sent all the stuff about the Menorah over to the Israelis, who could do with it whatever the hell they wanted, and now he was heading home to Zenab and the kids with a bag full of brochures for the Red Sea resort of Hurghada. There was just one discordant note: when he'd asked Hassani to pass a copy of the case report on to Chief Mahfouz, his boss had informed him that the old man had passed away late the previous night. The news had saddened Khalifa, although not overly so. As Mahfouz himself had said, at least he'd died knowing he'd done the right thing in the end.

He stopped to say hello to Mandour the T-shirt seller, a plump, partially sighted man whose habit of chasing punters up and down the road extolling the virtues of his wares had almost become a tourist attraction in itself, then continued on his way, swinging his bags beside him, thinking of beaches, and waves, and, best of all, Zenab in a swim suit – God, what an image! Before he knew it he was standing outside the drab grey apartment block in which he lived, one of a row of identical blocks lined up on the northern fringe of town like a line of pock-marked stone monoliths.

He paused a moment to finish the cigarette he was smoking, then climbed the bare concrete staircase to the fourth floor and, as quietly as he could, inserted his key into the door of his flat. He didn't open it immediately. Instead, leaving the key in the lock, he kicked off his shoes, squatted down and, rooting inside one of the two plastic carriers, produced first a pair of cheap rubber flippers, which he pulled onto his socked feet, then a diving mask and snorkel, slipping the former over his face and the latter into his mouth. Then he let himself into the apartment, barely able to control his amusement at the joke he was about to play.

'Tsonly ee,' he called, his words distorted by the rubber mouthpiece wedged between his lips. 'I hoh!'

No response. He slapped forward into the hallway, wondering where everyone was.

'I hoh!' he repeated, louder. 'The deef sea diver has surhaced!'

Still no response. He put his head into the kitchen – empty – then edged his way around the fountain in the middle of the floor and padded, duck-like, towards the living room at the far end of the flat, struck by the sudden thought that maybe
they
were playing a joke on
him.
What a laugh! The door to the living room was ajar and, pausing for a moment to clear his mask, which had become fogged, he pushed it open and stepped through, making what he hoped looked like an underwater swimming motion with his arms.

'Wow, it's a-azing down here with all the hish and the—'

His words trailed off. Zenab, Ali and Batah were all sitting on the sofa, their faces pale, frightened. Opposite, one sitting, one standing, were two men in grey suits, the standing one's jacket hanging open slightly to reveal the unmistakable outline of a Heckler and Koch machine pistol. Jihaz Amn al Daoula. No doubt about it. State security service.

'Daddy!' Ali leapt from the sofa and ran to his side, eyes bright with tears. 'They want to take you away, Daddy! They say someone wants to talk to you. They're going to send you to prison.'

Khalifa removed the mask and snorkel, flicking a glance down at Zenab, who looked terrified.

'What's all this about?' he asked, trying to keep his voice calm, be strong for his family.

The sitting man – the elder and thus, presumably, the more senior of the two – got to his feet.

'It's like the boy says: someone's got some questions for you. You're to come with us. Now. No arguments.'

He looked across at his companion and the two of them smiled.

'Although you might want to change out of your flippers. I don't think you'll be needing them where you're going.'

There was a limousine-style car waiting in a lay-by across the street – sleek, black, smoked-out windows; he couldn't imagine how he'd missed it earlier – and, escorted by the two men, he was ushered into the rear seat, the younger of the agents slipping in beside him, the older one taking the passenger seat in front. A third man, in the same uniform of tailored grey suit and crew-cut hair, was already waiting behind the wheel. Even before the doors were properly closed he had started the engine and moved off, the car gliding out onto the uneven tarmac with the smooth, predatory grace of a prowling panther.

Khalifa tried to ask what was going on, where he was being taken, if all this was to do with Piet Jansen and Farouk al-Hakim, as he knew it must be. The men said nothing, just stared fixedly ahead with the blank, menacing impassivity of professional executioners. After a couple of minutes he gave up trying to communicate, lighting a cigarette and gazing out of the window, cursing himself for his naivety, for imagining he could expose someone as powerful as al-Hakim and not be made to pay for it. The Jihaz always looked after their own. And always punished those who crossed their own. God, how could he have been so naive? Beside him in the darkness the tip of his Cleopatra scratched orange patterns against the window from the trembling of his hand.

