cut at tall, odd angles. Absolute blackness consumed them. If not for the flashlight, they would not have been able to see their fingers touching their noses.
The treasures Saki had secreted here were created 2,500 years ago according to directions provided from God. The Ark of the Covenant was long gone, destroyed when the Babylonians torched the First Temple. Or at least that’s what most historians believed. But the golden menorah, the divine table, and the silver trumpets could still exist. He knew about the Arch of Titus, on the summit of the Sacred Way in the Forum, upon which was a relief showing the menorah and trumpets being paraded through Rome in 71 CE. The Israeli government had asked and the Italians obliged, forbidding anyone from passing through the arch. The last dignitaries to have formally walked under it were Mussolini and Hitler. Tour guides actually allowed visiting Jews to spit on the walls. He’d written a story about that, long ago. He recalled how every Jew he interviewed spoke with reverence about the Temple treasure.
On one thing Simon had been right.
Finding it would mean something significant.
They kept walking, the flashlight illuminating the rocky floor ahead. No moisture here. Dry as a desert. The brittle sand crunching with every step.
Ahead, the corridor ended.
———
BENE STOOD SILENT AND WATCHED ZACHARIAH SIMON STANDING perfectly still, not a muscle moving.
“What are you going to do?” Frank asked him.
He felt more comfortable speaking with Simon not being able to understand.
A good question. He’d told Frank that there’d been nothing but trouble from Simon. Now his adversary, who’d lied to him from the start and tried to kill him in Cuba, was helpless. All he had to do was jostle the mud and the man would sink to his death.
But that was too damn easy.
“You were testing me,” he said to Frank. “And testing Sagan.”
“We promised that only the Levite would make it across, according to the instructions. I had to make sure that happened. I had to trust the quest. I was sure this man”—Frank pointed at Simon—“was not the Levite, but I had to know that the other one was.”
“Maroons want to trust, don’t they?”
“For all the fighting we were, at heart, a peaceful people who simply wanted to exist. Even when we made peace, we trusted that the British would be fair.”
“But they weren’t.”
“Which was to their detriment, not ours. They lost more than we did. History will always remember their lies.”
He saw the point.
“What happened here today was important for the Jews,” Frank said. “I’m glad we could play a part in it.”
“What’s back there?”
Frank shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“I didn’t come here for any treasure.” He pointed at Simon in the water. “I came for him.”
“And he’s yours.”
Bene extended a hand, which Simon grabbed.
He pulled his nemesis onto the bank.
“That’s right,” he said. “He’s mine.”
———
TOM STARED AT THE OPENING, A JAGGED SLIT NOT MUCH TALLER than him, where the dry passage ended at a choke point. He shone the light and saw more sandy floor on the other side.
He approached, Alle behind him, and they entered.
A quick survey with the light revealed a room about twenty feet deep and that much wide, with an uncomfortably low ceiling. In the flashlight’s beam during the sweep he’d spotted a glitter where the light reflected back toward them.
Once satisfied that the chamber was no threat, he aimed the beam and counted three stone pedestals. Rocks, about three feet high, their tops and bottoms chiseled flat, stood upright. To his left, atop the first, was the seven- branched menorah, its golden hue dulled only slightly. Next the divine table, the golden patina brighter, its jewels twinkling like stars. Two silver trumpets lay on the third dais, their silver exteriors dotted with more gold, the rest tarnished black but still intact.
The Temple treasure.
Here.
Found.
“It’s real,” she said.
