Godstone

The next day was the anniversary of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday. The previous evening, I had taken Gee and Adam to Jerusalem Central Bus Station on Jaffa Road, where they had taken a shared taxi to Ben Gurion Airport to catch the midnight Pan Am flight to New York. Adam had said he wanted me to go with them to New York. When I refused, he tried to persuade me to accompany them at least to the airport. I had thought about it but decided that they’d both be safer without me.

Adam cried as they boarded the taxi. He made me promise that I would find him wherever he was. I promised that I would. Before leaving, Gee gave me the address and telephone number of her father. That was all I needed.

The taxi driver had told me that he was expecting trouble the next day because of the prophet’s anniversary, but everything was calm when I made my way back to Jaffa Road to take the 10:00 a.m. bus to Eilat.

Even so, I was nervous, and while I waited for the bus, I saw someone who looked like Imad on the other side of the bus station. He appeared to be watching me but made no move to approach me. A little closer to me, a man who also seemed vaguely familiar was sitting on a bench reading a newspaper—or rather he wasn’t reading a newspaper; he was only pretending to read it. He kept looking in my direction but stayed put on his bench. I was relieved when the bus eventually pulled up and I could climb aboard.

I found a seat by the window, about halfway down the bus’s right-hand side, and an elderly lady sat next to me. She told me she was called Irene, was from Montreal, and was on her way to Eilat to see her daughter and grandson. She was very friendly, and I was glad to have someone to chat with; it made me feel less nervous.

Irene told me that her husband had died a few years previously. Their only daughter had met an Israeli who was travelling around Canada after his military service, and they had moved to Eilat a few months later. Now that her daughter was married, Irene only saw her once a year.

To keep the conversation going, I asked Irene how she felt about her daughter living in Israel, and she shrugged. “She’s happy,” she replied.

“And you?” I asked. “Are you happy?”

“I miss her,” she replied. “I see her and my granddaughter once a year. But if she’s happy, then I’m happy too. Isn’t that what life is about for parents?”

I was about to tell her that I was too young to know what it was like to be a parent, but I stopped myself.

“And you?” she asked. “Are you happy? You seem rather worried about something. Are you in trouble?”

I told her that I wasn’t in trouble but that I had a lot on my mind. I regretted starting the conversation with her. I leaned my head up against the bus window and closed my eyes; she got the message and didn’t say anything else.

There were a number of checkpoints on the road out of Jerusalem, but the bus didn’t stop for them. I fell asleep and was woken up when the bus stopped at a crossroads. A soldier got onto the bus and started checking everyone’s identity cards. He was wearing a standard-issue Israeli Army uniform, but as he moved his way slowly down the central aisle, I got the feeling that something wasn’t quite right. I decided to pretend that I was still sleeping.

When he got to Irene, she struck up a conversation with him as he checked her passport. I don’t know why, but she told the soldier that I was her son and that we had travelled over from Canada the day before. She said that I had gotten food poisoning somewhere along the line and that I hadn’t slept for nearly two days.

“Now that he’s asleep,” she told the soldier, “perhaps it is better not to wake him up.”

The soldier grunted something and then continued on down the bus.

I breathed a sigh of relief when he finally got off and moved on.

“There was something about that soldier that I didn’t trust,” Irene told me as I sat up again in my seat. “He didn’t seem like a soldier.”

After a few kilometres, Irene pointed out of the window at a high cliff on our right. She told me that in AD 40, King Herod had built a fortress high on the cliff overlooking the Dead Sea and Jordan. Some years later, during a revolt against the Romans, the Jews captured the fortress and called it Masada. When the Romans counterattacked, the nine hundred Jews in the fortress committed mass suicide rather than be captured.

Irene said that she had visited the site on a previous trip, but there was little left to see. However, the place was of great importance to the Jewish people; army recruits went there to swear allegiance to their country. She added that the country was still torn by strife and warfare almost two thousand years after Herod.

“I asked you earlier if you were happy,” she continued, “and you said you had a lot on your mind. You know sometimes it helps to talk to someone—and it’s even better if the person you talk to is a stranger on a bus—someone you’ll never see again. I’m a good listener.”

I looked at her, wondering how to reply. “I have to do something,” I told her eventually, “but have no idea how to do it, and I don’t think I can do it. A lot of people are depending on me succeeding, and I’m sure I’ll let them down.”

I have no idea why I told her that; perhaps because she was exactly what she had described: a stranger on a bus.

