A Long Way to Shiloh (3 page)

Friday and Saturday passed, bringing on Sunday. At eleven I was sitting over the breakfast debris, writing and smoking, when the phone went.

‘Hello.’

‘Caspar?’

‘I could run and see if he’s gone,’ I said, slipping easily into the eager tones of a neighbour along the landing. ‘I heard him going downstairs.’

‘It doesn’t matter, love.’

He hung up before I did.

A knowing bastard. What could this knowing bastard have on his mind? Any number of things; most probably Jordanian. It annoyed the Israelis intensely to have so much of their old literature lying around in Jordan, beyond reach and almost, for an unaffluent state, beyond price. They couldn’t buy directly, of course. Every now and again they managed to get their hands on a bit via some international agency; even so, unless donated, it worked out pricey, upwards of thirty shillings a square
centimetre
. They had to know what they were buying, and what else might be available. People like Uri had to keep tuned in to the international grapevine. Let him do it, I thought, at some more convenient time.

I had a lunch date at half past one, and popped out for a drink first at one. By three I was back again, somewhat restless. I had a look in the book to see if anyone had called.

1.10 p.m. For Dr Laing. A gentleman called.

1.15 p.m. For Dr Laing. A lady called.

What lady? What gentleman? What messages? Why no further details? A twinge of yellowing temper stirred my liver. The handwriting of Mrs Lewin! A continuing battle this.
Frigging
Mrs Lewin, who never took messages, would by now be enjoying her frigging afternoon nap. I went in search of her.

‘Mrs Lewin!’

‘Eh? What–? What is it?’

I abated my thunderous hammering.

‘I hope I’m not disturbing you, Mrs Lewin?’

‘Eh? No – Just a minute.’

Creakings and frowsty rustlings. Forked lightning leapt, not unpleasantly, from my liver.

‘Only I see there were a couple of calls for me.’

‘Yes. I’m coming.’

‘And I can’t seem to find the messages.’

‘Just a moment. I’ll be with –’

‘So I wondered naturally where you’d put them.’

The door opened. Mrs Lewin, teeth slipping into place, ashen jowls still quivering, peered gruesomely out.

‘There weren’t any!’ she said.

‘No messages?’

‘None. I asked! He said it didn’t matter. He was a foreign –’

‘And the lady?’

‘Her neither! She wouldn’t!’ She was yelping; alarm,
self-pity
, fury, all warring as she supported a breast with a shaking hand.

‘Did you get her name?’

‘No! She wouldn’t give it!’

Not if you didn’t ask, you cow; mind too fixed on your
flaming
kip.

‘Maybe you recognized her voice?’

‘I didn’t! It was none of the usual –’

Elizabeth, then. Almost certainly Elizabeth.

‘Well, I’m sorry to have bothered you, Mrs Lewin. It’s just that I’m expecting an urgent –’

‘Knocking like that! I thought the place had caught fire. I just this minute dropped off –’

I heard her door slam as I went up again.

Elizabeth. What had Elizabeth been ringing me about at 1.15? Perhaps I’d better ring her myself. I did so. No answer.

H’m. Imminent frustration here; the old adam soon to be at his most surly and clamorous. But at least the girl had left no message. This meant, presumably, she would call again. When would she call again? Presumably she would call again before four, the trysting hour. It was now a quarter past three.

I picked the
Observer
and read it very carefully. It seemed to be a long report about fencing. The phone rang. I nearly fell off the seat getting at it.

‘Hello.’

‘Caspar?’

I breathed heavily. ‘You are being a very persistent bastard today.’

‘That’s my old friend. How are you?’

‘Very ill.’

‘What’s the trouble?’

‘A broken leg.’

‘I’ll come and cheer you up.’

‘I’m just going out. Dancing.’

‘Look, love,’ Uri said, still genial, but with a clear suggestion that the joke was over. ‘You’ll be in at four.’

‘I won’t be in at four.’

‘You haven’t got a date with Lady Lulu.’

‘I have got a date with Lady Lulu.’

‘You haven’t,’ Uri said.

‘What?’

‘I called her. She had to go out. If she hasn’t done so already, she will be calling you.’

