In the fall of 1891 I met Doktor Stumper at his villa in Jerusalem's German Colony. Unaccustomed to being interrupted, he lectured me on his own veranda on why his trips in search of the Grail reached no findings as a Syrian girl served me tea who couldn't be more than thirteen.
For the 150 minutes thereafter, he recited by memory the story of Christ's last supper in all four Gospels, then in the six gospels of the Apocrypha - reciting them all in Greek, Hebrew, German, Latin, Turkish and Arabic.
His wife and five children sat in rapt attention, and therefore I had a distinct feeling that indicating any sign of boredom would result in the possibility of scandal, and more significantly, not getting the job.
After concluding the Gospel of Bardesanes in Arabic, he announced in German a conclusion from readings of the Gospel of Pseudo Matthew that the Holy Grail was placed by the Knights Templar within the bowels of the Temple Mount, digging a tunnel from the crusaders' church upon the Temple Mount, the Templum Domini, placing it all the way down in the ruins of King Solomon's temple. It obviously would take an enormous amount of time to dig all the way down to the Solomonic temple, during which the objections of Muslims would be overwhelming.
Herr Doktor then announced that to find the Holy Grail, we shall blow up the Temple Mount with dynamite.
Doktor Stumper explained his conclusion that the ruins of the Solomonic temple were 250 meters beneath the "Dome of the Rock", the al-Aqsa Mosque. Beneath the Dome lies the Bir al-Arwah, the 'Well of Souls,' where the spirits of the dead await their final judgement. He recalled what the 11th century Persian poet Nasir Khusraw wrote of it:
"They say that on the night of his Ascension into heaven, the Prophet, prayed first at the Dome of the Rock, laying his hand upon the Rock. As he went out, the Rock, to do him honour, rose up, but he laid his hand on it to keep it in its place and firmly fixed it there. But by reason of this rising up, it is even to this present day partly detached from the ground beneath."
It was Doktor Stumper's view that the dynamite must be placed in the Well of Souls and exploded from there. Since we could not risk damaging the ruins of Solomon's temple, we would have to blast down merely to the ruins of King Herod. And since Doktor Stumper concluded that the blast would collapse the Knights Templar tunnel, we must then dig a tunnel of our own, past potential ruins of the Maccabian and Nehamian eras to finally arrive at the Solomonic Temple, where which the Templars placed the Grail.
As an engineer with expertise in the transport of weapons, Doktor Stumper wanted my professional opinion on how much TNT was necessary to blast a roughly 185 meter hole in the mountain that would lodge us directly at the Herodian temple ruins
I told him frankly that this plan's success was extraordinarily unlikely. I had been to Jerusalem six times, and on four of them had walked the Temple Mount - once even permitted to see the Well of Souls. The Well is six meters on each side, and for a blast to create such a hole, he would require 10000 killograms of nitroglycerine explosives, which could not possibly fit within the well. There are, furthermore, no safe means to transport this volatile cargo either by land or sea; nor would customs inspectors ever look kindly on allowing explosives of this magnitude within their borders. Lastly, as Jerusalem's Old City is nearly impossible to travel but by foot, the Old City would require an entirely new system of roads and ramps for vehicles with wheels over relatively long distances, which would further result in the extreme provocation of the Jerusalemite population and perhaps even every monotheistic believer in the world.
Doktor Stumper listened to my objections stonefacedly and silent. Upon my concluded remarks he referred to my objections as mere trivialities. 1. He would hire the necessary technicians to expand the Well of Souls to whatever dimensions I stipulated, along with workers for every foreseen requirement. 2. For this project, he had the full backing of the Kaiser's treasury and diplomatic corps. Whatever money and connections required were at my disposal's fullest measure. All necessary Ottoman and Palestinian authorities could be bribed, cajoled, persuaded, and threatened into compliance, as could authorities in any countries traversed en route to destination. 3. Herr Doktor Stumper had a cousin by marriage, one Herr Daimler, at work on just such a transit vehicle, called a 'truck', which provides exactly the safe transit of weapons we require. 4. When the world beholds the properties of the Holy Grail, all further objections are irrelevant.