“And that worries you?” Irene asked.

“It terrifies me,” I replied. “If I fail, I have no idea how things will play out, but they can only be bad.”

“Resist nothing,” Irene told me gently.

“What do you mean?” I asked her. “Resist nothing?” It seemed a bizarre thing to say.

“No one knows how things will play out,” she told me. “Sometimes what we think of as a bad outcome turns out to be a good one. So that is why we should resist nothing and let go of the need to judge our experience.”

“I’m afraid I still don’t understand,” I told her.

“Well, we have time before we get to Eilat. May I tell you a story?”

“Of course,” I replied.

“This is the story of a farmer,” she began, “a farmer who had only one horse. One day, his horse ran away, and his neighbour told him, ‘I’m so sorry. This is such bad news. You must be so upset.’ But the farmer just said, ‘We’ll see.’

“A few days later, his horse came back with twenty wild horses following him. The man and his son corralled all twenty-one horses. His neighbour was very excited and said, ‘Congratulations! This is such good news. You must be so happy.’ But the farmer just replied, ‘We’ll see.’

“One of the wild horses kicked the man’s only son, breaking both his legs. His neighbour said, ‘I’m so sorry. This is such bad news. You must be so upset.’ But the farmer just said, ‘We’ll see.’

“The country went to war, and every able-bodied young man was drafted to fight. The war was terrible and killed many young men, but the farmer’s son was spared since his broken legs prevented him from being drafted. His neighbour said, ‘Congratulations! This is such good news. You must be so happy.’ But the farmer just replied, ‘We’ll see.’”

Irene sat back in her seat. She had finished her story.

“So what you’re saying,” I asked her, “is that what you think of as a bad outcome might just be one step on a journey towards a good outcome, and that in any case, you can’t do anything about it?”

“All acts have consequences,” she replied. “But you can’t be sure that a good act has good consequences and that a bad act has bad consequences. What you think may be bad may be good, and what you think may be good may be bad. So accept it as it is. Do not resist it, and do not judge it.”

I tried to absorb what Irene was telling me, and the idea of not resisting made me feel stronger.

“You will do what others expect of you,” Irene told me. “You will succeed. But be aware that the outcome might not be as good as you think it will be. Now it’s time for me to sleep a little before I meet my daughter.”

The bus drove on through the Negev Desert, a vast, hilly nothing with only the occasional splattering of green from a kibbutz irrigation system. Irene fell asleep beside me, her head lightly resting on my shoulder. We arrived in Eilat Bus Station, where we both got off. I guess that Irene must have been eighty years old; she had swollen ankles and walked with difficulty. I admired her bravery in coming all this way to see her daughter.

I waited with her while the bus driver unloaded her suitcase. I offered to stay with her until her daughter arrived, but she insisted that I go find my own bus to the border. I asked someone, and he pointed me in the direction of a number-thirteen bus on the opposite side of the parking lot. I said good-bye to Irene and boarded my bus. She was still standing there when my bus drove off. I wondered where her daughter was and what had stopped her from being there on time to meet her mother, who had travelled so far to see her.

I took the bus to the Israeli border, where I paid twenty-four shekels in exit tax to a grim-faced Israeli border guard. A shuttle bus then took me the few metres to the Egyptian border, where my small rucksack was searched and my passport checked three times by three different soldiers.

Somehow they let me through without asking me to pay my Egyptian entrance tax, and I briefly panicked when the soldiers called me back as I was boarding my bus to Saint Catherine’s. I paid the tax and filled out another form while the bus waited for me. The whole thing took an hour or so, but the soldiers were smiling and friendly, a contrast to the sternness on the Israeli side.

The Egyptian bus was modern and air conditioned, not at all what I had been expecting. I settled into my numbered seat and paid a fare of ten Egyptian pounds to a conductor who spoke only Arabic. I was the only passenger on the bus, and the conductor seemed delighted to see me. He shook my hand and gave me an awkward pat on the back.

He then showed me to the rear of the bus, where there was a strange sort of seating arrangement; a couch that wouldn’t have been out of place in a nightclub faced backwards out of a panoramic back window. I sat on the couch and watched the desert slip away behind the bus. The conductor came to check on me about every five minutes. Normally I would have been annoyed, but I found it rather comforting, just as I had found Irene’s company comforting.

