Copyright

HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

Copyright © Greg Chivers 2019

Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com

Cover layout design by Ellie Game © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Greg Chivers asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008308773

Ebook Edition © February 2019 ISBN: 9780008308797

Version: 2019-02-14

Dedication

For Bea, Lucas and Charlotte

Epigraph

Nothing like this instrument is preserved elsewhere. Nothing comparable to it is known from any ancient scientific text or literary allusion. On the contrary, from all that we know of science and technology in the Hellenistic Age we should have felt that such a device could not exist.

Derek de Solla Price, ‘Gears from the Greeks: The Antikythera Mechanism’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society

Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter 1. Clementine

Chapter 2. Silas

Chapter 3. Levi

Chapter 4. Clementine

Chapter 5. Levi

Chapter 6. Silas

Chapter 7. Clementine

Chapter 8. Silas

Chapter 9. Clementine

Chapter 10. Silas

Chapter 11. Clementine

Chapter 12. Levi

Chapter 13. Clementine

Chapter 14. Silas

Chapter 15. Levi

Chapter 16. Silas

Chapter 17. Clementine

Chapter 18. Levi

Chapter 19. Silas

Chapter 20. Clementine

Chapter 21. Silas

Chapter 22. Clementine

Chapter 23. Levi

Chapter 24. Silas

Chapter 25. Levi

Chapter 26. Clementine

Chapter 27. Levi

Chapter 28. Clementine

Chapter 29. Silas

Chapter 30. Clementine

Chapter 31. Silas

Chapter 32. Clementine

Chapter 33. Silas

Chapter 34. Clementine

Chapter 35. Levi

Chapter 36. Clementine

Chapter 37. Silas

Chapter 38. Clementine

Chapter 39. Silas

Chapter 40. Clementine

Chapter 41. Levi

Chapter 42. Clementine

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

1.
Clementine

Men stare from shadowed doorways. She is too obviously alien here, even with the paleness of her skin concealed behind high collars and a tinted visor. The women are invisible in this part of the city. Two sparsely bearded teenagers in baggy sherwal and thawb unashamedly follow her. It does not occur to them she might feel threatened, that they should exercise any kind of restraint. A trapped bird of fear flutters in her chest. All the tacit understandings of gender from home, with all the protections they give, are absent here, replaced by a new labyrinth of unwritten rules she flouts with every step. She is the transgressor in this place.

The address she was given by the trafficker in Marseille should be somewhere close, but the streets are unmarked, the buildings unnumbered save for intermittent brass plaques which seem to follow no recognizable order. She shoves the paper under the nose of a fat man selling leafed oranges from crates. His eyes narrow as he takes in the curling lines of script, then his face relaxes and he stares into the middle distance, pretending not to see her. All the eyes here play the same game, following the pornography of her movement intently, becoming blind the moment she approaches.

A corner leads her into an alley that ends suddenly in a wall topped with curves of broken glass. The two stubbled faces lurch into view when she turns around. They’re close enough to smell – turmeric and teenage boy beneath the faint tang of Jerusalem’s dust. It’s hard to tell the ages; the Arab boys grow hair younger. Their short, compact bodies warn of muscle beneath the loose fabric of their clothes. One looks away instantly in flawless imitation of his elders, but the other smiles nervously before dropping his gaze. Perhaps he has sisters.

The shorter one touches her. His hand on her cheek is damp with sweat. Her stillness should be a warning, but he is too enraptured with the discovery of blond hairs to notice. Without meeting her eyes, he fingers the stray strands behind her neck where they’ve come loose. Her teeth clench as she suppresses the urge to bite or kick. Violence brings attention.

‘Leave me alone.’ She hears her own voice struggling around the Arabic sounds, too high, too frightened. A mistake here could ruin the city for her. There are only so many places left to run.

The boy’s eyes show he understands the words, but a hiss of excited breath is the only response as his eyes travel down her body. As he moves around her, something metal glints behind his ear, a flat circle barely bigger than an earring. A tiny filigree of dark lines betrays the presence of circuitry within. She raises a hand with fingers curled to touch him. He pulls back, wary, but stays still just long enough for her to brush against the thing. The burst of code that passes through her fingertip is benign, a harmless interrogative. It identifies the ear stud as a simple communication device, capable only of voice or lo-fi sub-vocalizations. It requires user authorization to accept incoming signals, but the firewall is laughably primitive.

A moment later he screams. His hand comes to his ear, fingers clawing uselessly at the lobe and cartilage. The pain comes from inside; a continuous pulse of ultra-high frequency bursts at the edge of human hearing, but still capable of stimulating the aural nerves. It will stop soon. The damage will heal quickly and leave no lasting mark that could betray her presence here.

The other one stares in confusion as his friend falls to his knees. She tries to mirror the surprise on his face, a second too late to be convincing, but he isn’t looking at her, eyes fixed on the twitching figure on the floor. She presses the paper with the address into his hand.

‘Where is this? Can you show me?’

A trembling hand points back down the street towards a doorway behind the orange-seller.

The fat man ignores her as she walks past. She resists the urge to brush past him or topple his crates, forcing an acknowledgement of her existence. She feels the presence of others in the room before her eyes adjust to the gloom. Faintly apple-scented shisha smoke glows in slatted light where the sun penetrates wooden shutters warped with age. Four male faces examine her, but the inspection is more human than the ruthless dissections she endured outside. Her transgression is muted within the confines of these walls. Three leather-skinned old men pass the hookah pipe between them without taking their gaze off her. The bald-headed man behind the bar is younger, on the cusp of middle age with a heavy, muscular frame only slightly turned to fat. He acknowledges her with a raise of the chin.

‘I’m looking for Levi.’

He turns away and utters a stream of Arabic too fast for her to catch the syllables. A stool scrapes on the stone floor and movement reveals another figure hunched over a small circular table in the corner covered with trinkets of some kind. Hooded eyes squint to see her and she realizes she must be standing silhouetted in the light of the door. The watcher’s face has the same look of indeterminate age as the teenagers who followed her, but his eyes are older, half-hidden by thick-skinned lids with heavy lashes. A too-big leather jacket fails to hide his youthful skinniness.

‘Are you Levi? Can we talk here?’

‘I don’t know you. This is not how I do business. Maybe I don’t want to talk to you.’

She uncurls the paper with the address and holds it out. He doesn’t look. ‘Farouz Mubarrak told me to come here. He said you could help me.’ She watches for a flicker of recognition at the name but Levi’s face shows nothing. ‘Farouz Mubarrak … from Marseille?’

‘I don’t know anyone in Marseille. He must have heard my name from someone.’

The barman’s cough doesn’t quite conceal a barked laugh. For a moment, hopelessness threatens to overwhelm Clementine. The trafficker in Marseille had promised to make her disappear. The names were part of the plan. Everything was paid for. ‘Can you help me? I can get money.’ The lie feels obvious. If she can change the dirhams in her belt she might have enough for two nights in a hostel and a few days of street food.

‘Sorry, sweetheart. In my experience, money doesn’t come in off the street like a bum looking for a free lunch.’

‘But …’

‘You’re pretty but I don’t need a girlfriend right now. You want help? Go to the Mission. I hope you like to pray.’ He bends over the table, dismissing her with silence, busy fingers teasing the tangled chains of the trinkets apart.

The barman coughs again and she realizes she’s been standing, staring, paralysed by hopelessness.

‘I don’t know what you’re looking for, but Levi … he’s maybe not the right one to help you. He’s right about the Mission though. It’s full of crazies but it’s safe. A woman like you can’t be alone here. You understand?’

For a moment, the sudden, unexpected kindness unleashes the despair she’s been holding back. She nods a silent acknowledgement to avoid saying words that might become a sob and covers her eyes with her hand before stepping outside. The orange-seller curses at the impact of her shoulder before realizing who bumped him. He’s still off-balance, looking down, when she plucks a ripe fruit from the top crate and shifts it between hands quickly so her body blocks his eyeline. By the time he looks up she’s got a five-metre head start if it comes to a chase, but the fat man grimaces in indignant silence, unaware of the theft, pretending not to watch Clementine walk away.

2.
Silas

The device defies explanation, like all the best toys. The report compiled by the senior curator ended with those killer words ‘possible religious significance’ – still the internationally recognized archaeologist’s code for ‘we don’t know’. The ignorance was a blessing really – theories beget enthusiasm, and public interest in the artefact would complicate its theft unduly.

When Silas first got the job, it was understood the title ‘Minister of Antiquities’ served as a licence to divert a certain proportion of the city’s excessive historical wealth into private hands. Now, the new breed of officials – curators, law enforcement – they weren’t looking for the money he could bring them. Something was changing in the city. After more than a century of cold turkey, Jerusalem was getting hooked on religion again, and it was bad for business.

To keep things tidy, this device would have to disappear in a way that didn’t connect to him. Today’s inspection would lay the groundwork. The strangely hirsute curator fiddles with the keys to the glass case, droning on about some peculiarity in the engravings on the pottery recovered from the seabed near this Antikythera thing. The device itself bears a few scratches which could be interpreted as a kind of cuneiform similar to Sanskrit, but the pottery is marked with what looks like words in a largely incomprehensible ancient script called Linear B. Despite the discrepancy, the curators have convinced themselves both items (and other less notable finds) were cargo from the same wrecked ship. The slightly flimsy reasoning for this conclusion is that one of the pottery tablets bears what could be the latter half of the word ‘Antikythera’ as rendered in Linear B.

Silas lets the words wash over him. Knowing about these objects is how the curators define themselves – denying them these little moments of superiority would cause pointless upset. This one, Boutros, can be touchy about ‘his’ things, which makes today’s performance all the more necessary. As the dreary monologue ends, the case opens and Silas pounces, hefting the device from where it rests on a little rectangle of cheap black velvet, producing an audible gasp from the beard next to him. Waggling the fingers of his free hand silences the protest on the keeper’s lips. The mandatory white gloves prevent supposedly catastrophic contamination by grease or microbes.

It doesn’t look like much, a lump of greyish-green rock that you might pick up in a construction site or the ruins of an old factory, but that ‘rock’ was two millennia of accretions from the seabed. You could see the outline of a cross-spoked circle, marked with illegible ancient symbols. Patches of vivid aquamarine glitter in the stone like little pools of the sea this thing had come from. The finely worked metal parts within are invisible, but their existence has been inferred from traces of oxidization on the rock-like exterior. Analysis of a tiny sample seemed to show the device was cast from an alloy mankind would not learn to work until centuries after this thing was made. Therein lay the true mystery of the Antikythera Mechanism, but mysteries concern Silas less than the price they fetch.

His buyers had done their own research on it and decided it met their needs. They didn’t tell him what they’d found out, but he didn’t need to know. The only thing Silas needed to know was how badly they wanted it, which, as it turned out, was very badly indeed. The profit from this job would be enough to check out of the game for good, but quitting while you’re ahead is the coward’s choice. No, this money was going to be the start of something far greater. In Jerusalem’s broken democracy, it would be enough to buy power.

