The Last Testament
‘What did you get?’
‘Ah, now that would be telling, wouldn't it? But, as the Prophet, peace be upon him, says, “The hoarded treasures of gold and silver seem fair to men” – and they certainly seem fair to me.’
‘You got gold and silver?’
‘And much else that will seem fair to men.’
‘How long were you there for?’
‘I was there all night. I went back five times. For the last four trips I took a wheelbarrow.’
Salam took in Ahmed's wide smile and made a decision. He would not let on that he too had been at the museum last night, not because he feared the law – there was no law now – or any Baathist punishment, but because he was ashamed. What had he taken from the National Museum but a single useless lump of clay? He wanted to curse God for making him such a coward. For, as always, he had been too meek, holding back from danger and allowing others to barge past him to glory. It was the same on the football field, where Salam never plunged into a tackle, but kept his distance, gingerly avoiding trouble. Well, now that habit had cost him his fortune. Ahmed would make it, he would be a millionaire, he might even escape Iraq and live like a prince in Dubai or, who knows, America.
That evening Salam looked under his bed with none of the fever he had felt when he had checked there that morning. His booty was still in place but now as he pulled it out he saw it as drab and worthless. He imagined Ahmed's stash of rubied goblets and gold-encrusted figurines and damned himself. Why had he not found those treasures? What had sent him poking around in a dark basement when the dazzling glories of Babylon were there for the taking? Fate was to blame. Or destiny. Or both of them, for ensuring that, no matter what, Salam al-Askari would be a loser.
‘What's that?’
Salam instinctively doubled over the clay tablet, as if he had been winded. But it was no good: his nine-year-old sister had seen it.
‘What's what?’
‘That thing. On your lap.’
‘Oh this. It's nothing. Just something I got at school today.’
‘You said there was no school.’
‘There wasn't. But I got this outside—’
Leila was already out of the room, skipping down the corridor to the kitchen: ‘Daddy! Daddy! Salam has something he shouldn't have, Salam has something he shouldn't have!’
Salam stared at the ceiling: he was finished. Now he would take a beating and for nothing, for some worthless piece of dust. He held the tablet, stood on the chair by his bed and began fiddling with the window. He would chuck this chunk of clay out of the window and be done with it.
‘Salam!’
He turned around to find his father in the doorway, one hand already moving to the buckle of his belt. He moved back to the window, working harder now, his fingers trembling. But it was jammed, it would open no more than an inch wide. No matter how hard he pushed, it was stuck.
Suddenly he felt a hand gripping his wrist, pulling his arm back. He could feel his father's breath. The two of them were wrestling, Salam determined to get that window open so that he could hurl this damned lump to the ground.
The chair beneath him began to wobble; his father was pushing against him too hard. He could feel himself toppling over, falling backwards.
He landed hard on his backside. He let out a cry of pain at the impact on the base of his spine. But that, he realized, was the only sound. There had been no crash, no shattering onto the stone floor. And yet the clay tablet was no longer in his hands. He looked up to see his father calmly pick it up from the bed where it had fallen.
‘Dad, it's—’
‘Quiet!’
‘I got it from the—’
‘Shut it!’
What a mistake this had been from beginning to end; how he wished he had never set foot in that museum. He began to explain: how he had got swept up in the fervour of last night, how he had been carried in there with the mob, how he had stumbled on this tablet, how everyone had taken something, so why shouldn't he?
His father was not listening. He was studying the object, turning it over in his hands. He paid close attention to the clay ‘envelope’ that held the tablet within.
‘What is it, Father?’
The man looked up and fixed his son with a glare. ‘Don't speak.’ Then he headed out of Salam's bedroom, walking slowly and with extreme care, his eyes on the object in his hands. A moment later the boy could hear the muffled voice of his father on the telephone.
Not daring to venture out of the bedroom, lest he provoke his father's anger anew, Salam perched on the end of his bed, thanking Allah that he had been spared a beating, at least for now. He stayed there like that until, a few minutes later, he heard his father open the apartment door and step out into the night. Salam pictured the ancient tablet that had been his for less than a day and knew, in that instant, that he would never see it again.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Jerusalem, Tuesday, 8.45pm
Amir Tal knocked on the door with two brisk taps, then, without waiting for an answer, walked into the Prime Minister's office. Yaakov Yariv's chair was swivelled round, its back to the door: Tal could see only the corona of silver around his head. He wondered, as he had before, whether the old man was taking a catnap.
‘Rosh Ha'memshalah?’
The chair spun around immediately, revealing that the Prime Minister was wide-eyed and alert. But, Tal noticed, there was no pen in his hand, no half-complete document on the table. No sign, in fact, that he hadn't been asleep. A trick the boss had learned in the army, no doubt.