The bus followed the coast as far as the desert town of Nuewba and then cut inland and wound its way through the Sinai Mountains. The scenery was like nothing I had ever seen before: strange, wind-eroded rock formations in shades of pink, orange, and blue. There was little sand, just rocks and mountains.

The small town of Saint Catherine was also like nothing I had imagined. It was a spread-out sort of place with little sign of life. I wandered around until I found a police station, where I asked if there were any hotels nearby. “No hotels,” a young officer replied. I guessed that those words were the only English he knew.

I was worried that I had gotten off the bus in the wrong place. “Saint Catherine’s?” I asked. He took my arm and led me back outside the police station and pointed down a long road through the desert. It was getting dark, and the wind had turned bitterly cold.

I set out down the road and realised that I was severely underdressed for a night in the desert. I was relieved when, after a couple of kilometres, I found a café that served hot chicken soup.

I was the only customer in the café. The owner told me as best he could that there was a hotel another kilometre down the road. He didn’t seem particularly confident, but I ate my chicken soup and then set off again. After a couple of kilometres, I found a hotel of sorts. The owner showed me to a darkened room with sixteen beds in it, fifteen of which were already occupied. Even though it was only 8:15 p.m., everyone was sleeping.

There was no heating in the room, and I was given only a thin blanket to cover myself. The cold kept me from sleeping, but at least I wasn’t outside in the desert. Someone’s alarm went off at 2:15 a.m., and the other occupants in the room began to get up and pack up their bags.

I asked the man in the next bed, a German tourist, what was happening. He told me that they were part of a group and that they were going to trek up to the top of Mount Sinai to watch the sunrise. Then they would visit the monastery as soon as it opened at 8:00 a.m. He asked me to join them, but I declined. As soon as they had left, I took the blankets off five of the beds and covered myself with them.

I slept until 8:00 a.m. and then set off for the monastery, about a four-kilometre walk away. I got there just as the German tour group was leaving. The German I had talked to earlier that morning came up to me and told me that I had made the right call. The trek in the dark had been cold and miserable, and by the time they had climbed Mount Sinai, they had been too cold to even hold their cameras. “The sunrise was nothing special,” he added. “You didn’t miss anything.”

“What about the monastery?” I asked.

“It is pretty enough, but you can’t see much of it,” he told me. “It is nearly all closed off to visitors. We did see the bush that is supposed to be the Burning Bush, the one in the Bible—the one God spoke through to Moses. But if you believe that, you believe anything.”

“So where are you going now?” I asked.

“To Sharm el-Sheikh,” he replied. “It is on the Red Sea, about two and a half hours from here—a diving resort. We’re going diving.” His face lit up at the thought.

I wished him the best, and then he was gone, along with his group. I was alone.

I entered the monastery by a small gate set in high walls. The mosque that Gee had mentioned was on the left as were the guest quarters. The central basilica, the Church of the Transfiguration, was a little farther along on the left. I tried the church door, but it was locked. There was no one around, so I tried various other doors. They were also all locked.

Before I had left, Gee had told me that the transfiguration was one of the most important miracles in the Bible. Jesus had gone up a mountain to pray with three of his apostles—Peter, James, and John. Jesus suddenly began to shine in a bright ray of light, and the prophets Moses and Elijah appeared next to him. As he was speaking with them, a voice called out from the sky, calling Jesus “Son.” Christians take the episode as proof that Jesus is the Son of God and not just a prophet, as Muslims believe.

Gee had also told me that as many as four hundred Greek monks lived there during the monastery’s heyday in about AD 1000. Now fewer than twenty do. But even those twenty monks obviously kept themselves to themselves.

The sun was coming up, and I found a sunny corner to sit in. I had no plan, and I hadn’t a clue what I was going to do. But for the moment, I was happy just to let the morning sun warm me up a little.

After a while, I realised that I was being watched. I had my back against a stone wall that enclosed what I later learned was the Burning Bush. A man dressed in a football shirt was sitting on the inside of the wall, less than two metres away and watching me through an iron gateway. His Bedouin headdress kept his face in shadow, but by the way that he was sitting, he seemed old. I wondered if he was the old man that Gee had mentioned she had met. In any case, he certainly seemed familiar.

“American? Russian?” he asked. His accent was indiscernible.

“English,” I replied. I stood up to move closer to him so that I could see his face, but he waved his hand, indicating that I should sit down again. I did as he wanted.

“Liverpool or Everton?” he asked. “Which team do you support?”

