The Last Testament Part 11

For the second time in two days she was back on the West Bank, though now her guide was a man who called it Judea and Samaria, even if the phrase seemed to come wrapped in fairly large quotation marks. Uri Guttman pointed out of the window, just as Sergeant Lee had done, though he was not indicating this or that site of Palestinian suffering, but the landmarks of the Old Testament.

'Down that road is Hebron, where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the three patriarchs, are all buried. And the matriarchs too: Sarah, who was married to Abraham; Rebecca, wife of Isaac, and Leah, second wife of Jacob.'

'I know my Bible, Uri.'

'You are a Christian, no? A Catholic?' He separated each syllable: Cath-o-lic Cath-o-lic.

'I was born and raised that way, that's right.'

'What, and you are not a Catholic now? I thought it was like being a Jew. Once you are, you are.'

'Something like that,' Maggie said quietly, wiping the moisture from her window.

'There are many Christian sites around here too. This is the Holy Land, remember.'

'"Never to be surrendered".'

'Are you quoting my father?'

'Not only him.'

The guided tour was interrupted only once, when Uri turned on the radio news. The latest word was desperately bleak. Hizbullah had launched a rocket bombardment from Lebanon, breaking their own long-held ceasefire. Israeli civilians in the north were cowering in bomb shelters and Yaakov Yariv was under pressure to hit back, pressure from his own supporters. If he was about to make peace, they said, he had to prove he was no soft touch. Maggie had discussed this with Davis on the phone that morning: Hizbullah did nothing without the backing of Iran. If they were attacking now, it was because Tehran expected a regional war. And soon.

They had driven around and then above Ramallah and were now pulling into Psagot, a Jewish settlement perched on a hill that loomed over the Palestinian city. Maggie was struck by the simplicity of it all. It was almost medieval. Fortresses on hilltops, as if packed with archers ready to rain arrows down on the enemy below. It made her think of France or England, or Ireland, for that matter. The castles were either gone or in ruins now but only a few centuries ago the European countryside would have looked much like this, too: a battleground, with every mountaintop and hillside a strategic prize to be seized or feared.

The road was winding and steep, but eventually they came to a boom gate. Uri slowed down, giving enough time for the guard on duty to emerge from his sentry box, decide that this car was Israeli and therefore legitimate and wave him on. The guard was middle-aged and paunchy, wearing ill-fitting jeans and a plain T-shirt under a green soldier's anorak. Slung over his shoulder was an M16 rifle, its b.u.t.t bound with black gaffer tape. Maggie couldn't decide if the casualness of the scene made it more or less sinister.

Once out of the car, she tried to get her bearings. At first glance these Jewish settlements really did look like American suburbs transplanted into the middle of dusty Arabia, the houses complete with their trademark red roofs and gra.s.s lawns. At the end of one street a group of teenage girls were playing basketball, though they were all wearing denim skirts long enough to cover their ankles.

She looked further, keen to take in Ramallah from this vantage point, but her view was blocked. Only then did she notice the thick concrete wall that bordered one side of Psagot, shutting out entirely any sight of the city below.

Uri caught her gaze. 'It's ugly, no?'

'You're not kidding.'

'They had to build it a few years back to stop the sniper fire from Ramallah. Every day there would be bullets landing here.'

'And did it work?'

'Ask the girls who can play basketball in the street now.'

On closer inspection, Maggie could see that if this was an American suburb, it was one of the more down-at-heel variety. The housing units were basic and the central administrative building, into which Uri was leading her now, was a drab affair. The place was surprisingly empty. As Uri waited for a secretary to appear at the front desk, he explained that everyone was either at demonstrations in Jerusalem or in the human chain.

Eventually, a woman appeared and instantly gave Uri a long look of deep sympathy, her eyes damp. It was becoming clear that, whatever views he held personally, Uri Guttman was the grieving son of settler aristocracy: word about his mother's death had spread, following an announcement on the radio that morning. With no appointment, she gestured for him to come into the office of the man who Uri had explained was not just the head of Psagot but of the entire settlements council of the West Bank.

The second Uri was through the door, Akiva Shapira was on his feet, striding over to welcome the younger man. Big and bearded, he immediately placed his hand on Uri's head and uttered what Maggie took to be some kind of prayer of condolence. 'HaMakom y'nachem oscha b'soch sh'ar aveilei Tzion v'Yerushalayim.' His eyes were closed as he said the words.