I said, ‘What the hell –’

‘Caspar. Old friend,’ Uri said, voice descending a full
old-friendly
octave. ‘Unless it was of the utmost urgency would I do this to you? Be intelligent. And also be in – at four o’clock. I am speaking now from a telephone box. I will call for you with a car. I will take you in the car to London. I will bring you back in the car. You can be back by nine o’clock if you want. You will lose nothing. You might gain very much. I am now being quite serious.’

I thought, when rage allowed, that he’d better be.

‘Caspar,’ he said after a moment.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m sorry, Caspar. To coin a phrase, this thing is bigger than both of us. You’ll see.’

‘All right.’

‘I’ll make it up to you. You’ll tell me what I can do.’

‘I can tell you now. You can get stuffed.’

‘Yes, love. Stay where you are. Till four o’clock.’

The Israeli Embassy is in Palace Green, at one end of
Kensington
Palace Gardens, that private and brooding avenue,
almost
entirely extra-territorial, which lies between Kensington and Bayswater. It was after six and dark when we got there, which didn’t seem to be unplanned, and we bowled into it from the Kensington end, similarly not by chance.

‘The neighbours farther along are nosy,’ Uri said, turning into the drive.

The neighbours farther along were the embassies of Jordan, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia; no soul from any of them, however, stirring now. Nothing whatever seemed to be stirring in the street. Uri’s whimsy-shrouded secrecy, strenuously maintained throughout the journey, had already brought on a severe attack of the habdabs, in no way lessened now by the masterful way with which he opened the embassy door and whipped me inside.

The Israeli Embassy is a nice embassy, very snug. There is a democratic air about the place, of rolled sleeves and glasses of tea. A girl was crossing the hall with a glass of tea as we went in, and Uri exchanged shouted
Shaloms
and
bevakashars
with her as we mounted the staircase. We went through a large room into a smaller one. Four or five men were sitting about in it, talking; one of them, I saw, Agrot. I’d never actually met him, but his face was familiar enough from book jackets and papers. He was spooning yoghurt from a bottle, and he rose with it still in his hand, a big chap, moustached, nose a bit out of true, not unlike Hunt the logistician of Everest.

He said, ‘Shalom,’ smiling, grip very hefty.

‘Shalom.’

‘I wanted to meet you a long time.’

‘I didn’t know you were here.’

‘I just arrived. Excuse this,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t eat on the plane. I liked your Eteo-Cretan work.’

‘I liked your Bar-Kochbah.’

‘Compliments!’

We sat down and swapped a few more. He continued
spooning
his yoghurt. Some time during the course of it someone got me a drink. I began to feel that vague uneasiness that comes with hearing a newly-arrived foreigner speak your language as well as his own and exhibiting in it a lively awareness of a range of affairs you’d supposed to be purely local. The rest of the characters drifted off after a bit, leaving just Agrot, Uri and myself. It seemed to be time for business.

I said conversationally, ‘And what brings you here just at the moment, Professor Agrot?’

He said, ‘Yes,’ and licked a spot of yoghurt off his thumb and reached into his breast pocket and drew something out.

It was a little print, about five by three, evidently of a text fragment, square Hebrew letter, very badly done.

‘What do you make of this?’ he said.

Apart from the fact that some of the words were suspiciously long, as if the writer had forgotten to leave spaces in between, I didn’t make anything of it. Certain Hebrew letters, M and T, for instance, are not dissimilar – about as similar, say, as O and D in our own letter. Just as the English word
ODD
, badly
written
, could come out as
DDD, OOO, DOO, ODO,
so a word in scroll Hebrew using M and T could produce its own stock of permutations. In addition, scroll Hebrew uses no vowels. A group of three letters, say
MTR
, could therefore be read as
MATTER, MOTOR, TUMOUR, TOTTER
or possibly some proper name, or just as possibly some word common enough a couple of thousand years ago and not encountered since.

Most often, because of the root structure of the Semitic
languages
, you can have a general stab at the thought implied in the word; and if there are enough of them place it reasonably in context. There weren’t enough of them here, and I couldn’t pick out any recognizable root.

I said, ‘The scribe seems to have had his wrong boots on that day.’

‘He was rather ill at the time.’

‘It’s not Hebrew or Aramaic, anyway.’

‘How’s your Greek?’

I studied it again.

‘Better than his. It’s not Greek.’

‘Try it backwards.’

