The Last Secret Of The Temple (50 page)

Ben-Roi mumbled something and tried to flail out an arm, but he was still winded from the punches and there was no power in the movement. Har-Zion signalled again and the crew-cut man slammed his heel into the side of Ben-Roi's head, splitting the top of his ear, sending him crashing into a crate.

'Stop it!' shouted Khalifa, no longer able to contain himself, the Uzi pressing into the back of his neck forgotten in the shock of revulsion he felt at what he was witnessing. 'In God's name, stop it!'

Har-Zion turned, slowly, stiffly. He stared at the Egyptian, a hard, unpleasant look, then said something in Hebrew. The Uzi was lowered and Khalifa suddenly found himself clasped in a suffocating neck-lock. On the floor, Ben-Roi had struggled up into a sitting position, his torn ear streaming blood.

'Let him go, Har-Zion,' he rasped. 'He's not part of this.'

Har-Zion let out a derisive snort. 'You hear that? Us he condemns for defending our own people while he pleads for his friend the Arab. Whatever else he is, believe me, this piece of shit most certainly isn't a Jew.'

He nodded to the crew-cut man, who raised his boot again and crunched it down into Ben-Roi's crotch, the detective convulsing in agony. Then he crossed to Khalifa and without pausing drove his fist straight into the Egyptian's solar plexus, the blow delivered with the controlled, businesslike precision of a surgeon dissecting a cadaver. Khalifa had been hit before, numerous times – half his youth seemed to have been spent getting into fist-fights in the Giza backstreets where he'd grown up – but never anything like this. The fist seemed to sink halfway into his stomach cavity, splaying his vital organs, driving the air out of his lungs. A tangled kaleidoscope of thoughts and images swirled through his mind – Zenab, the patch of snow at the motorway service station, that strange blue-eyed man in the synagogue in Cairo – before suddenly, unexpectedly, just for a moment, the mist of pain evaporated and he found himself looking up into the eyes of Layla al-Madani.

'Ley?
he whispered. 'Why?'

If she responded he didn't hear, because almost as soon as it had come the moment of clarity disappeared again. His mind clouded, his head dropped back, and then everything went dark.

How long he remained unconscious he couldn't be certain, but it must have been a while because when he came to he was being dragged down the central aisle by two of the Israelis, feet trailing uselessly on the floor ('They're scuffing my nice shoes!' was his first, incoherent thought). Ben-Roi was ahead of him, limping along with an Uzi pressed into the back of his head, his neck and jacket stained with a congealed crust of blood from his torn ear; Har-Zion and Layla were now at the far end of the cavern, watching as the crew-cut man worked at the front panel of the Menorah crate with a jemmy. As they came up to it, the panel sheared off with a squeal of rending wood, revealing a dense block of straw from within which peeped tantalizing glints of gold.

Realizing that their prisoner had regained consciousness, the Israelis hoisted Khalifa upright and pushed him roughly against one of the box stacks, a wave of nausea causing everything to bulge and swim around him before gradually settling down again. Ben-Roi was beside him, and for a moment their eyes met and held, each giving the faintest of nods to acknowledge the other's presence, to indicate they were OK, before turning away again and focusing their attention on the scene in front of them.

There was a pause, the atmosphere charged suddenly, expectant; then, stepping forward, Har-Zion and his second-in-command started stripping away the protective straw. Their bodies blocked Khalifa's view so that he was only able to catch vague glimpses of the object they were revealing – a curving arm, the corner of a pedestal, fleeting flashes of gold – and it was not until the thing had been revealed in its entirety and the two men had stepped back and to the side that he was able to view it properly.

He had seen it before, of course, in the photograph in Dieter Hoth's safe deposit box. That had been in black and white, however, and had wholly failed to convey the full, breathtaking magnificence of the artwork at which he now found himself staring. It was about the height of a man, its base made up of two hexagonal tiers from the centre of which, as though from some ornate pot, a vertical stem shot upwards, six branches curving outwards from its sides, three to the left, three to the right, one above the other, each crowned, as was the stem, by a lamp-cup cast in the shape of a small cymbal. Such was the Menorah's basic form. There was more to it than that, however, so much more. Its branches were decorated in the most exquisite manner with knops and bulbs and calices shaped like almond-blossoms; around its base were wonderfully worked images in raised relief of fruits and leaves and vines and flowers, so lifelike you almost felt you could smell their fragrance. Its gold was so deep it was almost red; its symmetry possessed of such perfect balance, such sinuous, effortless poise, that it seemed not to be cast of metal at all but rather to be something alive, something that grew, breathed and coursed with sap. Groggy, in pain and probably with not long left to live, Khalifa could still not help but be awed by it, his head shaking from side to side at the sheer glittering splendour of the thing. The Israelis' reaction was even more intense, Ben-Roi muttering 'Oy vey' over and over again; Har-Zion's granite face had softened into an almost childlike expression of rapture.