Liverpool had won the UK league the previous season and was expected to win this season as well. Everton was a strong contender. It was a reasonable assumption on his part that I would support one of the two.

“Chelsea,” I replied.

“Bad luck,” the man said with a quiet chuckle. “Chelsea has no chance to win the league this year. My money is on Everton, even without Gary Lineker.”

“What do you mean without Gary Lineker?” I asked. Gary Lineker was their star player.

“Lineker is transferring to Barcelona,” the man replied, pointing to his football shirt. I recognised the Barcelona colours.

“I didn’t know that,” I told him.

“No, you wouldn’t,” he replied. “It hasn’t happened yet.” We sat in silence while I thought about what he had said. I found it difficult to believe that an old man in the middle of the Sinai desert could know which club Gary Lineker was going to join.

“You English must have been disappointed about the World Cup,” the old man said with another chuckle. I realised he was making fun of me.

Argentina had won the World Cup earlier that year after they knocked England out in the quarterfinals. Coming as it did only four years after the Falklands War, it had stirred up a lot of emotion.

In the match, Argentina’s captain, Diego Maradona, scored two goals against England’s one. Maradona scored the first goal by batting the ball into the net with his hand, but the referee missed it. Later, Maradona half admitted the fault by saying it was “the hand of God” that had scored the goal.

“Lineker is good,” the old man continued, “but Maradona is better. His two goals against you, especially the hand of God one…” He laughed out loud—a deep, throaty laugh. I knew he was winding me up but I didn’t care. I liked him.

“But Maradona’s second goal,” the old man continued. “That is the best goal I have ever seen—the goal of the century. Argentina deserved to win.”

I disagreed, but I didn’t think it was worth pursuing the argument. We sat there for a moment in silence. I felt the stone in the wall behind me begin to heat up in the sunshine. There was something weird about this place, something extraordinarily peaceful.

“But music, there you English win every time,” the old man said after a while. “Are you Rolling Stones or Beatles?”

“Rolling Stones.”

“Me too,” he replied. “My favourite album is Beggars Banquet. There is one track on it that I really like.

“’Sympathy for the Devil’?” I prompted, wondering where the old man had ever listened to the Rolling Stones. It all seemed so unlikely.

“That’s the one. It just about sums it all up. I really like that track.”

Please allow me to introduce myself

I’m a man of wealth and taste

I’ve been around for a long, long year

Stole many a man’s soul and faith

“You English should stick to music—forget football,” he told me. We sat for a moment again in silence.

“Greek?” I asked after a while. “Are you Greek, one of the monks?”

The man laughed as if the idea of him being a monk, or Greek, was the funniest thing he had ever heard. His laugh was infectious, and I laughed too. He had a sense of humour that I could identify with.

“What about Egyptian? Are you Egyptian?” I asked, still laughing.

My question made him laugh even louder. His laughter echoed off the walls of the courtyard. “Greek,” he finally replied. “We are all Greek here.” And then as an afterthought, he added, “It is all Greek to me.” He let out another cackle of laughter and then collapsed in a coughing fit.

I began to wonder if I was talking to the village idiot—a happy village idiot, but still the village idiot.

“You are tourist? You are with a group?” the old man asked me when he had stopped coughing. I shook my head in response.

“So why have you come here?” he asked, his voice suddenly serious.

“I am looking for something,” I ventured.

“We are all looking for something,” he replied, pulling out a packet of cigarettes, unfiltered French Gitanes. I hadn’t seen that brand on sale anywhere since I had left England, and I guessed that a tourist must have given them to him. He offered me one, but I refused. It was too early in the morning for me. He lit the cigarette with a plastic lighter, took a long pull, and coughed loudly. His lungs were in a bad way.

“This is a good place to find what you are looking for,” he said, waving his arms around to take in the monastery. “As long as you can remain sane.” He chuckled at the thought and then laughed out loud again, his laughter ending in another coughing fit.

“I’m William,” I said, finally introducing myself. I made a move to stand up, but for a second time he indicated that I should sit. I still hadn’t seen his face; it remained hidden by the shade of the light and the cloth of his headdress.

“What is your name?” I asked him.

“Ah, my name. I have had many names,” he replied, an edge of sadness in his voice. “When I was growing up, my parents called me Simon. My father was a fisherman. I was a fisherman. We lived on the shores of Lake Galilee in a village called Tiberius, not too far from Nazareth. Have you heard of it?”

I nodded.

