was a ‘white limestone votive bowl from Warka, dated 3000 BC’: Salam watched as it disappeared inside a football kit bag. A ‘statue representing King Entemena from Ur, dated 2430 BC’ took two men to lift and a third to navigate through the newly-opened hole in the wall. Salam remembered what they had taught him at school: that the Baghdad Museum contained treasures that were five thousand years old. ‘Inside that museum lies not just the history of Iraq,’ his teacher had intoned, ‘but the history of all mankind.’
Now it resembled nothing grander than a vegetable market, the customers scrapping over the produce. Except these were not squashed tomatoes or bruised peppers, but artwork and tools that had survived since the birth of civilization.
Salam could hear raised voices: two of the ringleaders were arguing. One slapped the other and the pair began to fight, bringing a metal bookcase stacked with pots crashing to the ground. Someone produced a knife. A man gave Salam a hard push in the back, shoving him towards the violence. Instinctively, he wheeled around, dived out of the hole in the cinder-block wall and ran.
He rushed down the stairs, hearing a new clamour at each landing. Every one of the eighteen galleries in the museum was now undergoing the same plunder. The noise scared him.
Salam kept heading down, flight after flight, until he had left the crowds behind: no one was bothering to come this far down now with such easy pickings higher up. He would be safely away from them here.
Salam pushed open a door and it moved easily. In the gloom he could see a few boxes of papers overturned, their contents carpeting the floor. Whoever was responsible had been right not to linger: this was merely an office. He noticed a few decapitated wires, dangling like the roots of an upended tree: someone had stolen the phones and fax machine and left the rest.
Maybe they had missed something, Salam thought. He tugged at the desk drawers, hoping to find a gold pen or even a cashbox. But all he found were a few old sheets of paper.
There was a larger drawer underneath; he’d give that one last pull and then he’d go. Locked.
He headed for the door only to catch his foot on a ridge by the desk. Salam looked down to find a loose stone square. His bad luck: all the others were flat and perfectly even. Hardly thinking, Salam wedged his fingers into the gap between the squares and prized out the loose one. It being too murky to see, he felt for the ground below–but his hand just sank into a narrow but deep hole.
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
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