'Akiva, this is my friend Maggie Costello. She is from Ireland, but she is here with the American team for the peace talks. She is helping me.'

Maggie offered a hand, but Shapira had already turned around, heading back to his desk. Whether he was avoiding a handshake on political grounds, because she was a servant of an American administration despised for imposing surrender on Israel, or on religious grounds, because she was a woman, she couldn't tell.

'You're both welcome,' he said breathing heavily, as he squeezed himself back into his seat. The first surprise: a New York accent. 'By rights I should be the one doing the visiting. You have suffered the most profound loss, Uri, and you know you have the wishes of all the people of Eretz Yisroel, the whole land of Israel.'

Maggie understood the translation was for her benefit, as was perhaps the phrase itself. That 'whole' was not lost on her.

'I need to talk to you about my father.'

'Of course.'

'As you know he was very agitated in the last days of his life, frantic.'

'He was desperate to see Yariv. To tell him what madness he was committing, but this so-called Prime Minister of ours wouldn't see him.'

'Is that what he wanted to say? That the peace talks were "madness"?'

'What else? He thought this was sane, giving up the very heart of our land? Are you serious?'

Maggie knew that this, too, was for her sake. Shapira was barely looking at Uri.

'He knew that this was an act of a people who have lost their collective minds. A re-run of the great Jewish mistake. From Pharaoh to Hitler himself, the clever Jew has always reckoned he can make the wolf go away. And what is this Jewish secret weapon? I'll tell you, Uri. It is surrender! That's right! That is the great genius of the Jews, the nation of Marx and Freud and Einstein. Surrender! And now Yariv is trying the same trick. We give the enemy what he wants, without a fight, and we'll call it peace. It is surrender, no more and no less. Am I wrong, Miss Costello?'

She wished she hadn't come. Uri on his own would have been spared this performance. But he wasn't fazed. She saw him lean forward, like an interviewer.

'Akiva. What I want to know is what specifically my father had on his mind in the last days of his life.'

'And for this you came all this way? This you couldn't work out by yourself? What he had on his mind mind? Isn't that just so obvious a child in kindergarten could give you the answer?' He turned away from Uri, again. 'Tell me, Miss CostelloUri says you're Irish. I have no idea whether you're a Protestant or a Catholic, but tell me this: when the IRA were planting bombs every five minutes, did the Protestants say, "OK, here, take Belfast. Split it down the middle and we'll have whichever bits you don't want. Oh, and while we're at it, all the millions of Catholic Irish who left on boats for the last one hundred and fifty yearsall of them can come back and live here, in our little bit of Protestant Northern Ireland." Tell me honestly, did you ever hear a Protestant in Northern Ireland say such a thing? Did you?'

'Akiva, I'm here to talk about my father-'

'Because that is what our beloved Prime Minister and our so-called government, may G.o.d rain justice down upon them, are doing here. The same thing! Let every Palestinian whose great-uncle once p.i.s.sed in a pot in Jaffa come here and claim a mansion in Tel Aviv. And sure, let's split Jerusalem in two. Do you know how many times Jerusalem is mentioned in the Koran? Tell me, do you?'

Uri was staring at the ceiling, struggling to hide his frustration. Maggie spoke instead. 'Really, we're not here-'

'Zero.' He made the shape with his thumb and forefinger. 'A big fat zero. We pray for a return to Jerusalem three times a day for two thousand years; we build our synagogues facing east so that we can face Jerusalem, no matter if we're in New Jersey or Dublin; we ask Ha'shem, the Almighty, to make our tongues cleave to the roofs of our mouths and for our right hand to lose its cunning if we should forget thee O Jerusalemand yet we we have to give it up! We have to surrender a city to these Arabs who don't even mention itnot a mentionin their so-called holy book!' His face flushed, he now leaned forward, jabbing a finger at Maggie. have to give it up! We have to surrender a city to these Arabs who don't even mention itnot a mentionin their so-called holy book!' His face flushed, he now leaned forward, jabbing a finger at Maggie.

'So yes, I know what Shimon Guttman had on his mind. The suicide of the Jewish people! Do you hear me? The self-destruction of the Jewish people. That is what he wanted to prevent.'

Uri raised a palm in request, like a pupil asking a teacher for permission to speak. Maggie could see he was suppressing his own views. Whether that was because he was too drained to summon the energy for a fight, or because he had made the smart decision that there was nothing to be gained from a political row, she couldn't tell. But she was grateful for Uri's instinct. They needed Shapira to be helpful, otherwise their trip would be wasted.