“Do you like fishing?” he asked.

“When I was younger,” I replied. “I used to go with my father, river fishing. I loved it. I loved the calm of being beside the water.”

“When I gave up fishing,” he continued, “I became known as Peter. That’s Pierre in French and Petrus in Greece. If you were American, you would call me Rock, like Rock Hudson.” He laughed again, a self-deprecating laugh. “But as you are English, you can call me Peter.”

I asked Peter if he had lived in the monastery all his life.

He told me that he had spent some time in Italy, but otherwise he had lived in the region most of his life. Again he found that funny. “How many years have I lived here, in this monastery?” he asked himself. “I don’t know.”

“A stone,” I told him after another long moment in silence. “I am looking for a stone.”

Peter chuckled again and waved his hand around him. “As I said, I am a rock. And there are plenty of rocks here. All around, there is nothing but rock.”

“But I am looking for a special stone,” I replied.

“Ah,” he said. We again sat in silence. “And what is special about this stone?”

“It is a stone that is broken in two,” I replied. “I have one half, and I am looking for the other.”

“The other half?” he asked.

“The other half,” I repeated.

“A girl came here about ten years ago,” Peter told me softly. “She was also looking for a stone. She had the same eyes as you, one blue, and one green. I told her I couldn’t help her. I told her that she had to send you, that you had to bring the stone.”

His words hit me like a blow to my stomach and for a moment I couldn’t breathe. Gee had often spoken of destiny. She had said it was my destiny to reunite the stone. But it wasn’t destiny. It had all been planned, a pre-arranged plan in which I was an unknowing actor.

“I have been waiting for you for many years,” Peter continued. “Now you are here.”

“Why me?” I asked, my voice trembling. “Why did you ask for me?”

Peter shrugged his shoulders. “So you have the stone?” he asked.

I reached into my jacket pocket and took out the stone, carefully unwrapping it. I held it up in the sunlight and it cast a blue light onto the wall behind me. It reminded me of the blue light from my refrigerator in Onslow Square. All that seemed so long ago.

“And the other half?” I asked. “Is the other half of the stone here?”

“I am here. The rock is here. We are here.” His answer was ambiguous.

“But where is the other half of this rock?” I asked. “Do you know where it is? Can you take me to it?”

“You already have the answer to those questions, young man,” he replied. “It is in the back pocket of your trousers.” I put my hand into my back pocket and pulled out the scrap of paper that I had kept with me since Haifa.

“Ah, you see, you did have the answer,” he said. “Please read me what is written on the paper.”

I did as he told me.

Flesh and blood is weak and frail;

Susceptible to nervous shock;

While the True Church can never fail,

For it is based upon a rock.

“So you are the rock?” I asked him. “You are the foundation of the church?”

He did not reply. Instead he stood up and indicated that I do the same. He was taller than he had looked when he had been crouched down behind the wall. He was very thin, and his football shirt seemed two sizes too big for him.

As he raised himself to his full height, his headdress moved in a way that allowed me to see his face for the first time. Behind his long, black beard, he looked one thousand years old. But his eyes—one green and one blue—stood out against the dark tan of his face.

In that instance, I knew who he was.

“It is nice to meet you, William,” the old man said with a smile. “Or should I call you Peter? I have wondered for many years what it would feel like to meet myself. It is a nice feeling. I am not disappointed.”

“Hey!” a voice called from the courtyard. “Who are you?”

I turned and saw a man—an American by his accent, probably in his midforties—coming out from what I presumed were the monastery’s guest quarters. He walked briskly towards me, a military walk that went with his crew cut and muscular frame. I turned back towards the old man, but he had vanished.

“Hi,” I called out to the man as he was halfway across the courtyard. I was having trouble breathing and my voice didn’t seem to work properly. I realised that I was in shock from what Peter had told me.

“I’m Bill, a tourist, staying at the hostel in the village,” I continued, trying to sound as normal as I could. “I walked up here this morning. Everything seems closed. Haven’t seen any monks. I haven’t seen anyone.”

I stretched out my hand to greet him. He hesitated a moment but then took it in a firm, strong grasp. “Are you staying here?” I asked. “I didn’t know you could stay here, at the monastery that is. The hostel in town is pretty grim.”

The man had shaving foam in his ears and a little more under his chin.

“Limey?” he asked. “English?”

I nodded. “Tourist,” I told him again.

His shoulders dropped a centimetre. He had decided I wasn’t a threat. “I’m Curt.”