The curator’s silent glare warns him he’s allowed the Antikythera Mechanism to stray into contact with a patch of microbe-ridden skin, distracted by the daydream. The money has to come first, which means engaging with the here and now. Silas adjusts his face to assume the air of mock solemnity the museum staff deem appropriate for handling relics. The man seizes the Mechanism from his hands with visible relief and lays it on its velvet cushion in a peculiar motion of obeisance. He’s twiddling through several chained key rings, preparing to seal the transparent security case when Silas holds up a single finger. ‘I want you to put the replica on display …’ He forestalls the inevitable objection before it can be uttered. ‘Nobody will know or care, and I’ve had a warning of an attempt to steal the Antikythera Mechanism, so I want it out of public view and moved into category B storage.’ The curator emits a barely intelligible syllable before Silas speaks over him. ‘Category A storage is an obvious target; it would be effectively less secure than public display. In these circumstances Category B offers the best balance of security and concealment.’ Silas’s stare invites the man to challenge his statement, but makes it silently clear any discussion will be neither pleasant nor profitable.

The full heat of the noon sun hits the instant he steps out of the museum’s discreet side entrance. The flash of blindness inflicted by its sudden light brings with it a moment of instinctive terror that subsides only as his vision adjusts. For pragmatic reasons, Silas sticks to the tenebrous edges of alleys split in two by the sun as he walks. A human eye adjusted to the dark can still perceive what passes in the light.

A water-seller nods imperceptibly as he passes. One of the perks of office was the ability to employ others to cover his tracks. If he is observed, he will know. Even so, he takes an apparently haphazard route to the Old City, taking in the sights – the ersatz, misplaced carbuncles vanishing numbers of true believers refer to as the Dome of the Rock and the Holy Sepulchre. They were crap. Everything that mattered in Jerusalem had been reduced to glass and rubble more than a century ago, but the tourists still came for the stories, and if they wanted a sniff of something real they came to the museum.

The only place you can still feel the history is in the deep Old City, but the sightseers seldom stray down here. In the last war, this walled warren of streets served as its own citadel; the buildings around its perimeter shielded the ones within from the wave of pressurized air that levelled the proud temples of the old faiths. Now, the dust-caked ruins at the edges stand as a slowly crumbling bulwark against the post-war contagion of grim utilitarian box-buildings spreading through the rest of Jerusalem.

Inside, the sun doesn’t reach the streets for most of the year. The stench of refuse ripening tells you it still belongs to the Arabs and the poor. The faces change; you can see flashes of pale skin on the European hookers plying their trade, but poverty always stinks. A fat fruit-seller smiles obsequiously as Silas passes, a cheap, occasionally useful informant who’s always keen to impress. That is the truly marvellous thing about the poor; tiny sums of money suffice to purchase so much goodwill.

A rainbow-beaded curtain in a doorway offers an entrance to his destination. The strands brush the sides of his face and sway noisily as he passes. This place is a dump, but it serves a purpose. This is where to find the skinny Jew boy who likes to hide among the Arabs, as if that wasn’t the most obvious thing in the world. Silas waits, presumably being subjected to some form of scrutiny, before the bulky man behind the bar nods him over to a dark corner where he can just now discern movement.

Levi Peres strikes a match and holds it to the tip of a thin, straggly cigarette. The flash of orange match-light reveals a man of no more than twenty-one with a scant beard that lends its wearer none of the intended gravitas. The shadowed figure leans back in its seat with exaggerated ease. Bravado is a wonderful thing – so useful.

‘You know who I am. Can we talk somewhere privately?’

Levi gestures around expansively. ‘This is my office. We can talk here.’

One of the trio of old men sitting on leather pouffes at the other end of the room takes a deep drag on the shisha pipe and coughs. The bulky barman stands silent, unashamedly listening.

‘All right, that’s up to you. The thing you have to understand is that listening to this job description connotes acceptance. There are obligations and liabilities that go with that and they’ll apply to your hefty friend if he’s in.’

The youngster gives a little jerk of the head and the big man purses his lips, then shrugs and drifts to the other side of the bar, out of earshot.

‘Yusuf’s a good guy. If he’s not around I get nervous. Tell me a big number to make me feel better.’

‘Fifty thousand shekels. One fifth now to cover expenses and make life more enjoyable. The rest on completion.’ Silas watches for a reaction but this Levi character has at least got front. Fifty thousand would be maybe two and a half years’ labour for an honest working man. It represents a little under half a per cent of what Silas ultimately stands to make on this deal.

Levi plucks a fibre of unburnt tobacco from his tongue. ‘Two hundred thousand. Forty up front. If I don’t know what I’m getting into, I need to know it’s worth it.’

Small-time. A few seconds feigned agonizing serves to avoid making the victory look too easy. ‘OK, two hundred, but twenty’s as much as I can do up front.’ Any more than that and young Levi Peres will disappear from Jerusalem for good. So would anyone. The youngster performs his own little act of silent mental arithmetic before nodding. ‘There is an artefact I wish to have removed from the city. I have a buyer, but the item is sufficiently high profile that its loss will be noticed sooner or later. Later is better. It is currently in the museum’s storage facility. I have taken steps to withdraw it from public view and reduce the security surrounding it, but you will have to effect its removal.’

Levi’s expression darkens and his hands spread in denial. ‘No way. You want a break-in, you find yourself a thief. Who do you think I am?’

He smells the trap, but he can’t see it. ‘I know exactly who you are, Levi Peres. I know who you owe money to, how much, and what they’ll do to you if you don’t pay, and I know you’re just about smart enough to pull this off. Besides …’ His voice softens; no need to puncture that useful bravado yet. ‘You’re not a foot soldier on this job. There’s enough in that pot for you to get help.’

The thin cigarette in Levi’s hand twitches and half-burnt ash tumbles onto his loose-checked keffiyeh. ‘You should have said up front if you wanted a crew.’

Too late for remorse, boy, and you know it. ‘The money told you that. Or were we not having the same conversation?’ Silas’s fingers glide against the silk of his European-style jacket, pull out two solid blocks of pre-counted money and slide them across the table. He stands with slightly stagey formality. ‘One of my people will be in touch with details.’

Habit, more than any genuine fear of being followed, steers him through a skewed dogleg route back to his office. A light breeze carries the odour of the Old City away to the east. There is always a sense of relief that comes with the moment of putting a plan into action, as if the ideas had carried weight from the moment of their conception. Not that there’s any guarantee of success, not at all, but the omens are good. Levi Peres is perfect. Of course, there are better smugglers and better thieves in Jerusalem, but the best ones have a certain traction in the city – they could make things difficult if they chose. No, he didn’t need the best. Levi Peres was good enough, and entirely disposable.

3.
Levi

‘Shouldn’t you be working on your masterplan?’

Yusuf turns a chair around the wrong way and sits. The curved wicker frame creaks under the weight of those bear arms folded across the backrest. He leans in too close, like a man who wants to hear a secret.

‘I’m thinking. You should try it sometime.’

He watches me for a few seconds. He doesn’t care that I’m not looking at him.

‘It’s the woman, isn’t it? You thinking maybe you should’ve helped her out?’

‘Sure, like I’ve got time to burn on every ghreeb who wanders in off the street.’

‘Come on! You got to be curious! She comes in here, from Marseille, asking for you by name? And you don’t want to know what her deal is?’

A knot of a hundred tiny metal chains chinks between my fingers. He won’t drop this thing about the girl. He never does. It’s kind of an unwritten agreement between Yusuf and me that I bring excitement into his life in exchange for him letting me run the business from his place. The problem with unwritten contracts is they’re subject to interpretation. ‘Forget her. I’m working on a plan. That’s all you need to know. Right now, I have other work to do.’

‘Yeah, looks important. What is that shit?’

‘Religious souvenirs, for the tourists. I got a variety box of a thousand from China for nothing, but they got tangled in transit, and selling crucifixes to Muslims is a quick way to go out of business.’

‘What business? There’s no tourists.’

‘Because you’re so busy with all these customers you can waste time talking to me.’ That shuts him up for a second. Nobody’s making any money since Europe blew up again and the tourists stopped coming to Jerusalem, but nobody wants to let on they’re hurting; it’s a little bit about pride, and a lot about not letting the sharks see you bleed. Another smoker’s cough from one of the old geezers at the back breaks the silence of the empty bar.

‘You’re an idiot, you know that?’ Yusuf plucks a peanut from the bowl on his bar, leans back and flicks it into the air with his thumbnail. It bounces off his lip and falls onto the floor. He looks at it a second before deciding not to pick it up. ‘You should know better than to mess with Silas Mizrachi.’

‘And that’s your professional assessment as what? A bartender?’ He always does this; he can’t help himself. Telling me I’m wrong is like a nervous tic for him.

‘It’s my professional assessment as someone who knows how to add up – professionally. A job like this takes money. He gives you the change in his back pocket, and suddenly you’re a gangster. You’re not a gangster, Levi. If Silas came to you, it’s because he wants someone he can screw. Take the money and get out of town – Gaza or something. Silas is nothing outside of Jerusalem.’

‘Yeah, that’s a fun idea, but it’s not going to work. The money’s not enough.’

‘Enough for what?’

‘You heard what he said about me owing someone.’

‘Yeah, that was news to me. Who do you owe?’

‘Maurice Safar.’

Yusuf’s face goes tight at the name. In the wider landscape of Jerusalem, Safar doesn’t even figure, he’s a neighbourhood guy, but he’s connected everywhere. Skipping town is not an option. ‘Eesh! How much?’

‘Does it matter? More than Silas just put on the table.’

‘Wallahi, Levi! Did they not teach arithmetic at Jew school? You people are supposed to be all about the money!’

He always panics. That’s why I can’t tell him everything. I’ve got nine days until Maurice Safar breaks the thigh bone of my left leg. Yesterday he showed me a metal bar he got from his father. It’s the one part of the job he always does himself. Violence is only an effective motivator when it’s sincere. People have to know you mean it, and Maurice Safar always means to hurt you.

‘All I need is someone to do the legwork and stay out of sight …’

‘You mean a thief – someone who has actual skills.’

‘I have skills.’

‘All right, skills other than bullshitting and buying cheap tobacco.’ Yusuf counts something imaginary on his fingers like a kid doing maths.

‘OK, OK, you made your point. I need a thief, a cheap one.’

‘So ask your girlfriend. She needed money.’

‘I honestly cannot tell whether that’s a serious suggestion. Seriously, I don’t know.’

He holds his hands out, palms up, and gives me this look like I’m breaking his heart. I know for a fact he doesn’t have one. ‘She did a number on fat Saul outside – swiped one of his oranges faster than you can blink.’

‘I love you, man, but sometimes you can be a schmo. This – this is one of those times. Tell you what, if I need someone to steal fruit, I’ll give her a call.’

Yusuf reaches under the bar and picks up a glass from a shelf I can’t see, stares at some imaginary dirt at the bottom, shakes his head slowly from side to side. This whole Mr Reasonable schtick is bullshit. He only says these things to get a rise out of me. Other people don’t see that.

‘Excuse me for trying to help.’ The snake muscles of his forearm flex as he twists the pint jar around a towel.

‘Don’t be like that …’ If it was actually possible to hurt Yusuf’s feelings, I might put more effort into making nice. Or I might not; it’s kind of hard to imagine how things could be different from how they are. Maybe it is a little messed up.

The sound of leathery laughter from somewhere near the door jerks me around. It’s just the old guys at the shisha pipe laughing at something dumb. Sometimes I still make the mistake of trying to listen to their conversations. I swear they do not speak in actual words; every now and then you might get a sentence, but it is never, ever funny.