'He told my mother he had seen something specific,' Uri began, the picture of politeness and filial duty. 'Something that would change everything. Do you know what that was?'

Shapira turned towards Uri and softened his voice. 'Your father and I talked all the time these last weeks. He and I-'

'I'm talking about the last three or four days. That's when he saw whatever it was-'

'He could be quite a private man, Uri. If he didn't want to share with you what he had seen, maybe there was a reason for that.'

'What kind of reason?'

'How do the Psalms put it? "As a father has compa.s.sion on his children, so the Lord has compa.s.sion on those who fear him."'

'I don't understand.'

'Compa.s.sion for his children, protecting his children. It's the same thing.'

'You think he was protecting me?'

'He was a devoted father, Uri.'

'But what about my mother? He tried to protect her too. And look what happened to her.'

'Are you sure he didn't pa.s.s on whatever information he had to her, Uri? Can you be certain of that?'

Uri reluctantly shook his head, as if he had been caught out.

Maggie realized that it was possible that Mrs Guttman had found out something last night, just hours before her death. Maybe she had tried to make a call. Perhaps that way she had alerted her killers. Or maybe, despite Uri's protestations, she had seen something which had so appalled her, filled her with such despair, that she had taken her own life.

'You see, my dear Uri, the Master of the Universe has a plan for the Jewish people. He doesn't allow us to see it, of course. He gives us a glimpse, here and there, in the texts, in the sources. It's only a glimpse. But he performs miracles, Uri. Your own faith probably teaches you that, too, Miss Costello. Miracles. And the history of the Jewish people is a story of miracles.

'We suffer the greatest tragedy in human history. The Holocaust. And how long do we have to wait before redemption? Three years! That's all! The n.a.z.is fall in 1945 and in forty-eight we have a state of our own. After two thousand years of exile and wandering, we return to our ancient land. The land which G.o.d promised to Abraham nearly four thousand years ago. What do you call that, Miss Costello, if not a bona fide, copper-bottomed, fourteen-days-at-home-or-your-money-back miracle? Our darkest hour, followed by the moment of greatest light!

'Same in sixty-seven. The Arabs surround us, all of them sharpening their knives to slit our throats, to push the Jews into the sea. And what happens? Israel destroys their air forces in a matter of hours and their armies in days! Six days. "And G.o.d saw every thing that he had made and, behold, it was very good." And on the seventh day he rested.

'Well, would you bet against the Almighty redeeming us once more? Yes, things are dark now, no denying it. Your government in Washington, Miss Costello, plans on robbing the Jewish people of its birthright, telling us to give up land we were promised by G.o.d. And collaborating with you is a man who we once trusted, a traitor who is ready to betray his people so that he can parade before the anti-Semites in Europe as the good Jew, the nice Jew, the dove with a n.o.bel Prize clasped in his beak, while the bad Jews are left to be murdered in their beds by the Arabs.

'It all seems to be over, it's our darkest hour all over again, when look! A hero of the Jewish people, Shimon Guttman, intervenes to stay the hand of the traitor and lo, Guttman the hero is slain. And now the people of Israel begin to understand. They now see the threat that faces them: a government that is willing to shoot its own citizens. Even, and for this please forgive me, Uri, to kill the wife of the hero!

'This is the way the Almighty works. He gives us signs, clues if you will. Because he wants us to see what's going on. He took your mother so that we would be under no illusions. It's a message to us, Uri. Your parents and the tragedy that has befallen them is a message. It's telling us to say no to this huge American trick. To say no to ma.s.s Jewish suicide.'

All of this came at such a speed, and at such loud, full-throated volume, there was no choice but to wait for it to stop. This Shapira was a practised speaker, that much was clear, who had mastered the technique of the seamless segue from one sentence to the next, brooking no interruption. Maggie had been in the meeting when the US team famously sat listening to the Syrian President talk for an unbroken six hours, deploying the exact same trick. The only suitable response was stamina and patience. You just had to wait till your foe, or partner, it made no difference, had talked himself out. That moment seemed to have arrived.

'Mr Shapira,' Maggie began, leaping in ahead of Uri. 'That's all really helpful. Would I be summarizing your views accurately if I were to say that you suspect the hand of the Israeli authorities themselves in the deaths of Uri's parents?'

'Yes, because what the United States of America needs to realize-'

Big mistake, thought Maggie. Should not have formulated it as a question, inviting a b.l.o.o.d.y answer.

