From his room in the Intercontinental Hotel, Bartlett gazed down into the walled city of Jerusalem. The strengthening morning sunlight burnished the Dome of the Rock, Islam’s third holiest shrine, and somewhere among the jostling buildings, warmed the Western Wall, the Via Dolorosa, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre – the shrines of Jewry and Christianity. Jerusalem was the Koran and the Bible with Testaments old and new bound in stone. A city sacred to a billion and a half people.
And yet, Bartlett thought, the history of the city of Abraham, David and Solomon, of Mohammed and Jesus Christ, was written in blood. Persians, Macedonians, Egyptians, Ptolemies – they had all ruled it until the Maccabean rebellion restored it to the Jews in 17 B.C. – or B.C.E. as the Jews put it. Then the Romans, the Byzantines, the Persians again, Arabs and Seljuks, Crusaders, Mongols, Mamelukes, Turks, British, Jordanians. Then, in 1967, the Jews again.
Bartlett observed from a distance and tried to be awed. He failed. The view was somehow ordained – a colour slide of Jerusalem, the Eternal City. He could hear a guide as sonorous as a psalm. It was instructional religion, a magnificent tableau, a vast crib.
He stubbed out his cigarette and turned away from the window. He had to go into the city now before cynicism took root; alone, away from the organised tour arranged for the geologists. You had to feel Jerusalem, not have it explained to you biblical chapter and verse.
He unpacked his suitcase rapidly and looked at his watch. It was 10 a.m. He had three hours before the official lunch and five hours before the conference was due to begin.
He walked along the Jericho Road and King Solomon Street. The air smelled of coffee and cedar wood. He passed a few Arab children, a donkey, a group of extreme Orthodox Jews who looked like black crows from a distance, an Egged tourist bus parked at the roadside while its tourists took snaps of a camel.
At the Damascus Gate he walked past the pleading taxi drivers into the walled city. He held his briefcase very tightly.
Bartlett took the right fork inside the gate along the Suq Khan Ez-Zeit in the Christian quarter. It seemed to him very much like any other Arab town. The alley roofs squeezing the sky, the gabbling crowds patrolling the alleys, the postcard sellers, the shops like coal cellars stuffed with sweetmeats, hot bread, wooden camels, brassware, meat moving with flies; the coffee shops, the smokers of hubble-bubble pipes, the pestilence of guides, the fighting children, the tourists as quick on the draw with their cameras as gunfighters with their guns.
One guide was more insistent than the others. A heavily built Arab in an open-neck blue shirt beneath a lightweight, blue suit. Bartlett thought he looked a bit like Nasser.
‘No thank you,’ he said ‘I don’t want a guide.’
The Arab caught hold of Bartlett’s arm. ‘You will not be disappointed. Very cheap. I will show David’s Tower, the pool of Bethesda where Jesus healed the cripple, the El Aqsa Mosque which. was presented by the noble Saladin in 1168.’
Bartlett shook his arm free. ‘I said no. Now clear off.’
At the Church of the Holy Sepulchre belief and reverence began to assert themselves. The site of Calvary. He joined nuns and priests and sightseers in the devout darkness. Greek Orthodox, Christian Arab, Catholic, Protestant. Many with different ideas about the exact siting of the Cross. But that didn’t seem to matter: one God embraced the Church and perhaps the whole city.
Outside the Arab who looked like Nasser was waiting for him. ‘And now,’ he said, ‘I will take you to the Western Wall – or the Wailing Wall as it is called.’ He quoted from a guide book experiencing considerable trouble with pronunciation. ‘It is the age old place of Jewish lamentation and prayer for its restoration.’
‘Are you implying that you brought me here to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre?’
The Arab gave his toothy dictator smile. ‘I am only too pleased to help.’
It seemed vaguely to Bartlett that he was only acting the part of guide. ‘Listen here,’ he said. ‘You didn’t lead me here. Nor are you leading me anywhere else. Even if you follow me right round Jerusalem you’re not getting a penny. Understand?’
The Arab smiled. ‘This way to the Western Wall,’ he said.
They walked along the Bab El-Silsileh Road to the courtyard in front of the great yellow-slabbed wall. The Arab stopped on the edge of the courtyard. Bartlett took a cardboard hat from an official and went up to the wall in the section reserved for men. They stood, hands pressed. against the old stone, praying, lamenting. Bartlett imagined the jubilation and emotion of the victorious Israeli troops when they saw the Wall in 1967. Again awe and reverence settled upon him.