The door curtain rattles behind me. Outside, shopkeepers disappear like cockroaches in the fading afternoon light that creeps through the gaps between rooftops. Everything closes for ‘quiet time’ in the Old City. The only people still looking for business at this time are the tech cult preachers offering to solve all your problems by putting a computer in your head. A pair of them stand behind a stall like they’re going to be there all night. Somebody told me they don’t sleep after they get the procedure done, but I’ve watched them: they do shifts; they just all have the same haircut and the same smile, like they’re in on a secret.

In three hours every door and every shutter on this street will be wide open again, covered with racks of carpets and leather stuff and birds in cages – all shit that nobody on the planet actually needs. Like there’s some unwritten law of the souk that says no one’s allowed just to sell you a loaf of bread. I still have to go to the Mahane Yehuda for real food, which always carries a risk of running into family. Right now it’s the wrong time for shopping, but the kind of work I have to do is easier with empty streets. I need to see bad people, and they get busy later.

Leo’s restaurant is in the Armenian Quarter. Depending on who you ask, we’ve got anywhere from three to five quarters – that’s just Jerusalem arithmetic. Any other year I’d detour to avoid the crowds around Temple Mount, but the tourist flow dried up as soon as the insurrection in Europe started again. The one thing you can never avoid is the Haredim doing their business at the Wailing Wall, crying about a building that got knocked down two thousand years ago, and was probably somewhere else. If you think about it, it’s impressive how they keep up the motivation.

It takes fifteen minutes to walk to Ararat Street. You know someone’s going to be watching you from the minute you cross the invisible boundary that runs down the middle of the Cardo archways, so there’s no point trying to be sneaky. When I get there, Leo’s standing outside his joint, smoking a Russian import cigarillo. The old guy clocks me as soon as I turn the corner. Still sharp.

‘Shalom! Well, if it isn’t the Old City’s very own yid prodigy! I’m sorry, kid, I’m all good for plastic replicas of the Dome of the Rock. What can I say? Tourist business isn’t what it used to be. It’s this damn war.’

A couple of years ago I would have laughed at the shitty joke and taken the hit, backed out of the big boys’ game. I can’t afford that now; opportunities to earn real money are too thin on the ground. ‘I need to talk business with Shant.’

The old man’s smile vanishes. ‘What kind of business do you need to talk about with Shant, kid?’

‘With the greatest respect, the answer to that question is Shant’s kind of business, Leo.’

Leo gives me that old gangster stare. He’s not playing. He can still bury me if he thinks I’m jerking his chain. ‘OK, kid, I know you. Shant can listen to what you have to say, but you better not be wasting his time. He’s my nephew. I look after him. I hold you responsible for anything that comes out of this. You get me?’

‘I get you, Leo.’

‘Give me a minute. I think he’s doing his yogilates.’

‘I’m sorry, what?’

‘Yogilates. It’s a mix of … Doesn’t matter. Sit tight. I’ll get him.’

Everything is shiny in Leo’s bar: no cracks in the red leather seats of the booths at the back. It’s obvious these guys don’t need tourists to make money. Shant makes me wait, but I stay casual even though I can feel my ass sweating. This is already wrong. I can’t run a job unless I’m the boss, and he’s letting me know I’m not the boss.

‘Hey.’ The voice is high-pitched. It comes from a pair of spectacles peering over the back of the seats three booths away. The face behind them is a boy, kind of. It’s one of those staring-down-the-barrel-of-puberty faces that’s still making up its mind.

‘Hey.’

The face comes up. It looks at me like I’m a cat that wandered in off the street, not sure whether he’s supposed to pet me or kick me out. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m, uh … waiting for someone.’

‘Oh, you’re here to see my dad.’ Suddenly he sounds bored.

I look again at the eyes. There’s a bony hardness around them that could be Shant. The rest must be his mother. ‘You’re Shant’s son?’

‘Mmm …’

‘Learning the old man’s business, eh?’

‘Yeah.’ The word comes out as a sigh. His head turns so the cheek rests on the top of the booth, like he’s going to sleep. He’s had this conversation before, and he doesn’t want to be here. I don’t blame him. If he was my kid, I for sure would keep him the hell away from all this shit.

‘You should count yourself lucky, kid. You know what my father did?’ The face rises from the seat back, curious. ‘He ran a furniture showroom on the Rehov Hanevi’im.’

‘That doesn’t sound so bad.’

‘Really? What do you think I did all day? Nothing, that’s what. School holidays killed me. To this day, I still get antsy if I smell wood polish.’

‘That does sound boring. I just don’t know what I’m supposed to learn sitting around here. All I see is people come in, start talking, and my dad gets angry.’ His eyes dart around the room; then he leans forward. ‘Some of the kids at school say he hurts people.’

Shit. You can tell by the look on his face: he knows – not the ugly detail, but he can feel what’s not right. Kids are smart like that. I mean, my dad was a fucker, but the worst he ever did was leave a few bruises on us, and Mom if she got loud. He never buried anyone in an underpass. What can I say? He’s looking at me, waiting for an answer, a guy who just walked in off the street, like somehow my opinion matters.

‘Those kids don’t know what they’re talking about. Would I be here if your dad was gonna hurt me?’

‘I guess not.’ He looks happier, but not much. I guess he probably wanted me to tell him his dad was really the greatest guy on the planet, but he’d know I was lying. Sometimes the truth sucks, but it’s what you’ve got. ‘You know, the other guys who come around here don’t say more than two words to me.’

‘Well, they’re idiots. Maybe that’s why your dad has to shout at them.’ The sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs drags me back to reality. ‘Don’t worry about learning the business. All that “follow in your father’s footsteps” stuff is for schmucks with no imagination. You do you, kid.’

He gives me a grin that looks nothing like his father.

Shant Manoukian appears from an arched doorway with no door at the back of the room, big but lean in a loose tracksuit, all smiles and handshakes. A faint sheen of sweat gives his face a movie-star glow. He looks at the kid for a second, seems about to say something, then shrugs and turns to me.

‘I see you met Kyle. Sorry to keep you waiting. I was just finishing up my yogilates.’ I never heard that word before Leo said it. It must be some bullshit workout thing. I’m hoping for the purposes of this conversation it won’t matter. Whatever, he’s not sorry. White teeth flash every time he grins, which is a lot.

‘Yeah, Leo said.’

‘You should try it, man. Your posture could use a little work.’ My spine twitches with the urge to straighten.

‘You sound like my mother.’

‘Ha! I like you, Levi. You’re a funny guy. So, Leo tells me you got a job. What’s the deal?’

‘Ten K for a week of planning, executing next week, half now, half on completion.’

Shant nods in mock approval. ‘You sure you got five K, Levi? That pays for my time but what’s the job?’

I give him the same line Mizrachi gave me – listening to the details constitutes agreement to complete the job. His face tells me exactly how shitty that line is. The movie-star head starts to shake slowly, almost sympathetically. He holds up a hand like a traffic cop.

‘You’re talking about signing up blind. That’s not professional. Maybe Uncle Leo said something to you about risks. He looks out for me, but I run my own business. I can take risks; it just costs is all. One hundred K, fifty up front. You got fifty in your pocket, Levi Peres?’

I start making out that I’m good for the money, but when I get to the part about only ten K up front he looks like he’s sucking something sour. I stop talking and his expression softens.

‘Levi, it’s not for me. You’re a smart kid; I can see that. Leo would tell me to nod and smile and keep pumping you for info, but I respect you for coming here. I respect you for trying to make this work, but it’s no good. Walk away from this. Have you thought about Gaza?’

We shake hands. As I head out the door, Uncle Leo gives me a mock salute with the stub of his cigar. All that respect stuff was bullshit. Shant figured out it’s a job they don’t want to steal, so he found a quick way to end the conversation. In a way it doesn’t matter. They’ll forget about the job they didn’t do, but they’ll remember we had this conversation. After this, Levi Peres can sit down and talk business with anyone in this city, which is great, but it doesn’t get me out of my hole with Safar. Only money’s going to do that, but I have a manpower problem, and not enough money to fix it.

4.
Clementine

From a distance, the Mission is a white hole in the dark of the Old City. As Clementine gets near she can see the cracks the whitewash doesn’t cover. In the gothic-arched doorway the smell hits her: an intense urine tang. The deranged cluster in the shadows, dark piles of shambling rags drawn to this place of succour, but repelled by some ineffable magnetism from the door itself. A pair of yellow eyes, slitted like a cat’s, watches her pass from beneath a concealing hood, the expression impossible to read.

Inside, the Mission is true to its name, an outpost for a dying Europe. The walls are the same whitewash as outside but cleaner, with fewer cracks. Six rows of dark wood benches line up either side of an aisle pointing arrow-straight to a low altar covered with white cloth. For the first time since she left France, homesickness touches Clementine. This room could be in Lyon or Grenoble, but for the faint mist of dust that hovers golden in the yellow light.

A pale-skinned woman, the first she’s seen since she arrived, appears from a doorway in the wall behind the altar. She wears a simple brown robe tied at the waist with a cord. Her short, red hair is cut like a man’s in a style that would mark her as sexually deviant at home, but maybe the rules are different here. The shaven sides show her ears fully, but there is no glint of metal in either of them. For whatever reason, this woman does not embrace the technology the locals favour. She smiles in a manner that grants limited, conditional acceptance of Clementine’s right to be here and waits for her to speak.

The silence is wrongfooting. The conversational gambits she’d been running through on her way here all seem too obviously false now. This woman’s stern simplicity demands repayment in the same currency. Clementine’s concocted stories of a struggle against oppression, of loss and abandonment, evaporate, replaced by a single statement. ‘I want to disappear.’

The woman’s eyes wander over Clementine’s pale skin and inappropriate, form-fitting European clothes. There’s a glimmer of something that might be sympathy. ‘Are you ready to embrace our Saviour?’

A simple, binary question, loaded with two millennia of history, packed with an infinity of agendas. Which one does this unremarkable woman serve? What will it demand? Choice is a luxury reserved for those already possessed of food and shelter. Clementine does not hesitate. ‘With all my heart.’

The woman’s smile warms, but her eyes are still calculating. ‘I am Hilda. You can help in the kitchen for now. I’m afraid you’ll have to stay in the hostel dormitory tonight. You’ll need to change out of those clothes. They’ll bring trouble we don’t need.’ She walks with slow, smooth steps, leading the way to a darkened glass door behind the altar. It opens to reveal a small vestry that looks as if it serves as a bedroom. Despite conspicuous cleanliness, it is a tableau of a life improvised. Piles of things, mostly books and papers, cover every available flat surface, including a narrow, hard-looking bed. Hilda reaches into one of the piles, pulls out a brown robe identical to her own, and passes it over. For a moment Clementine watches dumbly as the reality of what she’s doing settles on her. Holy orders. Will there be a vow? Some sort of ritual? Will they accept someone like her? All she has is this woman’s tacit acceptance. Instead of hopelessness, the thought inspires a wave of calm. This is all she has. Perhaps a freedom from choice is the gift of the Holy City.

There is a pang of loss as she strips off her smart-fabric leggings and vest. Inappropriate they may be, but the temperature-sensitive weave and adjustable wicking properties made them valuable in any climate. The variable colour shift was a useless legacy of her old life – it wouldn’t hide her in the city. Clothes like this were hard to find, even in Europe, since the war on the Ural frontier had started up again. The gossamer network of goods between continents necessary for such sophisticated products had taken years to re-emerge after the first war, and now it was gone again.