“Are you staying here?”

“Yes.” Curt looked back over his shoulder to where he had just come from. “They call it the guest wing, five rooms only. Food is not bad if you like kebabs. Leaving today.”

“Do you know if anyone is taking your room?” I asked. “If not, perhaps I can.”

Curt looked at me as if that wasn’t a good idea. “Maybe one night,” he said reluctantly. “I was supposed to stay tonight but have to go to Sharm. Leaving at midday.” Curt took a step backwards. “If I were you, I would not hang around here. All hell is going to break loose in a couple of days.”

“All hell?”

“Not sure if you follow politics—nuclear arms talks, the START negotiations. Well, some brain-dead moron has come up with the brilliant idea of holding the next summit meeting here, a chummy Gorbachev-Reagan get-together. Logistical and security nightmare.”

“Why?” I asked.

Curt waved his arms up at the surrounding mountains. “A few terrorists with a few mortars, rockets,” he explained. “Sitting ducks.”

“I mean why are they holding it here?”

“Oh.” He sighed. He was disappointed that my question was political, not military. “Peace crap. The Sinai is at peace following the Camp David Accords, so it would be symbolic to have a global peace deal signed here.” Curt bit lightly on his bottom lip. “And the monastery has been here for hundreds of years, never attacked. Revered by Christians, Jews, and Muslims—a sign that we can all live together in happy, happy peace. Complete crap.”

I nodded my agreement, even though I didn’t really know to which part I was agreeing.

“You know there’s a mosque there?” he said, turning and pointing to it.

I nodded again.

“Main reason, though, is that Reagan wants the meeting here. It’s the oldest working Christian monastery in the world and at the foot of Mount Sinai—the Ten Commandments. Moses and the Burning Bush, talking to God.” Curt pointed to the tree behind me, and I turned politely to look at it as if I hadn’t noticed it before.

“It’s funny to think that the future of the world will be decided here,” Curt said, taking in the monastery with a wave of his right arm.

“But where will Gorbachev and Reagan stay?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine them staying at the hostel in the village.

“Sharm,” he answered. “They will stay in Sharm, a hundred twenty-five miles from here, and come here by helicopters. The Israelis built the airport in Sharm back in ’68. They gave it to the Egyptians after Camp David. A couple of decent hotels in Sharm, but where they stay is not my concern. My concern is security here.” Curt waved his arm again to show me the monastery.

“The tunnels are the problem; the whole place is riddled with them. That’s why you don’t see anyone. They move between the buildings through tunnels.”

I wondered if that was what had happened to Peter, if he had disappeared into a tunnel.

“They will only come during the day,” Curt continued. “Reagan and Gorbachev and their army of advisors.” He emphasised the word army, a sarcastic tone in his voice. “The Egyptian Army will be in the mountains around; we will have to trust they can do their job.” He was talking to himself. I was no longer of any interest to him.

“When?” I asked.

“When what?”

“When are they coming?”

“Monday.” He looked at me as if for the first time. “Be long gone by then, boy. Be long gone by then.”

I followed Curt back to his room. It was clean and bare, with a single iron bed and a washbasin under the window. Curt had indeed been shaving when he had seen me through the window.

“It’s your lucky day,” he told me. “Room’s paid for until tomorrow noon. I wouldn’t bother telling anyone that you’re using it and not me. They probably won’t notice, and there isn’t anyone around to tell anyway. I can’t work out where the monks spend their days. I never see them. Just the occasional busload of tourists.” He thought for a moment. “Any tourists that come here Monday and Tuesday will be disappointed. They won’t get near the place.”

I left Curt and walked the four kilometres back to my hostel. I packed up my small rucksack and tried to find someone to pay. There was no one around, so I left five Egyptian pounds on the reception desk. Before walking back to the monastery, I went back to the café where I had eaten the night before. I ate the same chicken soup as the night before; it was the only thing they had.

As I walked back to the monastery, a convoy of Egyptian military trucks, maybe thirty of them, passed me, each one filled with soldiers. None of the soldiers looked older than twenty, nothing but boys. By the time I got back to the monastery, they had already begun to set up their tents in front of the monastery’s high, red walls. The tents seemed to blend in with the surroundings as if they had always been there.

Once inside the walls I went directly to Curt’s room. The door was unlocked. I didn’t know what else to do but walk in and make myself at home. I lay on the bed, and I might have slept a little before going out again and exploring the area.