I tried it backwards. The consonantal clusters began to assume vaguely familiar associations.

‘Here,’ Agrot said. ‘A rough reading in English of the portion you have.’

The rough reading went:
Here
of
the
place
[
in
the
area
]
by the hand of the lowest and he who testifies alone
[
the private soldiers and myself only
]
so that they should not have it in their mouths
[
without witnesses
]
the OEED in darkness
[
is buried
].

‘Interesting?’ Agrot said.

‘Very.’

‘What strikes you particularly?’

‘About this invalid who thought backwards in Greek?’

‘He didn’t think that way naturally. He was making a
pre-arranged
report to an authority who would understand.’

‘I see.’ From his confident assertion he obviously had a great deal more of the stuff.

‘Anything else?’ he said.

‘This OEED, you mean.’

‘What do you think it means?’

I looked at it again. Anything with a code-name usually
telegraphed
some piece of priestly property. From the juxtaposition with ‘darkness’ it could indicate ‘light’.

‘Light?’ I said.

‘We’re thinking alike.’

‘In that case,’ I said, ‘you’d expect a sacred article, a Book of the Law or the Prophets – anything with light-shedding
properties
in a religious context.’

‘This one needed four men to carry it.’

‘Ah.’

‘Together with its auxiliary equipment.’

‘H’m.’

‘Any further ideas?’

‘Not on one drink. You don’t get performance and economy.’

Uri got up and poured me another.

‘Why has the light got to be metaphorical?’ Agrot said.

‘How do you mean?’

‘What sheds light physically?’

‘A lamp?’

‘Bravo.’

I looked at him. ‘You’re not supposing, I hope,’ I said slowly, ‘
the
lamp?’

‘Well. It would be quite a turn, wouldn’t it?’

‘Quite a turn.’ He seemed perfectly serious about it. I said, ‘Have you got a date for this?’

‘A very accurate one. March of 67.’

‘Then the lamp couldn’t have remained in darkness very long, could it?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Agrot said. ‘Tell me why.’

He was leaning back, nose a little to the east, smiling gently.

He didn’t need me to tell him why. He would know why, rather better than I.
The
lamp, the great seven-branched lamp, the Menorah, has been the symbol of Judaism for some
thousands
of years; of his own State, Israel, for the past fifteen or so. The Roman conqueror Titus took the lamp when he destroyed the Temple in August of 70. A representation of it is still to be seen on his Triumphal Arch in Rome; a group of Romans carry the massive gold object through the Roman streets in the triumphal procession. The procession was witnessed by the
historian
Flavius Josephus who recorded it in the finest detail. If Agrot had a date of 67 for
the
lamp, and Titus took it in 70, then it couldn’t, as I said, have remained in darkness very long.

‘Because Titus took it,’ I said.

‘We wonder if he did.’

‘He took
the
lamp.’

‘He certainly took
a
lamp,’ Agrot said.

I said, ‘Ah, h’m,’ and lit a cigarette.

Apart possibly from the True Cross and the True Shroud, the True Menorah has attracted a larger corpus of fairy tale and legend than any other artifact in history. Its design and
dimensions
were of course as specified by God to Moses – in history’s earliest As-Told-To, the Pentateuch – and as subsequently
installed
in the Temple by Solomon. With such sponsors, the devout have always accorded it magical properties, including inviolability. I’d never heard that Agrot was particularly
devout
and he didn’t strike me as much of a one for fairy tales. I looked at him through the cigarette smoke. He was still smiling gently.

‘What’s bothering you?’ he said.

‘What you’d expect to be bothering me.’

‘All right, look at it this way. Given the idea that a copy
might
have been made at some time – and after all, it’s a very old idea, much older than Titus – you’d expect somebody to have had a try at making one then. The times were very
dangerous
.’

‘Right.’

‘And therefore for someone to bury the original.’

‘And therefore for someone else to whip it as soon as they found where it was.’

‘Ah,’ Agrot said. ‘I see what’s bothering you. Quite so. The point here is that we don’t think anybody ever did find where it was. We think there is a good possibility it is still where it was put.’

‘Why?’

‘Well. There are reasons,’ Agrot said. ‘But to find out, you’ll have to come to Israel.’

It suddenly occurred to me that if I hadn’t been brought here to listen to this load of fable-type cock I might by now be in bed with Lady Longlegs. Would the chance ever recur?