'And God said let there be light,' he whispered, 'and there was light. And God saw that the light was good.'

Only one person seemed unmoved by the whole thing, and that was Layla. She stood slightly apart from everyone else, barricaded inside her head, betraying no emotion whatsoever unless it was in the faint red stain that still marked her upper cheeks, and in the way her hands seemed involuntarily to clench and unclench. For the briefest of moments her eyes snagged on Khalifa's before immediately swerving away again, unable to hold his stare.

Several minutes passed, everyone just gazing at the Lamp, its beauty, far from diminishing with familiarity, actually increasing as the full richness and subtlety of its decoration became apparent, until eventually the spell was broken by the crew-cut man.

'We should get it out,' he said, his voice sounding harsh and crude, like a rock thrown into a pool of still water.

For a moment Har-Zion didn't respond, just continued staring, eyes moist with emotion. Then, with a nod, he motioned to three of his men. They stepped forward, draping their Uzis round their necks, and grasped the Lamp, counting
echat, shtayim, shalosh
– one, two, three – before starting to lift. Fit and muscle-bound as they were, its weight was too much for them, and it was only when they were joined by a fourth man that they were able to manhandle it up onto their shoulders, faces contorting with the strain, legs buckling.

Steiner levelled his gun at Khalifa and Ben-Roi, and, as one, the group started to move back down the aisle, stopping every twenty metres so that the Lamp-carriers could catch their breath. Eventually they reached the far end of the cavern and the Lamp was lowered onto the elevator platform, its wooden planks creaking beneath the weight. The Israelis climbed up beside it, Layla going with them, and the control lever was eased back, the detectives remaining on the cavern floor as the platform slowly ascended in front of them. Three metres up it came to a halt again, a line of Uzi muzzles pointing down.

'This is where we part company, gentlemen,' Har-Zion called, his mouth curved into a triumphant smile. 'Us, by God's providence, to begin the rebuilding of the Temple and the inauguration of a new golden age for our people. You . . .'

He gazed down at them for a moment, again rotating his shoulders to try to loosen the suffocating glove of burnt skin in which his body was clamped. Then he indicated that his men should fire.

'No!'

Layla's voice echoed shrilly around the cavern.

'No!' she repeated. And then again: 'No!'

Har-Zion's men looked at their leader, but he gave no signal, either to shoot or to lower the guns, so they remained as they were, fingers tight around the Uzis' triggers. Below, on the cavern floor, Ben-Roi and Khalifa exchanged a glance.

'No!' Layla yelled for a fourth time, her tone desperate, hysterical almost, hands clenching and unclenching. She had wanted to speak out before, when they had beaten the two men, but she hadn't been able to do it, choked as she was with shame and self-loathing. Now, however, she couldn't stop herself, barely even conscious of what she was saying, just sensing that her entire existence had somehow narrowed itself to the focus of this moment, and that despite it all, despite the years of lies and betrayal, she could not just stand mute while two people were shot dead in cold blood in front of her. Pointless, of course, given how many people had been butchered over the years because of her actions, how indelibly steeped in blood she was. There could never be any redemption from what she had done. Nor was she looking for it. All she knew was that as she had stood there gazing down at the two detectives – their faces pale, resigned – her father's voice had suddenly rung out inside her head like a clear bell, stronger than it had ever rung out before. The words he had spoken on the night of his death:

I
can't leave someone to die in the dust like a dog, Lay la. Whoever they might be.

And as soon as she had heard those words she had experienced a fierce, uncontrollable yearning to know that there was still something of her father left deep inside, some last tiny lingering vestige of his beautiful light. That she was still his daughter, however dark the world she had made for herself.

She pushed to the front of the elevator, eyes catching Khalifa's for a fraction of a second before she turned to face the Israelis, her slim body blocking their line of fire.

'You've won,' she cried at Har-Zion. 'Don't you see that? You've won, for God's sake. Just leave them. For once, just stop the killing and leave them.'

