The Last Testament

Now he felt something solid; cool to the touch. It was a tin box. At last: money!

He had to lie on the ground, his cheek against the stone, in order to reach down far enough. His fingers struggled to grasp their target. The box was difficult to lift, but at last he got it out. It was locked; but its contents seemed too silent for coins and too heavy for notes.

He stood up, peering through the darkness until he found what he assumed was a letter opener lying on the desk. He slid it under the thin tin of the lid, leaning on the blade to lever up the metal. He did that all the way along one side, opening the box like a can of beans. By tipping it to one side, he could make the object inside slide out. His heart was pounding.

The second he saw it, he was disappointed. It was a clay tablet, engraved with a few random squiggles, like so many of the others he had seen tonight, many of them just smashed to the ground. Salam was about to discard it, but he hesitated. If some museum guy had gone to such lengths to hide this lump of clay, maybe it was worth something. Salam sprinted up the stairs until he could see moonlight. He had come out at the back of the museum, where he could see a fresh horde of looters breaking their way in. He waited for a gap in the line, then stepped through the broken-down exit doors. Running flat out, he slipped into the Baghdad night – carrying a treasure whose true value he would never know.

CHAPTER ONE (#u08150d5a-4cd8-5f64-be55-b99da7515ae9)

Tel Aviv, Saturday night, several years later

The usual crowd was there. The hardcore leftists, the men with their hair grown long after a year travelling in India, the girls with diamond studs in their noses, the people who always turned up for these Saturday night get-togethers. They would sing the familiar songs – Shir l'shalom, the Song for Peace – and hold the trusted props: the candles cupped in their hands, or the portraits of the man himself, Yitzhak Rabin, the slain hero who had given his name to this piece of hallowed ground so many years earlier. They would form the inner circle at Rabin Square, whether handing out leaflets and bumper stickers or softly strumming guitars, letting the tunes drift into the warm, Mediterranean night air.

Beyond the core there were newer, less familiar, faces. To veterans of these peace rallies, the most surprising sight was the ranks of Mizrachim, working-class North African Jews who had trekked here from some of Israel's poorest towns. They had long been among Israel's most hawkish voters: ‘We know the Arabs,’ they would say, referring to their roots in Morocco, Tunisia or Iraq. ‘We know what they're really like.’ Tough and permanently wary of Israel's Palestinian neighbours, most had long scorned the leftists who showed up at rallies like this. Yet here they were.

The television cameras – from Israeli TV, the BBC, CNN and all the major international networks – swept over the crowd, picking out more unexpected faces. Banners in Russian, held aloft by immigrants to Israel from the old Soviet Union – another traditionally hardline constituency. An NBC cameraman framed a shot which made his director coo with excitement: a man wearing a kippa, the skullcap worn by religious Jews, next to a black Ethiopian-born woman, their faces bathed by the light of the candle in her hands.

A few rows behind them, unnoticed by the camera, was an older man: unsmiling, his face taut with determination. He checked under his jacket: it was still there.

Standing on the platform temporarily constructed for the purpose was a line of reporters, describing the scene for audiences across the globe. One American correspondent was louder than all the others.

‘You join us in Tel Aviv for what's billed as an historic night for both Israelis and Palestinians. In just a few days’ time the leaders of these two peoples are due to meet in Washington – on the lawn of the White House – to sign an agreement which will, at long last, end more than a century of conflict. The two sides are negotiating even now, in closed-door talks less than an hour from here in Jerusalem. They're trying to hammer out the fine print of a peace deal. And the location for those talks? Well, it couldn't be more symbolic, Katie. It's Government House, the former headquarters of the British when they ruled here, and it sits on the border that separates mainly Arab East Jerusalem from the predominantly Jewish West of the city.

‘But tonight the action moves here, to Tel Aviv. The Israeli premier has called for this rally to say “Ken l'Shalom”, or “Yes to Peace” – a political move designed to show the world, and doubters among his own people, that he has the support to conclude a deal with Israel's historic enemy.

‘Now, there are angry and militant opponents who say he has no right to make the compromises rumoured to be on the table – no right to give back land on the West Bank, no right to tear down Jewish settlements in those occupied territories and, above all, no right to divide Jerusalem. That's the biggest stumbling block, Katie. Israel has, until now, insisted that Jerusalem must remain its capital, a single city, for all eternity. For the Prime Minister's enemies that's holy writ, and he's about to break it. But hold on, I think the Israeli leader has just arrived…’

A current of energy rippled through the crowd as thousands turned to face the stage. Bounding towards the microphone was the Deputy Prime Minister, who received a polite round of applause. Though nominally a party colleague of the PM, this crowd also knew he had long been his bitterest rival.

He spoke too long, winning cheers only when he uttered the words, ‘In conclusion …’ Finally he introduced the leader, rattling through his achievements, hailing him as a man of peace, then sticking out his right arm, to beckon him on stage. And when he appeared, this vast mass of humanity erupted. Perhaps three hundred thousand of them, clapping, stamping and whooping their approval. It was not love for him they were expressing, but love for what he was about to do – what, by common consent, only he could do. No one else had the credibility to make the sacrifices required. In just a matter of days he would, they hoped, end the conflict that had marked the lives of every single one of them.

He was close to seventy, a hero of four Israeli wars. If he had worn them, his chest would have been weighed down with medals. Instead, his sole badge of military service was a pronounced limp in his right leg. He had been in politics for nearly twenty years, but he thought like a soldier even now. The press had always described him as a hawk, perennially sceptical of the peaceniks and their schemes. But things were different now, he told himself. There was a chance.

