“Is this the head of the garden?” Marcus asked.
“The head? What do you mean, sir?”
“I’m not sure, really.”
She tilted her face and looked up at Marcus, blinking hard a few times, the orange sunset giving her eyes the hue of aged pennies. “I don’t think the garden has a head or a tail, for that matter. For the last hundred years or so, people have come though this gate.”
Marcus smiled. “By head, I meant an entrance, beginning, and end…or an exit.”
She nodded. “I must go now. Good evening, sir.”
“Wait, please. Is there a statue somewhere in here? Or is there a painting of someone crying…one eye is weeping and the other is not?”
“The mosaic on the front of the church…it is said our Lord is weeping in the picture. I do not know if He sheds tears from only one eye. I must leave now.”
“I know you have rules, but may I look around the garden? I promise to lock the gate on my way out.”
The old nun considered the request for a moment. A sudden cool wind blew in from the belly of the Kidron Valley and tumbled over the Mount of Olives, jostling the boughs of a eucalyptus tree near the gate. Then the wind stopped as abruptly as it had arrived. A rooster crowed somewhere in the hills behind the Church of Mary Magdalene. The nun seemed to stand a little straighter, her eyes searching Marcus’s face. She touched a silver cross hanging from her neck. “May you find what you seek,” she said. “Enter, please. I’m Sister Nemov. I have supper to fix for others up the hill. Just pull the gate shut when you leave. It will lock on its own.”
“Thank you. I’m Paul Marcus.”
Sister Nemov nodded, eyes closed for a second. She clasped her hands together, knuckles the size of pecans, swollen from arthritis, and stood to one side when Marcus walked through the open gate. She said, “Perhaps you would want to enter the church. It is very beautiful. The Holy Rock of Agony is there, too.”
“I appreciate that.” Marcus looked around the entryway. There was nothing but old, cut stone and a cobblestone path bordered by white lilies and flowers he’d never seen. “Those flowers smell like junipers.”
The old woman smiled. “They are called Myrtus. It’s a Hebrew word.”
Marcus thought about his conversation with Nathan Levy. Code named Myrtus.
Sister Nemov said, “Most people call them myrtle, and it’s the leaves which have the pleasant smell, not the blossoms. However, the blossoms always reminded me of stars, maybe the morning star, because they have five petals.” She nodded, turned and walked up the hill, limping slightly on her left side moving toward the golden domes of the church of Mary Magdalene.
Marcus stepped into the Church of All Nations, the smell of burning candles, incense, and scented oils wafting from the small sanctuary. The altar, framed by four large marble columns, was made of white stone. Behind it, from floor to ceiling, was a vertical mural depicting Jesus praying on a rock, olive trees to the left and right, an angel hovering high in the sky above him.
Marcus walked slowly, looking at the murals, statues and paintings. He came across a rock, resembling a section of granite, undulated with pits and swells, maybe ten-by-ten in size. It was in the middle of a hall, past a simple altar, where just beyond it, seven candles burned. A few spotlights illuminated a carved image of Jesus hanging from a wooden cross. A small wrought iron barrier surrounded the rock on the floor. It was apparently installed to prevent people from walking across the stone, but diminutive enough to allow them to kneel and touch the rock.
Marcus could see that the creamy white stone was darkened in places near the edges. It was tinged with light browns and mustard yellows, colors a flame could turn a marshmallow. He assumed it was from the multitude of hands that had pressed against the stone supporting people and their prayers. Marcus stepped to the edge of the ancient rock. He looked up above the altar to the image of Jesus nailed to the cross, the light from the flickering candles casting moving shadows over the cross. He felt tightness in his chest, his mouth dry…to the head of the garden, one eye weeps for man, and one sees revelation in the direction of the temple measured by Solomon, a rose without thorns blooms under a new sun. The truth is found fewer than two hundred shadows of the moon, for the shadow is to the seeker as the seeker is to the shadow.
FIFTY-TWO
When he stepped outside from the Church of All Nations, it was almost dark. A flushed smudge of the sun’s last rays faded far beyond the Old City, the Dome of the Rock now a silhouette. The lights of Jerusalem glowed in a sea of shadows caught between cut granite blocks, adobe, concrete, and glass. Marcus’s cell buzzed in his pocket. The screen read: UNKNOWN. Marcus answered and Bill Gray said, “Paul, we need you back here. Something’s come up.”
“Who are we? What’s come up?”
Marcus heard Gray sigh into the phone. “The police have arrested a suspect in the deaths of Jen and Tiffany.”
Marcus’s heart hammered. His palm was damp, fingers gripping the phone. “Are you sure?”
Gray was silent for a moment. “Yes, Paul. A local guy. He’s a low life meth head with a long rap sheet.”
“I’ll catch the first plane out of Tel Aviv.”
“I hope this will bring closure to you. Goodnight, Paul.”
Marcus disconnected and tried to think. His head ached, scalp tight, muscles knotting in his back. He watched the fog building from the Kidron Valley, diffusing some of the perimeter lights of Jerusalem while a full moon inched above the city. He stepped into a garden near the church. He was alone, exhausted, eyes burning, the sound of traffic far away down the Jericho Road. Stone paths laced through the garden, flowers planted along the paths. Huge olive trees, most with ancient and massive gnarled trunks, stood like aged warriors along the path. Under the moonlight, Marcus could see that the knotted girth of each tree was filled with dark pockets and crevices, many cavernous enough to reach inside the fissures carved into the bark by the knife of time. Some of the trees predated sections of the Old City.
Marcus walked around the gardens, heavy with the scent of hibiscus and olives. What was the head? What was he looking for, and would he recognize it if he found it? The moon rose higher above the old trees and a mist snaked through the wrought iron gates surrounding the garden. He could see olives growing from some of the trees. How many centuries of crops, he wondered. Who had picked from these trees? Who had found shade under the same branches he now walked beneath where dappled moonlight cast bent and crooked shadows across the paths?
He suddenly felt very tired, heavy fatigue building behind his eyes. He sat on a concrete bench under a majestic old olive tree and thought about his wife and daughter. Police have arrested a suspect in the deaths of Jen and Tiffany. Finally. But was it true?
He reminded himself that their deaths were the reason he was here. But what had he done? He felt so disconnected. Alone in a garden.
Soon the fog erased the shadows and Marcus felt a chill in the night air. Something, maybe a bat, flapped wings overhead in the dark, the cool air drifting down his neck. The fog moved, covering the tree trunks and settling beneath limbs that seemed to be floating on top of a white sea. Marcus wondered if he could find his way back to the small exit.
He heard steps. Soft steps. Not the heels of hard sole shoes, but more like steps from sneakers or boat shoes. They stopped. Marcus felt the scar on his chest tingle. He breathed deeply and silently. His mind raced. Did he really hear something? Was someone lost? Was it the man he’d seen watching him? Who and why? He lowered himself to the damp earth and felt around the base of a tree. He found a rock almost the size of his hand. He stood and held his breath. Listening.