Initially they headed back towards the middle of Luxor, making, he presumed, for one of the many government offices clustered in the centre of town. As they passed Luxor General, however – and this only served to increase his anxiety – they swung off onto a trunk road and headed out again, eastwards this time, towards the airport. Again he tried to ask the men where they were going, again they refused to answer, the silence seeming to push in on his chest and lungs as though his torso was being slowly constricted within a thick loop of rope, making it hard for him to draw breath.

At the airport, the front barrier was thrown open for them without question and, skirting the car park, they were waved through a side gate out onto the runway area, the dial of the car's speedometer veering round to 150 km/h as the driver put his foot to the floor, rushing them across the expanse of smooth, empty tarmac towards the very furthest corner of the airport enclosure where they pulled up alongside a Learjet, its twin engines already running. As he was ushered out of the car he asked for a third time, his voice desperate now, what this was all about, where they were going, what was going to happen to him. Still the two agents said nothing, just marched him up the steps into the jet's cabin and pointed him into a leather seat, indicating that he should fasten his safety belt.

The door was closed, instructions shouted towards the cockpit, and the plane taxied out onto the runway, slowing for a brief moment as if to gather its strength before accelerating again and lifting gracefully into the air. Khalifa stared down at the floodlit bulk of the terminal building as it slowly receded beneath him, then leant back and stared at the cabin ceiling. Behind him he could hear one of the agents mumbling into a mobile phone.

Amazingly, given the circumstances, he must have dozed off, because the next thing he knew his shoulder was being shaken and he was being told to get up. Groggily, he undid his seat-belt and got to his feet. They were on the ground again. For a muddled moment he thought perhaps he'd only dreamt the take-off and they were actually still in Luxor. As he was prodded through the cabin door and down the steps onto the tarmac, however, he realized it couldn't have been a dream because this was a new airport, smaller than Luxor, differently configured, an unfamiliar smell in the air that at first he couldn't place but then realized was the brackish tang of salt water. The sea. Where the hell . . . ? He glanced down at his watch. Not Hurghada, certainly, they'd been in the air too long, almost fifty minutes. Alexandria? Port Said? Hadn't been in the air long enough for those. So where? Sharm el-Sheikh? Yes, it could be Sharm el-Sheikh. Or Taba, maybe. Yes, Sharm el-Sheikh or Taba, although what the hell they were doing on the Sinai Peninsula he couldn't begin to imagine. Wherever they were it clearly wasn't their final destination because at the bottom of the steps he was led round to the far side of the Learjet where a Chinook CH-47 helicopter was waiting for them, crouched on the runway like a giant praying mantis. They barely had time to clamber into its long, narrow belly and strap themselves into their seats before its rotors whined into life and they were airborne again, wheeling away across the airport and off into the night.

'God help me,' Khalifa whispered, remembering all the stories he'd heard about the Jihaz throwing people out of helicopters way out in the middle of nowhere, their bodies left to rot amid the rocks and the sand. 'Please, God, help me.'

They flew north, to judge by the position of the moon outside the window, the cabin vibrating with the rhythmic wub-wub of the engines, a barren, mercury-coloured desertscape rushing past beneath, its surface torn by sharp ridges and criss-crossed with a meandering tracery of wadis, like snake-trails slithering across the landscape. Twenty minutes went by, then they came down again, the helicopter's bulbous wheels settling themselves onto the desert's back, its rotor blades slowing to a standstill, swamping the interior with a dense, eerie silence. One of the agents leant forward and tapped Khalifa on the arm.

'Up.'

He undid his seat-belt, hands shaking, and followed the men to the front of the cabin where they heaved open the door, revealing a dim rectangle of night within which he could just make out a jumbled landscape of slopes and ridges beneath a star-filled sky.

'Out.'

Khalifa hesitated. Why had they brought him here? What were they going to do to him? Then he jumped, shoes crunching on the gravelly desert floor, a rash of goosebumps rising like bubblewrap across his forearms from the cold. The two agents remained behind him in the doorway of the Chinook.

'Over there,' said one of them. 'Go.'

The man raised the muzzle of his gun, pointing to the right, towards a low stone building about a hundred metres off at the foot of a rocky incline, its outline murky and indistinct, its windows lit by a faint yellowy glow like monstrous eyes peering out of the gloom. A Bedouin shelter? An old army border post? Either way Khalifa didn't like it. He turned back towards the men, but they simply patted their guns and waved him forward, so he started walking.