She hesitates, wary of nakedness in front of a stranger, until Hilda looks away. The world goes dark as the robe slides over Clementine’s head. It’s heavy, and the coarse fabric scratches her skin where it touches. Her head emerges to see Hilda smiling now, perhaps in amusement at the sight of the slight woman swaddled in fabric, perhaps at something else. The benign opacity of her expression is a mask that could hide anything, or anyone.

The kitchen is spotless but tired. The stainless-steel surfaces are scored with the passage of a decade of cutlery. A small, dark woman stirs two big pots of something surprisingly appetizing. She doesn’t wear robes and she seems surprised to see Clementine, but silently accepts her presence, handing her an apron and a dented ladle. From the other side of a green plastic folding shutter comes the sound of moving bodies and murmuring, the stilted conversations of the hopeless, not listening to each other, hitting dead ends, repeating themselves.

The cook leans across the counter and pulls at the centre of the shutter. It clacks noisily up into a hidden recess. The people on the other side are mostly men, already in a line. They know how this works. A few glance up, noticing the unexpected robed figure, but most are focused on the food. They shuffle past blindly as Clementine ladles bowls full of aromatic stew. There’s a faint waft of sumac and bursts of something else more exotic, a spice that leaves an almost uncomfortable heat on the tongue. Still, it’s good food. The homeless in Europe have been killing rats for more than a decade now. An unwanted memory sends a shudder through her: not just the homeless.

The act of serving becomes automatic and she stops noticing the faces in front of her until one of them hisses thanks. She looks up to see the yellow eyes that watched her in the doorway. They see through the disguise of her robe. The features around them are hidden behind shadows and layers of ragged cloth, the blotched red wrist of the hand that takes the bowl seems almost to strobe out of existence in the flickering yellow ceiling light, but the scars of radiation sickness are unmistakeable.

Clementine suppresses a start of surprise and resumes the mechanistic act of filling the bowls, looking around her to see if anyone else has noticed the stranger. The cook wrestles the dead weight of the second pot, oblivious. The homeless continue their dead-man shuffle.

A few make attempts at conversation when she steps out from behind the counter to gather bowls and spoons, but they’re nonsensical, or perhaps in some dialect of the damned she doesn’t understand. She smiles dumbly; none of her language training prepared her for this. As she clears away, she looks in vain for the yellow-eyed stranger.

The small, dark cook makes empty conversation as they share the duties of washing up and putting away. She answers Clementine’s questions about recipes and ingredients with gentle incredulity at her ignorance, unable to grasp the exoticism of her fare to someone who comes from a place where spices will not grow. The rest of her talk is platitudes and local gossip: political scandals, acts of outrage by a cult she calls ‘the Machine people’. The stories mean nothing to Clementine. There is no threat of meaningful dialogue. She has already disappeared.

She follows the cook’s directions to the dormitory. A windowless corridor floored with colourless, hard lino takes her there. The geography of this place is unsettling, hard to follow even for someone like her. It doesn’t correspond at all to the featureless white box visible from the outside. Walls have been knocked away into nearby buildings and tunnels dug between to link them. It is a warren of the faithful with many entrances. The exteriors are all facades. It makes her wonder who else is hiding here. Or is this just what pragmatism looks like in the ruins of the Holy City?

The hostel dormitory is small and cramped compared to the cavernous dining hall. There are people already here, most dressed in the ragged uniform of the poor. Some chat with cautious familiarity. Hilda had explained the hostel’s twelve beds were allocated on the basis of a benignly rigged lottery. At 5 p.m. every day applicants were invited to draw straws for a place. Recent winners, and known substance abusers, chose from a lot that contained no long straws. Some perhaps suspected their fate was sealed, but it was fairer than chance. Clementine had bypassed the lottery entirely, for reasons as yet unclear.

Fully half her roommates are women: the lottery’s work again. They look genderless in the garb of poverty and the skin of their faces and hands is hard from days spent outside in the streets. The eyes of the men follow her hungrily across the room to an empty bed in one corner. Their scrutiny is relentless, their thoughts obvious, but signs proclaiming the Mission’s code of conduct hang like silent sentinels on the walls. Nobody wants to find themselves losing the lottery.

Nobody undresses. Instead, there are token gestures towards the rituals of preparing for bed: outermost garments are put to one side; one of the men prays in a style Clementine has never seen before, rocking backwards and forwards while murmuring atonally. Another uses a bowl of water to perform lengthy, ritualistic ablutions confined to the limited areas of flesh accessible without removing further layers. They all seem to move to some unspoken timetable. By the time the fluorescent strip light on the ceiling flickers out, they are already lying still.

Clementine stares at the ceiling in the darkness. She can feel the eyes of the men and hear their thoughts. Still, this is the safest she’s been for months, since before leaving France. She thinks of the people she left behind. How many survived? Most would be dead, the bravest. If there were any survivors, they’d likely been sent to join the punishment battalions in the east. Not everybody got the chance to disappear. She was lucky, lying here in a hard bed amongst the hopeless. Still, sleep would not come.

A rustle of cloth and a stifled gasp is the sound of a man masturbating in the dark. Clementine pushes her bedcovers aside and walks to the door, picking her way faultlessly through the pitch black, the path and distance memorized through instinct honed by months of training. In the corridor, she blinks three times rapidly and a film descends over her eyes. Monochrome outlines appear out of what was total blackness and she retraces her steps through the warren until she reaches the smoked glass of Hilda’s door and knocks.

A light blossoms behind the glass and the older woman gestures her inside wordlessly. She doesn’t seem surprised. Even roused from sleep, she still wears the same gentle, slightly calculating expression. Clementine slips out of her robe and crawls into the recently vacated bed, still warm from Hilda’s body. The older woman smiles as she leans down to pull the blanket across to cover her nakedness. The light flicks off, the door clicks closed, and she is gone. Tears of relief and gratitude well in Clementine’s eyes. She has to blink three times before they can fall.

5.
Levi

Yusuf is pretending to be busy when I get back, chin on his elbow, bodyweight pushing a dent into the clouded zinc of the bar while he listens to some no-hoper trying to sell knock-off shisha tobacco from India. If the guy bothered to look at Yusuf’s face he’d know he wasn’t making a sale, but he just keeps talking, stuck on a script that won’t work without a clean data feed he can’t get this deep in the Old City. Any other week, Yus wouldn’t be giving this schmuck the time of day, but he’s still smarting at getting cut out of the Silas deal. He makes out like it’s all a big fuck-up, but jealousy is what it is. This is the kind of petty shit he does as payback. The tobacco guy only lets up after Yusuf promises to try a sample batch, which is never going to happen. Through me he gets Zanzibar gold leaf at closer to wholesale than is decent or reasonable. That’s the other part of our agreement.

The door curtain rattles behind the tobacco guy. Yusuf gives me a look while the rainbow beads swing and slow to a stop; then he moves to the door, fingers picking at the knot of his apron as he walks. Smoke swirls through the chink of light striping his face while he watches the guy disappear down the street. ‘So?’

‘So what?’

He sits opposite, bulk filling half the table. The way he moves, quick, crisp, he’s excited about something. ‘So you’re still here. It can’t have gone that bad.’

‘Yeah, it went pretty good actually.’

‘You got yourself a cheap thief?’ There’s an edge in his voice, like I put a little dent in his excitement.

‘Not that good.’

‘Have you thought about …’

‘I am not going to Gaza! Will you shut up about Gaza?’

‘Ya rab, Levi! Forget about Gaza. Did you hear about your girlfriend?’

‘Again with this?’ It’s the girl. I should have known. His ability to drop things is zero.

‘Hear me out. A few people saw her come in here. You expect that. Well, it turns out she had a little trouble on her way over: a couple of boys from the Safar crew thought she looked like fun, followed her into the souk.’

‘Yeah? That’s too bad, but shit like that’s going to happen. What’s your point?’

‘It didn’t exactly turn out how they expected.’ He’s got his fists clenched, he’s so excited.

‘What do you mean?’

‘She ditched them.’ He watches my face, waiting for a reaction.

‘Ditched them? Ditched them like how? Like she ran away? I mean, good for her, but that doesn’t qualify her for shit, Yus.’

‘I’ll tell you what Omar told me. He was there; his stall’s right across the street. She turned into the alley opposite the arcade, you know the one with the carpets hanging out front, and the Safar boys followed her. Two minutes later, she comes out, heads straight in here like nothing happened, and get this – the boys don’t show their faces for ten minutes after that.’

‘So what? She beat them up?’

‘Come on, be serious! Omar’s friends with those guys – they talk to him, and they say she disappeared! They turn the corner, it’s a dead end, but there’s nobody there.’

‘You are full of it, my friend. Or they are. It doesn’t add up.’

‘So she’s perfect for you.’

‘Ha, ha, you kill me.’ A certain percentage of everything Yusuf says is bullshit. If it’s second-hand, like from his friend Omar, you can double that percentage, but, by the law of averages, every so often he comes up with something. Safar’s boys are just kids, but they’re a serious proposition on home turf. If she got away, she did something right. ‘OK, you made your point. For the sake of argument, let’s say that’s interesting. If she disappeared, how would I even find her?’

‘Oh, that’s easy. She followed your advice. Smart girl.’

‘My advice? I didn’t give any.’

‘Sure you did. One of the regulars saw her at the Mission. Looks like she’s working there now.’

I look over my shoulder at where the three old guys are still taking turns sucking at the pipe. ‘One of them? I didn’t realize they ever moved.’

‘You’re a piece of work, you know that, Levi? Old Yash has been scoring his dinners at the Mission ever since his wife died.’

‘Hold on a minute. Are you telling me one of those guys at the pipe is a different person than was here when I left?’

‘And you’re supposed to be the sharp one. You think I only have three paying customers? How do you think my business works?’

‘I’m not an accountant.’

‘No, you leave the adding up to me.’ The dome of that big bald head glistens as he shakes it at me. ‘You got into this mess because you owe too much money to the wrong people, and now you’re at the wrong end of a bad deal. You’ve got to fix this.’

‘Look, OK, I get it. A strange woman came in; she was kinda hot, in a skinny European way, and you’re excited. I still don’t get why you think she’s a solution to my thief problem. You don’t know anything about her.’

‘I know she made the Safar boys look stupid, and she’s faster than Fat Saul.’

‘Evolution is faster than Fat Saul.’

‘Options, man. Options. All I’m saying is, you don’t have many of them.’ He’s got that big dopey grin on his face, and he’s nodding at me like he’s waiting for me to agree. It kills me when he’s right.

‘Look, it’s late, it’s been a messed up day, and I can’t even think right now. If it’ll make you happy, tomorrow I’ll go to the Mission, see if she’s there. If I find her, we can have a conversation. If I don’t … well, we’ll work something else out. Sound good?’

‘Hey, I’m just trying to help you here, but yeah, that makes sense.’ He sucks his teeth and grimaces, which tells me whatever comes next is going to be a pain in the ass. ‘Seeing as you’re going out, can you pick something up for me?’

‘What?’

‘I’m running a little low on whisky. You got some in last week, didn’t you?’

‘Can you get it yourself? It’s just in the stash: in the tunnels in the usual place.’

His face breaks into a sheepish grin. It looks kind of ridiculous on a guy his size. ‘C’mon, man, you know I don’t like to go down there. Gethsemane always freaks me out. There are people buried in that place, like actual dead bodies.’