‘We're tired,’ he began, hushing the crowd. ‘We're tired of fighting every day, tired of wearing the soldier's uniform, tired of sending our children, boys and girls, to carry guns and drive tanks when they are barely out of school. We fight and we fight and we fight, but we are tired. We're tired of ruling over another people who never wanted to be ruled by us.’

As he spoke, the unsmiling man was pushing through the crowd, breathing heavily. ‘Slicha,’ he said again and again, each time firmly pushing a shoulder or an arm out of his way. Excuse me.

His hair was silver grey, his chest barrelled; he was no younger than the Prime Minister. This wade through the throng was exhausting him; his shirt collar was darkening with sweat. He looked as if he was trying to catch a train.

He was getting nearer to the front now and was still pushing. The plain clothes guard in the third row of the crowd was the first to notice him, immediately whispering a message into the microphone in his sleeve. That alerted the security detail cordoning the stage, who began scoping the faces before them. It took them no time to spot him. He was making no attempt to be subtle.

By now the plain clothes officer was just a couple of yards away. ‘Adoni, adoni,’ he called. Sir, sir. Then he recognized him. ‘Mr Guttman,’ he called. ‘Mr Guttman, please.’ At that, people in the crowd turned around. They recognized him too. Professor Shimon Guttman, scholar and visionary, or windbag and right-wing rabble-rouser, depending on your point of view; never off the TV and the radio talk shows. He had made his name several summers ago, when Israel pulled out of Gaza: he camped out on the roof of a Jewish settlement, protesting that it was a crime for Israeli soldiers to be giving back land to ‘Arab terrorists, thieves and murderers’.

He was marching on, squeezing past a mother with a child on her shoulders.

‘Sir, stop right there!’ the guard called out.

Guttman ignored him.

Now the agent began making his own journey through the crowd, breaking through a small cluster of teenagers. He considered pulling out his weapon, but decided against it: it would start a panic. He called out again, his voice was instantly drowned out by sustained applause.

‘We do not love the Palestinians and they do not love us,’ the Prime Minister was saying. ‘We never will and they never will…’

The agent was still three rows away from Guttman, now advancing towards the podium. He was directly behind the older man; one long stretch and he could grab him. But the crowd was more tightly packed here; it was harder to push through. The agent stood on tiptoes and leaned over, just lightly brushing his shoulder.

By now Guttman was within shouting distance of the stage. He looked up towards the Prime Minister, who was coming to the climax of the speech.

‘Kobi!’ he yelled, calling him by a long-forgotten nickname. ‘Kobi!’ His eyes were bulging, his face flushed.

Security agents from all sides were now closing in, two on each side, as well as the first man advancing from behind. They were ready to pounce, to smother him to the ground as they had been taught, when a sixth agent, standing to the right of the stage, spotted a sudden movement. Perhaps it was just a wave, it was impossible to tell for sure, but Guttman, still staring maniacally at the Prime Minister, seemed to be reaching into his jacket.

The first shot was straight to the head, just as it had been rehearsed a hundred times. It had to be the head, to ensure instant paralysis. No muscular reflex that might set off a suicide bomb; no final seconds of life in which the suspect might pull a trigger. The bodyguards watched as the silver-haired skull of Shimon Guttman blew open like a watermelon, brains and blood spattering the people all around.

Within seconds, the PM had been bundled off the stage and was at the centre of a scrum of security personnel shoving him towards a car. The crowd, cheering and clapping thirty seconds earlier, was now quaking with panic. There were screams as those at the front tried to run away from the horrible sight of the dead man. Police used their arms to form a cordon around the corpse, but the pressure of the crowd was almost impossible. People were screaming, stampeding, desperate to get away.

Pushing in the opposite direction were two senior military officers from the Prime Minister's detail, determined to break the impromptu cordon and get to the would-be assassin. One of them flashed a badge at a police officer and somehow ducked under his arms and inside the small, human clearing formed around the body.

There was too little of the dead man's head to make out, but the rest of him was almost intact. He had fallen face down and now the officer rolled the lifeless body over. What he saw made him blanch.

It was not the shattered bone or hollowed eye sockets; he had seen those before. It was the man's hands, or rather his right hand. Still clenched, the fingers were not wrapped around a gun – but gripping a piece of paper, now sodden with blood. This man had not been reaching for a revolver – but for a note. Shimon Guttman hadn't wanted to kill the Prime Minister. He had wanted to tell him something.

CHAPTER TWO (#u08150d5a-4cd8-5f64-be55-b99da7515ae9)

Washington, Sunday, 9.00am

‘Big day today, honey.’

‘Uh?’

‘Come on, sweetheart, time to wake up.’

‘Nrrghh.’

‘OK. One, two, three. And the covers are off—’

‘Hey!’

Maggie Costello bolted upright, grabbed at the duvet and pulled it back over her, making sure to cover her head as well as her body this time. She hated the mornings and regarded the Sunday liein as a constitutionally protected right.

Not Edward. He'd probably been up for two hours already. He wasn't like that when they met: back in Africa, in the Congo, he could pull the all-nighters just like her. But once they had come here, he had adapted pretty fast. Now he was Washington Man, out of the house just after six am. Through a squinted eye jammed up against the pillow, Maggie could see he was in shorts and a running vest, both sweaty.

She was still unconscious, but he'd already been for his run through Rock Creek Park.

‘Come on!’ he said, shouting from the bathroom. ‘I've cleared the whole day for furnishing this apartment. Crate and Barrel; then Bed Bath & Beyond; and finally Macy's. I have a complete plan.’

‘Not the whole day,’ Maggie muttered, knowing she was inaudible. She had a morning appointment, an overspill slot for clients who could never make weekdays.

‘Actually not the whole day,’ Edward shouted, the sound of the shower not quite drowning him out. ‘You've got that morning appointment first. Remember?’