'Thank you, that's clear. They did this to silence the Guttmans, because they feared whatever information it was they had discovered.' The inflection was downward now, indicating a statement. 'Yet what you have described are the views Shimon Guttman held for many years. He most certainly would have wanted to convey them to the Prime Minister. But they were hardly new. How do you explain the frantic urgency? How do you explain why the Israeli authorities would act this way to suppress an opinion that was already well known?'

'Opinion? Who said anything about opinion? Not me. I've been using the word information. Information Information, Miss Costello. Different thing. Shimon had obviously uncovered some information that would force Yariv to realize the lunacy of his ways. I think he wanted to get it out there any way he could.'

'What kind of information?'

'Now you're asking too much of me, Miss Costello.'

'Does that mean you won't tell us or you don't know?' It was Uri, operating as if he and Maggie were a tag team. Akiva ignored him, his eye remaining fixed on Maggie.

'Why don't you take some advice from someone who's been around this neighbourhood a little longer than forty-eight hours? What I know, you don't want to know. And, Uri, you don't want to know either. Believe me, big things are at stake here. The fate of G.o.d's chosen people in G.o.d's Promised Land. A covenant between us and the Almighty. That's too big for a few jumped-up, sleazeball politicians to try to tear up, no matter how important they think they are, whether here or in Washington. You can tell that to your employers, Miss Costello. No one comes between us and the Almighty. No one.'

'Or else?'

'Or else? You're asking "or else"? This is not a question to ask. But look around you. Uri, take my advice. Leave this alone. You have parents to mourn for. You have a funeral to arrange.'

There was a knock on the door. The secretary poked her head around, and mouthed something to Shapira. 'Sure, I'll call him back.'

He turned back to Uri. 'Do yourself a favour, Uri. Mourn your mother. Sit shiva Sit shiva. And leave this thing alone. No good can come of poking around. Your father's task has been fulfilled. Not the way he intended, maybe. But fulfilled. The people of Israel have been roused.'

Uri was doing his best, Maggie could see, to disguise his eye-rolling contempt for what he was hearing. Occasionally he slumped into his seat, like an insolent schoolboy, only to remember himself and sit up straight. Now he leaned forward to speak. 'Do you know anything about Ahmed Nour?'

Maggie leapt in. 'Mr Shapira, you've been very generous with your time. Can I thank you-'

'What, you're trying to blame me for the death of that Arab? Is that what they're saying on the leftist radio already? I'm surprised at you, Uri, for sucking up that bulls.h.i.t.'

Maggie was on her feet now. 'It's been a very troubling time, you can imagine. People are saying all kinds of things.' She knew she was babbling, but her eyes were doing the work, desperately trying to say to Akiva Shapira: He's just lost both his parents. He's gone a little nuts. Ignore him He's just lost both his parents. He's gone a little nuts. Ignore him.

Shapira was now standing up, not to bid farewell to Maggie but to embrace Uri.

'You can be very proud of your parents, Uri. But now let them rest in peace. Leave this alone.'

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

AMMAN, JORDAN, TEN MONTHS EARLIER TEN MONTHS EARLIER.

Jaafar al-Naasri was not a man to rush. 'Those that hurry are those that get caught,' he used to say. He had tried explaining that to his son, but he was too dumb to listen. Al-Naasri wondered if he had been cursed to be surrounded by such stupidity, even in his own house. He had made sure to marry a clever woman. They had done everything right, sending their children to one of the best schools in Amman. Yet his daughter was a s.l.u.t who modelled herself on the wh.o.r.es on MTV; and his boys were no better. One a lumpen oaf, whose only value lay in his fists. The other brighter, but a layabout. Up at noon, with aspirations to be a playboy.

It pained Jaafar al-Naasri. Yes, he was a wealthy man now, thanks in part to the generosity of Saddam Hussein and the United States military. Between them, they had opened the door to the great treasure house of mankind, the repository of the very origins of human history. Was it an exaggeration? Jaafar was p.r.o.ne to the occasional lapse into hype, he could not deny it: what salesman was not? But the Baghdad Museum needed no selling. It had served as the keeper of man's earliest memories. Mesopotamia had been the first civilization and those beginnings were all there, under gla.s.s, tagged, indexed and preserved in the National Museum of Antiquities. The first examples of writing, anywhere in the world, were to be found in Baghdad, in the thousands of tablets written in cuneiform, the language of four millennia past. Art, sculpture, jewellery and statuary from the days when these were all new forms, relics of the age of the Bible and before, they were to be found in Baghdad.