‘Sir, I have some important news. The technicians say they've cracked the note left by Shimon Guttman. They've cleansed it of blood and human material and got it to a point where it can be read. The lab will send over the results in the next few minutes.’
‘Who else knows about this?’
‘No one else, sir.’
There was another tap on the door: the Deputy Prime Minister. ‘I hear we have some news. From the lab?’
The PM shot Tal a weary look. ‘Convene a meeting here in fifteen minutes. Better have Ben-Ari here too.’
Yariv pulled out of his desk drawer the text that he had been working on for the last twenty-four hours. Drafted in the White House, it bore the handwritten annotations of the President himself: they had all worked on this so long, Yariv could recognize his oddly-sloping scrawl instantly. The President had summarized the points of agreement and the remaining differences. Yariv had to hand it to him, he had done a brilliant job, cleverly emphasizing the former and distilling the latter so concisely that they took only a few words. Yariv exhaled deeply as he reflected that those short half-sentences – some of them describing disputed strips of land not two yards wide, no bigger than a grass verge – probably looked to most outsiders like mere technical matters, fine-print detail that surely could be resolved by two teams of lawyers. But Yariv knew that each one could, in fact, represent the difference between serenity for his people, at long last, and another generation of bloodshed and weeping.
When he heard Tal and the others return, he shoved the paper back inside the drawer and, in the same moment, pulled out a bag of garinim, the sunflower seeds that had become his trademark. None of his cabinet colleagues had seen the American president's draft. Nor would they, until he and his Palestinian counterpart had agreed on it. No point in fighting a cabinet revolt over a hypothetical peace accord: he would save that for the real thing. He nodded at Tal to get things started.
‘Gentlemen, the scientists at Mazap, the Criminal Identification Department, have worked 24/7 to see through the blood and tissue fragments and reveal what message it was Shimon Guttman wished to convey to the Prime Minister. They warn that the version they have is provisional, contingent on final tests—’
The Defence Minister, Yossi Ben-Ari, cleared his throat and began fidgeting with the yarmulke on his head. It was of the crocheted variety, a sign that Ben-Ari was not just religious but from one of Israel's specific tribes: a religious Zionist. Not for him the black suit and white shirt uniform of the ultra-orthodox, many of whom had little interest in, if not outright hostility towards, a secular state. Rather, Ben-Ari was a modern, muscular Israeli and a raging nationalist, the leader of a party whose core belief was that Israel should have the largest, most expansive borders possible. Guttman had denounced him as a traitor to their cause just for sitting in Yariv's cabinet, as had the rest of the hardcore settler movement. Ben-Ari believed he was doing vital patriotic work, acting as the brake on Yariv that would prevent him ‘selling the Jewish people's birthright for a mess of pottage’, as he liked to put it. He would stop Yariv giving away land that was too historically significant to be surrendered – or at least he would keep those losses to their barest minimum. And, if the Prime Minister went too far, Ben-Ari would simply quit the cabinet, thereby unravelling Yariv's fragile coalition, mockingly referred to in the press as ‘Israel's national disunity government’. That gave him enormous veto power, but there was a cost: if he ever used it, Yossi Ben-Ari would be cast in Israel and abroad, now and forever, as the man who prevented peace.
Tal saw the fidgeting and understood what it meant. He cut to the chase. ‘It turns out this was more than a note. It was a letter. Guttman had written on both sides of the paper, in a tiny crabby script, which is why it took the technicians so long to decipher. I'll read it out:
My dear Kobi,
I have been your enemy for longer than I was your comrade in arms. I have said some harsh things about you, as you have about me. You have good grounds to distrust me. Perhaps that is why every attempt I have made to contact you has been blocked. That is why I have resorted to this desperate move tonight. I could not risk giving this letter to one of your staff, so that they could throw it straight into the trash. Forgive me for that.
I write because I have seen something that cannot be ignored. If you were to see what I have seen, you would understand. You would be changed profoundly – and so would everything you plan to do.
I have toyed with sharing this knowledge with the public, through the media. But I believe you have a right to hear it first. Accordingly, I have tried to keep this knowledge a secret – one so powerful it will change the course of history. It will reshape this part of the world and so the world itself.
Kobi, I am not a hysterical man, despite what you have seen on TV. I have exaggerated sometimes, perhaps, in the cause of politics, but I am not exaggerating now. This secret puts me in fear for my life. The knowledge it contains is timeless and yet, in the light of everything you are doing, impossibly urgent. Do not forsake me, do not cast me out. Hear what I have to say: I will tell you everything, holding nothing back. But I will tell only you. When you have heard it, you will understand. You will tremble as I have done – as if God himself had spoken to you.
