The Fallen Angel

turn, but once he crossed into the Jewish Quarter, the crowds thinned. He wound his way eastward—up and down stone steps, beneath archways, and across quiet squares—until he arrived at one of the portals to the Western Wall. Because it was a Friday, the plaza was more crowded than usual. Several hundred people, men and women, were praying directly against the Wall, and Gabriel reckoned there were at least a hundred more inside the synagogues of Wilson’s Arch. Pausing, he tried to imagine what would happen if even one of the giant Herodian ashlars broke loose. Then he walked over to the highest-ranking police officer he could find.
    “I want you to close the Wall and plaza.”
    “Who the hell are you?” the police officer asked.
    Gabriel raised his wraparound sunglasses. The officer almost snapped to attention.
    “I can’t close it down without a direct order from my chief,” he said nervously.
    “As of this moment, I am your chief.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Close the plaza and Wilson’s Arch. And do it as quietly as possible.”
    “If I tell those haredim they have to leave, it won’t be quiet.”
    “Just get them out of here.”
    Gabriel turned without another word and headed toward the entrance of the Western Wall Tunnel. The same Orthodox woman was there to greet him.
    “Is he down there?” Gabriel asked.
    “Same place,” the woman said, nodding.
    “How many other people are in the tunnel?”
    “Sixty tourists and about twenty staff.”
    “Get everyone out.”
    “But—”
    “Now.”
    Gabriel paused briefly to download an e-mail from Dina onto his BlackBerry. Then he followed the path downward into the earth and backward through time, until he was standing at the edge of Eli Lavon’s excavation pit. Lavon was crouched over the bones of Rivka in a pool of blinding white light. Hearing Gabriel, he looked up and smiled.
    “Nice suit. Why aren’t you with His Holiness?”
    Gabriel dropped the BlackBerry into the void. Lavon snatched it deftly out of the air and stared at the screen.
    “What’s this?”
    “Get out of that hole, Eli, and I’ll tell you everything.”
     
     
    A mile to the west, at the apartment in Narkiss Street, Chiara was watching live coverage of the Good Friday procession on Israeli television. A few moments earlier, as the pope was leading the delegation in prayer at the eighth station of the cross, she had noticed Gabriel holding a mobile phone to his ear. Now, as the Holy Father made his way solemnly from the eighth station to the ninth, Gabriel was no longer at his side. Chiara stared at the screen a few seconds longer before snatching up the phone and dialing Uzi Navot’s office at King Saul Boulevard. Orit answered.
    “He was just about to call you, Chiara.”
    “What’s happening?”
    “He’s on his way to Jerusalem. Hold on.”
    Chiara felt her stomach churning as Orit put her on hold. Navot came on the line a few seconds later.
    “Where is he, Uzi?”
    “It’s complicated.”
    “Damn it, Uzi! Where is he?”
     
     
    Though Navot did not know it, Gabriel was at that moment perched at the edge of the excavation pit with Eli Lavon at his side. Beneath them glowed the chalky white bones of Rivka, witness to the Roman siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of Herod’s Second Temple. For now, Lavon was oblivious to her; he had eyes only for the tiny image on the screen of Gabriel’s BlackBerry. It showed David Girard, aka Daoud Ghandour, standing in an underground chamber of some sort at the side of Imam Hassan Darwish, the Muslim cleric from the Supreme Council of the Jerusalem Waqf.
    “Are those pillars in the background?”
    “The pillars aren’t the concern right now, Professor.”
    “Sorry.”
    Lavon inspected the second image—the trapezoid with the mark and the number 689 in the lower third.
    “It would make sense,” he said after a moment.
    “What’s that?”
    “That the chamber where they’re standing is located in that portion of the Mount. The ground beneath the Dome of the Rock and the entrance to the al-Aqsa Mosque is riddled with conduits, shafts, and cisterns.”
    “How do we know that?”
    “Because Charles Warren told us so.”
    Sir Charles Warren was the brilliant officer from the British Royal Engineers who conducted the first and only survey of the Temple Mount between 1867 and 1870. His meticulously detailed maps and drawings remained the standard resource for modern archaeologists.
    “Warren found thirty-seven