Free The Jerusalem Diamond by Noah Gordon Page B

hulks.
    â€œThe vehicles were destroyed while running the blockade during the War of Independence,” the driver said. “They were trying to bring food and ammunition to the city. During the last wars, the bastards didn’t reach here. But the first time, the Arab guns were set up on both sides of the road. We leave these wrecks as memorials.”
    Harry nodded. “I’ve been here before.”
    Each time he came, the drivers identified the piles of rust for him.
    He telephoned David Leslau, but the archeologist had gone for the day. Harry left word.
    His room was at the rear of the hotel. From his windows he looked down on a long section of wonderful ancient wall and a series of cubed Arab buildings—East Jerusalem. The Old City beckoned, but the sun burned high and hard and he chose cool sheets, his soft bed.
    When he awoke, his headache was better. At 9:10 A.M. he was breakfasting on eggs, pita, small green olives and iced tea, when Leslau telephoned and agreed at once to come to the hotel.
    He and the archeologist knew one another only by reputation and publications. Leslau turned out to be short and ugly, with a chest like a bull’s. Both his ginger-colored hair and his full beard needed cutting, and a thick tuft of graying yellow-brown hair poked from a tieless shirt no longer white. He peered through thick glasses that magnified restless brown eyes. His skin was leathered from outside work. He wore dusty shoes and chino slacks, and somehow he made Harry feel overdressed and overwashed.
    They sat in leather chairs in the lobby, while around them tourists clustered like sparrows.
    â€œWhich passage did you translate?” Leslau asked at once, pulling an ear with thick fingers.
    Harry started to tell him.
    â€œYeah, yeah. Jesus, Joshua and frigging Job. My poor, new friend, fresh from America with dreams of immortality—”
    â€œDon’t talk to me like that,” Harry said quietly.
    â€œYou’re the fourth person to identify the
genizah
described in that passage. Not the first.”
    Harry looked at him.
    Leslau sighed. “Come along, come along,” he said.
    Leslau had an old Volkswagen that acted tubercular on the hills, which as a result he took at ferocious speeds. The road twisted and undulated, dropping steadily.
    â€œEver been to this area before?”
    â€œNo.”
    They were passing plantations of bananas and citrus. “Unusual climate. Like Africa’s. Sudanese, really, as you can see.”
    â€œMmm.”
    Leslau gave him a quick glance.
    â€œTook the song right out of your heart, didn’t I? Hell, never mind what I said back there. I’m a caustic sonofabitch. I realize it, but I’m too old to change.”
    â€œWho spotted the
genizah
location first?” Harry asked.
    â€œMax Bronstein sent me to it almost immediately. Before his letter reached me, I had more or less figured it out. And then a very bright woman at the Hebrew University had been consulted, and after a week or so she came up with the Vale of Achor, too.”
    At the fork in the road, Leslau veered south, nodding toward the left branch. “The Jericho
tel
is a few kilometers north of here. It’s provided an interesting dig for more than seventy years. Jericho’s the oldest city in the world, goes back to the year 8,000 B.C.E ., long before there were Jews. In the mound, excavators found nine human skulls, wrapped in clay instead of flesh and with shells representing their eyes.”
    â€œWhat were they?”
    â€œGods,” Leslau said.
    Harry turned toward him. “When you excavated the
genizot
mentioned in the scroll, what did you find?”
    â€œWe didn’t excavate the
genizot.
We simply dug them for the third time. The
genizot
already had been excavated.” He bumped the Volkswagen off the main road. The car followed a wadi until it reached a sheer stone escarpment and they could drive no farther. “So far we have