swoop back and slowly begin to circle.
Ah that's better, that's nicely reassuring. For a moment there all this was unsettling my mind. Here I'd been thinking about finding the Sinai Bible these last dozen years and more, thinking no one in the game knew the great secret of its existence but me, and what do I discover all of a sudden? You and Munk both knew about it, that's what. And you, Cairo. Just a couple of months ago we spent a long night up here talking together, deciding to end the game, and you let me run on about the Sinai Bible as if you'd never heard of it. Guilty or not?
Cairo smiled.
No, I never did anything like that.
You didn't? Is my mind adrift and afloat in the manner of Haj Harun? I certainly thought you did.
No. I simply asked you how you'd heard about it. And more important, what it meant to you.
Is that all?
Yes.
And I just ran on and on after that? Well I do that, I know. But why didn't you interrupt me and say you already bloody well knew about the Sinai Bible? That everyone in the game knew about it? Of course, what else, since it's just about the oldest piece of goods in Jerusalem.
About three thousand years old? said Cairo, smiling.
Joe groaned.
Oh all right, so I was running on and you were just being a good listener. But tell me this, Cairo. After you'd heard about the Sinai Bible, why weren't you ever interested in finding it? Why wasn't Munk?
I guess we had our own goals in the game.
And so you did. And so in the end, all we know is where the game ends. Jerusalem naturally. Jerusalem of course. Saith ending of endings end. Jerusalem as it was and will be. And here we are with you and Munk and that nasty little Nubar all cousins today, friends and foes alike related, and where does that leave me? Don't I get to be related to someone?
I would think so. In fact since you were the youngest of thirty-three brothers, I would think you must have quite a few nieces and nephews, not to mention their children.
True, I must. Quite a few. Even though seventeen of my brothers were killed fighting in the Great War, that still leaves room for a number of nieces and nephews and their children.
Where are the rest of your brothers?
America mostly, scattered around something called the Bronx. I'll have to look them up someday. But you and Munk and little Nubar all second cousins a century after the fact. That was some job for one great-grandfather, this tireless young Luigi. Whatever became of him?
He died of dysentery at St Catherine's monastery in 1817. Do you know anything about St Catherine's?
Just that it's quiet and remote. I tramped in there once to have a turn around and climb the mountain.
Wanted to know what it felt like to stand up there, but of course no one spoke to me or gave me any tablets.
A lobster tail cracked in Joe's hands.
Oh my God, wait, you're not going to tell me that's where Skanderbeg Wallenstein found the Sinai Bible?
Of course.
Where else, of course, naturally that was the place. Anything more?
That's also where he did his forgery. In a cave just below the summit.
Joe whistled softly.
Full circle, no stop. St Catherine's it is on all counts, all points touched and none left out, the miracle of the mountain and why not. Luigi fathers everyone and then dies there, having been a Christian and a Jew and a Moslem at one time or another, and then one of his sons finds the original Bible there and forges a new original there. And then one of his great-grandsons, our very own Munk of course, finds his cause there, through the intervention of a Japanese baron of course, just as you'd expect, and soon this said Munk will proceed to win the Great Jerusalem Poker Game, of course and of course. It's the nature of the game assuredly and it's all clear to me now, now that it's behind me. That rogue Luigi has brought it all together, and nicely so. But he must have been a mischievous one, that's what he must have been, carrying on and about the way he did and ordering and disordering things a century later. Ah yes. And tell me, Cairo, speaking of nasty little Nubar, what do you hear about him these days?
He's in Venice and doesn't seem to be faring too well. There could be drastic news soon.
Can't say I wouldn't be ready for that. Never did like the way he tried to tinker with our game. To my mind you either sit down and play or you don't.
And lastly, said Cairo, there's the name Johann Luigi used when he was traveling in disguise.
Do you tell me that? I was just hoping there might be one last tiny item tucked away somewhere. What name could it have been?
Sheik Ibrahim ibn Harun.
Was it now. Well well well. I think he deserves a toast for that as well as everything else. Let's hoist a glass to Sheik Luigi and his particular names. I like the idea of him calling himself Abraham, the son of Harun. Who's to say after all? On his way down from Aleppo, when he began his wanderings, he just might have stopped in Jerusalem and met a remarkable gent by the name of Harun, and decided that if he was going to wander in these parts it would be best to become the adopted son of that remarkable elderly gent, honoring the old man too that way and also maybe picking up a little of the old sorcerer's magic by association, just in case a miracle became necessary, which it seems to me his wanderings certainly were. Yes indeed, a striking possibility and worth a toast to cap our Christmas celebration.
They got to their feet beside the table heaped with lobster shells and bottles. Joe was wearing mittens, Cairo had put on his gloves. The weather had grown colder as the afternoon wore on. The sky was dark and it looked like snow again. They stood with mufflers wrapped around their ears, gazing out over the Old City.
To Sheik Luigi, said Joe. Without him there never would have been the longest poker game in the back room of Haj Harun's former antiquities shop.
They drank, then went inside the little hut and threw their glasses into the small grate where a turf fire was slumbering.
A Christmas and was it not, Cairo?
A time, Joe. A good time for all of us.
Joe lowered his eyes. He looked down at the floor.
Ah God willing, for some of us anyway. Peace to seek.
-16-
Venice 1933
On a cold December day in 1933, Nubar lay shivering in bed watching the thick winter fog roll up against the windows of his palazzo in Venice. Sophia was now sending him cables almost every day inquiring about his health, asking him what his plans were, wondering how his short holiday in Venice had inexplicably stretched into a stay of nearly a year.
WHAT ARE YOU DOING THERE, NUBAR?
It was terrible. He couldn't possibly tell Sophia what he was doing.
TO BE FRANK, I'M IN HIDING. I HAD TO ESCAPE FROM ALBANIA BECAUSE OF AN
INCIDENT IN A FISHING VILLAGE AND I CAN'T COME BACK RIGHT NOW BECAUSE
OF THE LIES THAT MIGHT BE TOLD ABOUT ME. PEOPLE WILL DO THAT, JUST LIE AND
LIE. BUT NO MATTER HOW OUTRAGEOUSLY I'M SLANDERED, BUBBA, I'LL TRIUMPH
IN THE END, I PROMISE YOU.
And he could even imagine exactly what her response would be.
PROMISES, NUBAR? SPARE ME, DON'T PROMISE ME ANYTHING. JUST TELL ME HOW
YOU SPEND YOUR DAYS. ARE YOU GETTING OUT OF THE HOUSE ENOUGH AND ARE
YOU DRESSING WARMLY?
And another statement of fact.
WELL TO BE FRANK AGAIN, BUBBA, I DON'T DRESS AT ALL DURING THE DAY