After fifty metres he stopped and looked back, noticing for the first time two other helicopters sitting side by side beyond the one he had come in, then continued, the conviction growing with every step that this was it, he was going to be executed, there could be no other possible explanation for his presence out here in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere. Maybe he should make a run for it, he thought, scuttle off into the desert, hide among the rocks. At least he'd have some chance, albeit a remote one. But he couldn't bring himself to do it, couldn't force the necessary adrenalin down into his legs, so he just plodded forward until he came to the building and was standing on the step in front of its rusted iron door.

He threw a final glance back towards the Chinook, then, mumbling a prayer, by now certain that his life was about to end, reached out a shaking hand, pushed the door open and stepped inside, wondering in a detached sort of way whether he'd actually hear the shot that killed him or whether everything would simply go blank and he'd suddenly find himself transported to a completely different world.

'Mesa el-khir,
Inspector. My apologies for bringing you here like this, but given the urgency of the situation we had little other choice. Please, help yourself to tea.'

Khalifa blinked. He was standing in a low, spartan room – stone walls, bare concrete floor, corrugated tin roof – with a collapsible camp table at each end and, on the tables, a pair of oil lamps, the latter illuminating the room with a heavy orange light, viscous and shimmering. In front of him three men were sitting in worn armchairs. A fourth man was standing in the far corner of the room, leaning against the wall, his face half-lost in the shadows. The air was dense with the odour of kerosene and cigar smoke.

Relief – that was his immediate reaction. A surging, bowel-shuddering wash of euphoria that whatever else he'd been brought here for, it clearly wasn't to be killed. Almost instantaneously it gave way to shock, for the person who had addressed him, one of the men in the armchairs, unmistakable with his thick square glasses and silver-grey hair, was none other than Ahmed Gulami, his country's foreign minister. Khalifa opened his mouth to say something, ask what the hell was going on, but such was his surprise, and awe, that no words would come out, and after a moment he shut it again. There was an extended silence, the four men all staring at him, the only sounds the soft hiss of the lamps and, outside, the rusty creak of the iron window-shutters. Then Gulami waved a hand towards a thermos flask sitting on the table nearest to him.

'Please, inspector, do have some tea,' he repeated. 'I expect you need it after your journey. And if you could close the door . . . It's a cold night.'

In a daze, Khalifa pushed the door to and walked across to the table where he filled a Styrofoam cup from the flask. Once he had done so Gulami beckoned him onto a low canvas stool beside him. The standing man remained where he was; the other two shuffled their chairs round so as to face Khalifa directly.

The younger of them – a handsome man in his late thirties, with a mop of black hair and a red and white checked
keffiyeh
slung over his shoulder – the detective had already recognized: Sa'eb Marsoudi, the Palestinian activist-turned-politician, a hero not merely to his own people but, after his leadership of the First Intifada back in the late 1980s, most of the Arab world as well (Khalifa still remembered those iconic television images of Marsoudi, wrapped in the Palestinian flag, kneeling down and praying in front of a line of advancing Israeli tanks). The other, older man – medium height, stick-thin, with a white skullcap on his head, a cigar clamped between his teeth and, on his right cheek, a ragged, sickle-shaped scar arcing from his eye down to the level of his chin – this man too Khalifa had seen before, although at first he was unable to pinpoint precisely where. Only after a few seconds did he remember that it was in Piet Jansen's villa, that first night he had visited it, in the picture on the front of
Time
magazine. Masan, Maban? Something like that. A politician. Or was it a soldier? Israeli, anyway. The fourth figure, the one standing, he couldn't place, although there was something about him – the lumbering, bear-like frame, craggy face, the way he kept swigging from the silver hip-flask he held in his hand – that Khalifa didn't like. Thuggish, that was his immediate impression. And drunk too, by the look of it. Disgusting. He stared at him for a moment, then dropped his eyes and took a sip of his tea.

'So,' said Gulami, pulling a set of amber worry beads from the pocket of his jacket and beginning to tell them off between the finger and thumb of his left hand. 'Now we are all here, let's get down to it.'

He turned to Khalifa.

'To begin, inspector, I must emphasize the absolute confidentiality of what you are going to hear tonight. The
absolute confidentiality.
You were not brought to this place. You did not see these people. This meeting is not happening. Do I make myself clear?'

The detective had a head full of questions he wanted to ask, and a few choice comments to make to boot about the way he had been treated. He wasn't about to make them in front of someone as powerful as his country's foreign minister, however, and just mumbled a simple 'Yes, sir'. Gulami held him in his eyes, the worry beads processing through his fingers with a soft clicking sound, then, with a nod, sat back and crossed his legs.

