The Columbus Affair: A Novel

“Another fifty meters,” Tre said.

A rush of falling water could be heard. They pushed through more foliage until they found a pool, water tumbling down from twenty meters above. A stream entered and exited the pool, disappearing into the black forest. He’d seen a thousand of these in the mountains around his estate. Water was not in short supply on Jamaica, and had always been one of its main draws.

Frank’s flashlight clicked on and the beam cruised across the pool’s surface, then up the waterfall. “There’s a slit in the rock. Behind the water. A cave. But it’s a dead end. A false route that goes back to nothing.”

“So why show it to us?” he asked.

The colonel lowered his light and turned. “It once led to the mine, but was sealed long ago. Maroons eventually laid traps there. A way to deter anyone who might come for a look.”

“What are you saying, Frank?”

“That what you are about to see has cost men their lives.”

He heard the unspoken part. There’s risk here.

“I’m ready,” he declared.

“That gun you’re toting will do no good. You have to swim to get inside.”

He stripped off his shirt, then removed the shoulder harness, handing both to Tre. He started to remove his pants and boots but Frank stopped him.

“You’ll need those in there.”

“So what do I do?” Bene asked.

“There’s an opening about three meters down, below the waterfall. It’s a shaft that leads up a few meters to a chamber that was part of the mine at the time of Columbus. Back then, you walked straight in through the slit behind the falls. Not anymore. That’s why this place has never been found.”

“How do you know about it?” Tre asked.

“It’s part of my heritage.”

“I’m going, too,” Tre said to him.

“No. You’re not,” Bene said. “This is between Maroons.”

———

ZACHARIAH WAITED FOR AN ANSWER TO HIS QUESTION.

“You want the Third Temple,” the ambassador said. “Without the coming of the Messiah.”

“It is my belief that the Messiah will return if we build the Third Temple.”

“Most Jews believe that the Messiah must first come before we will have our Third Temple.”

“They are wrong.”

And he meant it. Nowhere had he ever read anything that convinced him that the Temple must await the Messiah. The first two were built without him. Why not the third? Certainly it would be preferable to have the Messiah. His arrival would herald the Olam-ha-Ba, the World to Come where all people would coexist peacefully. War would cease to exist. Jews would return from their exile to their home in Israel. No murder, robbery, or sin.

Which justified everything he was about to do.

“You also plan to start a war,” she said. “Tell me, Zachariah, how will you return our Temple treasures to the mount?”

She did know.

“In a way that the Muslims cannot ignore.”

“Your spark.”

What better way to reawaken a sleeping Israel than to have the Jews’ most venerated objects—lost for two thousand years—attacked on the Temple Mount. And the Arabs would react. They would regard any such act as a direct threat to their control. Every day they suppressed any semblance of a Jewish presence on the mount. For the Temple treasure to return after 2,000 years? That would be the greatest provocation of them all.

They would act.

And even the meekest of Israeli citizens would call for retaliation.

He could already here commentators comparing the Babylonians to the Romans to the Arabs, each defiance a denial to Jews of their divine right to occupy the mount and build the Lord a sanctuary. Twice before destruction occurred with no consequences. What about this time? they would ask.

Israel possessed more than enough might to defend itself.

This singular act of sacrilege would resurrect its protective vigilance.

“A spark that will ignite a blazing fire,” he said.

“That it will.”

“And what will you do,” he asked, “once all that happens?”

He truly wanted to know.