Sam Bourne - The Last Testament

‘We are The Defenders of United Jerusalem,’ the older of the pair said eventually in unaccented Hebrew. And now, as the police circled them, Uri could see clearly, perched on the back of each of their heads, a knitted kippa, or skullcap-the unambiguous badge of the Jewish settler movement.

‘So they were after us as well.’

Uri wheeled round to see Maggie sitting up, rubbing her eyes.

‘Maggie! You’re alive!’

‘I’m sorry about that. I didn’t know I was such a wuss.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’m meant to be a big tough diplomat. I’m not meant to faint the moment someone fires a gun.’

The police kept all three of them, Uri, Maggie and Mustapha, for several hours, asking each of them to give long, detailed statements. At their side throughout was a lawyer, Uri’s brother-inlaw, who insisted on his clients’ right to keep their private property, including the clay tablet, private. After his intervention, the tablet stayed with them at all times. As for the tiny white square of paper, Maggie hid that deep in a pocket and never let it go.

When they emerged from the police station, it was to a scene Maggie and Uri had seen plenty of times on TV but which neither ever expected to experience directly. Hundreds of camera lenses were aimed at them, flashbulbs strobing, arc lights on full glare.

They had barely set foot outside the building when this vast crowd gave a collective roar, as dozens of photographers and reporters called out in unison: ‘Maggie! Maggie! What did he say? Maggie, what did Abraham say? What does the tablet say?’

Uri and Mustapha flanked her on either side, each of them shoving people out of the way in order to get to the taxi that was waiting for them. The driver had to do two full circuits before he had shaken off the chasing vans and motor cycles, eventually reaching Maggie’s hotel.

In the sanctuary of her room, Maggie switched on the television. She had some clue what to expect from her mobile phone, returned to her by the police with a flashing message announcing Inbox Full . She listened to the first few voice messages: BBC, NPR, CNN, Reuters, AP, the New York Times , all requesting an interview as soon as humanly possible. The Daily Mail in London offered a six-figure sum if she would tell them the exclusive story of a single woman’s quest for the tablet of Abraham. There were also several messages from the White House.

Now when she clicked through the channels she kept catching sight of herself, holding the clay tablet up to Uri’s camera. Fox News was playing, in an apparent loop, the tape of Bruce Miller confessing his multiple sins, culminating in the line, ‘Ashamed? I’m proud of it.’ Finally, Maggie settled on BBC World.

‘We’re joined now by Ernest Freundel of the British Museum here in London, one of the very few people in the world capable of reading the cuneiform text in which this crucial tablet was allegedly written. Dr Freundel, what do you make of this claim?’

‘Well, ordinarily any report of this kind would be treated with the utmost scepticism. But I understand this tablet was found and translated by Professor Shimon Guttman, who was one of the greatest authorities on this subject. If he said it was authentic, then I am inclined to believe him.’

‘And your reaction to the notion that this is the last will and testament of Abraham himself?’

‘Well, there will be tests and so on. But Guttman was not a gullible man. One has also to say that if the Americans were going to such lengths to obtain this tablet, it does suggest that they at least were persuaded that it was real.’

‘And an emotional moment for a scholar like yourself, Dr Freundel?’

‘I cannot deny that I would give almost anything to have had the chance to see this tablet, or hold it, myself. Alas, I never had that chance. But it is of immeasurable significance.’

As Maggie perched on the end of the bed, Uri came over, clutching a laptop computer. He clicked through a series of websites: Al-Ahram , the Washington Post , the Guardian , the Times of India and China Daily . They were all covering the same story. Finally, he showed her the headline on the front page of the Haaretz site.

A world on tenterhooks; Israelis and Palestinians await the word of Abraham.

Underneath was a news account of that afternoon’s events at the Israel Museum. It said that Israeli police had arrested settlers’ leader Akiva Shapira, the suspected leader of The Defenders of United Jerusalem. What’s more, the police spokesman added, they had gathered evidence that Uri Guttman and Maggie Costello had also been within the sights of a radical Islamist cell linked to the wanted militant Salim Nazzal.

Maggie clicked and clicked. There were endless columns and debates devoted to discussing what Abraham might or might not have said. There were cries on all sides that it must be a fake, especially, said the Israeli hawks, if Abraham gave the Temple Mount to the Muslims and especially, said the Palestinian hardliners, if Abraham gave the Haram al-Sharif to the Jews. The blogosphere was replete with conspiracy theorists, insisting the timing of the tablet’s release was just too neat to be real.

‘You know, Maggie, you’re going to have get the truth out, the full text of the testament. It can’t wait.’

Maggie looked back at the TV. It now showed the British prime minister, standing in Downing Street, declaring that ‘History is holding its breath’.

Maggie sighed. ‘I know, Uri. I just need to work out who should be the one to say it.’

When she looked back on it, as she would many times in the years ahead, she would conclude that Bruce Miller’s most valuable lapse was a single sentence: There’s a back channel too, so they’re talking, believe me . That’s what he had said. Other people would probably have forgotten it, but not Maggie, nor any other mediator. Back channels were too intriguing to forget. Even under the duress of the body search and the battering from Miller’s men, the reference had lodged in her head and stayed there.

Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised her; it was common for even the bitterest enemies to keep a line of communication open, whether through some trusted business tycoon, a personal friend of a prime minister or a foreign government. Of course the Israelis and Palestinians would have maintained a way to keep talking.

She thought of it again now, as she lay on the hotel bed, allowing herself to drift off into a few minutes of exhausted sleep. She dreamed she was roaming the streets of Jerusalem not in her own body, but as the bra-topped avatar created by her sister in Second Life. She was floating above the golden Dome of the Rock, soaring high above the Western Wall. The men down below, in their beards, black coats and prayer shawls were looking up at her, their mouths agape…

She woke suddenly, her forehead clammy with sweat. Could it be? Was it possible? She grabbed at the computer and headed straight for Second Life, logging on again as Shimon Guttman’s alter ego, Saeb Nastayib. She teleported straight back to the seminar room at Harvard University. Please be there .

Sure enough, there were the avatars she had seen before: Yaakov Yariv and Khalil al-Shafi. She approached, hit the Chat button and typed a simple message: I have the information the world is waiting for .

The reply did not come instantly, for reasons she would later understand. It turned out that both Yariv’s office and al-Shafi’s would dump ‘sleeping’ avatars in Second Life’s Harvard seminar room, just to maintain a presence there. That way they could keep the channel open, ensuring that each side was available to the other twenty-four hours a day. Amir Tal, the personal aide to the Israeli prime minister, would check in hourly during the day and several times at night while his Palestinian counterpart would do the same. It had been al-Shafi’s idea: he had read about internet simulations of the Middle East peace process while in jail and had logged on to one, taking the role of Khalil al-Shafi, soon after his release. All it needed, he realized, was a senior Israeli to join in and they would have their own back channel. No need for midnight flights to Oslo or clandestine weekends in Scandinavian wood cabins. This dialogue could take place in full daylight, with total deniability. If anyone asked what was going on, ‘Yaakov Yariv’ and ‘Khalil al-Shafi’ could say they were simply American students, playing a game.