The upper chamber looked empty. No Jake. No jackal.
“Jake!” I hissed.
No answer.
“Jake!” I repeated as loudly as I could without bringing in vocal cords.
Same nonresponse.
I braced my feet, threw out my arms, and pulled and pushed myself onto the upper-chamber floor.
Jake didn’t appear.
Ignoring the objections of my shoulder and hip, I rose to a squat and looked around in the flashlight sweep.
I was alone.
I listened.
No sound filtered in from outside the tomb.
Rotating quickly, I moved my beam through the velvety black around me.
Blue flashed in the darkness of a northern loculus.
What the hell?
I knew what the hell.
I worked the light. I was right. The hockey bag.
But why? Where was Jake?
“Jake!” Full vocal.
I dropped to all fours, crawled toward the loculus, stopped. Jake had hidden the bag for a reason. Reversing, I crawled toward the tomb’s entrance.
It was then I heard the first sound since leaving the tunnel. I froze, head cocked.
A muffled voice.
Another.
Shouting.
Jake’s voice. Words I couldn’t make out. Hebrew?
More words I couldn’t make out. Angry words.
A soft thud. Another.
Running footsteps.
The blackness grew blacker. I glanced toward the entrance.
Legs were blocking the small square of sunlight.
22
IN A HEARTBEAT, BOOTS SHOT INTO THE TOMB. ABODY FOLLOWED. A large body.
I scrabbled backward and pressed myself to a wall. Crumpled cans jabbed my knees and pop-tops gouged the palms of my hands.
My mind flashed again to the man on the valley rim. My heart pounded. Sweet Mother of God! Would I live through this day?
Tightening my grip, I raised the flashlight, ready to strike.
The body had settled onto its haunches, back to me. My beam lit coconut palms on Waikiki blue.
I took my first breath since seeing the legs. Outside I could hear shouting.
“What the hell’s going on?”
“Hevrat Kadisha.” Jake threw the words over one shoulder, never taking his eyes from the entrance.
“I don’t speak Hebrew.”
“The goddamn bone police.” Jake was panting from exertion.
I waited for him to explain.
“Da’ataim.”
“That clears it up.”
“The ultra-Orthodox.”
“They’re here?” I pictured men inshtreimel andpeyos rolling over the rim of the Kidron.
“In force.”
“Why?”
“They think we have human bones in here.”
“We do have human bones in here.”
“They want them.”
“What do we do?”
“Wait them out.”
“Will they leave?”
“Eventually.”
That was not reassuring.
“This is insane,” I said after listening for a few moments to the shouting outside.
“These cretins show up at excavations all the time.”
“Why?”
“To harass. Hell, we often need police protection just to do our jobs.”
“Isn’t access to archaeological sites by permit only?”
“These head cases don’t care. They’re opposed to the unearthing of the dead forany reason, and they’ll riot in order to stop a dig.”
“Is theirs a majority view?” In my mind’s eye the bearded men now carried posters and placards.
“God, no.”
Outside, the voices eventually stilled. Somehow, I found the quiet more disconcerting than the shouting.
I told Jake about the jackal.
“You’re sure it was a jackal?”
“I’m sure,” I said.
“I didn’t see it run from the tomb.”
“She was moving fast,” I said.
“And I was focused on those morons out there. You’re okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Sorry,” Jake said. “I should have checked before we went down.”
I agreed wholeheartedly.
Outside the tomb, the silence continued.
I shone the light on my watch. Nine-seventeen.
“What’s the law in Israel regarding human remains?” I asked, still speaking in a loud church whisper.
“Bones can be excavated if they’re about to be destroyed by development or plunder. Once they’ve been studied, they must be handed over to the Ministry of Religious Affairs for reburial.”
As we spoke, Jake kept his eyes on the small opening through which he’d just slithered.
“Sounds reasonable. Similar statutes protect native burials in North America.”
“These fanatics are hardly reasonable. They believe halakha, Jewish law, forbids any disturbance of the Jewish dead. Period.”
“What if a site is about to be bulldozed?”
“They don’t care.” Jake flapped a hand at the entrance. “They say build a bridge, dig a tunnel, reroute the road, encase the whole bloody tomb in cement.”
“Are they still out there?”
“Probably.”
“Who decides if human remains are Jewish?” My stomach was still knotted from my encounter with the jackal. I was talking mainly to calm myself.
“The guardians of Orthodoxy, themselves. Handy, eh?”
