Loe raamatut: «The Crying Machine»

2.
Silas

The device defies explanation, like all the best toys. The report compiled by the senior curator ended with those killer words ‘possible religious significance’ – still the internationally recognized archaeologist’s code for ‘we don’t know’. The ignorance was a blessing really – theories beget enthusiasm, and public interest in the artefact would complicate its theft unduly.

When Silas first got the job, it was understood the title ‘Minister of Antiquities’ served as a licence to divert a certain proportion of the city’s excessive historical wealth into private hands. Now, the new breed of officials – curators, law enforcement – they weren’t looking for the money he could bring them. Something was changing in the city. After more than a century of cold turkey, Jerusalem was getting hooked on religion again, and it was bad for business.

To keep things tidy, this device would have to disappear in a way that didn’t connect to him. Today’s inspection would lay the groundwork. The strangely hirsute curator fiddles with the keys to the glass case, droning on about some peculiarity in the engravings on the pottery recovered from the seabed near this Antikythera thing. The device itself bears a few scratches which could be interpreted as a kind of cuneiform similar to Sanskrit, but the pottery is marked with what looks like words in a largely incomprehensible ancient script called Linear B. Despite the discrepancy, the curators have convinced themselves both items (and other less notable finds) were cargo from the same wrecked ship. The slightly flimsy reasoning for this conclusion is that one of the pottery tablets bears what could be the latter half of the word ‘Antikythera’ as rendered in Linear B.

Silas lets the words wash over him. Knowing about these objects is how the curators define themselves – denying them these little moments of superiority would cause pointless upset. This one, Boutros, can be touchy about ‘his’ things, which makes today’s performance all the more necessary. As the dreary monologue ends, the case opens and Silas pounces, hefting the device from where it rests on a little rectangle of cheap black velvet, producing an audible gasp from the beard next to him. Waggling the fingers of his free hand silences the protest on the keeper’s lips. The mandatory white gloves prevent supposedly catastrophic contamination by grease or microbes.

It doesn’t look like much, a lump of greyish-green rock that you might pick up in a construction site or the ruins of an old factory, but that ‘rock’ was two millennia of accretions from the seabed. You could see the outline of a cross-spoked circle, marked with illegible ancient symbols. Patches of vivid aquamarine glitter in the stone like little pools of the sea this thing had come from. The finely worked metal parts within are invisible, but their existence has been inferred from traces of oxidization on the rock-like exterior. Analysis of a tiny sample seemed to show the device was cast from an alloy mankind would not learn to work until centuries after this thing was made. Therein lay the true mystery of the Antikythera Mechanism, but mysteries concern Silas less than the price they fetch.

His buyers had done their own research on it and decided it met their needs. They didn’t tell him what they’d found out, but he didn’t need to know. The only thing Silas needed to know was how badly they wanted it, which, as it turned out, was very badly indeed. The profit from this job would be enough to check out of the game for good, but quitting while you’re ahead is the coward’s choice. No, this money was going to be the start of something far greater. In Jerusalem’s broken democracy, it would be enough to buy power.

The curator’s silent glare warns him he’s allowed the Antikythera Mechanism to stray into contact with a patch of microbe-ridden skin, distracted by the daydream. The money has to come first, which means engaging with the here and now. Silas adjusts his face to assume the air of mock solemnity the museum staff deem appropriate for handling relics. The man seizes the Mechanism from his hands with visible relief and lays it on its velvet cushion in a peculiar motion of obeisance. He’s twiddling through several chained key rings, preparing to seal the transparent security case when Silas holds up a single finger. ‘I want you to put the replica on display …’ He forestalls the inevitable objection before it can be uttered. ‘Nobody will know or care, and I’ve had a warning of an attempt to steal the Antikythera Mechanism, so I want it out of public view and moved into category B storage.’ The curator emits a barely intelligible syllable before Silas speaks over him. ‘Category A storage is an obvious target; it would be effectively less secure than public display. In these circumstances Category B offers the best balance of security and concealment.’ Silas’s stare invites the man to challenge his statement, but makes it silently clear any discussion will be neither pleasant nor profitable.

The full heat of the noon sun hits the instant he steps out of the museum’s discreet side entrance. The flash of blindness inflicted by its sudden light brings with it a moment of instinctive terror that subsides only as his vision adjusts. For pragmatic reasons, Silas sticks to the tenebrous edges of alleys split in two by the sun as he walks. A human eye adjusted to the dark can still perceive what passes in the light.

A water-seller nods imperceptibly as he passes. One of the perks of office was the ability to employ others to cover his tracks. If he is observed, he will know. Even so, he takes an apparently haphazard route to the Old City, taking in the sights – the ersatz, misplaced carbuncles vanishing numbers of true believers refer to as the Dome of the Rock and the Holy Sepulchre. They were crap. Everything that mattered in Jerusalem had been reduced to glass and rubble more than a century ago, but the tourists still came for the stories, and if they wanted a sniff of something real they came to the museum.