'Sa'eb Marsoudi, I believe, needs no introduction.'

He indicated the man with the
keffiyeh
slung over his shoulder, who tipped his head at Khalifa. His hands, the detective noticed, were clasped so tightly together the knuckles looked like they would burst through the skin.

'Major-General Yehuda Milan,' Gulami went on, nodding towards the cigar smoker, 'was one of his country's foremost soldiers, now one of its most respected politicians. One of its most enlightened and courageous politicians as well, I might add.'

Milan also tipped his head towards Khalifa, taking a slow puff on his cigar.

'Detective-Inspector Arieh Ben-Roi' – Gulami gave a flick of his worry beads towards the figure standing in the corner – 'I believe you already know.'

Out of politeness, Khalifa half-raised a hand in greeting, annoyed with himself for not having guessed the man's identity sooner. Ben-Roi made no effort to reciprocate the gesture, just stared at him out of the shadows, his expression distinctly hostile.

'Let me repeat, inspector,' Gulami continued, 'what you hear tonight is to go no further than these four walls and the inside of your head. There is a very great deal at stake, more than you can possibly realize, and I will not have it jeopardized with loose talk. Is this understood?'

Khalifa mumbled another 'Yes, sir', desperate to know what all this was about but sensing that it was not his place to ask, that whatever the reason for his presence out here it would be revealed to Gulami's timetable, not his own. The foreign minister peered at him through his heavy, black-framed glasses, then turned to Milan and Marsoudi, both of whom gave the faintest inclination of the head, as if to say, 'OK, tell him.'

'Very well.' Gulami sat back in his chair and stared down at his beads. When he spoke again the level of his voice had dropped, as if even out here in the middle of nowhere he was still worried about being overheard. 'For the past fourteen months the government of the Arab Republic of Egypt has made this building available to
sais
Marsoudi and Major-General Milan as a secure and neutral environment in which they can meet and talk, away from the media spotlight and the pressures of their domestic political situations. Both have spent their lives fighting for their respective peoples, both have suffered great personal losses in the name of those peoples' – Milan shifted in his seat, throwing a half-glance back towards Ben-Roi – 'and both have, independently, reached the conclusion that those same peoples are doomed to catastrophe unless they can find some wholly new way of engaging with each other, some different path to tread. Their purpose out here: to try to forge that different path; to develop proposals for a viable and,
insha-allah,
lasting settlement to the conflict that has blighted their land for so long.'

Whatever Khalifa had been expecting, it wasn't this. He bit his lip, eyes sliding from Gulami to Marsoudi to Milan and back to Gulami, a vague sense of dread marshalling itself behind his ribs, like a swimmer who, already aware that he is too far from shore, starts to realize he is even further out of his depth than he had previously imagined.

There was a pause, Gulami's words seeming to hover in the air like an echo lingering at the furthest extremity of a deep cavern, then the foreign minister opened a hand towards Marsoudi, inviting him to speak. The Palestinian shuffled forward on his stool.

'I won't waste your time with details, inspector,' he began, his brown eyes glinting in the glow of the kerosene lamps. 'All you need to know for current purposes is that in our meetings here over the last fourteen months we have, and not without some bitter words I can assure you' – he threw a glance at Milan – 'hammered out a set of proposals that go further in the name of peace, take greater risks, give up more than has ever been contemplated before, by either of our two sides.'

There was a cup of water on the floor beside him and, lifting it, he took a short sip.

'Understand, we are just private individuals. We do not represent our governments, we have no official backing for these talks, we possess no legislative authority to implement the proposals we have developed. What we do have, precisely because, as
sais
Gulami has explained, we have spent so long fighting for our respective causes' – again he flicked his eyes towards the Israeli – 'is the faith and trust of the majority of our people. Enough faith and trust, I believe, for them to listen to and, please God, support ideas that coming from any other of our countrymen would be dismissed out of hand as at best hopeless idealism, at worst outright treachery.'

Beside him, Milan exhaled a cloud of cigar smoke, the scar on his cheek seeming to glisten in the half-light like a thin vein of crystal.

