Storm Front

and said, “We’re still doing the music. Drop by anytime. So, what about this stele from Israel?”
    They chatted for a few minutes about the stone, and Virgil’s father shook his head and said, “Ultimately, it won’t matter much, except to archaeologists and those sorts, and it’ll be another bone picked over by the crazies. Judaism doesn’t depend on the veracity of the Solomon stone any more than Christianity depends on the veracity of the Shroud of Turin. They are artifacts from a past we can’t see.”
    “Jones would disagree,” Virgil said.
    “Because he spent his life digging up artifacts from the past we can’t see,” McConville said.
    “He wasn’t a bad man,” Virgil’s old man said. “I liked him right from the start. He was a tough guy, played rugby back when rugby players ate their dead. Had an intellect on him.”
    “Sort of went down in flames, though. He had a pretty good reputation over there, until he did this,” Virgil said. “He wanted me to take his ashes to Israel for burial. . . . He said the case wouldn’t be over until I did it.” He told them about Ellen’s plea involving her father’s ashes.
    “Are you going?” McConville asked.
    “Nah.”
    “Why not?” Virgil’s father asked.
    “I don’t know. It’d cost too much, for one thing. It’s a long trip. I didn’t really owe him anything.”
    McConville shrugged. “In my opinion, you’ve got to go. I mean, look at everything that happened. If he’s as smart as Lew says he was, and if he says the case isn’t over and only you can settle it . . . how can you
not
go? I’m not saying you’ve got an ethical obligation, you’ve just got an obligation to your own curiosity. Don’t you?”
    Virgil looked at his father and asked, “Why’d you have to be sitting with this guy? If I go, it’ll cost me ten grand.”
    “The money’s not a problem,” his father said.
    “It’s not? I’m paying fourteen percent on my boat and I’ve got two years to go.”
    “The boat’s your problem,” his father said. “As for taking his ashes to Israel, I’ll write you a check.”
    Virgil thought about that for a minute, then said, “I knew you had money, but I didn’t know you had
money
.”
    “We’re quite comfortable,” his father said. “So you’ll go?”
    “I can’t handle long flights in tourist class.”

25
    T here were arrangements to be made, but Ellen handled them. She suggested that when he got to Jerusalem, he contact Yuli Gefen, Moshe Gefen’s daughter, to take him out to the cemetery. That was the same Gefen that Yael had seen in Sam’s Club: the bagwoman for Jones’s scam.
    So Virgil went to Israel with a jar full of ashes, business class.
    He carried a letter from the Israeli embassy, about the ashes, to show at customs, if customs wondered what was in the jar. The flight took twelve hours or so from Newark, and landed in Israel in the morning. Virgil walked the ashes through customs, no questions asked, and caught a taxi to the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem.
    The hotel reminded him of a couple in Phoenix, with its thick walls and tiles. He got a few hours of sleep, since his body insisted that it was four o’clock in the morning, and then, after consulting with the front desk about the telephone, he called Yuli Gefen. She lived in Tel Aviv, she said, and had to take care of the kids that afternoon and evening, but was anxious to see him. Could she drive up in the morning?
    Virgil said that would be good. Still jet-lagged and out of sorts, he got directions from the desk man again, and walked up a long hill, and eventually found himself in the Old City. In the Old City, he bought a map and went to look at the Western Wall, and did the Stations of the Cross, checked out the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where he saw a pilgrim crawling on her knees across the square outside.
    Then he walked through a maze of narrow passages, past merchants selling mostly junk, but also meat and spices and rugs and jewelry and T-shirts and ball caps and almost everything he could think of, but no fishing or boating equipment that he could find, and finally came out at the Dome of the Rock.
    He couldn’t go inside, because it was too late in the day; but from the outside, he thought it one of the most magnificent buildings he’d ever seen.
    —
    A FTER most of a bad night, dreams jumbled with waking moments, he finally got to sleep, and two minutes later, it seemed, was awakened by the call to