The only place you can still feel the history is in the deep Old City, but the sightseers seldom stray down here. In the last war, this walled warren of streets served as its own citadel; the buildings around its perimeter shielded the ones within from the wave of pressurized air that levelled the proud temples of the old faiths. Now, the dust-caked ruins at the edges stand as a slowly crumbling bulwark against the post-war contagion of grim utilitarian box-buildings spreading through the rest of Jerusalem.

Inside, the sun doesn’t reach the streets for most of the year. The stench of refuse ripening tells you it still belongs to the Arabs and the poor. The faces change; you can see flashes of pale skin on the European hookers plying their trade, but poverty always stinks. A fat fruit-seller smiles obsequiously as Silas passes, a cheap, occasionally useful informant who’s always keen to impress. That is the truly marvellous thing about the poor; tiny sums of money suffice to purchase so much goodwill.

A rainbow-beaded curtain in a doorway offers an entrance to his destination. The strands brush the sides of his face and sway noisily as he passes. This place is a dump, but it serves a purpose. This is where to find the skinny Jew boy who likes to hide among the Arabs, as if that wasn’t the most obvious thing in the world. Silas waits, presumably being subjected to some form of scrutiny, before the bulky man behind the bar nods him over to a dark corner where he can just now discern movement.

Levi Peres strikes a match and holds it to the tip of a thin, straggly cigarette. The flash of orange match-light reveals a man of no more than twenty-one with a scant beard that lends its wearer none of the intended gravitas. The shadowed figure leans back in its seat with exaggerated ease. Bravado is a wonderful thing – so useful.

‘You know who I am. Can we talk somewhere privately?’

Levi gestures around expansively. ‘This is my office. We can talk here.’

One of the trio of old men sitting on leather pouffes at the other end of the room takes a deep drag on the shisha pipe and coughs. The bulky barman stands silent, unashamedly listening.

‘All right, that’s up to you. The thing you have to understand is that listening to this job description connotes acceptance. There are obligations and liabilities that go with that and they’ll apply to your hefty friend if he’s in.’

The youngster gives a little jerk of the head and the big man purses his lips, then shrugs and drifts to the other side of the bar, out of earshot.

‘Yusuf’s a good guy. If he’s not around I get nervous. Tell me a big number to make me feel better.’

‘Fifty thousand shekels. One fifth now to cover expenses and make life more enjoyable. The rest on completion.’ Silas watches for a reaction but this Levi character has at least got front. Fifty thousand would be maybe two and a half years’ labour for an honest working man. It represents a little under half a per cent of what Silas ultimately stands to make on this deal.

Levi plucks a fibre of unburnt tobacco from his tongue. ‘Two hundred thousand. Forty up front. If I don’t know what I’m getting into, I need to know it’s worth it.’

Small-time. A few seconds feigned agonizing serves to avoid making the victory look too easy. ‘OK, two hundred, but twenty’s as much as I can do up front.’ Any more than that and young Levi Peres will disappear from Jerusalem for good. So would anyone. The youngster performs his own little act of silent mental arithmetic before nodding. ‘There is an artefact I wish to have removed from the city. I have a buyer, but the item is sufficiently high profile that its loss will be noticed sooner or later. Later is better. It is currently in the museum’s storage facility. I have taken steps to withdraw it from public view and reduce the security surrounding it, but you will have to effect its removal.’

Levi’s expression darkens and his hands spread in denial. ‘No way. You want a break-in, you find yourself a thief. Who do you think I am?’

He smells the trap, but he can’t see it. ‘I know exactly who you are, Levi Peres. I know who you owe money to, how much, and what they’ll do to you if you don’t pay, and I know you’re just about smart enough to pull this off. Besides …’ His voice softens; no need to puncture that useful bravado yet. ‘You’re not a foot soldier on this job. There’s enough in that pot for you to get help.’

The thin cigarette in Levi’s hand twitches and half-burnt ash tumbles onto his loose-checked keffiyeh. ‘You should have said up front if you wanted a crew.’

Too late for remorse, boy, and you know it. ‘The money told you that. Or were we not having the same conversation?’ Silas’s fingers glide against the silk of his European-style jacket, pull out two solid blocks of pre-counted money and slide them across the table. He stands with slightly stagey formality. ‘One of my people will be in touch with details.’

Habit, more than any genuine fear of being followed, steers him through a skewed dogleg route back to his office. A light breeze carries the odour of the Old City away to the east. There is always a sense of relief that comes with the moment of putting a plan into action, as if the ideas had carried weight from the moment of their conception. Not that there’s any guarantee of success, not at all, but the omens are good. Levi Peres is perfect. Of course, there are better smugglers and better thieves in Jerusalem, but the best ones have a certain traction in the city – they could make things difficult if they chose. No, he didn’t need the best. Levi Peres was good enough, and entirely disposable.