Edward Whittemore - Jerusalem Poker

Mecca, of course. The navel of Islam inside the Kaaba. The Holy of Holies, a black meteorite.

He inhaled deeply.

Black. Islam deprived of its most sacred object. The stone that pilgrims came from all over the world to kiss. To steal the black meteorite from the Kaaba and render the Holy of Holies utterly empty.

Utterly.

Cairo Martyr laughed. And the black stone itself?

To Africa, of course. He would carry it to Africa where the Arabs had grown rich for centuries on black gold, his people. A black meteorite now to pay for black gold then.

Justice.

It had taken him four years to work out his master plan but it had been worth it, no one could hope for more. He intended to steal the black meteorite from heaven and bury it in rich black African soil, where it belonged.

At the end of the First World War a brooding Cairo Martyr, sleek from four years of solid meat, emerged from seclusion at the top of the Great Pyramid and descended into the raucous crowds and swirling flies of the bazaars of the Middle East, there to hire the wholesale dealers who would receive his smuggled mummy dust and mummy mastic in bulk, cut the first with quinine and the second with glue or glucose and distribute both to retailers who would sell them on the open market in tiny oilskin bags, five pounds sterling per bag.

The dose was small and an impotent man or a barren woman needed more than a bag for treatment.

Three or four bags a day was a common dosage, but habits running to eight or nine bags were far from rare.

Prices varied with the season. In general spring with its illusions of hope was the most profitable sellers'

market, winter with its lethargy the worst. But an outbreak of local tribal warfare could drive sales up at any time. Highly spiced foods tended to do the same in the summer, as did aggressive athletic contests in the autumn.

Usage also varied by region and ethnic background. Desert bedouin, the fierce Kurds and religious Jews seemed immune to the benefits of mummy dust and were almost total abstainers. But the sedentary Arabs of the cities, wealthy Persians and lazy Turks of all classes were heavy consumers.

Sales increased substantially near large rivers, near mosques, on Saturday evenings and during full moons, declining dramatically in the weeks before lambs were slaughtered in the spring. Mummy dust was generally preferred by men and women under thirty, mummy mastic by those over that age. But a confirmed user was more than happy to get his mummy any way he could.

The European authorities in the Middle East moved to suppress the clandestine trade as soon as they became aware of it. Both mummy dust and mummy mastic were declared dangerous drugs and treated accordingly in the courts, but the profits involved in handling them were so huge Martyr had no difficulty establishing a marketing network that reached into every corner of the Levant.

Petty dealers were frequently picked up and jailed for mummy-mastic possession, but due to the precautions Martyr had taken it was nearly impossible for his major wholesalers to be prosecuted.

And on the rare occasions when one was, the English or French magistrate in charge of the case immediately received a large anonymous bribe along with detailed dossiers on a dozen underworld figures in his city, previously unknown criminals who could easily be convicted of any crime because they were guilty of every crime.

The wholesaler was then released for lack of evidence and quickly went abroad to the French Riviera for a vacation arranged by Martyr, after which he would turn up with a different name in another Arab capital, where his expertise could be put to work in some other aspect of the overall operation.

In only three years Cairo Martyr's secret balm network was smoothly functioning throughout the Levant, assuring him a large income for life. The time then came for him to launch the second phase of his master plan, the series of deadly steps that would ultimately lead to the theft of the black meteorite from the Kaaba in Mecca.

With typical patience Martyr intended to approach his goal by degrees. First he would gain clandestine control of Jerusalem, the third holy city of Islam. When that was accomplished he would move on to Islam's second city, Medina. And only then, with all flanks secure, would he take his campaign to Mecca for his final triumph.

But when Martyr arrived in Jerusalem in the autumn of 1921, he found he wasn't alone in seeking secret control of the city. Other clandestine operators were at work in the confusion that had followed the war, in particular a Khasarian Jew from Budapest, Munk Szondi by name, who seemed to have immense resources of his own.

If he had been faced with just this one competitor, Martyr was confident he could have made a deal with the man for an equable division of spoils. In fact he had worked out most of the details for a compromise proposal when he accidentally met Szondi for the first time in a Jerusalem coffee shop where they had both chanced to seek shelter on a cold December afternoon when snow was definitely in the air.

But he couldn't make an offer to Szondi then because a third man happened to be sitting with them in the crowded shop, a young Irishman who also agreed to the game of poker Szondi had suggested as a diversion against the gloomy weather.

A game of poker. A diversion. The wind outside whipping through the alleys. Snow definitely in the air.

And somehow a strange design descending upon the three of them that night after they moved the game to the curiously empty shop of Haj Harun, where Martyr soon made another discovery. For some reason as yet unknown, the Irishman was also seeking secret control of Jerusalem.

Chance had apparently brought them together on the last day of 1921, but now none of them seemed able to leave the game, to escape the mysterious spell that had suddenly locked them in around a poker table.

Why? What was the spell? Did it have something to do with Haj Harun?

Cairo Martyr shrugged. He smiled.

There were complications he didn't yet understand but he was as patient as ever, as patient as his great-grandmother and Menelik Ziwar had been. So patient he never looked at his cards before he bet on them, because he knew in the end he wouldn't win out of luck.

In the end he would win because he had to.

Because his cause was just. Because no one could have a cause more just than his.

Even if it meant facing a siege in the Holy City more arduous than any since the First Crusade.

By the closing days of January 1922, with a month of steady play behind them, the three gamblers had begun to realize they were involved in more than ordinary chronic poker. And it had also become apparent they would have to bring outsiders into the game if they were to make any money, the three of them being too evenly matched to win from each other.

It was Munk Szondi who made the suggestion one night when he had the deal.

What about it, Joe?

Suits me.

Cairo?

An excellent idea.

As Munk shuffled the cards he gazed at the tall antique Turkish safe in the corner.

I've been wondering about that, he said.

Have you now, murmured Joe. Well I recall some wondering about it myself when I walked in here the first time and saw it standing there so tall and thin. That doesn't look to be a safe, I said to myself. It looks more like an impregnable sentry box on local guard duty.

Joe nodded to himself. He smiled, recalling that afternoon nearly two years ago when he had rapped on the safe and heard the echoes from deep in the ground. Haj Harun had then told him the truth.

The safe was bottomless. Inside it was a ladder that led down to the caverns of the past, the ruins of a dozen Old Cities, two dozen Old Cities. Because Jerusalem was on a mountaintop, as Haj Harun explained it, and since it had been endlessly destroyed and rebuilt over the millennia, no one had ever bothered to dig away what was left from before. Instead they had built over the ruins, raising the holy mountain ever higher. And only Haj Harun knew the caverns existed, because he alone had lived in all those former Jerusalems.