My number is below. Please call me tonight, Kobi – for the sake of our covenant.
Shimon
Tal put the paper down quietly, aware that a new atmosphere had entered the room, one he did not want to disturb by moving too briskly. He noticed the Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister glance at each other, then away. He found he couldn't bring himself to meet the boss's eye and realized then that he had no idea how the Prime Minister would react. The silence held.
‘He'd obviously cracked.’ This from the Deputy PM, Avram Mossek. ‘A bad case of Jerusalem Syndrome.’ The term referred to an acknowledged medical condition, cited by psychiatrists to describe those whose heads had been turned by the Holy City. You could spot them from the Via Dolorosa to the back streets of the Jewish Quarter, usually men, usually young – with the beard, sandals and wild staring eyes of those convinced they could hear the voices of angels.
Ben-Ari ignored that remark; now was not the time to defend religious fervour. ‘Can I see that?’ he asked Tal, nodding in the direction of the text.
His eyes scanned it. ‘It doesn't sound like Guttman at all. He was not an especially religious man. A nationalist, of course. But not religious. Yet here he implies that God himself has spoken to him. And he quotes the Rosh Hashana liturgy: “Do not forsake me, do not cast me out.” I wouldn't put it as robustly as Mossek here but maybe Guttman had indeed lost his mind.’
They all looked to Yariv, waiting for his verdict. A one-word dismissal, even a gesture, and the matter would be forgotten. But he simply sucked on a sunflower seed, staring at the copy of the text Tal had handed him.
As so often, his assistant found the silence awkward and moved to fill it. ‘One curiosity: he says he has “tried” to keep this knowledge a secret. That suggests he may not have succeeded. If we decide to take this further, we will have to find out who else Guttman spoke to: friends, family members. Maybe, despite what he says about the media, some right-wing journalists. He certainly knew plenty of those. Second: the stuff about fearing for his life could backfire very badly. On us, I mean. If the right were to get hold of this text, it would fuel their conspiracy theories: a man whom we insist was killed by accident was in fear for his life. Third: this is all clearly about the peace talks. “In the light of everything you are doing,” he says. Adding that you, Prime Minister, would “tremble” if you knew what he knew. Which implies that you would realize you are making a terrible mistake and would not go ahead.’
Guttman was against the peace process – there's a big surprise,' said Mossek dryly.
Yariv raised his hand and leaned forward. ‘These are not the words of a madman. They are urgent and passionate, yes. But they are not incoherent. Nor is this a martyr's letter, despite the premonition of his own death. If it were, he would have spoken clearly and transparently about the treachery of giving up territory and so on. He would have wanted a text to rally his troops. This is too,’ he paused, sucking a tooth as he tried to find the right word, ‘enigmatic for that. No, I believe this is what it says it is: a letter from a man desperate to tell me something.
‘The task now is to ensure that no one breathes a word of the contents of this letter. Amir will say that the lab tests were inconclusive, that no words can be made out clearly. If so much as a syllable of it leaks out, I will sack both of you and replace you with your bitterest party rivals.’ Mossek and Ben-Ari drew back, astounded by this sudden show of suspicion, which both interpreted as pentup anger. ‘And Amir here will tell the press you betrayed a crucial state secret to the enemy during the peace negotiations. Whether through malice or incompetence we will let the press decide. Meanwhile, Amir, it is clear that Shimon Guttman harboured a secret for which he was prepared to risk his life. Your job is to find out what it was.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Jerusalem, Tuesday, 10.01pm
She was meant to travel nowhere except with her official driver, but there was no time for that. Besides, something told her this was a visit best paid discreetly, and it was hard to be discreet in an armour-plated Land Cruiser. So now she rattled towards Bet Hakerem in a plain white taxi.
She had moved fast. Once she had unpicked the anagram, everything else seemed to fit into place. She had stared hard at the photograph of Nour, to find whatever it was that had nagged away at her when she first saw it. She had looked into his eyes, as she had done before, but then her gaze had shifted to the background.
He was clearly standing indoors, in a home rather than an office, in front of what seemed to be a bookcase. Visible was a complex floral pattern in blue and green. When Maggie clicked on the image to make it larger, she could see that this was not wallpaper, as she had first guessed, but a design on a plate, resting on the shelf just behind Nour's shoulder.
