Sam Bourne - The Last Testament

The first reply came from al-Shafi. She asked him to telephone her, to verify that it was really him and, sure enough, she soon heard that familiar voice down the telephone. She arranged to meet his closest aide in an hour’s time.

Then she made the same arrangement with Amir Tal.

They gathered in the plush, west Jerusalem home of an American businessman. Maggie was too tired for pleasantries and got straight to the point.

‘As you know, I have the tablet. Today I was about to reveal the full text, on camera, because I feared that if I didn’t, if something happened to me, the last testament of Abraham would be lost forever. But now it is safe.’

She explained that she would not yet show them the tablet-that would have to wait until the leaders themselves met. She produced instead Guttman’s translation, reading the English out loud to the two men, then passing the paper so that the two of them could read the words again, in their own languages. They both paled in unison.

‘Of course you’ll have every chance to verify the authenticity of the tablet and this translation as soon as we move to the next stage,’ Maggie said quietly, anxious to give them as much time as they needed to absorb what they had just read.

‘And what is the next stage, Miss Costello?’ the Palestinian asked.

Maggie explained that it was up to the two leaders to tell the world what Abraham had decided. It wasn’t right for the announcement to come from her, an outsider. Instead they should call a joint press conference for the next day, straight after the Jewish sabbath. Uri Guttman and Mustapha Nour would be at their side, representing their late fathers, as the two leaders made the announcement.

Maggie watched the press conference on television. It would have been fun to be there, but she didn’t want to create another media zoo like the one at the police station. Besides, in the background was where she belonged. For this to work, the words had to come from Yariv and al-Shafi, no one else.

She wondered how they would do it. Would Yariv go first, in Hebrew, then al-Shafi in Arabic, followed by an interpreter? Or would they do it the other way around? In the end, they came up with something much, much better.

Al-Shafi went first and he spoke in English, introducing this as the tablet dictated by Abraham the patriarch and then reading the text:

‘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.’

Then he paused and Yaakov Yariv took over, also in English:

‘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-’

Then the two men paused, veteran showmen the pair of them, before reading on, in unison, their voices chiming perfectly:

‘That it shall be shared between my two sons and their descendants in a manner of their choosing. But that they be clear that it belongs to neither one of them, but to both, now and forever. That they be entrusted as its guardians and custodians, to protect it on behalf of the Mighty Name, the one Lord who is sovereign over everything and all of us. Sworn with the seal of Abraham, son of Terach, witnessed by his sons, in Hebron, this day.’

JERUSALEM ,TWO DAYS LATER

She had all her papers on her lap, in a neat black portfolio case. Less was always more when it came to a negotiation, she believed: a blank note pad should really be enough. Only at the very last stage did you need sheaves of documents, usually maps. And they were not at that stage. Not yet, anyway.

She took a look at this room, at the large dark wooden table stretching out before her, its faded elegance typical of this building. The same vintage as the American Colony Hotel, she reckoned, a leftover of the grand imperial past and the delusions of nearly a century ago. She looked at her watch, again. She had got here twenty minutes early. Another five minutes and they would get started.

The sheer drama of the joint press conference had had an even more powerful effect than anyone had anticipated. Television is a sentimental medium and the sight of those two old warhorses joining together, incanting the words of their common ancestor, had proved irresistible. The news networks stayed in twenty-four-hour mode-all Abraham, all the time-wiping out the coverage of the earlier violence. The pundits began wondering if peace was in fact the Middle East’s age-old destiny, a destiny of which it had been cruelly cheated. Time magazine put a renaissance image of Abraham on its cover above a single line: The Peacemaker .

A euphoric Amir Tal and his Palestinian counterpart had been on the phone just before midnight on Saturday, asking Maggie what she wanted in return for throwing their bosses an extraordinary political lifeline, allowing them to take credit for a discovery that would endow them both with enormous, enduring authority.

‘Only that the two sides resume face-to-face talks immediately,’ she had said. Not through officials: just the two leaders in a room with a single mediator.

The tablet meant there was now no excuse for failure to solve the last remaining question: the status of the Temple Mount. They should aim to have a final peace accord ready for signing within a week, one that their peoples would accept, one that would have the blessing of Abraham himself.

The two officials offered their provisional agreement. Maggie pressed home her advantage.

‘And there’s one last thing I want.’

‘And what is that, Miss Costello?’

‘Well, it relates to the identity of the mediator.’

That had been two days ago. She had spent the forty-eight hours since that phone call preparing herself. She had read every note, every minute, of the talks so far, every official document prepared by both sides, occasionally demanding translations of key texts used by the Israeli and Palestinian teams internally. She also bought herself some new clothes.

In between it all, she saw Uri. After she had watched the press conference on TV-and the moment when Mustapha and Uri had hugged before the cameras had been one of the highlights-they had met up at Someone to Run With, the late-night café where they had hammered away at the computer before fleeing, fearing pursuit from Miller’s men. ‘We’re still the oldest people here,’ she said and he smiled. Each asked the other about their plans and each shrugged. Uri said he had some things to sort out here in Jerusalem, his parents’ house, his father’s papers.

‘Your father gave you one last surprise, didn’t he?’

‘You know, it’s funny. The whole world is going crazy over this tablet. Everything it means. But for me the most amazing thing is that my dad did so much to keep it safe. Even though it says what it says.’

‘He was a scholar.’

‘Not just that. Remember what he told my mother, over and over? That this changes everything? Maybe it changed him.’

Hesitantly, Maggie steered the conversation round to Bruce Miller and why she had been sent to Jerusalem. She told Uri that Miller had wanted them to sleep together, that she had been-she hesitated before the word-a honeytrap. She told him how ashamed it made her, that she felt sickened by it.

He listened hard, unsmiling. ‘But you didn’t know you were a trap, did you, Maggie? It wasn’t your fault. You can’t be a trap if you don’t know you’re a trap. And it’s my fault for walking into you. Besides, you’re much rarer than honey.’

They hugged, a long, tight hug, and then shyly, like teenagers at summer camp, they exchanged email addresses. Neither had a physical address they could be sure of. When Maggie began to say goodbye, he placed a finger over her lips. ‘Not goodbye,’ he said. ‘ L’hitraot . It means “Until we see each other again”. And we will. Soon.’ And then they kissed, until both of them knew that promise was not vain.