documents dated way before the foundation of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the fourth century. There were manuscripts on goat parchment almost two thousand years old. Some of them may still exist, locked away in the libraries of our rivals. My dream is to find just one of these manuscripts, something dating from the lifetime of Jesus and his followers, those who met him and actually heard his word, and to house it up here in a purpose-built library. Something that speaks to all the pilgrims of any denomination who come here seeking Jesus, not the bickering and rivalry you see below. Having that kind of treasure to show the world would put the Ethiopian community firmly on the map again, as something more than a bunch of oddballs camped out on the roof.’
Jack shaded his eyes and glanced past the dingy grey structures of the monks’ cells to the holy cross on top of the dome over Christ’s tomb, rising behind the west range of the courtyard in front of him. The seeming purity of the scene, the whitewashed walls set against the sky, seemed to bely the complex history Helena had been describing, yet he knew they were standing on the accretion of centuries like an archaeological site. ‘I agree, he murmured. ‘This would be the perfect place. I’d love to help you.’
‘We don’t have much of a stake below, near the tomb, but up here we feel we’ve got the edge. Right over the spot where Christ rose, as high as you can get.’
‘You believe this is the place?’ Costas asked.
She paused. ‘It’s like everything else to do with early Christianity. You have to cut away so much encrustation to reach the truth, and sometimes the truth you were seeking just isn’t there to be found.’
‘The encrustation of history,’ Costas murmured. ‘Funny, Jack uses that word too.’
‘Same school, I guess,’ Helena grinned. ‘The Church of the Holy Sepulchre wasn’t dedicated until three hundred years after Jesus’ death, at a time when the search was on among some Christian clergy for a fantasy past, one that fitted the political needs of the emperor Constantine the Great. The story of his mother Helena finding a fragment of the True Cross in one of the ancient water cisterns below the church is probably just that, encrustation. But there’s truth here too. This place where we’re standing really was an ancient hill, outside the city walls. There were tombs here at the time of Jesus, and it could have been a site for executions. It all adds up.’
‘You’re sounding dangerously like an archaeologist, Helena,’ Jack said.
‘It’s what lies under it all that I want to get at, the bare bones of history.’
‘They’re not always bare, in my experience,’ Costas muttered.
‘Don’t mind him,’ Jack said, smiling. ‘He’s recently traumatized.’ He turned back to Helena. ‘But I understand what you’re getting at.’
‘There’s something about spending time on this rooftop, Jack,’ Helena said. ‘It’s as if everything below is smothered under the great weight of the past. Up here, with nothing but the sky over us, it’s like being above a great bowl of history, radiating upwards to some distant focal point. And looking down, all the absurdities of humanity seem trivial, easily dispensable. You seem to see the shape of things for what they really are, the simple truths. It gives me hope that one day I will find the real Jesus, Jesus the man. That’s what makes this place precious to us. I sat beside the Sea of Galilee only a few days ago, just water and shimmering hills and sky, and I seemed to see it all so clearly in front of me.’
Jack glanced at Helena. ‘I’d love you to share some of that. But first we need your help. Pretty urgently. It’s what I called you about. Is there somewhere we can go?’
At that moment Morgan came up the stairs on to the rooftop courtyard. Like Jack and Costas he was wearing chinos and a loose shirt, but he was carrying a straw hat which he put on as he came out into the sun walking towards them.
‘Welcome to the kingdom of heaven,’ Costas smiled.
‘It’s hot enough to be the other place,’ Morgan said, then looked at Helena apologetically and held out his hand. ‘You must be Sister Selassie.’
‘Dr Morgan.’
Helena gestured for them to follow her to a line of doors on the other side of the courtyard. The walls and upper structure of the church that surrounded the courtyard kept the noise of the city at bay, but there was a sudden sharp clatter from somewhere nearby followed by a series of percussive echoes. ‘Gunfire,’ Jack said. ‘Sounds like. 223, M16. Israeli Army.’
