The Fallen Angel

indeed see what they had done. They had carved a massive hole in the heart of God’s mountain and turned it into a private museum filled with all the archaeological artifacts that had been unearthed during the years of reckless construction and secret excavations—the building stones, capitals, columns, arrowheads, helmets, shards of pottery, and coins. And now, for motives even Gabriel could scarcely comprehend, Imam Hassan Darwish intended to blow it all to bits—and the Temple Mount along with it.

For the moment, though, Eli Lavon seemed to have all but forgotten about the bomb. Entranced, he was making his way slowly through the artifacts toward the two parallel rows of broken pillars that formed the centerpiece of the exhibit. Pausing, he consulted his compass.

“They’re oriented east to west,” he said.

“Just like the Temple?”

“Yes,” he said. “Just like the Temple.”

He walked to the eastern end of the pillars, touched one reverently, and then walked a few steps farther. “The altar would have been here,” he said, gesturing with his small hand toward an empty space at the edge of the cavern. “Next to the altar would have been the yam, the large bronze basin where the priests would wash before and after a sacrifice. Kings Seven describes it in great detail. It was said to be ten cubits across from brim to brim and five cubits high. It stood upon twelve oxen.”

“ ‘Three facing north,’ ” said Gabriel, quoting the passage, “ ‘three facing west, three facing south, and three facing east, with the tank resting upon them.’ ”

“ ‘Their haunches were all turned inward,’ ” said Lavon, completing the verse. “There were ten other smaller basins where the sacrifices were washed, but the yam was reserved for the priests. The Babylonians melted it down when they burned the First Temple. The same was true of the two great bronze columns that stood at the entrance of the ulam, the porch.”

“ ‘One to its right and one to its left,’ ” said Gabriel.

“ ‘The one to its right was called Jachin.’ ”

“ ‘And the one to the left, Boaz.’ ”

Gabriel heard a crackle in his earpiece followed by the voice of Uzi Navot.

“We’re trying to get to you as quickly as possible,” Navot said. “The police and IDF have entered the Temple Mount compound through the eastern gates. They’re meeting resistance from the Waqf security forces and the Arabs coming out of al-Aqsa. It’s getting pretty ugly right above your head.”

“It’s going to get a lot uglier if this bomb explodes.”

“The bomb disposal teams are coming in the second wave.”

“How much longer, Uzi?”

“A few minutes.”

“Find Darwish.”

“We’re already looking for him.”

As Navot fell silent, Gabriel looked at Lavon. He was staring toward the roof of the cavern.

“Jachin and Boaz were each crowned with a capital that was decorated with lilies and pomegranates,” he said. “There’s a debate among scholars as to whether they were freestanding or whether they supported a lintel and a roof. I’ve always subscribed to the second theory. After all, why would Solomon put a porch on the house of God and leave it uncovered?”

“You need to get out of here, Eli. I’ll stay with the bomb until the sappers arrive.”

Lavon acted as though he hadn’t heard. He took two solemn steps forward, as though he were entering the Temple itself.

“The door that led from the ulam into the heikhal, the main hall of the Temple, was made from the wood of fir trees, but the doorposts were olive wood. They burned when Nebuchadnezzar put the First Temple to the torch.” Lavon paused and placed a hand gently atop the ruins of one of the pillars. “But he couldn’t burn these.”

Gabriel walked past a trestle table heaped with coins and ancient tools and slipped between two of the pillars. He touched one and asked Lavon what had happened to them after Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the Temple.

“The Scriptures are unclear, but we always assumed the Babylonians hurled them over the walls of the Temple Mount and into the Kidron Valley.” He looked at Gabriel with a rueful smile. “Sound familiar?”

“Very,” said Gabriel.

Lavon moved to the next pillar. It was about eight feet in height, and one side was blackened by fire. “ ‘They made Your sanctuary go up in flames,’ ” he intoned, quoting Psalms 74, “ ‘they brought low in dishonor the dwelling-place of Your presence.’ ”

“You need to be leaving, Eli.”

“Where am I going to go? Upstairs to the riot?”

“Make your way through the aqueducts back to the Western Wall Tunnel.”

“And what am I supposed to do if I run into another group of Saladin’s warriors? Fight them off with my pickax like a Crusader?”

“Take my gun.”

“I wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

“You were in the army, Eli.”

“I was a medic.”

“Eli,” said Gabriel in exasperation, but Lavon was no longer listening. He was moving slowly from pillar to pillar, his expression a mixture of astonishment and anger. “They must have hauled them out of the valley in 538 BC, when the Persian Empire authorized the construction of the Second Temple. And when Herod renovated the place five centuries later, he probably used them as part of the supporting structure, which would explain why the Waqf found them when they were digging around up here. They were too big to take to the dump or throw into the Kidron Valley again, so they hid them here, along with everything else they ripped from the mountain.” He looked around the vast cavern. “Even if we are able to get this material out of here, it has no proper context anymore. It’s as if it was . . .”

“Looted,” said Gabriel.

“Yes. Looted.”

“We’ll get it out, Eli, but you really should go now.”

“I’m not leaving these things here alone,” Lavon answered. He was drifting from pillar to pillar, his face tilted skyward. “The contemporary models and drawings of the First Temple oftentimes put a roof over the heikhal, but there wasn’t one. It was an open courtyard with two-story chambers on three sides. And at the far western end of the structure was the debir, the Holy of Holies, where they kept the Ark of the Covenant.”

Lavon approached the spot slowly because it was there that Imam Darwish had chosen to place the bomb. It was no ordinary bomb, thought Gabriel. It was a Western Wall of explosives, wired and primed and waiting to detonate. Were it something small, Gabriel might have been able to disarm it with a sapper whispering in his ear. But not this.

“How do you suppose they were able to do it?”

“I’m sure Imam Darwish will be happy to tell us.”

Lavon shook his head slowly. “We were fools to let them have complete control of this place. Who knows? Maybe we should have behaved like every other army that conquered Jerusalem.”

“Tear down the Dome and al-Aqsa? Rebuild the Temple? You don’t really believe that would have been the right thing to do, Eli.”

“No,” he admitted, “but at a moment like this, I’m allowed to imagine what it might have been like.”

Gabriel looked at his watch.

“How many minutes left?”

“If Dina is right—”

“Dina is always right,” Lavon interjected.

“Twenty-five minutes,” said Gabriel. “Which is why you need to get out of here.”

Lavon turned his back to the bomb and lifted his arms toward the avenue of pillars. “There isn’t a single authenticated artifact from the First or Second Temple. Not one. It’s the reason why Palestinian leaders have been