Of course. She had seen that pattern before; indeed, she had been struck by its beauty. She had seen it just twenty-four hours earlier, when she had made a condolence call at the home of Shimon Guttman. In a house full of books, the ceramic plate had stood out. And here was Nour, standing in front of one just like it. Could it be that the two of them had discovered this pottery together, perhaps taking a piece each? Were these two men, whose politics made them sworn enemies, in fact collaborators?
She smiled to herself at the very thought. The CIA chief had declared Nour's death a typical collaborator killing: maybe he was right, he just had the wrong kind of collaboration in mind.
And then her eye had moved away from the ceramic, noticing again the disembodied arm looped over Nour's shoulder. Was it possible that this picture had been taken in front of the very bookcase Maggie had seen on Monday night, right here in Jerusalem? Did that arm embracing the Palestinian belong to none other than the fierce Israeli hawk, Shimon Guttman?
She had reached for her cellphone, about to call Davis with her discovery. Or to go up a level, to the Deputy Secretary of State who had sent her to see Khalil al-Shafi. But she paused. What exactly did she have here? A coincidence that was odd, granted, but hardly clear evidence of anything. On the other hand, the chances that there really was an Ehud Ramon toiling away in some university faculty somewhere, leaving no trace on Google, were close to zero.
The truth was, this connection between the two dead men had gripped her because of the conversation she had had in the mourning house with Rachel Guttman. So far she had said nothing about that to anyone. If challenged, she would have said that she had not taken the old lady's words seriously, that she had regarded them as the ramblings of a traumatized widow. That was at least halftrue. But Mrs Guttman's words had nagged away at her. And now this link – if that's what it was – to the dead Palestinian.
It was all too speculative to be worth briefing colleagues about, at least in this form. She didn't want them concluding that her spell in the wilderness had turned her into a conspiracy nut. Yet she couldn't quite leave it either. The solution was to make this one visit, find out what she could, then present her findings to her bosses. The CIA station chief would be the obvious destination: she should tell him what she knew and he could see what it meant. All she needed was to ask the Guttman widow a couple of questions.
That decision had been taken no more than half an hour ago. Now, the taxi pulled up on the corner of the Guttmans' street: soon she would have her answers. ‘I'll walk from here,’ she told the driver.
The vigil that had been held there since Saturday night – right-wingers and settlers, determined to keep up the pressure on the government – was smaller now. A handful of activists with candles, keeping a respectful distance from the house.
Maggie checked her watch. It was late to visit like this, unannounced, but something told her Rachel Guttman wouldn't be asleep.
She looked for a doorbell, finding a buzzer with a Hebrew scrawl on it which she took to be the family name. She pressed it quickly, to minimize the disturbance. No reply.
But the lights were on and she could hear a record playing. A melancholy, haunting melody. Mahler, Maggie reckoned. Someone was definitely home. She tried the metal knocker on the door, first lightly, then more firmly. At her second attempt, the door came open a little. It had been left ajar, just like the mourning houses Maggie remembered from Dublin, open to all-comers, day and night.
The hallway was empty, but the house felt warm. There was, Maggie felt sure, even the smell of cooking.
‘Hello? Mrs Guttman?’
No reply. Perhaps the old lady had dozed off in her chair. Maggie stepped inside hesitantly, not wanting to barge into this stranger's house. She made for the main room, which last night had been jammed with hundreds of people. It took her a second to get her bearings, but she soon found it. There, in the space between the tall, leather-bound volumes, was the ceramic plate. No mistaking it: the pattern was identical to the one in the newspaper picture of Ahmed Nour.
She tried again. ‘Hello?’ But there was no response. Maggie was confused. The house was open and gave every sign of being occupied.
She stole another glance at the plate, turned out of the main room and tried to follow the warmth and the smell. It took her down a corridor and eventually a door onto what Maggie guessed was the kitchen.
She pushed at it but it was tightly shut. She knocked on the door, almost whispering. ‘Mrs Guttman? It's Maggie Costello. We met yesterday.’
As she spoke, she turned the handle and opened the door. She peered into the dark. It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust, to make out the shape of a table and chairs at one end, all empty. She looked towards the sink and the kitchen counter. No one there.
Only then did her gaze fall to the floor, where she saw the outline of what seemed to be a body. Maggie crouched down to get a better look – but there was no doubt about it.
There, cold and lifeless, its hand gnarled around a small, empty bottle of pills, was the corpse of Rachel Guttman.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Baghdad, April 2003
He only had a rumour to go on. His brother-inlaw had mentioned it at the garage yesterday, not that he would dare ask him about it now. If he did, he would only demand why he was asking and before long it would get back to his wife and he would never hear the end of it.
No, he would find this out himself. He knew where the café was, just after the fruit market on Mutannabi Street. Apparently everyone had been coming here.
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