‘OK, OK, I’ll do it. You’re pathetic, you know that? It’s just a freaking bomb shelter. It’s been empty a hundred years.’

‘Love you, man.’

‘Yeah, whatever. Bye.’

It should be a ten-minute walk to the Mission from my apartment, but Yusuf’s detour takes up the hour after breakfast, and the streets are filling up by the time I get going. The route takes you to the north edge of the Old City, where the walls crumpled like paper and the only time people talk about reconstruction it’s the punchline in a bad joke. Harsh morning light shows up the worst of it. Broken glass shines like teeth in the windows of skeleton buildings. Sagging wires just above head height carry stolen electricity to a few of the squats, but at night it’s mostly dark around here.

The Mission’s the least shitty thing in the neighbourhood, which isn’t saying much. All the cripples and the kanj-heads are outside, cluttering up the doorway or sliding off like woodlice to wherever it is they hide in daytime. They watch quietly, trying to figure out if I’m a mark, losing interest as soon as they realize I’m not here to empty my wallet. Eventually one of them points me in the right direction.

At first the robe throws me off, but the brown ghost pushing a mop around the crummy dining hall is her. All that cloth hides her legs so it looks like she’s floating across the yellow patches of floor between the tables where the bums eat their dinner.

‘Hey, Cinderella …’ She looks up. ‘Spare me a few minutes of your valuable time?’

She fixes her eyes on the mop; they follow the shiny streak it leaves on the floor. It smells like a hospital in here. ‘Last time we spoke, you said you didn’t need a girlfriend. I think we’re on the same page.’

The mop goes into the stained metal bucket like a drowning man and unleashes another burst of detergent stink. I grab the handle. She looks at me like she’s a second away from reaching for a blade. There’s something funny about her eyes, like they’re set too deep. She pulls the stick away from me and the head makes a big wet slap as it hits the floor. She’s strong.

The thing about being in my business is that you learn pretty quick not to take the brush-off: from girls, from gangsters, doesn’t matter. If you need something, you go after it. Also, like Yusuf said, options are something I don’t have right now.

‘Fat Saul wants his orange back.’ The hood of the robe falls back, away from her face, as she looks up at me, eyes wide with suspicion, maybe fear. She wants to ask how I know, but she’s not saying, which is good; keeping your mouth shut is an under-appreciated prerequisite for this business. Some people never learn it. The mop stops and settles into a thin pool of grimy water as she leans on it, listening. ‘Are you even earning any money here?’ We both know the answer to that question but still, the point needed to be made. ‘One week, two thousand shekels, and don’t worry, it’s nothing nasty.’

The money gets her attention, like I knew it would. I can see she’s still thinking about it when the mop starts moving again. How clean does a floor need to be? It’s only bums that eat here. ‘Don’t they ever give you time off in this place? Listen, I can see you’re busy with some important work right now, but when you’re done, come see me down at Yusuf’s tonight. We can have a proper conversation. I’ll be there ’til seven o’clock.’

The place is empty apart from the regulars when I get in. Yusuf’s watching war porn on the news feeds. One look is enough to tell you tourist season won’t be happening any time soon – Machine crackdowns on insurgents in France and Norway, Sino-Sovs still getting pushed back on the Kazakh front. He finally drags his eyes off the screen when the picture cuts from footage to a talking head.

‘Hey, Levi! Did you—’

‘Don’t say it! I know what you’re gonna say and I don’t need to hear it. It’s under control. That’s all you need to know!’

‘I was just going to ask if you got the whisky.’

‘Yes! Yes, I got your whisky, OK? And yes, I went to the Mission. I did exactly as you said. There, OK, I said it. Happy now?’ I know he’s just pushing my buttons and I shouldn’t give him the satisfaction but sometimes I can’t help it. I mean, it’s one thing to give the guy a little excitement in his life when he’s stuck behind the bar all day, but you’d have to be a saint to put up with his I-told-you-so shit.

‘So …’

‘She’s coming.’

‘When?’

‘Tonight.’

‘I guess we’ll see.’

‘Yeah, I guess we will.’

By the time she walks in, its twenty to eight and Yusuf’s already collected on the little bet we made about whether she’d show. The robe’s gone, and she looks different, dark blond hair combed back like a man’s, I guess so she gets less attention, but she’s wearing those weird tight clothes again. Maybe they’re not so strange if you’re from Europe. I don’t know – we used to get tourists, now we get refugees, but she doesn’t look like either.

‘Good to see you, babe, but you know, punctuality is important in this line of work.’

‘Yeah, sorry about that. I brought you an orange.’

There’s an orange on the table and I don’t know where it came from. I didn’t even see her fingers move. In those clothes there’s nowhere she could hide one of Fat Saul’s big Jaffas. This could still be a good day for Levi Peres.

6.
Silas

A shining stalactite of drool extends from the lip of the broken being in front of him. In a minute it’ll break and land on the office rug, which supposedly belonged to a Persian King: Cambyses or something. At moments like this, his father’s words come back to haunt him. The old man used to say: ‘The problem with money is that you have to earn it.’ After a lifetime spent trying to prove him wrong, this moment serves as a dismal affirmation. Meeting the customer is perhaps the harshest of the many unforgiving practicalities of business, and today it manifests in the form of three figures of indeterminate gender filling Silas’s office. Metal obliterates almost all trace of the people they used to be, sculpted into shining limbs and crania, leaving only the merest patches of exposed flesh necessary for cutaneous respiration. The nearest one, the dribbler, has taken a step further to abandon his humanity; sludgy nutrient sacs on his back are proof he has overcome the tyranny of desire for food, but the feeding tube running into his mouth prevents his lips meeting completely. Hence the carpet issue.

Of all the many stripes of loon who form the patchwork fabric of the city, none irritate Silas as effectively as the Cult of the Machine, but personal preferences cannot be permitted to intrude on business, not when these sums of money are at stake. If his visitors notice his carefully veiled animosity, they give no sign. An inability to perceive the emotions of others is a weakness that almost always afflicts those who consider themselves superior, and the Mechanicals are no exception. They glory in their semi-synthetic endocrine and lymphatic systems, crudely re-engineered to interface with their creaking prosthetics. Anyone with an ounce of self-worth would permit only as much intrusion into their body as is necessary for the essentials of communication and medical care, but the Mechanicals would have you believe that slaving your nervous system to a Korean-built micro-processor in a box at the base of your skull somehow makes you more than human, rather than less. Their very presence here, in his office, gives the lie to their bluster. If they’d attained any Machine-like detachment, they’d sit back and wait for delivery, but no, they’re worried. A skilled observer can discern the signs; it’s just a different kind of body language. Real people fidget or mess their hair. These damaged appliances emit heat. The dribbler speaks first.

‘We want you to bring forward delivery of the device.’

The feeding tube gives the poor thing a lisp. Manners dictate Silas endeavour to look it in the eye. The oval face is pale and veined from tissue rejection and the steady diet of immunosuppressants taken to counter the body’s response to contamination by metal limbs and digits. The reality of cheap, backstreet augmentation is something the Cult doesn’t show to potential recruits, but progression depends on physical demonstrations of commitment, and the faith doesn’t pay for new arms for the rank and file. If they survive to reach middle management, they all look like this one, give or take a tube. It won’t have long left in its current form; it’ll either ‘ascend’ and be admitted to the factory-labs of Europe by its masters, where they’ll remove the last vestiges of human flesh and graft its electronically preserved consciousness into a bio-engineered form within an exoskeleton of shining metal, or it will die of something resembling AIDS. The Machines who inspire this worship are an abomination, a wrong turn humanity might have avoided in a better world, but their power is more real than any god’s, and their ersatz faith certainly incentivizes the workers.

Silas shrugs. ‘You know the schedule we’re on. The job entails expenses. If you want me to stick to the dates, I need you to cover my operating costs.’

‘It is yours. You should take it and give it to us.’

‘We’ve discussed this. The Antikythera Mechanism is not mine, it belongs to the city.’

‘But you could take it. Give it to us now. We will pay you more.’

This is where difficulties arise. The Machine Cult are decidedly less than human when it comes to acknowledging such minutiae of existence as holding down a job. You could view that as evidence of the changes their body-modification has wrought upon their minds, although Silas rather suspects they haven’t changed at all – the people who inflict this upon themselves are the ones who couldn’t cope with all the messy uncertainties real life entails. The extinction of flesh reduces the uncomfortable variables of self, but the external world is harder to control. Reality is stubborn and unforgiving, and today Silas is its avatar.

‘Please, there is a schedule. Deviating from it will bring trouble none of us want.’

The taller, healthier one in the middle of the trio pipes up. ‘Another two million. Bring it to us tomorrow.’ The end of the last word disappears in a wet gurgle. They are not flexible thinkers – they struggle to let go of an idea once they’ve latched onto it. The mistake would be to think they are stupid. The one at the back, not talking, is doing a reasonably surreptitious survey of the security arrangements. The slow, lateral turns of his head suggest he has some sort of scanning augmentation built in around his eyes, perhaps even total replacements. If they’ve received surveillance technology from their patrons in the West, any locally available counter-measure will be useless.

‘I have removed the Antikythera device from public display as a precursor to our enterprise, but it is not on these premises. If you wish to withdraw from the arrangement previously agreed …’ Silas stresses the word any sane human being would recognize as significant. ‘… you should feel free to make your own arrangements. After all, no money has changed hands. I feel I should add, though, just so you fully understand the parameters within which you must make your decision, that in addition to their standard weaponry, I have equipped the museum’s guards with dart guns capable of delivering a discreet dose of phenobarbital.’

They stare blankly.

‘Really? No? Well, allow me to enlighten you. It’s a remarkably cheap and effective way to negate immunosuppressants.’

The heat from their bodies becomes palpable as nervous energy is reprocessed into something their systems can handle. They remain perfectly still. Without the drugs, their bodies will reject the metal they’ve forced in, attacking it like cancers. It is a grim, painful death, but, more than that, it is an undoing of everything they’ve become – a forced recognition of its artificiality and wrongness. Those darts are existential terror for a shekel a shot.

One of them takes a step forward, his shadow darkening the desk. It is another weakness of the Machine Cult that they overestimate their ability to intimidate. In their infuriating way, the Cultists are a fascinating case study in the gap between the imagined perceptions of others and reality. They imagine they wield the power of their inhuman masters in the West – the unspoken threat of it hangs in the air – but it is bluff. The writ of the great powers does not extend to the Holy City. If it did, Jerusalem would be just another factory, but instead their proxies are ruining the carpet.

‘So, gentlemen, to my expenses: I require five hundred thousand to cover my initial outlays on personnel and equipment, and another five to fund the next stage of the operation. That will suffice until delivery, at which point I’ll have to insist on payment in full prior to handover.’

Their stare is unwavering, but eventually the one at the back speaks. ‘You must be there.’

‘No. My terms of delivery are non-negotiable. The associates I have engaged are quite capable of getting the item to the coast, or any other chosen extraction point. My government commitments do not permit me to leave the city.’

The frustration of it is that he has had this conversation with them before, in various forms. They must have hoped their physical presence would alter its outcome this time, but the truth is that they came here with no leverage. If you were inclined towards sympathy, you might even pity their predicament. They are laying out a huge quantity of money given to them by creatures of utter ruthlessness and unimaginable power. For them, failure in this enterprise carries not just a certainty of death, but a denial of the afterlife they have dedicated their existences to achieving. Like any purchaser, they want to feel they are in control. In a commercial transaction a good salesman will foster the illusion, but this is the point at which criminal enterprise differs – even the appearance of ceding control can be fatal. Silas makes a show of looking at his watch, a usefully pointed anachronism for the present audience.

