The Fallen Angel

where the priests would wash before and after a sacrifice. Kings Seven describes it in great detail. It was said to be ten cubits across from brim to brim and five cubits high. It stood upon twelve oxen.”
    “ ‘Three facing north,’ ” said Gabriel, quoting the passage, “ ‘three facing west, three facing south, and three facing east, with the tank resting upon them.’ ”
    “ ‘Their haunches were all turned inward,’ ” said Lavon, completing the verse. “There were ten other smaller basins where the sacrifices were washed, but the yam was reserved for the priests. The Babylonians melted it down when they burned the First Temple. The same was true of the two great bronze columns that stood at the entrance of the ulam , the porch.”
    “ ‘One to its right and one to its left,’ ” said Gabriel.
    “ ‘The one to its right was called Jachin.’ ”
    “ ‘And the one to the left, Boaz.’ ”
    Gabriel heard a crackle in his earpiece followed by the voice of Uzi Navot.
    “We’re trying to get to you as quickly as possible,” Navot said. “The police and IDF have entered the Temple Mount compound through the eastern gates. They’re meeting resistance from the Waqf security forces and the Arabs coming out of al-Aqsa. It’s getting pretty ugly right above your head.”
    “It’s going to get a lot uglier if this bomb explodes.”
    “The bomb disposal teams are coming in the second wave.”
    “How much longer, Uzi?”
    “A few minutes.”
    “Find Darwish.”
    “We’re already looking for him.”
    As Navot fell silent, Gabriel looked at Lavon. He was staring toward the roof of the cavern.
    “Jachin and Boaz were each crowned with a capital that was decorated with lilies and pomegranates,” he said. “There’s a debate among scholars as to whether they were freestanding or whether they supported a lintel and a roof. I’ve always subscribed to the second theory. After all, why would Solomon put a porch on the house of God and leave it uncovered?”
    “You need to get out of here, Eli. I’ll stay with the bomb until the sappers arrive.”
    Lavon acted as though he hadn’t heard. He took two solemn steps forward, as though he were entering the Temple itself.
    “The door that led from the ulam into the heikhal , the main hall of the Temple, was made from the wood of fir trees, but the doorposts were olive wood. They burned when Nebuchadnezzar put the First Temple to the torch.” Lavon paused and placed a hand gently atop the ruins of one of the pillars. “But he couldn’t burn these.”
    Gabriel walked past a trestle table heaped with coins and ancient tools and slipped between two of the pillars. He touched one and asked Lavon what had happened to them after Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the Temple.
    “The Scriptures are unclear, but we always assumed the Babylonians hurled them over the walls of the Temple Mount and into the Kidron Valley.” He looked at Gabriel with a rueful smile. “Sound familiar?”
    “Very,” said Gabriel.
    Lavon moved to the next pillar. It was about eight feet in height, and one side was blackened by fire. “ ‘They made Your sanctuary go up in flames,’ ” he intoned, quoting Psalms 74, “ ‘they brought low in dishonor the dwelling-place of Your presence.’ ”
    “You need to be leaving, Eli.”
    “Where am I going to go? Upstairs to the riot?”
    “Make your way through the aqueducts back to the Western Wall Tunnel.”
    “And what am I supposed to do if I run into another group of Saladin’s warriors? Fight them off with my pickax like a Crusader?”
    “Take my gun.”
    “I wouldn’t know what to do with it.”
    “You were in the army, Eli.”
    “I was a medic.”
    “Eli,” said Gabriel in exasperation, but Lavon was no longer listening. He was moving slowly from pillar to pillar, his expression a mixture of astonishment and anger. “They must have hauled them out of the valley in 538 BC , when the Persian Empire authorized the construction of the Second Temple. And when Herod renovated the place five centuries later, he probably used them as part of the supporting structure, which would explain why the Waqf found them when they were digging around up here. They were too big to take to the dump or throw into the Kidron Valley again, so they hid them here, along with everything else they ripped from the mountain.” He looked around the vast cavern. “Even if we are able to get this material out of here, it has no proper context