The Last Ember by Daniel Levin Read Free Book Online Page B

office heard reports of unauthorized excavation, and our initial investigation discovered mounds of rubble in the olive groves of the Kidron Valley at the foot of the Temple Mount.” Emili recounted how her team moved through the heap, picking out shards of biblical-era pottery and shattered Crusader amulets, like stunned medics surveying a smoldering battlefield with no survivors. “A local monastery confirmed that bulldozers had been dumping rubble in the middle of the night.”
    “And you contacted the Waqf Authority?”
    “Yes. And as we expected, we received no response.”
    “You expected your preservation efforts to be ignored?” Fiorello feigned surprise.
    “The Waqf Authority has been as vigilant against non-Muslims visiting certain areas of the Mount as the Manchu priests in imperial China once were in preventing the entrance of mortals to the Forbidden City. If we were to inspect beneath the Mount, Dr. Lebag and I knew it would have to be without permission.”
    “Dr. Sharif Lebag was part of your delegation?” Fiorello now approached the witness on the stand in the same way he was beginning to approach the heart of her testimony. He touched the railing as though offering his support, preparing her to broach the topic of her murdered colleague.
    “Dr. Lebag had been in Jerusalem for a few months.” Emili swallowed.
    “His spoken Arabic and traditional Islamic observance were helpful to recruit informants. A shopkeeper in the Old City’s Muslim Quarter told him of a possible illicit excavation near his stall in the spice market. Men with drills and pickaxes were using a previously abandoned rusted door located opposite his stall. Dr. Lebag and I visited the spice market and inspected the door. It looked abandoned for centuries, except for one detail.”
    “Which was?”
    “The rusted iron handle had silicon sensors to authenticate fingerprint recognition.”
    “Magistrato!” Tatton objected. “This is all fascinating background, but this case is about an artifact. Is there any relevance—”
    “ Magistrato , I am demonstrating the worth of these fragments by the extravagant efforts to hide them.”
    The magistrato nodded, permitting the inquiry.
    Fiorello resumed. “If this abandoned door required fingerprint authentication, presumably you could not enter?”
    “No, but we obtained a map of Jerusalem indicating an ancient underground street that ran beneath the spice market and directly beneath the door. The next morning we entered the market.” As Emili spoke she could picture the events in her mind. “Dr. Sharif Lebag and I dressed as tourists, carrying in tattered backpacks our lithium flashlights, climbing rope, and spades. Sharif’s contact, the shopkeeper, allowed us to remove the stone drain beneath the table in his stall. The ancient street was a considerable distance below us and we roped down to it. Enormous columns supported modern Jerusalem above. Our flashlight beams could barely reach the ceiling.”
    “And that’s where you saw these fragments?”
    “Not at first. At the end of the street there was a cavern converted into a room reinforced with steel beams. The room contained high-tech archaeological equipment, including a humidity-controlled glass case for original scrolls and parchments. Digitized images of Renaissance Greek and Latin manuscript pages papered the cavern walls with labels documenting the folio year.”
    “Did the labels identify the source of the text?”
    “Yes. All the pages included passages, copied by scribes, from the works of Flavius Josephus. In the center of the room, a group of marble fragments lay on a glass table beneath a fiber-optic lamp. Both Sharif and I recognized the artifact at once. Fragments of the Forma Urbis”—she pointed at the photograph of the artifacts on the easel—“ those fragments of the Forma Urbis.”
    “There were identifying markings?” Fiorello said.
    “Yes,” Emili said. “ ‘Archivio di Stato.’