‘You’ll have to forgive me, I’m afraid I’m going to have to bring this meeting to a close. If you can be sure to have the money wired to my account by close of business today, I will be sure to keep our little operation on schedule.’

7.
Clementine

Levi’s thin fingers close around the bright fruit as if to test its reality. He pinches the green leaf from its stem and sniffs it before leaning back, apparently satisfied. At the edge of her vision, the other one watches from behind the bar, his face halved in blue chiaroscuro by light from a screen showing some foreign sport. A bank of three refrigerators against the wall hums as freon courses through the tubes of their heat exchangers. One is a semitone deeper than its fellows and rattles faintly at thirty-second intervals. A dripping tap plays counterpoint to the chorus, but otherwise the room is silent.

At a nod from Levi the barman bustles out from behind the counter like a heavily muscled housewife. Clementine hovers, uncertain where to sit, resisting the urge to blink and peer into the room’s darker recesses. A squeal of tortured wood from behind makes her jump as Yusuf slides a splintered wooden bar down between two staples on the door, sealing them all in.

‘Closing early tonight. This is a private conversation.’ His smile summons the memory of yesterday. His kindness had been a chink of light in her despair, but that meant nothing now. These people were criminals; that much was clear.

‘Over here.’

A sudden circle of light illuminates a small round table in the corner of the room. Levi hunches over something, just as he did before. That time it was trinkets, now it’s two data slates hard-linked by a physical wire: old-school, but secure. Whatever is in them is supposed to be secret. The yellow glare from the ceiling lamp prevents her seeing what’s on the slates. Levi extinguishes the images with a tap of the finger and looks up as she approaches.

‘So, how are you doing? You like it there, at the Mission?’

‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ Guilt darkens Clementine’s words. Nobody at the Mission made her sign contracts or swear oaths, but this still feels like a betrayal.

‘Yeah, I guess you are.’

‘So are you going to tell me about this job?’

‘In a minute. The thing you need to understand is that once I tell you the details, there’s no backing out.’ He looks over her shoulder to where Yusuf still stands next to the barred door, and then looks to her, waiting.

‘You want me to say “yes” without knowing what I’m agreeing to?’

‘Basically, yeah. Don’t worry, it’s only a little bit illegal.’ Levi chuckles at his own joke, but Clementine turns away, stares at the floor. The attempt at humour throws the reality of her choices into stark relief. It’s this or the mop and the kitchen forever, serving the ghosts as they pass through.

‘Levi, we don’t know each other. We can’t really talk about trust, or agreements, or anything like that. There’s no reason for me to trust you, or vice versa, so let me tell you where I’m at, and then you can decide for yourself how much of a risk it is to tell me about this job. How’s that?’

His mouth narrows into a line and his gaze flicks to Yusuf and then back to her.

‘OK, tell me “where you’re at”.’ His words mimic Clementine’s still shaky Arabic accent.

She forces a smile. ‘I’m broke, I spent last night in a homeless shelter, and the locals seem to regard the only clothes I own as some kind of sexual invitation. I need the money.’ Her smile sags beneath the weight of reality in those words, but she holds it in place and fixes Levi’s gaze, waiting for him to speak.

‘I think we can do business.’ His grin is a salesman’s, closing an easy deal. He taps the corner of one of the screens, and both of them shine into life; then he flips them around to face Clementine. They are photographs of the interior of a building taken from its own security cameras. ‘I need you to get into this building – it’s a museum storage facility – and retrieve an artefact. Think you can do that?’

‘Yes.’

He laughs again. ‘Confident, that’s good.’

Her fingers slide across the table to touch the tablet, but Levi jerks it back, caging it with his own hand just beyond her reach.

‘Keep your hands to yourself. You see what I need you to see, no more.’

‘If you want me to plan a break-in, I need to see everything.’

He shakes his head and smiles, but there is no warmth in his expression. ‘I think you’re labouring under a misunderstanding. I don’t need you to plan anything. I need someone quick and smart to do the legwork, that’s all.’

‘How do we get past the security? There’ll be alarms, cameras …’

‘You won’t need to worry about any of that stuff. It’s taken care of.’

‘I worry if it’s my picture they’re taking.’

Levi’s mouth pinches like he’s tasting something sour; then he shakes his head again. ‘I already told you too much. Get out.’ He spits the last word and leaves a silence, waiting for her to move.

His anger vents in sharp, shallow breaths, a warning hiss, but Clementine doesn’t shift. The thought of tomorrow morning’s cleaning routine echoing infinitely into the future keeps her rooted to her seat.

‘Go on, move! If you breathe a fucking word to anyone, we will find you. Nothing moves in this city Yusuf doesn’t know about it.’

Her head jerks around at the mention of the other man’s name. He’s still standing watchfully by the door, barring her exit, but there is no malice in his pose. The tablet lies tantalizingly out of reach, but she can almost taste the trickle of current flowing through the solid-state circuitry from the tiny block of lithium at its core. Just a little nudge …

Blue light from the tablets suddenly illuminates Levi’s face. He blinks in disbelief. ‘What the fuck did you do?’

‘Like I said, I need see everything.’

Heavy footsteps from behind warn of the big man’s approach, but Levi holds up a hand, and they stop. She feels the looming presence no more than a metre behind her.

‘May I?’ She gestures to the tablets shining through Levi’s caged fingers and he nods cautiously, pulling his hand away.

The moment her index finger brushes the tablet’s casing, data rushes up to greet her, coursing through the fingertip interface into her grey matter, flowing in a stream of firing neurons into the tiny auxiliary processor at the base of her frontal cortex. An itch in her brain is a long dormant sub-routine kicking into life, processing, sorting through thousands of files. The storage is archaic: pointless partitions and fragmentation make it needlessly cumbersome, but a few microseconds suffice to realize it is mostly redundant information. Almost all the files are copies of each other with small, pointless modifications. This data is an illusion, a pantomime of rigour.

‘This isn’t everything.’ Clementine’s voice comes out in a lifeless monotone.

‘What do you mean? I have contacts. This is the skinny.’

‘Look.’

The micro-projector on one of the tablets sparkles into life, and the photographs from its data files flicker into the air above the table on its beam of light. One after the other, they seem to hover, connecting with each other through some algorithmic alchemy to form a glowing three-dimensional wireframe of the target building that rotates slowly between Clementine and Levi.

‘Fuck.’ She turns in her chair at the sound of Yusuf’s voice. The big man is staring at the ghost building she’s conjured, mouth wide open.

‘How? How do you do that?’ Levi’s stare is intense, but his voice betrays a note of excitement.

‘It’s easier than the orange.’

‘That’s not an answer.’

‘You’re right, it isn’t. Is that going to be a problem?’

A calculating look comes into his eyes, and he shakes his head. ‘What’s going on here?’ He points to one of five blurred areas in the rotating schematic. It stops, and the relevant area enlarges, obeying an unspoken command.

‘This is how I know you’re not being given everything – there’s no source data available for me to process into the larger model. Is there a reason your contact wouldn’t give you the whole picture?’

‘Maybe. Maybe these areas just aren’t important.’ He waves a hand, and the model continues its rotation. ‘This doesn’t change anything.’

‘I think it does. I think my fee is four thousand.’ Clementine pulls her finger away from the tablet and the schematic winks out of existence, casting them both into gloom. Levi emits something like a growl, a sound of reluctance from deep in his throat; then he leans forward, face cracking in a sudden smile.

‘Yeah, yeah, four thousand is cool. You bring a lot to the party. I can respect that. I think we should regard this as the beginning of a business relationship.’

‘No, I do this and then I’m out.’

‘Let’s just see how this goes and then maybe consider it further down the line.’

Clementine breathes deep and shuts her eyes against memories: a year of running now. This is not her first opportunity to make money through crime. There were offers in Marseille as soon as people got a hint of what she was. Now, at the end of the money, choices are fewer. ‘This is not a career opportunity for me.’

‘I understand. I’m just saying things can change, that’s all.’

‘I hope we understand each other.’

‘Yeah, whatever, now do your thing.’

Clementine gestures the light model into being and it resumes its rotation between them, white lines of the wireframe scrolling across their faces like moving scars. Levi points as he talks.

‘It’s a warehouse – the main storage facility for the state Museum of Antiquities. It’s split between three floors, each corresponding to a different level of security – A, B, and C, but the order is all messed up. C is the low-level stuff you might just dig up if you get lucky – coins, pottery. It’s on the ground floor – not heavy security but there’s only one door in, and there’s a guard on it 24/7. I’m guessing some pressure sensors and beams – nothing crazy.’

He watches for any trace of a reaction. Clementine stays silent, mentally cross-referencing what he’s telling her with data already absorbed from the tablets, searching for inconsistencies. There are none. As far as she can tell, the picture they have is not false, merely incomplete, but that could be equally deadly.

‘The floor above C is A. I told you it was messed up. A is the really valuable stuff – this kind of thing, it’s either on the cover of the museum brochure, or they deny its existence, or maybe both, I don’t know. B is our destination, the top floor.’

‘Why aren’t we going for the valuable stuff?’

‘Because this is a real job. We’re getting what the client wants. That’s it.’

‘Who’s the client?’

Disbelief flattens Levi’s voice. ‘You don’t know. You’re never going to know, so don’t ask.’

‘Fine, you’re right. I don’t need to know the backstory, but I can’t work with these gaps in information. A single unexpected camera or sensor could turn any plan I make into a very bad idea. These are problems I can solve, but I need to take a look and make some guesses at what we’re dealing with.’

‘Now?’ He looks uncertain, the brittle pride of a few moments ago cracked in the heat of practicalities. A good sign.

‘No, daylight’s better. We’ve got time, haven’t we?’

‘Yeah, time is one thing we got. Do what you need to do.’

‘OK. Give me a couple of days to work things out, then I’ll meet you back here after lunch. I’ve got to serve breakfast at the Mission and clear up.’

‘For those bums?’

‘For those bums.’ She owes that much, and more, for the kindness she’s been shown. This is already enough of a betrayal, and they have problems of their own. Before she left to come here tonight, Hilda had been worried about something: one of the elders, a man she called a prophet, had been arrested.

Levi’s nose wrinkles as if he can smell the urine tang of the Mission gatehouse. ‘I could, like, advance you a little money – you get yourself a proper room somewhere.’ He hunches back into that jacket and it swallows him. All his edges are blunted but he still looks nervous about something, smoking with no hands while he fingers the tablet. The tip of the straggly cigarette glows to the sound of a sharp inhalation. Is he trying to make nice after the confrontation, or is this some convoluted attempt at a pass? No, he’s smarter than that. Then the realization hits her; she’s become an asset worth looking after, and even this utilitarian kindness fits him about as well as that jacket. It’s not comfortable.

‘See you soon, Levi.’

8.
Silas

A red light flashes, urgent but ignored at the corner of the desk. For almost twenty-two delicious minutes he has sat, transported by the magic of the screen, but as the play nears its end, its analgesic comfort starts to fade, and the pressures of an endless day loom as a faint ache at the edge of perceptible sensation, a warning of what is still to come. That pitiless light will be someone else wanting something, imagining their desires correlate with his priorities. For a few more stolen moments, he pushes the unwelcome thoughts away, focusing his full attention on the scene unfolding before him.