I found some well-tended vegetable gardens; their greenness stood out in sharp contrast to the red desert. I realised that there must be an underground spring somewhere nearby; it was undoubtedly why they chose this spot for the monastery in the first place.

While I was in the gardens, I had the feeling that I was being watched. I kept turning around to see if I could see anyone, but I couldn’t. The paths were gravel, so I should have heard if anyone was following me, but I didn’t.

It was starting to get cold, so I made my way back to my room. I looked for an electric light but realised there wasn’t one. Instead I found a small stub of a candle that I lit with a match, the last in a box on the windowsill. I thought about going out again to see if I could find anyone, when there was a knock on the door.

“Cocktails,” a female voice called out. I opened the door and saw a woman standing there, carrying a bottle of vodka and two glasses. She was only slightly smaller than I, with a round Slavic face, recently reddened by the Sinai sun. Her face registered surprise, and then disappointment, when she saw me. “Curt,” she said in a Russian accent. “Where is Curt?”

“Gone to Sharm,” I answered, confident and happy that I was in the loop. “He will be back tomorrow.”

“And who are you?”

“William,” I replied. “And you?”

“Ekaterina.” She hesitated and half turned away to look back at the Basilica but then turned back to me. “Well, would you like a drink?”

“I’ll keep you company while you have a drink. But I can’t drink alcohol anymore.”

“Not even Russian vodka?”

“Not even Russian vodka.” I looked at the bottle in her hand, and the mere sight of it made me feel queasy. “But please come in.”

She hesitated but then stepped through the doorway. Ekaterina sat on the bed, and I sat on the chair by the desk.

“Sure?” she asked as she poured a shot of vodka into one of the glasses. I nodded, and she shrugged. I could smell the alcohol from two metres away: dog shit. She drained the glass in one go and poured herself another.

“What time is dinner?” I asked. I was feeling hungry.

“Thirty minutes,” she replied, looking at her watch. “Tourist?” she asked.

I was disappointed. I had hoped she would take me for the British Secret Service. “Yes, tourist.”

“Me, government.”

“The Reagan-Gorbachev meeting?” I asked. She snorted into her drink. I took that to be a yes.

“You don’t think the summit is a good idea?” I asked. I expected her to be loyal to her president and say it was a wonderful idea.

“Terrible idea,” she replied. “These two men, these two presidents, they are more dangerous than nuclear weapons. And Gorbachev is the worst. He will destroy the Soviet Union.”

Ekaterina poured herself a third vodka and downed it. “My father,” she said, “died fighting the Nazis: the Siege of Leningrad, July 1942. Hitler had no interest in saving the civilians. His sole goal was to destroy the city and the population with it. Gorbachev is like Hitler; he wants to destroy the Soviet Union.”

Ekaterina was evidently looking for me to take the role of Curt in a discussion of military and political history. I didn’t know anything about the Siege of Leningrad.

“President Gorbachev is well intentioned,” she continued. “But he is naïve. And that is dangerous. If the USSR comes to an end and we abolish nuclear weapons, then the whole world will become like Afghanistan. Thirty, forty years’ time, this whole region will be a battlefield. This summit—it is bad.”

She went to pour another vodka but looked at her watch instead. “Enough politics,” she said. “Dinner.”

She stood up and led me outside into the dark and across to the monastery’s refectory. The refectory was almost as dark inside as it was outside; just a few candles lighted it. A handful of monks were already seated at the refectory’s long tables. “No talking,” Ekaterina whispered to me as she pointed to a couple of empty spaces on a bench.

Someone, I don’t know who, brought us some food that we ate in silence.

As we left, Ekaterina said, “Breakfast is at six. Don’t miss it. There is no lunch.” She laughed, and then she was gone into the darkness.

I went back to my bedroom. It was seven thirty. I went to bed. It took me forever to fall asleep, but it seemed that as soon as I had, a tapping on the window woke me. I struggled out of bed. The room was cold and dark; it was still the middle of the night. I pulled back the thin curtains at the window and saw Peter grinning at me through the darkness. He waved his hand at me, indicating that I should come out. I pulled on my jacket and opened the door. It was warmer outside than in my room.

He took my arm and led me back to where we had been talking the previous day. He opened the gate and led me down stone stairs. He took a lantern from a hook and lit it with the same lighter that he had used the previous day for his Gitanes. I looked at my watch and saw, from the light of the lantern, that it was 4:00 a.m. The stairs led into a tunnel cut into rock, big enough to stand in but not wide enough for two people to pass each other. The air was warmer in the tunnel than outside; it smelled old, dry, and stale.

