Sam Bourne - The Last Testament

‘Right now, we’ve got the news editor over at Channel 2 looking at these pictures. And who was it you just phoned, Mustapha?’

‘Al Jazeera. Ramallah bureau.’

‘They’re all watching this little scene. And before you get any ideas, Mr Miller, this is only a second camera. Getting what we call B-roll. The main camera is down there, safely hidden from view. You blast me now and my friend there will capture it in glorious Technicolor.’

Maggie could see Miller paling. He tried a smug smile, one of his characteristic TV expressions, but it came out crooked. Finally he stammered out some words. ‘Who’s going to believe this cock and bull story of yours?’

‘No one would have believed it, Bruce,’ Maggie conceded. ‘Not until you confirmed every last detail just now. For which we are eternally grateful. You know, when this bit of video finds its way onto YouTube and CNN and ABC and all the rest, I don’t think even you will be able to talk your way out of it.’

A mobile phone rang. Miller’s. He answered, only to turn from pale to transparent. He swivelled around, showing his back to Uri’s camera, though his voice was still audible.

‘Yes, Mr President. I can hear you clearly, sir. I understand: you can see me too. I agree, technology is an incredible thing, sir.’ He said nothing for a good half-minute, then spoke again. ‘I will draft the letter of resignation immediately, sir. And yes, I will make clear that this was a rogue operation, wholly my own initiative. Goodbye, Mr President.’

Without another word, Miller gestured at the armed men. Their weapons still raised, they slowly withdrew back up the steps, away from the model, forming a kind of protective cordon around Miller’s retreat. A few seconds later and they were gone.

Uri lowered his camera and walked over to Maggie. As they hugged, he pointed towards the trees. ‘That’s who I was calling from the car. An old cameraman friend of mine who lives in En Kerem. I told him to get in position, hide himself and aim his longest lens here. Oh, and to bring his smallest microwave transmitter with him. With the sound from your phone, I’d say it was my best work.’

Maggie suddenly broke off the hug, seized by a thought.

‘Is that thing still on?’

Uri nodded.

It was the object in her hand that made her do it. It felt like an explosive, primed to go off at any moment. So many people had already been killed for it; she and Uri had been chased, beaten and shot for it. No one who held its secrets was safe.

‘Point the camera at me,’ she said to Uri. ‘Right now.’

He brought the viewfinder to his eye, steadied himself, then gave her a thumbs up.

‘My name is Maggie Costello. I’m a peace negotiator working for the United States government in Jerusalem. This,’ she held up the tablet, just as Shimon Guttman had done in the video-message they had seen yesterday, ‘this tablet is nearly four thousand years old. Over the course of the last week, Bruce Miller and an American covert-ops team have bugged, burgled and murdered their way across this country and beyond trying to get hold of it. You heard Mr Miller confess to that a moment ago. He wanted to keep the fact of this tablet’s existence, and above all its contents, a secret. And here’s why.’

At last she took a good look at the object she had peeled from its hiding place by the miniature Warren’s Gate, gripping it tightly ever since. When she finally saw it up close, she was almost disappointed. It was so small, the characters etched on it so tiny. The whole thing was no bigger, and much slimmer, than a cigarette packet, hewn from rough, earthen clay. And yet her own government had been prepared to kill for it-along with any number of fanatics among both the Israelis and Palestinians. The words carved here, so many thousands of years ago, would have the power to unleash a war of wars, one that would never stay confined to those two sides. What if Abraham had given Mount Moriah to Ishmael but the Israelis refused to hand it over? The world’s Muslims would insist they had been cheated of their birthright. The clash of civilizations would be made terrifyingly real. And if Abraham had bequeathed the Temple Mount to the Jews, would the Muslims simply give way, letting go of the site where Mohammed rose to the heavens? Whatever this small chunk of clay said, it could only spell victory for one side and disaster for the other.

As she turned it over, she looked for a small piece of tape on the bottom edge which she had noticed when she pulled the tablet from the ground. She had assumed it was part of the fixing that Shimon Guttman had cleverly devised to keep this treasure hidden in the shadows of the model city. But when she brought it up to her eye she saw that it was not just tape, though it was sticky on one side. It was instead a tiny clear plastic envelope, a small-scale version of the kind traffic wardens put on car windscreens to keep a parking ticket dry. Carefully, she peeled it away from the tablet. Then she removed from it a small white square of paper bearing three neat, if tiny, blocks of print. The first was in Hebrew, the second in Arabic and the third in English.

She skimmed the English paragraph and began to read aloud, into the camera.

‘This is a tablet dictated to a scribe by Abraham the patriarch, shortly before his death in Hebron. It is in cuneiform script, in Old Babylonian language. The translation of his words reads thus:

‘I Abraham, son of Terach, in front of the judges have attested thus. The land where I took my son, there to make a sacrifice of him to the Mighty Name, the Mountain of Moriah, this land has become a source of dissension between my two sons; let their names here be recorded as Isaac and Ishmael. So have I thus declared in front of the judges that the Mount shall be bequeathed as follows-’

She fell silent the instant the shot rang out. When she hit the ground, her hand stayed tightly wound around the tablet, clinging on to it, as if to life itself.

JERUSALEM , FRIDAY , 1.44PM

The camera fell from his hand with a thud. Uri dashed over to her, crouching over her body to see where she had been hit. Less than a second later he heard a bullet whizzing past his own ear. Now he too fell flat, trying to lie on top of Maggie, to shield her body from the incoming fire.

He looked across and saw Mustapha, also prone on the ground. With a tiny movement of his finger, the Palestinian gestured for Uri to look upwards. There, directly above them, leaning over the parapet that overlooked the model city, were the barrels of several guns, firing into the trees opposite. Were these Miller’s men, regrouped? Were they trying to kill the hidden cameraman, as if that would somehow save them and their boss?

There was a rustle from the trees and then a Hebrew cry of ‘ Al tira! ’

Don’t shoot.

From above, Uri heard a response: ‘ Hadel esh! ’

Hold your fire.

He gradually raised himself up. Maggie was on the ground, deathly still.

Now, he could hear a clamour of Hebrew voices as more than a dozen men pounded down the steps: Israeli police. Their semiautomatic weapons were aimed squarely at two men standing on the hillside just below the model.

‘Identify yourselves!’ the police commander barked.

There was silence.

‘Identify yourselves or we shoot!’

Were these Palestinians, their Hebrew learned in jail, come here to mount some suicide mission? If they hesitated even a second longer, Uri knew what would happen: they would be shot in the head, the only sure way to prevent them setting off a bomb.

But they wore no bulky clothes, the usual giveaway. They were dressed casually; truth be told, they looked Israeli.