It is the culmination of an arc unfolding over six episodes. The alcalde, an unremittingly villainous official in charge of a generic rural settlement that could be anywhere from Panama to Peru, is about to reveal to the lovely Consuelo that she sacrificed her virtue for nothing. Her beau, Pablo – the man she hoped to save – is already dead. The denouement can take different forms but it is always an exquisite variation on the theme of moral compromise. For those too depraved to appreciate the melodrama, the Lat-Am import soaps offer two choices: alternative streams present the same storylines rendered as pornography of varying hideousness. The work must be wearing for the actors, but it creates a perfect product, a culturally pliable opiate for the worn workers of the Sino-Soviet bloc or their bourgeois counterparts in the West, perhaps even for the demi-human elite, although it’s hard to imagine what currents of emotion circulate in the hormone-regulated soup beneath their metal shells. The episode ends with a lingering close-up of Consuelo, her delicate jaw quivering with grief and shame. Silas leans back into the punched leather comfort of his chair to savour the image for a moment before allowing work to intrude.

‘Sybil.’

Unusually, his assistant fails to respond to the summons.

He lifts his feet from the desk, squares them on the floor in preparation to stand, pushing back the niggling urge to snap at her. There will be some good reason for her silence, and displays of hostility should be saved for the moments when they can serve some purpose. He pokes his head through the doorway separating their domains.

The spectacle of Sybil, with her artless mousy hair and dull, faintly bovine eyes, often provokes disappointment in visitors who come here. But in truth, she’s an asset infinitely more valuable than any office decoration. Sybil treads the razor line between blind obedience and initiative like no other. This quality requires a total absence of self – no guiding principles, no emotional attachments – an ability to make critical judgements, coupled with the capacity for selective blindness necessary for ruthless action. The trust he places in her is near total.

‘Sybil dear, when’s the diplomatic pouch from São Paulo due?’

She nods acknowledgement of the question but does not instantly respond, enmeshed in an incomprehensible array of tasks, all no doubt urgent and essential for the furtherance of his agenda. For more than a minute, information flows through her, sucked in through fingers jabbing and stroking at the floating arcs of data, outputted through clipped voice and text. Her effortless, natural manipulation of unseen lives exhibits a level of technical and managerial competence he could never attain, yet, he reflects, it is Sybil who performs his bidding, not her his. Proof, if it were needed, of the myth of meritocracy. Or to look at it another way, he possesses merit of a different kind he suspects Sybil will never own; he simply does not care that she is better.

‘Sorry about that, I thought I had a few minutes. I can never get my head around how short those episodes are with the commercials cut out. What’s Consuelo up to?’ The data arcs floating in front of her dim and become transparent.

‘She just found out Pablo’s dead. She’s taking it pretty hard. I don’t suppose the next month’s instalment is in yet?’

‘I’m afraid not. Two or three days would be my best guess.’

‘Oh well, work it is then. What was that light about? The Cult again?’

‘Actually, no. It was Vasily Tchernikov.’

‘Vasily? What does he want?’ Like anyone worth knowing, Vasily Tchernikov wears more than one face. Publicly, he serves as the cultural attaché within the embassy of the Sino-Soviet Republic of Humanity, but the niceties conceal a more demanding role as station chief for their intelligence operation within in the city. Until recently, someone like him would have regarded Jerusalem as a dead-end posting, but of late the Republic has been making an effort to cultivate client states outside of the Machine sphere of influence; this makes him an asset worth maintaining.

‘Something about repatriating some statues recovered from Palmyra. He says the Russian envoy in Damascus is insisting they be returned. Their presence in our Museum of Antiquities is “naked cultural larceny”.’

‘Vasily said that?’

‘No, that was Damascus.’

Silas stays silent, taking a moment to savour the subtext of what is, on the face of it, a banal request for a few lumps of badly eroded sandstone. The Damascene government styles itself as the flag-bearer for a new style of democracy in the Middle East, but in truth they are masters of an irradiated shit heap, dancing to the tunes of their masters in Sverdlovsk. Of all the Republic of Humanity’s client states, Damascus is the runt of the litter. The statues will no doubt be part of some gambit to claim cultural consanguity with the dead nations who used to occupy the real estate – a preamble to making wider territorial claims.

‘Fuck them … No, wait a minute – these statues – are they any good?’

‘They’re unique: representations of Moloch recovered from the ruins of the temple of Baal in Palmyra. To the Shias and the Haredim they’re blasphemies – both regard them as representations of Satan – but culturally they’re significant, so we have them on display.’

‘So getting rid of them could actually make a lot of people happy?’

‘And annoy anyone in the city who cares about real history.’ A mischievous smile curls the edges of Sybil’s lips. This is what visitors to Silas’s office do not see – the perfect sympathy, the way she moulds herself to his needs. It is a gift almost beyond price.

‘You’re making this decision too easy. Call the relevant curator. Tell him to pull the Moloch stuff from display and get it ready for transit.’

Sybil’s gaze drops and she shifts awkwardly in her seat. ‘Ah, I’m afraid that won’t be straightforward. Boutros wasn’t in today. Nobody seems to know where he is.’

‘Boutros?’

‘The “sanctimonious plank” who raised an official protest when you moved the Antikythera Mechanism into storage. He hasn’t turned up to work since.’

‘I imagine it’s some sort of protest. Never mind, with any luck, he’ll keep himself out of the picture for a while. Honestly, the fuss that man makes, you’d think he owned the bloody thing. And he used to seem such a reasonable sort too. Well, you’ll have to get someone else to deal with the statues. It doesn’t take a PhD to cover a statue in bubble wrap and tape … and call Vasily. Tell the Russian bastard he owes me a favour.’

‘Of course. Would you like to run through your schedule now?’

‘No, I need you to make some excuses for me. I’m going to court.’

Her head tilts. ‘Court?’

‘Our esteemed Chief Justice is presiding over a case that could cause him a little trouble. I might just catch the end of the evening session if I’m quick. I sense an opportunity here and I don’t want to miss it. Is there anything that can’t wait?’

She makes a face and swallows the answer she wanted to give. ‘Just some griping. Nothing I can’t handle.’

The prophet’s eyes shine with the moist intensity of the unhinged, as if some hidden wellspring of emotion was constantly threatening to overflow. Beneath weeks of hair and dirt he is still a handsome man, an anomaly in a courtroom packed with decaying functionaries of the legal system. When he speaks, his teeth glint bright white between lips cracked and darkened by the sun.

‘The Lord will be my judge.’

The actual judge seems unaffected by the implied insult. From Silas’s seat in the galleries, Amos Glassberg might be a statue of Solomon, a lean figure swathed in purple fabric that can serve no practical purpose but to evoke the required history. The whole courtroom is an absurd parody of something imagined from the city’s ancient past. Faux marble covers the walls and the steps leading up to the raised judge’s chair. In places it is cracked and warped. Where moisture leaks around the outlets for the air-conditioning units, it darkens with mould. The cool they bring is worth a little rot. The heat of human bodies pressed together in the galleries is relentless.

Of course, the Solomon schtick is all part of Amos Glassberg’s carefully cultivated image. The city’s Justice Minister might be boredom incarnate, but he possesses a canny instinct for what the people want from the law, and in public he always maintains the stoic visage of a father governing quarrelsome children. Jerusalem doesn’t do kings anymore, or even heads of state – the idea of all that power in the hands of one person is unacceptable to everyone who knows it won’t be their man. Glassberg is as near to a ruler as the city’s broken democracy permits. Other ministers have their fiefdoms, but all are answerable to the law. He rests an elbow on the elaborately carved arm of his judge’s seat and addresses the man in the dock. ‘I see. And which Lord would that be?’

A gentle smile calms the deranged face, hinting at some hidden joke, but Glassberg ignores it. He has seen too many messiahs fall into the trap of thinking this is a real conversation. This one is only the latest in the recent wave of immigrant Christian criminals to fill the courts. At moments like this, it is all too clear the centuries have not diminished the city’s fearsome appetite for martyrs. Their particular faith seems to be of no consequence. Prophets, poets, and crusaders have all placed Jerusalem at the centre of Creation, and the people of the city love and fear them for it. The trouble is, however bright the ideal shines, the intellectual property is still tied to this grubby real estate surrounded by desert. When the conceptual city collides with the reality, the spectacle of collision draws the public to the courtroom like flies to a slaughterhouse. Glassberg knows this. Despite the staid exterior, his feel for the ebb and flow of the city’s passions rivals Silas’s own, which is why he must go.

The judge’s gaze turns from the prophet to the prosecutor, a heavyset, middle-aged man uncomfortable in a tunic that reveals legs which, on balance, would be better hidden. ‘What is the charge levelled at the accused?’

‘Conspiracy to commit acts of terror, sedition, and criminal damage, your honour.’ He straightens his skirt and tugs unconsciously at his wig. The outfit is another stab at Bronze Age retro, supposed to be an authentic representation of priestly garb from the era of the First Temple, but cheaper than the ministerial robe, and about as authentic as this courtroom. In another city, you might mistake the prosecution team for inept middle-aged transvestites, but history in Jerusalem is currency, and even a forgery is worth something.

‘What form did this “terror” take?’

‘On the second of August, he led an occupation of the Talbiya branch of K-Nect-U implant clinics. His followers vandalized the property and destroyed implants valued at almost two million shekels.’

Glassberg leans back in his seat. A sigh of impatience escapes him. ‘Counsellor, what you are describing is a public order offence, culminating in criminal damage. I hope there is a reason you have elevated this to the city’s highest court. Furthermore, I hope that reason is unconnected to the cameras we have present.’

A murmur passes through the room. Glassberg has addressed the elephant directly. He does that. Anyone who’s spent time in his courtroom should know it, and yet somehow it always surprises people. It is one of the gifts that make him dangerous.

The prosecutor squirms. His plastic smile does a poor job of deflecting the implicit accusation: that the trial is political pantomime for the cameras, headline fodder for news feeds fuelling the fears of the anti-immigrant brigade. ‘Please bear with me, your honour. The list of charges is extensive.’

Amos is merciless. ‘But succinct; at least it will be if you wish it to be heard in this court.’

The crowd in the galleries around Silas trembles again, sensing conflict.

‘Two days after the occupation, the clinic was burned to the ground. The perpetrators are in custody, and claim they were acting on the orders of this man.’ A stubby finger points at the prophet.

‘And obviously you’ve obtained evidence to corroborate their claim?’

‘I have their sworn testimony.’

‘I’ll take that as a no, shall I?’ The prosecutor opens his mouth, but Glassberg cuts him off. ‘Well, we’ll see in due course, won’t we? Is that it for charges? You mentioned sedition?’

‘When officers attempted forcibly to remove the perpetrators from the clinic, he claimed their authority was invalid, and multiple witnesses heard him instruct his followers to heed the call of a higher authority which he alone can interpret. It is both a blasphemy and a violation of civil law.’

‘More or less the usual then?’

‘Your honour …’ The man adjusts his curled wig in a misguided attempt to assume an air of dignity. ‘Cases like this strike a twin blow at the very fabric of our society. The clinics are vital for the installation and maintenance of citizen comm-plants. Without them, commerce suffers, and law enforcement loses a vital tool. Chaos and ruin threaten. This, I believe, is more than sufficient justification for the charge of terrorism.’