“Where are we going?” I whispered. Peter either didn’t hear me, or he ignored me. I should have been afraid. I was in a dark, narrow tunnel going heavens knows where, but I wasn’t afraid. It just felt right; I felt at peace with myself.

The tunnel was longer than I would have expected, and we walked along it for some distance, maybe as much as a kilometre. I guessed that we were well outside the walls of the monastery and deep under the mountain. We arrived at another gate, which Peter unlocked with a huge key that he took out from under his robes.

He led me into a chamber of some sort, possibly ten metres in diameter. The lantern gave out enough light for me to see that the walls of the chamber were covered with shelves, all stacked high with ancient manuscripts. In the middle of the chamber was a golden casket, almost like an altar, placed on a wooden frame.

He placed the lantern into a metal stand that had been put there for the purpose. He indicated that I should follow him over to the casket, which he than unlocked and opened. Even by the dull light, I could see that it contained a green stone embedded in old, crumbling leather.

“Your stone,” he instructed. “Give me your stone.” I took the stone from my jacket pocket and held it with both hands in front of me. He lifted the other stone from the casket and also held it with his two hands in front of him.

“Is that the other half of the stone?” I asked. It was the same size as the one I had, and the same shape. Only the colour was different.

He nodded. “It is the other half of the stone,” he said, his voice trembling.

“What happens now?” I asked.

“Something that should have happened thousands of years ago,” he replied.

My half of the stone started to vibrate in my hands while at the same time giving out a strong blue light. The half that Peter held gave out a strong green light.

“Come,” he said, “it is time.” We held the two stones together, and there was an explosion that extinguished the lantern and knocked me to the floor. Peter was still on his feet, standing in front of me, holding the stone above his head. The whole room was bathed in a beautiful blue-green light. My heart was racing, and I took a couple of deep breaths to try to slow it down.

“It has happened,” Peter told me, his voice still trembling with emotion. “The two halves, the two stones are reunited.”

I picked myself up off the ground and he passed the stone to me. As I took it in my hands, I felt its power surge through me.

“How do you feel?” he asked me.

“I feel invincible,” I replied.

He looked at me for a while without speaking. “This stone,” he said finally, “will give you immense power—for good as well as for evil. You will have to be strong.” I already felt strong. I had never felt stronger in my life. “Are you ready?” he asked me.

“Ready for what?” I asked.

“To try again,” he replied. “To go back to the time when there was still a chance that mankind might follow the right path. You must go back.”

“And if I fail?”

“See,” he said. “Look into the stone and you will see what will happen if you fail.”

I looked into the stone and felt the room begin to spin ever so slowly. Suddenly I was outside in front of the monastery. There were lots of people, hundreds of them. A huge helicopter landed, sending sand and grit flying into my eyes.

A man in a suit got out from the helicopter, bending his head low as he stepped forward. Another man walked from the gate of the monastery to greet him. As they shook hands, there was a white flash, a blinding white flash, and then a huge explosion. The helicopter disappeared, and so did everyone around it.

I went to hand the stone to Peter. “I have seen enough,” I told him.

“Wait,” he said. “I want you to see more. I want you to see that this is where it ends. What do you see now?”

I looked again into the stone. I was no longer at the monastery. I was no longer in one place. I was everywhere. And everywhere, it was the end.

I tried again to hand Peter back the stone, but he refused. “I am too old, too frail,” he told me. “I cannot do this. But you can. Go back to where it all started.”

Peter turned and picked up the lantern from where it had fallen on the floor. The brilliant blue-green light from the stone had faded, and I could no longer see the walls in the darkness. But I did see a figure suddenly step out of the gloom.

“This has been quite a party,” Imad said as he took another step towards me. There was a darker shadow in his hand; I wasn’t sure, but it might have been a gun. “It is time for this to end. William, please give me the stone.”

I looked at Peter. I expected to see fear on his face, but instead I saw a huge smile. He winked at me and then turned brusquely so that he was between Imad and me, blocking me with his body.

“I am old,” he said to me quietly. “I have done my job. The stone is whole again. My work is done.” He reached out his arms and took my shoulders in his two hands.

“Good luck,” he said, still smiling. “And this time don’t leave the stone behind. Bring it back with you!”