There was a pause, the cavern throbbing with the roar of the generator, the Menorah glinting in the glare of the arc lamps. Then, slowly, Har-Zion nodded.

'She is right. It is time for the killing to stop.'

Layla's body seemed to relax slightly. Almost immediately she tensed again as she noted the cold smile spreading across Har-Zion's face.

'Or at least some of the killing. These' – he waved stiffly towards Khalifa and Ben-Roi – 'their lives mean nothing. Al-Mulatham, however – he, I believe, has served his purpose. As Miss al-Madani says, we have won. With the Menorah on our side our cause is unstoppable. One final reckoning, and then we can dispense with the Palestinian Brotherhood altogether. And all the apparatus that goes with it.
All
the apparatus.'

As he said this last phrase he glanced across at his crew-cut sidekick, at the same time tipping his head towards Layla. The man nodded in understanding and, with shocking calmness, stepped forward and slammed his palm hard into Layla's right breast, launching her backwards off the elevator platform and out into space, arms and legs flailing. For a brief moment she just seemed to hang there, hovering in mid-air as if suspended from the ceiling of the cavern by an invisible wire; then she cart-wheeled silently downwards and slammed to the floor with a sickening thud.

'Thank you, Miss al-Madani,' called Har-Zion. 'The state of Israel will be eternally grateful for your efforts. Arab or not, you have indeed earned yourself the title
Eshet Hayil.
A woman of valour.'

She knew immediately that her back was broken, probably a load of other things as well, although since she seemed to have no feeling from the neck down she couldn't be sure. It didn't much matter. She'd be dead in a few short moments anyway. Which was fine by her.

Strangely, as if to compensate for the fact that she could no longer feel anything, her other senses seemed suddenly to grow much sharper. Her nostrils quivered with the rich, resinous tang of the pine planks from which the crates were made; her ears seemed almost unnaturally attuned to sounds that in normal circumstances she would never have noticed. Most curious of all, she seemed to have developed the uncanny ability to see four or five different things all at once, without even moving her head. There was Har-Zion, standing up above on the lift, laughing with his followers; Ben-Roi a little to her left, looking unexpectedly shocked given how much he must have wanted something like this to happen to her; and, kneeling right beside her holding her hand – how on earth had he got there so quickly? – Khalifa. She could even see her own face, as if she was standing above herself looking down, the very faintest of smiles twisting the corners of her mouth, although there was no humour or satisfaction in it, more a sort of infinite, despairing loneliness that could find no other expression with which to manifest itself.

She'd always known it would end like this. Ever since she'd come back from England all those years ago and started working as an informer for Har-Zion and Israeli Military Intelligence. The precise circumstances were a surprise – in a giant cave full of looted Nazi treasure, for God's sake! – but not the violence. That had always been a given. Frankly, she was surprised she'd lasted this long.

Beside her, Khalifa was saying something, although she couldn't seem to hear his voice, which was strange given how many other less tangible noises she was picking up. She didn't need to hear, though, because she could make out what he was saying from the movement of his lips. It was just one word, repeated over and over again, a question, the same question he'd asked her earlier.

Ley?
Why?

What could she say? Nothing, really. She would have liked to explain. Really she would. Let at least one person know. Deathbed confession and all that. But then, how could she? How could she ever make him understand? Make anyone understand? That she had done what she had done not for any of the usual reasons people collaborated – money, coercion, ideology. No, she had done it because on the night of her fifteenth birthday, on a dirty patch of waste-ground on the edge of Jabaliya refugee camp, beneath a star-filled sky and with wild dogs howling in the distance, she had watched the person she loved more than any other in the world, her beautiful, brave, gentle father, the greatest man there had ever been, being beaten to death with a baseball bat. By his own people. Watched over by his own people. That's why she'd contacted Har-Zion and offered to work for him. That's why she'd gone along with the whole al-Mulatham thing; that's why, the moment she had found out about the Menorah, she had called Har-Zion from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, done everything she could to secure the Lamp for him. Because they'd killed the only person she had ever really loved, and because from that moment forth she had hated them, all of them, vowed that whatever else she did with her life she would make them pay for that, suffer for it, every last Palestinian. That was the reason. That was the answer. But how could she explain it? Make him understand? Communicate even a fraction of the misery and pain and hatred and torment that had consumed her all these years? She couldn't. It was impossible. Beyond her powers to illuminate. Always had been, always would be. She was just so desperately alone.