Silas bites back a bark of laughter at the legal hyperbole. There is more than a touch of the absurd in the spectacle. Glassberg’s dignified disdain sets it off perfectly. He sees what’s happening, but can’t help being the straight man in the deadly theatre unfolding around him. He knows what will happen outside the court, as the pantomime of manufactured outrage reproduces itself in earnest on the streets. A man like him cannot see past the fire and blood to the opportunities they bring for anyone possessed of will and imagination. His lean jaw tightens, and his gaze tracks pointedly from the prosecutor to the cameras at the back of the court.

‘Are you finished? I assume that little tirade was the reason we’re all gathered here. I imagine there was enough there for it to have the desired effect?’

Silas grimaces. This is what makes Glassberg an obstacle, for all his plodding predictability. In a sentence he can steal the wind from anyone who tries to play the part of demagogue in his courtroom, and he does it without putting so much as a dent in his reputation for impartiality. The rebuke sends a thrill shivering through the crowd. The prosecutor looks around the room, pretending to gauge the mood while he searches for a rejoinder. He starts to say something, stutters and falls silent. The threat of a contempt charge hangs unspoken in the air.

‘Right, shall we move this along? I’m sure we’d all rather be doing something else.’ Glassberg assumes a breezy businesslike air. ‘I’m throwing out the conspiracy charges and the sedition. There are a hundred lunatics saying the same thing on every street corner in the city, and I fail to see any benefit in turning the city’s prisons into asylums or, indeed, into refugee camps. The charge of criminal damage is, I note, uncontested, so we can dispense with a lot of the formalities.’ He sits up straight and addresses the prisoner in the dock. ‘The accused will pay a fine of one hundred shekels and understand that any further instances of this behaviour will be more severely punished.’

The man in the dock smiles placidly as the bailiffs lead him away to his liberty, quietly certain his fate is the result of divine providence rather than any trivial human agency. His followers at the so-called ‘Mission’ will pay the fine without blinking. This is not their prophet’s first appearance in Amos’s courtroom, nor will it be his last. Nobody wants them in Jerusalem, even the Christians they claim fellowship with scorn them, but still they persist, funded by some foreign fanatic who hopes to earn his own place in heaven by importing religion to the Holy City.

Fury darkens the prosecutor’s face. No doubt he imagines he will exact revenge for this humiliation in the city’s looming elections. The prosecutor’s chair is the traditional stepping stone to the Justice Ministry and the judge’s seat currently occupied by Amos Glassberg, but he is the wrong man in the wrong place. His support from the traditionalists of the Syriac and Orthodox traditions will not be enough. The landscape is changing; new faiths disturb the old balances – in that sense the transparent evangelism of the Mission is no different to the Cult of the Machine: both sweep up human refuse and recycle it, building armies of the grateful. They don’t dare wield their influence openly yet, but it is only a matter of time. Power, once gained, does not go unused. Already, in subtle ways, they force change upon a city that resists it by nature. And so they must endure the painful lessons learned by all the faiths that came before them, lured by the conceptual Jerusalem, and damned by the real.

The foreign churches will burn tonight. Frightened people will start the fires, their fear will spread like the flames, and then they will look for someone to make them feel safe from themselves. The city’s fractured politics have long made it impossible for any one faith to govern, but for the right man, for someone with a vision for Jerusalem as more than a backwater city-state at the edge of the developed world, the cracks in the old order offer a chance to sow the seeds of a new era.

9.
Clementine

Something twists the night air around Clementine, dragging it through the narrow channels of the Old City’s streets, raising tiny dust devils of grime that disappear in the dark. A storm blowing in from the desert? No, something else. She follows the flow, drawn by the sense of something unfolding, until the bark of human voices reaches her. The shouts sound faint and distant, but it’s an illusion spawned by the wind blowing away from her; nothing is ever further than a stone’s throw in the clogged vessels of Jerusalem’s ancient heart.

She hears the crackle like snapping twigs before she sees the glow, a nimbus of orange floating above the rooftops like a second dawn: fire, sucking the air from the alleys, gorging on the tainted oxygen. The calculation of its position comes to her unbidden, and panic sours the back of her throat; the flames are coming from the Mission. She runs easily, slipping through pools of darkness between scattered bubbles of yellow sodium light, the movement a liberation she could never enjoy in daylight hours.

A small crowd lines the edges of the square around the Mission, watching the chapel roof burn as if it were a sacrificial pyre. A few figures, some robed, some ragged, scurry around the base of the white walls, leaning ladders against the gables the fire hasn’t touched yet, running thin hoses to grime-encrusted hydrants, relics of another age. At the centre of it, she recognizes Hilda’s bulk silhouetted against the flames: still, solid, a bulwark of calm amidst the panic surrounding her.

‘What can I do?’

The older woman jerks around at the sound of her voice. Her gaze sweeps up and down Clementine’s foreign clothes, the question of where she has been unspoken.

‘It looks like it’s just the roof so far. If we can stop it spreading, we can still save the Mission.’

‘What happened?’

‘Later, Clementine. We’ll talk.’ Her voice is stern, but unthreatening. The anger in it is directed elsewhere. ‘Get to one of the ladders.’

She follows Hilda’s pointing finger to a patch of white wall already darkened with soot. Two ladders lean against it at either side of the patch of blazing roof. One wobbles dangerously as a man bearing a thin green hose climbs to the top. She clutches it with both hands, but still it totters with every step the reluctant firefighter takes, threatening to slip away from its two tiny points of contact with the cobbled ground. As she leans her body against it, his movement vibrates through the quivering wood and into her, her entire bulk still insufficient to prevent the ladder’s metal feet scraping against the stone.

At the top, the man waves a signal and someone at the hydrant gives a lever a quarter-turn. The hose gurgles next to Clementine’s ear and water trickles from the tip, bringing shouts and urgent gestures from the holder. The small robed woman operating the pump hesitates before giving the lever another quarter-turn. There’s a rushing noise and suddenly the water line starts twitching like an angry serpent. For a terrible moment Clementine imagines the hose’s plastic splitting like a bean pod, unable to withstand the pressure within, but in seconds the trickle becomes a fierce, sparkling jet.

The ladder trembles against her as the hose-wielder shifts position to direct its flow into the heart of the blaze. She can see he’s trying to climb higher onto the ladder’s last rungs, but he keeps stepping back, sending new vibrations down through the wood. It must be the heat from the flames forcing him away. Her fingers grip the zip of her bodysuit’s high collar. She could pull it up to cover most of her face – it’s not fire-proof, but the nano-weave is tough and the insulation would stop her feeling the heat for a few minutes. She could do it. A few yards away, Hilda directs another shopkeeper’s ladder towards the blaze, but it’s too short for the Mission’s high walls. The debt she owes to these people burns in Clementine’s chest, but heroics bring attention. She might not get another chance to disappear.

The wail of a siren drowns the thought. A red-painted, six-wheeled vehicle creeps from one of the alleys with a slowness that belies the urgency of its cries. The Old City’s narrow lanes do not permit speed. It stops directly behind Clementine, and something like a shiny gun on the roof of its cab swivels to point up at the fire. There is a roar of pumps and bright white foam arcs, dreamlike, into the heart of the blaze. It spatters onto the men on the ladders, but seems to land like soft snow, doing no harm. The fire simply dies. Its absence leaves silence, and Clementine stares in wonder at the roof, the nubs of blackened beams poking through the foam like boulders in the snow of a sudden, surreal winterscape, where moments ago flames crackled.

The spectacle over, the crowd around the edges of the square fades away. The fire truck simply reverses back into the alley it appeared from with a whine of electric motors, presumably guided away by its driving AI. The ladders are carried away. The reluctant firefighters become themselves again, the memory of the blaze persisting only as an acrid stink in the air. Clementine follows the trickle of robed figures retreating into the Mission.

When she gets to Hilda’s room, the older woman is sitting on the chair in front of the desk, not the bed, where they usually talk. ‘Where were you, Clementine?’

For a moment she struggles to speak, wrongfooted by the question. Her comings and goings seem trivial after the Mission’s brush with catastrophe, but Hilda’s voice makes it clear she is quite serious.

‘I … I went to see some men about a job.’

‘At this time of night?’

‘They run a bar.’ The betrayal is acid at the back of Clementine’s throat.

Hilda stares for six heartbeats before nodding silently to herself, as if in response to some internal dialogue. ‘I suppose that’s your right. This isn’t a prison. Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it mattered.’

‘Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe I’m a fool …’ Hilda’s words trail off.

‘I don’t understand, Hilda. What happened here? What’s going on?’

‘Perhaps you can tell me?’ For a moment, the older woman appears lost in thought. ‘No, no, forget that.’

Clementine’s eyes close, her hands rise unconsciously to cover her nose and mouth as the implications hit home. Of course, what was Hilda supposed to think? This woman arrives, a self-confessed fugitive, and a day later, someone sets fire to the roof of the Mission. How could she not think there was a connection? And the timing – by pure coincidence it all happens just after she snuck out.

‘I don’t … I don’t know anything about this. I don’t think anyone knows I’m here. This … the fire – it’s not what they would do.’

‘Perhaps you should explain.’

‘I’m sorry, I can’t.’ Clementine lowers her hands away from her face and lifts her gaze to meet the other woman’s scrutiny, those green eyes boring into her from beneath the shock of copper hair. The temptation to confess threatens to swallow her. But it would be selfish; the knowledge brings danger. ‘Perhaps it would be best if I go away for a while.’

Hilda flinches and gives a barely perceptible shake of the head. ‘You don’t have to.’ The corners of her mouth relax. The anger that possessed her moments ago seems to flow away, dispelled by some internal discipline or ritual of acceptance. Clementine watches, fascinated by the subtle transformation. There is still so much unsaid. What is it that moves this woman to care for her above the strays who wander through these doors? She’d thought at first it would be sex, but the bed has remained hers alone.

‘Who would set fire to the Mission?’

Hilda smiles sadly. ‘I’m afraid there’s a long list of suspects.’

‘Why?’

‘That’s easier. We don’t belong here, that’s one thing a lot of people in this city agree on.’

‘I don’t understand. The work you do …’

Hilda takes a breath. ‘It’s hard to understand the city until you’ve lived here. The work we do, helping the helpless, is a visible reminder of all the ways the city doesn’t work. People would rather turn a blind eye than see their own cruelty laid bare, and our beliefs frighten them.’

‘I thought you were Christians.’

‘Let me show you something.’ Hilda stands from the chair and steps over to the bookcases against the far wall, her fingers ghosting across the spines of old volumes bound in cracked leather. The titles are unfamiliar: The Revelations of Glaaki, The Pnakotic Manuscripts, De Vermis Mysteriis. ‘These books are our most treasured possessions, but they are not Christian scripture. Indeed, many Christians would consider them heretical. We gather knowledge because we accept there are truths in all faiths – they are all paths to connect with something greater than ourselves. We believe we all worship the same creator, whatever you wish to call her. So, yes, we are Christians, but we’re the wrong kind. We are not pure.’

‘That doesn’t sound like a threat.’

A long sigh escapes her. ‘If you’ve survived a thousand years by telling everyone they’re damned unless they accept your trademarked God, our mere existence is a threat to who you are.’

‘So the fire …?’

‘It’s only the beginning, Clementine. I’m afraid there is worse to come.’

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