Laurence O’Bryan - The Jerusalem Puzzle

‘What’s the project?’ I asked.

‘It’s not published yet, so I can’t tell you.’ His smile was enigmatic. ‘But I will send you the article when it comes out.’

‘What area is it in?’ Isabel had her head to one side.

‘The use of lasers for manipulation of molecules, cells and tissue. It’s called biomedical optics. It’s a whole new science. We got our own journal only in 2011.’

I joined the conversation. ‘Two of our researchers have published papers in that journal this year. We’re the only research institute in the world to have published that number in it so far.’ If it had been a spitting contest, I’d have hit the far wall.

His cheeks reddened.

‘Then you should see what we’re doing. We’re ahead of everyone.’ He jabbed his finger at me.

The waiter was hovering. Simon ordered a coffee. We’d finished our kebabs. They’d been good; soft and spicy.

Isabel talked about how interesting Jerusalem was. Talli gave her some advice on where we should go while we were here. Simon’s coffee came. I watched him stir it.

‘A lot of people come here for their souls,’ he said. He gestured toward the pedestrians passing beyond the window. ‘They think they will find it in the old stones here. They look, and then they look some more, but a soul is not easy to find.’

‘They need better maps,’ said Talli, solemnly.

‘You know about the show in the Tower of David?’ Simon motioned over his head towards the museum and walled fortress on the far side of the road.

‘It’s not from King David’s time though, is it?’ said Isabel.

‘It’s a perfect illustration of the layers of misunderstanding in this wonderful city. The citadel is called the Tower of David because Byzantine Christians thought it was built by him. But it was built by Herod the Great.’ His hands were in the air. ‘A madman who murdered his family.’

Talli put her hand on his arm. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere?’ she said. Simon looked at his watch.

‘Yes, yes, what am I thinking?’ He pointed at me and Isabel.

‘You will come with me,’ he said. ‘You will see what we are working on. And you will tell all your friends in Oxford when you go back how advanced we are.’ He stood.

We paid for our food.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked, as we headed towards the Jaffa Gate.

‘To another citadel.’ He gripped my arm. I put my hand on his, squeezed back, in a friendly, but determined way.

He leant towards me. ‘I have a meeting this afternoon at the Herod Citadel hotel. I am presenting at 5.30. The meeting will be private, but I’d like you to see the presentation. I think you will be surprised at what we’re doing. And a little jealous, perhaps!’

I didn’t take the bait. I wanted to see what he was doing.

We crossed a busy highway, passed modern-looking apartments. The air was cool now, and heavy with the promise of rain.

The Herod Citadel Hotel, a five-star hotel was a step up from the one I had picked for me and Isabel.

The Old Terrace restaurant was on the roof of the hotel. It had stunning views of the Old City, to the golden Dome of the Rock and the hills beyond. And it had a glass roof that looked as if it would stay intact in a meteor shower.

We waited near the elevators. Simon went off walking through the restaurant.

He arrived back a minute later with a tall, ultra-thin, black-haired, regally attractive woman beside him. Many of the male heads in the restaurant turned to look at her as she passed.

‘This is Rachel, my assistant,’ said Simon. ‘Come on. I have work to do.’

We went down to the meeting room. It had bright red and gold wallpaper and was set out for a presentation with rows of gold high-backed chairs and three tables lined up at the top of the room. There was a stack of brown cardboard boxes near the tables.

‘You can help us,’ said Simon. ‘If you want. Take the reports out of these boxes. Put one on each chair.’ He pointed at the chairs, then began opening boxes.

Isabel smiled at me. It was her let’s-be-nice smile. Simon had to be the pushiest person I had met in years. I was tempted not to cooperate. But I had some more questions to ask him. It’d be worth a few minutes of helping him out to get some answers. I took a pile of light blue reports, put one on each chair. Then I stopped.

My telephone was buzzing. I took it out and saw the name ‘Susan Hunter’ flashing across the screen, but as I pushed the green button, the line went dead. My elation at seeing the call turned to frustration in a second.

Susan Hunter prayed. She prayed for her husband waiting for her back in Cambridge and she prayed for her sister. And at the end she prayed for herself. She wasn’t used to praying. She hadn’t done it since she was eight years old. And she’d never been into it that much back then either.

But she had every reason to start now.

The basement was perfectly dark. She knew how many steps away each wall was, fifteen one way, twenty the other, but some times it felt as if the dark was endless, no matter what her brain told her. Her hands were pressed tight into her stomach.

Pain was throbbing through her.

She was doing all she could to ignore it.

She wanted to cry, to wail, but she wasn’t going to. He might be listening. And he’d enjoy it too much. That much she knew.

Where he had the microphone placed in the basement, she didn’t know, but its existence was irrefutable.

He had come down after a period of her whimpering and played a recording of the noises she’d made to cheer her up. That was how he’d put it.

But the sounds hadn’t cheered her up. They’d chilled her until her insides felt empty.

And then he’d taken her upstairs. The pain then had been horrific. And in the end he’d made her say things, which he recorded.

Then he told her he’d enjoy burning her again, if she didn’t do exactly what she was told every time he asked.

The thought of how he’d said that, his certainty, was enough to set her praying again.

The call went straight to voicemail. My deflation was immediate. Isabel must have seen it on my face.

‘Who was that?’

‘Susan Hunter. Can you believe it? Now her phone is off. I didn’t even get to speak to her!’

‘So she’s around somewhere?’

‘I have no idea. I’ll try her again in a few minutes.’

Simon was standing near me. ‘I can put those ones out,’ he said, putting his hand on the reports.

‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I’m doing them.’

He pulled his hand back. ‘I’m trying to help you, Dr Ryan.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’m just a bit distracted.’

I turned, began putting the reports on the chairs again.

I tried Susan’s phone twice in the following five minutes. The response was the same as every time I’d called her in the past six days, since I’d heard about Kaiser.

‘The number you are trying to reach is unavailable. Please try again later.’ They must be the thirteen most frustrating words in the English language.

As I finished with the reports, Simon was putting a

stack of leaflets on one of the tables at the top of the room. On the other table a laptop had already been set up.

He sat in front of the laptop, turned and motioned me to him.

‘This is what I wanted to show you.’ He clicked at a file. It opened slowly.

‘Who’s coming to this meeting?’ I asked, bending down.

‘Some iron skull caps.’ He didn’t look up.

‘Iron skull caps?’

‘They’re a type of Orthodox Jew,’ said Isabel.

She was on the other side of the table. She looked good in her black shirt.