'We harbour no illusions,' said the Israeli, picking up the discourse, his voice deep, husky and slow, like a series of notes played on the very lowest keys of an oboe. 'The proposals we have formulated are hugely controversial, will require immense sacrifices, on both our parts. Their implementation will be fraught with pain and conflict and suspicion. A generation, two, maybe even three, that's how long it will take for the wounds to start healing. Even then there will be many on both sides who refuse to come with us.'

'Yet despite that,' Marsoudi put in, taking over again, 'it remains our belief that, if we can persuade a majority of our people to accept them, these proposals offer the best, perhaps only chance for a realistic and durable solution to the problems in our land. And it is also our belief that when they see the two of us standing side by side together, bitter enemies for so long, now united in the cause of peace, a majority of our people
will
be persuaded. Have to be persuaded, frankly. Because as things stand now . . .'

He shrugged and fell silent. Milan puffed on his cigar; Gulami worked his worry beads; in the corner, Ben-Roi fiddled with his hip-flask, a deep frown concertinaing his forehead, whether from disapproval at what he'd just heard or because of some other thought festering inside his giant head, Khalifa couldn't tell. He took another sip of his tea, which was already starting to go cold, pulled out his cigarettes and lit one. Fifteen seconds ticked past, twenty.

'I don't understand,' he said. His voice sounded weak, overawed, the voice of a child sitting in a room full of adults. 'What's this got to do with al-Hakim?'

For a moment Gulami seemed confused by this comment, then he gave an amused grunt, realizing what was on Khalifa's mind.

'You thought . . . ?' He tutted and shook his head. 'Farouk al-Hakim was a piece of shit. A disgrace to his profession and his country. You have done us all a favour by exposing him for what he was. Rest assured we have not brought you here as punishment for uncovering his sordid little secrets.'

Khalifa took another nervous pull on his cigarette, exhaling the smoke almost before it had had time to penetrate his lungs.

'So why? Why are you telling me all this?'

Gulami held him in his eyes for a moment, then looked across at Milan. The Israeli sat back in his chair, staring at Khalifa. There was an interminable pause.

'What do you know about the Menorah, inspector?' he asked eventually.

Again, this took the detective by surprise. He hesitated, confused, Milan's gaze seeming to burn into him.

'I don't see what that has—'

Gulami's hand came down onto his arm, gentle yet firm, the pressure indicating that he should answer the question. Khalifa shrugged helplessly.

'I don't know. It's . . . it stood in the Temple of Jerusalem; it was lost when the city fell to the Romans . . .'

He mumbled his way through everything he'd found out over the last couple of days, which wasn't very much. Milan listened in silence, eyes never leaving him. When he'd finished, the Israeli got slowly to his feet and, crossing to the thermos flask, poured himself a cup of tea, gazing down at the flickering flame of the kerosene lamp, its light tinge-ing his cigar smoke orange so that it looked as if he was enveloped in a shimmering blanket of fire. There was another long pause, then Milan started speaking, his voice, already a low baritone, seeming to become even deeper and more gravelly, barely audible.

'Every faith, inspector, has something – some object, some symbol – that is sacred to it above all others, that more than any other serves to encapsulate the essence of that faith. For Christians it is the True Cross, for Muslims the Ka'ba in Mecca. For the Jewish people, my people, it is the Holy Lamp. "And the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light" – this is what the prophet Isaiah told us, and this, for us, is what the Lamp has always represented: the light of creation, of belief, of being. That is why, of all the objects in the ancient Temple, it was the most venerated and the most beloved; that is why, in our own day, it was chosen as the emblem of the state of Israel. Because there is nothing more precious to us, nothing more holy, no purer symbol of what we are and strive to be as a people. Because, quite simply, in the light of the Holy Menorah is revealed nothing less than the face of the Lord God himself. I absolutely cannot overstate its power and significance.'

He took a long, slow pull on his cigar, allowing this last sentence to linger a moment, his face disappearing behind a heavy curtain of smoke.

'And now, inspector' – he turned to Khalifa, slowly, his shadow looming and shifting on the wall behind him – 'thanks to you, the original Menorah, the first Menorah, the Menorah of Menorahs that Bezalel made way back in the mists of time and that was thought to be lost for ever – now, suddenly, after all these many centuries, it has returned. Again, I cannot overstress the significance of this. Nor, more importantly, the danger.'

His voice rose slightly on this last word, its syllables seeming to swell and resonate, filling the room. The sense of dread that had been gnawing at Khalifa for the last ten minutes, the feeling that, against his will, he was becoming ever more entangled in something that was way beyond his understanding, grew suddenly more intense.