Jerusalem Poker

At the time, on New Year's Day, Nubar hadn't been exactly sure why he had reacted so quickly to the report. But something had been working at the back of his mind, something having to do with Jerusalem and the Holy Land.

The answer to his cable had finally arrived that morning, a thick folder of briefing material, and Nubar found the information in it shocking.

The game, it seemed, was notorious throughout the Middle East. Anyone who hadn't been in it at one time or another had at least heard of it and wanted to be in it. And its reputation had spread far beyond the Levant, witness the lost Greek's eagerness to go there to try to win his fortune. The game had already been going for six full years, in fact it had just entered its seventh year with no end in sight. The money changing hands was incalculable.

Three men had founded the game and were its only permanent members, all mentioned in the lost Greek's report.

Szondi, the defender of old Polish clocks that belonged to poor kibbutz farmers, was a dedicated Zionist.

And as a Zionist, quite naturally, he traded in futures, as noted by the lost Greek, since there was no Jewish homeland at present. His first name was Munk, perhaps because he liked to think of himself as the monk of the coming Jewish revolution.

The Irishman, who merrily offered paralyzing drinks from antique cognac bottles, was one O'Sullivan Beare. He had made a fortune selling spurious Christian artifacts that were undeniably phallic in shape.

And he was still selling them, claiming they were blessed by an ecclesiastic, obviously fictional, known as the baking priest.

The beaming black Arab, actually a Sudanese, had the unlikely name of Cairo Martyr. He was also making a fortune on the side by selling pharaonic mummy dust and mummy mastic, renowned in the Levant as aphrodisiacs and euphoric agents.

As for the grandiloquent name of the game, that came from the fact that the ultimate prize at stake was nothing less than complete clandestine control of Jerusalem. That was the goal sought by each of the three founding members, and of course by anyone who challenged them, whether the challenger realized it or not.

Nubar was stunned.

Complete clandestine control of Jerusalem?

Now he understood why the lost Greek's report had immediately caught his attention. Jerusalem was where his grandfather had buried the original Sinai Bible after producing his forgery of it. The real original was still there and he, Nubar, was its rightful owner.

Jerusalem, the Holy City. The eternal city. Could it be, then, that the Sinai Bible was the philosopher's stone he was seeking? Containing all the ancient eternal truths, the one sure way to immortality?

Was it time to put aside the gaseous, chaotic mercury experiments of his youth and boldly take what belonged to him?

Nubar was beginning to think so. He was ready to make a momentous decision. And that's why he felt that today, Epiphany, 1928, might well be the most important day of his life.

The pelicans and alembics on his workbench, the crucibles and athanors, seethed and gurgled and hissed and bubbled as he hunched over them, engulfed in their mercury fumes. Midnight was near. Around his tower the storm raged. The moment had come for the third eye of occultism to see the unseeable in the darkness.

Nubar took the small sphere of polished obsidian from its hiding place in his workbench. attached to the sphere was a loop of nearly invisible gold thread. He smiled at the black volcanic glass and rubbed it against the side of his nose, the oils of his skin bringing it to a high luster. He placed the gold thread around the top of his head so that the obsidian sphere hung in the middle of his forehead, his third eye.

Now he possessed supernatural powers of perception.

The power to sum it all up. To consider the totality of the universe and make his decision.

Nubar mixed mercury, heated mercury, mechanically repeating the master alchemist's instructions. He lowered his head into the fumes as his mind wandered through the stormy night from plots and strategems to the possibility of joining Paracelsus in an exclusive society of immortals, to Zog, to the Black Book, to the muscular stable boy with curly hair, to teetotalism, the Protocols, a primitive volcanic eye.

To vegetables and black glass and a dark cemetery in Prague, to the Theban Sacred Band and the original Bible discovered by his grandfather in the Sinai, to the moat around the castle and hygiene in general.

The Uranist Intelligence Agency and whole-wheat bread and Krk-Brac, the whole truth and the Great Jerusalem Poker Game, the Assassins and subterranean trains and the Old Man of the Mountain.

Black glass, primitive volcanic eyes. A third eye, bombs.

The Black Book. Said to have been compiled by the German secret service before the war. Said to contain the names of forty-seven thousand English homosexuals in high places, both male and female.

Entrusted to the care of Prince William of Wied when he came to Albania in 1914 to serve briefly as king. Who had the Black Book now? Could it be bought or stolen? Did Zog know where it was?

Zog. Born Ahmed Zogu of the Zogolli clan of the Mati district. Dictator of Albania for the last three years and soon to crown himself King Zog I. Sophia had worked for the liberal leader, Bishop Fan Noli, but Nubar had backed the cause of the reactionary Zog. What rewards would be his after Zog's coronation?

The Uranist Intelligence Agency. His own private network of Paracelsus agents and informers, feared throughout the Balkans and perhaps beyond. Criminals of the highest caliber making up the largest private intelligence service in the world.

The Theban Sacred Band. Three hundred heroic young warriors of noble blood in ancient Thebes, bound together by oath in defense of their ideals and their city-state, an elite homosexual brotherhood that had lived and fought in mutual passion until slaughtered by Philip of Macedonia. Could the Band be reborn in Albania? Would that be the reward he requested from Zog?

The stable boy had rolled his eyes as he lit Nubar's cigarette, forbidden to Nubar according to one of the resolutions he had made on his twenty-first birthday. But Nubar had rapidly inhaled the cigarette anyway in the dizziness of the moment, in the shadows at the back of the stables where he had slipped down onto a pile of damp hay, a sudden weight on him and a fiery pain rushing up to cleanse his body.

Mercury fumes, chronic poisoning, delirium.

Using the crucibles on his workbench, Nubar mixed equal amounts of sulphur and lead and iron and arsenic, copper sulphate and mercury and opium. Equal amounts as he poured and mixed, as he drifted above his workbench through the stormy night numbly repeating the experiment again and again in search of the unique set of circumstances, in search of Paracelsus and his secret society of immortals.

While in a dark cemetery in Prague aging men with long thick noses bent over a little boy, holding him tightly and taunting him, their white beards matted and filthy, the Old Man of the Mountain slowly thrusting a dull rusted knife between the little boy's legs.

Nubar shuddered and found himself standing in front of a military formation, three hundred handsome young men at attention. They wore the helmets and swords and tunics of ancient Greece, identical in cut and color. Courageous invincible warriors waiting for him to address them, to lead them again into victorious battle as only he could do, their immortal commander Parastein von Ho von Heim, Celsus of Bombastus, the incomparable von Wallenbomb.

The handsome young warriors cheered him, holding up their clenched fists in salute. Nubar nodded solemnly and waved for silence. With a flourish he slipped his right hand around his right buttock. The lines and ranks watched him breathlessly.

Wild cheering erupted. Nubar grinned and nodded. For a moment he was able to thrust his whole fist in up to the wrist. The massed young warriors were screaming ecstatically. The muscular stable boy knelt beside him, waiting with bowed head. Nubar carefully wiped his fist on the boy's curly hair.

Whole-wheat bread and vegetables, curly hair and bombs.

Fumes. More mercury fumes and a moat, hygiene in general and the Assassins and subterranean passages. Brac. A dull rusted knife. Explosions.

And across the sea a poker game being played by three ruthless criminals for control of Jerusalem. The Sinai