For decades they had stayed in alarmed cases and behind steel doors, protected by the greatest security system in the world: the tyranny of Saddam Hussein. But thanks to those GIs in their tanks and the bomber pilots in the skies above, Saddam had fled and the doors to the museum had been flung wide open. The American soldiers who had surrounded the Ministry of Oil, placing its files and papers, its precious secrets of black gold, under round-the-clock armed guard, thankfully did nothing to protect the Museum. A single tank came, days too late. Otherwise, it was left naked and exposed, as open and available as a Baghdad wh.o.r.e. And Jaafar and his boys had been able to feast on her again and again, without disturbance.

Make no mistake, he had done well, filling the al-Naasri collection in his backyard with enough delights to start a museum of his own. His fool of a son had been digging morning, noon and night for months, stashing away the booty his wide network of runners brought daily from Iraq. Sometimes, if Jaafar suspected they were two-timing him, supplying a rival dealer, here in Amman or further afield, in Beirut or Damascus, then Nawaf would have to use his spade for another purpose. He had only had to do that half a dozen times, maybe less. Jaafar was not counting. But he could not say he was happy. By now, after a blessing like the US invasion, he should have been at the very top of his game, like that b.a.s.t.a.r.d Kaslik, who had built an empire across the region thanks to the 2003 war. But Kaslik had sons he could rely on. Jaafar al-Naasri could rely only on himself.

Which is why he was stuck here, now, in his workshop doing a job he should have been able to delegate. He could not entrust such a task to staff: the risk of betrayal, either stealing the goods or tipping somebody off, was too great. But he had once imagined a team of junior al-Naasris, as skilled as he was, beavering away, only too eager to take on the most sensitive work.

And this was certainly sensitive. The downside of Saddam's fall was that after it, the rules suddenly tightened. Governments around the world who had turned a blind eye to the trade in stolen Iraqi treasures before 2003 were no longer so forgiving. Maybe they felt it was OK to steal from a dictator, but not quite right to steal the inheritance of 'the Iraqi people'. Personally, Jaafar blamed the television news. If it hadn't been for the pictures of the Baghdad looting, things could have gone on as before. But after they had seen it, the denuding of the grand museum by wheelbarrow and sack, the high-ups in London and New York had got anxious. They couldn't be accomplices to this great cultural crime. So the word went out to customs officials and auction houses and museum curators from Paris to Los Angeles: nothing from Iraq.

Which meant Jaafar had to be creative. More than ever, he would have to conceal the products he was sending out. The item on the bench in front of him was a source of particular pride. It was a flat plastic box, divided into two dozen compartments, full of brightly coloured beads, under a clear lida jewellery-making set, aimed at the younger end of the teenage girl market. His wife's sister had bought it for Naima's twelfth birthday after a trip to New York. His daughter had played with it for a while, then tired of it. Jaafar had come across it a couple of months ago, quite by accident, and had realized its potential immediately.

Now, trying to ape the garish tastes of an adolescent girl, he reached for a pink bead, threading it onto the string, which already carried a fake ruby, a purple sequin and the metal top from a bottle of Coca-Cola. He smiled. It looked like a tacky charm bracelet, a medley of novelty items that a teenager might wear, break and never remember again.

Unless they looked too closely at one of the items on the string. It was not the only golden piecethere was also a bra.s.sy miniature poodlebut it was the finest. A simple gold leaf, delicate and finely engraved. But you would have to look, and Jaafar had been around precious things long enough to know that context was everything. Had it been in a museum, resting on a cushion, far away from the beads and the bottle-tops, then maybe you might have guessed that this was an earring buried four and a half thousand years ago with a princess of Sumeria. On Jaafar's worktable, cheek-by-jowl with trash, it looked like nothing.

Next came the seals, small stone cylinders embossed with a unique cuneiform pattern. Five millennia ago these would have been rolled onto clay tablets to denote a signature. Ingenious for their time, but no more ingenious than the home Jaafar had found for them. He reached down to the big brown carton that had arrived a week ago from Neuchatel, Switzerland. Inside was a bulk load of toy wooden chalets, complete with painted windows and surrounded by matchstick picket fences. Lift the roof and you would discover that this mantelpiece ornament had another function. A slow, tinny melody would begin, picked out by the shiny metal mechanism within.