The Jerusalem Puzzle. Laurence O’Bryan

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СКАЧАТЬ were probably tasers or something worse. They looked as if they were prepared for almost anything.

      Simon said something in Hebrew as one of the soldiers examined his ID card. It was passed to the oldest looking soldier, perhaps all of twenty-two or twenty-three years old, who pushed his helmet back and started talking fast in Hebrew.

      Simon replied calmly. Then he turned to us.

      ‘Have you got your passports with you?’ he said.

      I took mine out of the back pocket of my trousers. I held it in front of me with the photograph page open. The soldier took it from me, peered at it, looking at each page. Luckily it was a new one. It had no stamps that he wouldn’t like.

      Isabel took hers and a small bottle of water out of her bag. That action brought four guns to bear on us.

      Simon threw up his hands, said something that ended in ‘Ayyyyyeeeee.’

      Isabel showed them her passport with one hand, drank from the bottle of water with the other, then passed it to me.

      The soldier took Isabel’s passport, looked through it for what seemed like ages. Eventually he passed it back to her. Then they let us pass.

      Seconds later we turned a corner and could see the high steel barrier blocking the other end of the lane. There was a group of helmeted Israeli soldiers between us and the barrier. I could hear the chanting in Arabic beyond it.

      Suddenly a pair of hands appeared and a walnut brown face peered over the top of the barrier. The soldiers standing on this side banged near the hands with metal truncheons. The face dropped back, but a cry went up, as if the man had been injured, or maybe it was the sight of us beyond the barrier that had set him off.

      Whatever the reason, the next thing a shower of stones came over the barrier raining in our direction.

      I put my arm up to protect Isabel.

      The door we were in front of, a narrow one with a sandstone step, was like the others in the lane, closed tight. It had a notice stuck to it with blue tape around the edges. Simon banged the door. Nothing happened. Stones were dropping around us.

      Simon banged on the door again, harder this time. Then it opened and we were looking at a man who took up the whole width of the doorway. He had a freckly-gingery look, ginger eyebrows and ginger hair. His skin was pale pink. And his shirt, which he was bulging out of, had a faded red stripe around the middle.

      ‘What do you want?’ Mr Ginger said, in a most unfriendly manner. He sounded as if he was from deep in the American south. For a second I thought I might be able to call on a little empathy, seeing how I held a US passport. Then he opened his mouth again and almost snarled at us.

      ‘No visitors,’ he said. He closed the door, fast. Stones fell around us.

      ‘Ow,’ said Isabel. She clutched at her side.

      I banged the door with my fist. It rocked on its hinges. ‘Open up, for God’s sake,’ I shouted.

      I banged the door again and again.

      Then it opened. ‘I told you, no visitors,’ said the friendly Mr Ginger.

      Simon held up his ID card. ‘I am entitled to come in and inspect this dig. I’m a professor with the Hebrew University. I gave a reference to Max Kaiser to enable him to get on this dig. I need to see where he was working, because of what has happened. These people are my colleagues.’ He gestured towards us.

      Ginger threw his hands in the air. ‘We’ve no time to give tours.’

      ‘We won’t be long. If I have to come back with my friend from the Antiquities Authority, it will take us a lot longer. He is a stickler for sites being run properly.’

      Ginger frowned. ‘You gave Max his reference?’ he said. Simon nodded.

      A look of recognition replaced the suspicion.

      ‘Are you working on a red heifer project?’ he said.

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Max spoke about you.’

      Simon smiled, thinly. ‘I don’t want to have to come back. You know who I am. Let us in.’

      Ginger sighed. ‘Okay, come in. But your visit will have to be quick.’

      He stood aside.

      I went in first. Isabel followed me. Ginger shouted at us not to touch anything.

      ‘Be very careful,’ he said. ‘Visitors are not covered by any insurance.’ His words echoed through the building.

      ‘And don’t take any pictures. And I want a word with you.’ I looked back. He’d put a hand up to stop Simon in the doorway.

      ‘Have a look around,’ called Simon. ‘I’ll be right behind you.’

      We were inside. He’d done it. There was a muffled throbbing coming from somewhere below. A stairwell beckoned to us from the other side of the large dusty room we were in. One part of it led down. The other part led up. Describing the room as dusty would be a bit of an understatement.

      It was dusty in the way a sandpit is dusty. There were drifts of sand and cobwebs in each corner, and a thick layer of it on the floor with boot marks and channels in it. There was a heap of dust near the stairs too, as if that section had been swept down from the upstairs rooms.

      Had the house been abandoned for decades? It certainly looked like it. We headed down the stairs.

      The room below was darker, full of cobwebs. It had no stairs going down, just a three-foot-wide hole in the floor. There was light streaming from the hole. The throbbing noise was coming from it. I looked down into it. Isabel was behind me. I couldn’t hear Ginger and Simon talking anymore. I could hear other voices, European voices. Someone was speaking German down there. The replying voice was German too. Who the hell was on this dig?

      A shiny steel ladder led down into the hole. I took hold of it and swung myself onto it.

      ‘This is one time where I don’t think “ladies first” holds.’

      I looked down.

      I could see shiny equipment, a portable generator and some white airtight plastic boxes on the stone floor beneath. There was another hole of a similar size in the floor below us too.

      ‘You don’t have to come down if you don’t want to.’

      ‘Why don’t you try to stop me?’ said Isabel.

      There was no polite answer to that.

      At the bottom of the ladder the air felt heavy. The generator was running, and a red pipe, about an inch thick, ran out of it and down into the next hole. The inside of my mouth was coated in gritty dust. The walls on this level were ancient foot-square stone blocks. There was no plaster on them, as there was on the walls up above.

      The voices had stopped talking. Whoever was down below had probably heard us coming.

      I had a look СКАЧАТЬ