‘You look worried,’ Agrot said.

‘He has a number of problems,’ Uri said.

I said, ‘Yes. You see, Professor Agrot, although of course I’d like to –’

‘I hear that you are now a professor yourself.’

‘Quite. And I have to get this department going. It’s a new university and I have to get –’

‘Dr Silberstein will get the books,’ Uri said.

‘Eh?’

‘Dr Silberstein. The doyen of all book-getters. Dr Silberstein will get the books.’ He said it very confidently.

I drew in a lungful of smoke and looked at him. Dr
Silberstein
was indeed the doyen of all book-getters. If there was a book to be got, Dr Silberstein could get it. I’d used him before. I’d have used him this time, except that a Silberstein book came out a bit pricey. It wouldn’t, however, have page 64 missing, and it would have all relevant errata slips gummed in, even if Dr Silberstein had to lay hands on six separate copies
distributed
over six separate countries to ensure it.

I said, ‘How will Dr Silberstein get the books?’

‘How will Dr Silberstein get
books
?’ Uri said, opening his eyes very wide.

‘How will he get my books? How does he come to be in the act at all?’

‘I have brought him in the act,’ Uri said. ‘I have told him everything you told me. With regard to books, you have
nothing
further to worry about.’

It occurred to me that this bastard was being not only
unusually
knowing and unusually persistent but also unusually intrusive.

‘Who asked you to?’ I said.

Uri respectfully inclined his head.

‘I did,’ Agrot said. ‘Of course with the approval of the
Department
of Antiquities of the Ministry of Education and Culture.’

‘I see.’

‘No, love. You don’t,’ Uri said. ‘I’m afraid it all had to
happen
in a hurry. But everything was strangely – the religious might even say divinely – propitious. The suggestion is that while Dr Silberstein does a job for you, you do this job for us, we paying both fees. You’re needed, you see.’

‘Urgently,’ Agrot said.

It took a moment for this to settle.

I said, ‘What’s up with your own semiticists?’

‘Nothing,’ Agrot said. ‘Only I’ve been re-reading your work at Jericho and Megiddo. It shows unusual qualities of flair. You have good hunches. They work. We need them.’

‘How do you know they’ll work now?’

‘I don’t,’ Agrot said. ‘Do you?’

He was still smiling his gentle smile; a student of human nature.

I said, ‘What’s the urgency?’

‘Our copy, unfortunately, isn’t the only one. And it’s
certainly
not the best one. The readings are, so to say, obscure. We have good reason to believe our neighbours have a better copy. You haven’t been approached by them, I suppose?’

‘No.’

‘No. I don’t know if you saw this.’ He’d taken a booklet out of his pocket. ‘I’ve marked the page.’

It was the
Revue
de
Qumran
, Editions Letousey et Ane, Paris, by way of being one of our trade papers. The marked page was a correspondence page. A letter signed Khalil Sidqui from
Amman
, Jordan, had been ringed. I began to read it, with a vague recollection of having read it before. Apropos some doings at Qumran, Sidqui had reason to believe documents had been found elsewhere that cast light on first-century place names in Northern Palestine. Scholars had a duty to publish such
valuable
material. It was unscholarly to allow politics….

The usual kind of sniping carried out by both sides to see if the other has turned up something new.

I said, ‘Yes, I read it.’

‘Do you know Sidqui?’

‘Yes.’ I’d met him in Jordan, a little elderly worrier; not very top class.

‘There’s no question it’s our thing he’s talking about. We have other evidence. Someone put Sidqui up to this.’

‘A funny choice. Does he bother you?’

‘Not Sidqui
qua
Sidqui,’ Agrot said. ‘Just the implications. They must have had their copy some time.’

‘When did he write this?’

‘Before last December, anyway. He died then.’

‘Did he? I didn’t hear about it.’

‘No. Nor did I till last week.’

‘What was up with him?’

‘He was a sick man. Bilharzia. Some other things. However,’ Agrot said briskly, ‘the point is we know they have it, and that they are being very busy with it. I understand you leave your present post next week. If Silberstein takes on this thing for you, I’d be glad if you could come out then.’

Would
you
? Everything moving a bit too fast here. Too many wheels turning too audibly.