The Arab was waiting for him on the perimeter of the courtyard. ‘And now,’ he said, ‘I shall show you the Dome of the Rock from which Mohammed ascended into heaven.’
‘You’ll show me nothing,’ Bartlett said.
‘Perhaps a cup of coffee first?’
Bartlett’s reply was not in accord with the mood and the scene and he felt ashamed of it. The Arab was unperturbed.
Bartlett walked quicker without observing where he was going. The Arab walked beside him.
‘If you don’t clear off,’ Bartlett said, ‘I’ll call the police.’
The Arab smiled encouragingly. The mixture of fear and excitement that had accompanied Bartlett since the phone call in his Sussex home heightened. He walked faster; so did the Arab.
They were on high ground near the old wall of the city. Bartlett looked down and saw the green Hills of Jerusalem covered with olive trees and small, sandy houses that looked as if they could be crunched underfoot. The Arab continued to smile.
There was no one in the lane of ruined, tooth-stump houses except a few children. The Arab stretched out a hand towards Bartlett’s briefcase. The smile had been erased and one hand was inside his jacket.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ Bartlett said.
‘The briefcase, please. Quickly. I have a gun here.’
Bartlett began to walk away.
‘Stop.’
Bartlett turned and saw the Luger in the Arab’s hand. He stopped. The children sensing excitement. stood beside the Arab.
Bartlett said: ‘Can you please tell me what’s going on? I’ve got no money in there, you know.’
‘I know that. Now please give it to me.’
‘To hell with you,’ Bartlett said.
‘I have warned you. I intend to get it before the Russians.’ His finger tightened on the trigger. Then perhaps they will stop making us feel small.’ He moved closer and prodded the barrel of the big pistol in Bartlett’s ribs. ‘They say that we cannot do anything properly. I will show them. The briefcase, please.’
The three ragged children watched happily; one playing with the buttons of a shirt like a pyjama jacket, another picking his nose.
Bartlett said: ‘You’re too late. The police are here.’
The Arab turned and Bartlett thought how easy it would be to rabbit-punch him. But he was accomplished in geology not karate.
The Arab swore and turned to run. The Israeli police caught him.
One of the policemen said: ‘What is the trouble, sir?’
Bartlett smiled because they spoke like London policemen. Except that they wore dark peaked caps and drill shorts and shirts and they were darker than the Arab. He said: ‘This man was trying to steal my briefcase.’
‘Was he now?’ The senior policeman talked rapidly in Arabic then turned back to Bartlett. ‘He says he is merely showing you Jerusalem. He says he made no attempt to steal your briefcase. He says he thinks you have gone a little mad. The sun perhaps.’
‘He’s a bloody liar. Do I look mad?’
The policeman shook his head. ‘Not really, sir. But perhaps he was trying to grab at you to show you something. These guides can be a nuisance like that.’
‘He was trying to steal my briefcase,’ Bartlett said. ‘What’s more, he’s got a gun inside his jacket.’
The policeman’s hand strayed to his own gun. ‘Is that true?’ he said in Arabic.
The Arab’s hands fawned.
The policeman said: ‘He still says you’re crazy.’
‘Then search him.’
The second policeman slapped the Arab’s body without any concessions to gentleness and rifled his pockets. ‘Nothing there,’ he said.
‘But there must be,’ Bartlett said.
‘Sorry sir, but there isn’t.’ The policeman and the Arab looked up at the sun in the hot blue sky.
So did Bartlett. Was he going crazy? A persecution complex? A couple of minutes ago the Arab had been pointing a gun at him. Where was it? He looked up the road and saw the three children disappearing round the corner. ‘Forget it,’ he said.
He walked with the policemen through a confusion of lanes. Past ruined synagogues and living churches. There was little evidence that they were in an occupied. city. Occasionally they saw other policemen and a few Israeli soldiers heavy with guns. But that was all. The preponderance of aliens among the Arabs were the tourists and the extreme Orthodox Jews, some with ginger hair and big fur hats.
They passed a sign asserting VIRGIN MARY BORN HERE. The police left him at the corner of the Aqabat Darwish and the Via Dolorosa beside the Chapel of Flagellation near the Second Station of the Cross. He walked slowly towards the Third Station where Jesus fell for the first time. He stopped at a small hot café like a cave and ordered coffee. He permitted a boy to shine his shoes and searched the passing crowds for a smile like Nasser’s. He felt quite calm because he was becoming accustomed to his fugitive status.
