‘And those bits of paper that some of them are forcing between the stones are prayers?’
‘Yes,’ Angela said. ‘In fact, all this is really to do with Shechinah. That more or less translates from the Hebrew as the “divine presence”, but actually it’s rather more complicated than that. The word Shechinah is not so much God but more the place where God would be expected to reside. And in Orthodox Judaism, that location would have been the Holy of Holies in the innermost chamber of the First Temple, where the Ark of the Covenant would have been kept. Even after the First Temple was destroyed, the assumption was that the divine presence would have remained in the same place within the Second Temple, and when that was reduced to rubble the spirit would have stayed in the same location, and the closest point to that spot on the top of the Temple Mount that is still accessible to the Jews is the Wailing Wall. So that’s the place where they leave their prayers.’
‘I thought there was some theory that the Ark had ended up in Ethiopia, assuming it ever existed and had managed to last the centuries,’ Bronson said.
‘Yes, it has been suggested, though I don’t believe it,’ Angela replied. ‘According to legend, a place called Aksum in Ethiopia was where the Queen of Sheba lived, and she was believed to have married Solomon, the man who built the First Temple. They had a son, Menelik, who became the first Emperor of Ethiopia, and he’s supposed to have travelled to Jerusalem and, presumably with Solomon’s permission, removed the Ark and carried it back to his own country. There’s a small chapel there, lived in by a single priest, whose only job is to guard the Ark, which is never displayed or seen by anyone else. That’s the first problem, because he could be guarding something completely different, or even looking at an empty room.
‘But, there’s another very obvious problem with this story. The Ark of the Covenant was the single most important treasure that the Jewish people possessed, and I can think of no cogent reason why Solomon would have given it away. During his reign there was no threat to Jerusalem or to the Temple, so there would have been no reason to take it elsewhere for safe keeping. But even if it had been, once the perceived danger had passed presumably it would have been returned, and that’s not what the legend says happened. If Solomon had given away the Ark, and the people had found out about it, he would probably have been lynched, because it really was that important to them. The whole point about Solomon’s Temple was that it was intended to be the final resting place for the relic, the sanctuary where it would remain for ever, so for me this theory really doesn’t hold water.’
Angela took a last sip of coffee then glanced across the Kotel Plaza to where a group of people had begun to assemble near the Western Wall Heritage, the entrance to the tunnel system.
‘That must be our tour,’ she said, gesturing towards them. ‘We should probably get over there.’
Bronson left some money on the table and they strode across the plaza to wait for the tour to begin.
The walk through the tunnel system took a little over one and a quarter hours, but neither Bronson nor Angela were concentrating entirely upon what the guide was telling them. Instead, they kept to the back of the group, looking about them in all directions and taking pictures of anything and everything they saw — any kind of carving or inscription that could possibly be construed as a key.
Not that anything they photographed looked particularly hopeful. There were occasional marks on the stones, some of them possibly left by the masons who had fabricated them, others clearly carved graffiti of one sort or another, most probably dating from countless centuries earlier, and other occasional marks for which they had no obvious explanation.
But at the end of it, neither of them seriously believed that they’d seen anything that could possibly be what they were looking for, and both were feeling somewhat despondent when they emerged from the tunnel system.
‘We’ll need to look at these images on the computer just to make sure,’ Angela said, ‘but I didn’t see anything that appeared to be even slightly hopeful. Did you?’
‘Nothing,’ Bronson replied flatly. ‘I still think it was worth taking the tour, but I’m afraid you’re probably right. This key that the inscription talked about is most likely to be in one of the chambers right under the Temple Mount, and the only way we’re going to be able to find it is to pay a nocturnal visit and hope we can get deep inside the structure.’
Angela nodded but didn’t respond.
‘I checked the door locks when we went in,’ Bronson continued, ‘and they’re better than I had expected, but they’re certainly not top quality. I’m not an expert, but I’m pretty certain that I could pick them, as long as I had about five minutes without interruption. And I didn’t see any cameras inside the tunnels or any infrared detectors, so if we could get in there we’d be safe enough unless they’ve got some guard prowling around during the night who might come along and check the doors. And even then, I might be able to lock the door from the inside.’
Angela glanced at him as they walked along, heading back towards the hotel. ‘You’re determined to go through with this, aren’t you?’
‘I’d rather we didn’t have to,’ Bronson replied, ‘but right now I don’t see any alternative. If we walk away I think there’s a good chance that both of us will be targets of that terrorist group. Our best option is to try to beat them to whatever it is they’re looking for. But I don’t want you to get involved,’ he added. ‘I can go back in there myself. There’s no need for you to take the risk as well.’
‘Not a chance,’ Angela said. ‘You’ll need somebody to hold the torch and keep a lookout while you’re working on the locks. Plus, two pairs of eyes are better than one if we do manage to get into the locked chambers. What I’m trying to say is that where you go, I’m going to go as well, so you’d better start getting used to it.’
Bronson gripped her hand and squeezed it.
‘Thanks,’ he said simply.
38
‘It all looks quiet enough,’ Angela murmured.
She and Bronson were standing on the Kotel Plaza opposite the Wailing Wall, about twenty yards or so down a side street, a position from which they could see almost all of the open space in front of them. They’d been waiting for about ten minutes and in all that time they’d seen only two people — a couple walking arm in arm — cross the square. At a little after two in the morning, the lack of activity was hardly surprising, and exactly what they were hoping for.
‘Right, then,’ Bronson said quietly. ‘There’s no time like the present, I suppose. Let’s go.’
They stepped forward, arm in arm, looking as much as possible like a couple returning from a night out. The last thing they wanted was to be stopped, since in the pockets of Bronson’s lightweight jacket he was carrying three pairs of pliers and two screwdrivers, half a dozen crudely made skeleton keys that he had fabricated during the afternoon, as well as his version of a torsion wrench, a device to apply turning pressure to the barrel of a lock. It was, by any standards, a comprehensive, if home-made, DIY burglary kit, and he was in no doubt that if he was stopped and searched, he would be spending the rest of that night in a police cell.
They wandered casually across to the Wailing Wall, and for a few seconds just stood beside it, again checking that they were unobserved. Then they moved into the shadows cast by the Western Wall Heritage building and stood motionless for a moment.
‘So far, so good,’ Angela murmured.
‘That was very definitely the easy bit,’ Bronson said.
‘From now on, if anybody sees us or stops us, we’re in big trouble.’