The Jerusalem Puzzle. Laurence O’Bryan
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to come here,’ she said.
The highway turned. The spark of gold was gone. Pale cream, modern two and three-storey apartment buildings filled the low hills around us. As we got close to the city there were older buildings, and long tree-lined boulevards of apartments.
There was a lot of traffic too. Sunday’s the start of the week here, our driver said.
He had given us a running commentary on the latest news from Egypt and on the situation in Israel almost all the way from the airport. Our hotel, the Zion Palace, was a four-star, but it didn’t look it from the outside. The entrance was down a set of wide steps, like descending into a cave, but inside, the lobby was wide and marble-floored. There were brass coffee tables at the back, surrounded by chocolate-brown leather high-backed chairs. Huge blue ceramic pots sat in the corners of the lobby and paintings of Old Jerusalem hung on the walls.
The view from the small balcony in our room made me want to hold my breath. We stared out at the city. To our right were the pale gold sandstone walls of the Old City.
The hill of Mount Zion, crowned by the high upturned-funnel style roof of the Dormiton Abbey with its dome-capped tower was just visible to the far right.
There was an ancient magic to this view. There was history and religion in every glance, and something older overlaying it all. Countless wars had been fought over this patch of land and its fate was still in bitter dispute.
The hum of traffic, honking car horns and occasional shouts came up from the road below. Leaden clouds rolled slowly overhead.
I pointed at the Old City walls.
‘Just a bit further up that way is the Jaffa Gate,’ I said. ‘Do you see the valley to the right of the walls?’ Isabel nodded. ‘That’s where the followers of Ba’al and Moloch sacrificed their children by fire, while priests beat drums to hide the screams.’
‘Yeuch, that’s too sick.’
‘They call that place Gehenna, the valley of hell.’ I went to the edge of the balcony, as if drawn forward. The start of the valley, the part we could see, looked dried out, rocky, its low trees withered and dusty.
‘That’s where the entrance to hell is for a lot of Jews, and for some Christians and followers of Islam too. They think that’s where the wicked will line up to be punished at the end of the world.’
‘And now you can find it on a map,’ said Isabel.
Famished by the time we reached the hotel, we sat down immediately for dinner, eating in near silence, the fatigue of the journey capturing our thoughts. Back at our room I scoured Israeli websites for any news about Dr Hunter. There was nothing about her disappearance mentioned anywhere in the last few days. The only thing I found were the original articles about her going missing.
The main story on the Haaretz website was about a Jewish family that had been burnt to death in an arson attack the night before in a settlement near Hebron. The horror of it leapt off the screen. Pictures of a small blackened house with an ambulance in front of it, surrounded by Israeli soldiers, filled the news page. Isabel looked over my shoulder as I read it.
‘They’re blaming some local Palestinians,’ I said.
‘How many more people are going to get burnt to death?’ said Isabel.
‘You can get shot out here too,’ I said. I pointed at another article. It was about a funeral of a Palestinian youth who’d been shot in the back after being part of a demonstration in a village sandwiched between Jewish settlements. A Jewish settler was being blamed for that death.
‘It’s all sickening,’ said Isabel.
‘There’s a vicious fight going on here, unbending hatred,’ I replied. Opening my email, there was the usual array of special offers from every hotel, airline and social network I’d ever used and some I hadn’t. I spotted an email from Dr Beresford-Ellis. It had an attachment. I clicked on it. The message wouldn’t open. The screen just froze.
Had the internet stopped completely? I went to another tab and tried to download a page. It wouldn’t work either. Nothing would. I waited another minute.
‘I’ll go down and see if they can do anything about the signal; find out if it’s better in the lobby,’ said Isabel.
‘Can you see if you can get some fruit, I’m still hungry?’ I said.
The internet was still off ten minutes later and Isabel hadn’t come back. I let the door bang as I left the room, pushing the old-fashioned key into my pocket as I waited for the lift. I was hoping it would open to Isabel’s smiling face, but it was empty when it arrived.
In the lobby there was no sign of her either. I went to the reception. The dark-haired girl who’d checked us in was gone. In her place was an older guy with a bald spot he was trying to hide by brushing his hair over. He was standing in a corner of the reception area that was walled with blue and white Ottoman-era tiles.
‘No, I haven’t seen a lady in dark blue jeans with straight black hair,’ he said, after I described Isabel. His expression was quizzical, as if he was wondering whether I was asking him to find me a date.
‘Maybe she went to the shop. It’s down the road. Not far.’ He smiled, showed me his yellowing teeth.
‘Is there a problem with the Wi-Fi?’ I asked.
‘No, sir. It’s working perfectly.’
‘Not for me. How far away is this shop?’
‘Not far.’ He pointed towards the front of the hotel, then to the left.
I walked to the glass front door, then up the steps to the road to see if Isabel was coming. I’d never been this protective of Irene, my wife, a doctor who’d volunteered and then been murdered in Afghanistan two years before, but after what had happened to her my urge to look after Isabel couldn’t be ignored. Irene had been robbed of her life. I couldn’t bear for anything like that to happen to anyone else.
It was dark outside.
I had to tell myself to stop being paranoid. I looked back down at the hotel doors.
A man’s face was peering up at me through the glass door.
‘What are you doing out here?’ said a friendly voice behind me. ‘Did you miss me?’
I turned. Isabel was coming towards me from the other direction to the shop. She had a brown paper bag in her arms. ‘I got you your fruit.’
She held the bag forwards, smiled, then touched my arm as she passed. A ridiculous iron weight of fear lifted from my chest. When we got back to the room the Wi-Fi was working perfectly.
‘I got a call from Mark while I was out,’ she remarked. ‘He’s stationed in Cairo these days. Not a million miles from here.’
I spoke slowly. ‘Why does he keep calling you? I thought you two were over.’
She’d dumped him a year ago.
‘You are so jealous!’ she said. There was a sympathetic note to her voice.
I gave her my best see-if-I-care smile.
‘He wants to meet me again.’ She shook her head as if the idea was outrageous.
‘What?’ This was getting annoying.
‘I’m not going to, don’t worry.’
I opened the balcony door and went outside, staring over the lights illuminating the Old City walls. Isabel didn’t just have skeletons in her cupboard, she had live exhibits, waiting to be set free.
I felt a hand on my back and Isabel whispered in my ear. ‘Come to bed, Sean. I want to prove to you that there is no one else.’ Taking my hand she pulled me back inside. It was another hour before I got to sleep.
7