The coffee was thick and sweet. The boy’s enthusiastic polishing tickled his feet. He gave him a coin and thought how much he and Helen would have enjoyed sharing the experience of Jerusalem ten years ago. Before she had settled for the cocktail values of life in preference to the afternoon tea pleasures of being a geologist’s wife. Occasionally he missed her company; but not very often. these days; the infidelity had become too blatant.
He paid for his coffee and glanced at his watch. It was midday. He would have to be getting back to the hotel. He picked up the briefcase which he had kept on the table and walked into the Via Dolorosa. near Our Lady of the Spasm. He was turning right towards the Church of St Veronica when the briefcase was wrenched from his hand. He caught. a glimpse of the Nasser-profile and gave chase.
As he ran he realised that he was following the rest of the Stations of the Cross up the ascent to Calvary. The Arab paused on the corner of El Beiraq and glanced behind him. Bartlett gained ground and. shouted, ‘Stop, thief!’ A few people stopped and looked at him with surprise. But their reactions were too slow. The Arab plunged on along the Via Dolorosa towards the site of the Gate of Judgement where Jesus fell for the second time.
Bartlett pushed and elbowed his way through the tourists, the pilgrims, the Arabs. Everyone seemed to be going in the opposite direction. Sweat poured down his face; his chest ached; his age called to him.
He lost the Arab at the Eighth Station marked by a cross on the wall of the Greek Orthodox Convent of St Charalambos. It was also the end of the Via Dolorosa.
He saw the Arab look behind him. Then the crowds closed between them. When he reached the Station there was no sign of the Arab. Bartlett knew it was hopeless.
He walked back towards the Damascus Gate, stopping on the way for an orange mineral water and a cigarette. Before he realised it another boy was polishing one of his shoes again.
In the mêlée outside the Damascus Gate he climbed into a cab and told the driver to take him to the hotel.
The driver said: ‘You American?’
Bartlett didn’t reply.
A couple of minutes later they were at the hotel. The driver said: ‘That will be two dollars.’ Bartlett again replied without respect for the setting and gave him the equivalent of fifty cents.
The geologists stood in groups in the foyer of the hotel gesticulating and talking in half a dozen languages.
Bartlett found Wheeler and said: ‘What the hell’s going on?’
Wheeler said: ‘Apparently about half of the delegates went to some Arab restaurant last night and they’ve all got dysentery.’ He smiled. ‘Serves them right – they should have eaten Kosher.’
‘And what’s going to happen?’
‘They’re postponing the conference for a couple of days. Anyone who wants to can go home. But I’m staying – I like it here.’
‘So do I,’ Bartlett said. ‘With certain reservations.’
‘Are you going to stay?’
‘Naturally,’ Bartlett said.
While they were talking Bartlett was paged. There was a phone call for him and it was Raquel. ‘Good news, I hear,’ she said.
‘What do you mean good news? They’ve postponed the conference for two days.’
‘I know. That’s what I mean. I’ve got to go into the Golan Heights for two days. Now you will be able to come with me.’
Pleasure leaped inside him as it had in the days when he had looked forward to a weekend with Helen. ‘How did you know that the conference had been postponed?’
‘It was on the radio. Apparently a lot of you learned gentlemen have gone down with stomach trouble. You haven’t caught it, have you?’
‘I nearly caught lead poisoning in old Jerusalem this morning.’
‘How was that?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘One of your jokes, perhaps?
‘Perhaps,’ he said.
‘Then I shall come round to your hotel later today. Shalom.’
‘Shalom, shalom,’ he said.
He found Wheeler in the bar having a drink with the Polish Jew Matthew Yosevitz. Yosevitz said: ‘Good afternoon, Mr Bartlett. You left the party very quickly last night. It wasn’t the complaint that our colleagues are suffering from, was it?’
Bartlett shook his head.
‘That was a very pretty girl you were dancing with.’
‘Yes,’ Bartlett said. ‘She is very pretty.’
‘Israeli?’
‘She’s not Arab.’ He looked into the pale eyes behind the gold-rimmed spectacles. ‘I had quite a morning this morning.’
‘Really? What happened?’
‘An Arab stole my briefcase in the Old City.’
Yosevitz turned abruptly and knocked his glass of vodka off the bar. ‘Really?’ he said. ‘How very distressing for you.’