‘They’ve just called a curfew,’ Morgan said. ‘Apparently there’s been some kind of disturbance at the Wailing Wall, and it’s spread up to the Christian Quarter. A couple of tourists have been knifed. We got into the Old City just in time. They’ve shut all the gates. I’d only just started my recce of the Holy Sepulchre, and then they shut that down too, got everyone out.’
‘That’s another advantage of being up here on the roof,’ Helena said. ‘We’re above all that. But it’s pretty unusual for tourists to be attacked. The extremists here rarely resort to that. Doesn’t help any cause.’
‘Just what we need,’ Jack murmured, suddenly feeling uneasy. ‘Curfew, no tourists, police and army distracted. It leaves us vulnerable. I only hope Ben can get through.’ He glanced at Helena. ‘Our security chief. He flew out of London early this morning, and is due in from Tel Aviv about now.’
‘If anyone can get them to open the gates, it’s Ben,’ Costas said.
‘He’s already liaised with the chief of police here,’ Jack said. ‘They knew each other from Special Forces, some combined UK-Israeli operation even I don’t know about. Special Forces is a pretty small world.’
‘You guys sure do network,’ Helena said.
Jack gave her a wry look. ‘Anyone thinks being Indiana Jones is a one-man show, forget it.’
They reached a door, indistinguishable from others along the side of the courtyard. Helena unlocked it, switched on an electric bulb hanging just inside and ushered them in. ‘Welcome to my office,’ she said. They all squeezed in, Jack and Costas sitting on a bench and Morgan standing. It was little more than a monk’s cell, with the bench and devotional images on one side, but on the other side there were shelves brimming with books, architectural drawings pinned to the wall and a narrow desk with a state-of-the art laptop. ‘I steal electricity from the Armenians, and hack into wireless internet from the Greek monastery next door.’ She grinned, and sat down on a stool behind the desk. ‘You see, it’s really all a sharing community.’
Morgan peered at one of the drawings, showing simple rectilinear structures surrounded by rocky outcrops and terrain contours. ‘The Holy Sepulchre?’ he asked. ‘Is this the early church?’
‘I’m doing an architectural history of the Roman Church,’ Helena said. ‘I’m most interested in what lies beneath, what can be found out about the site before the Constantinian Church was established in the fourth century. There was a lot more going on here in the early Roman period after the crucifixion than people have ever guessed. It’s been my secret after-hours project, but now you know. I reckon if I’m going to be sitting on top of one of the most complicated places in history for the next few years, I may as well do more than keep my monks in order.’
‘Then you’re going to love what I’ve got,’ Morgan said excitedly, patting his bag. ‘Someone else was doing the same thing almost a hundred years ago. His work was left unfinished, and has never before been published. It’s mostly a detailed record of the early medieval elevations, but there are some observations on the Roman stuff underneath that will take your breath away.’ Morgan lowered his voice. ‘He thought that when King Herod Agrippa rebuilt the city walls in the mid first century AD, he also put a shrine on this spot, only a few years after the crucifixion. If you can help me follow his clues, we may have one of the most extraordinary revelations ever in the archaeology of early Christianity.’
Helena seemed rooted to the stool, and had gone pale. ‘You’re kidding me. Wait till you hear what I’ve found. Who was this guy?’
Jack took out a sheaf of papers from his faded khaki bag, and laid them on his knees. Costas leaned over from where he was sitting and shut the door. ‘That’s what we couldn’t tell you about on the phone,’ Jack said.
For the next forty minutes he quietly ran through everything: the shipwreck, Herculaneum, Rome, the London tomb, the clues they had found the day before in the nunnery in California. At the end he glanced at Helena, who was staring speechless at him, and then he placed a photograph on her desk of Everett’s wall painting with the chi- rho symbol and the Greek letters. ‘Does this do anything for you?’
Helena looked straight at the bottom of the photograph. She seemed stunned, and remained motionless.
‘Well?’
She cleared her throat, and steadied herself on the side of the desk. She blinked hard, then peered closely at the image. ‘Well, that’s an Armenian cross. The lower shaft is longer than the arms and top, and those are the distinctive double tips.’