I told him success was unlikely for a hundred more variables, but would venture any design for smoothly ramped roads he required for the Old City. To my offer Herr Doktor swiftly agreed and told me my full-time services would be unnecessary for some years, but he shall keep me on retainer. The German Reich would deposit one-hundred-fifty thousand gold marks every year in a bank of my choosing until such time as my expertise was required, at which point I would be required to relinquish any other project to work exclusively for him in Palestine. The gold marks would arrive for me in New York every year on exactly January 1st, and every year I must send him a new schematic at this address for just such a road based on whatever new technology evolved in the intervening year.
It was the last I was to hear from the Doktor for nineteen years.
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On Easter Sunday 1910 I received a telegram ordering me to Jerusalem with immediate haste. An ocean liner had been booked arriving in Normandy, along with passage through transcontinental passage along the Mediterranean railroads. I would arrive sometime in June provided with all necessary accommodations. I had one night to say goodbye to my family, from whom I'd be parted less than one year.
Upon my Jerusalem arrival a chauffeur took me with immediate haste to Herr Doktor Stumper's residence rather than my own. Upon arrival the chauffeur lead me to a drawing room with walls decorated floor to ceiling: framed medieval maps of Jerusalem, medieval and Byzantine paintings of Christ at the Last Supper, at the Garden of Gesthamene, and every station of the cross, along with speculative drawings of the Temple Mount in every historical period. Doktor Stumper was no longer dressed in a bourgeois suit but in the dress of an Arabic knight - white qaffia and galabea. I was soon to discover that months after our last meeting, he'd left his family for the Syrian Orthodox girl one third his age who served us tea, with whom he now had four more children. The two older sons were staring at my schematics with their father, speaking to each other in ancient Greek.
He greeted me with a hasty "Gruss gott." and switched immediately to his accented but correct in every particular English.
"I regret we have much work. I have elected to use your Road Plan C to construct limestone pavement leading us directly to Jewish Quarter's southern Mughrabi Gate, where we shall use Ramp Plan E to construct a ramped boulevard leading us from Mughrabi Gate to Temple Mount, and then we shall depart via an eastern elevated thoroughfare leading us to St. Stephen's Gate at the Muslim Quarter's edge. It is regrettable that Muslims will find objectionable a small encroachment upon their quarter, but we have compensated sufficiently the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Ottoman Consul in Nablus to depopulate the old city for one hundred hours and imprison any potential subversives."
"Has the Jewish population been consulted about what we mean to do?"
"An immaterial obstacle. The Jewish Quarter is barely occupied, we shall give them access to their two historic temples, and they quite obviously may rebuild their quarter as they see appropriate. Though I highly suspect the current Jewish increase in Palestinian presence to be a temporary affair."
"Please forgive me for inquiring but how will the Islamic population respond to your demolition of their third most sacred relic?"
"I shall explain more fully later, but will very briefly confide in you that if we are correct about the Holy Grail's properties, opposition from the Islamic community will thereafter be absolutely irrelevant."
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Schliemann needed his own fortune to discover Troy, but the second Reich provided all the money we needed.
It was elected that dynamite be transmitted via 19 six-masted wooden schooners departing from Hamburg - each measured at over 100 meter length; the movement of trains being far too volatile for dynamite, combustion on frigates much too incendiary, and transmission via trucks far too public. If a wooden sailboat explodes from nitroglycerine, the ship burns so quickly that any identifiable remnants would sink in ninety seconds. The explosion would have to be seen by the naked eye to even know of its occurrence. Transmitted in the schooner's lower decks along with the explosive cargo would be forty-three elite German soldiers in each boat - 817 in total. A further 5183 soldiers had gradually traveled to Palestine by train and frigate over the last eight years, all trained to pose themselves as Austro-Hungarian Jews - all of them trained in a second language: some Yiddish, some modern Hebrew, some Hungarian or Czech. all of them trained to chant Jewish prayers, and each trained to adopt a specific rural accent of townspeople in the Austro-Hungarian hinterland so no one could properly identify their town of origin. They were instructed to fight for the Jews against native populations if necessary, marry if necessary, have children if necessary, then abandon their families after the operation's completion. These undercover Germans comprised roughly 13% of Palestine's Jewish population.
The weapons would arrive not in Jaffa but a soon to be incorporated sea settlement called Tel Aviv, where few people lived and transfer of goods likely passes without notice. The explosives would load onto two hundred Daimler Paukbauerei Zweibrucken trucks designed for smooth transit and connected by intercom. The explosives would travel to Jerusalem by convoy at extremely slow speeds.
The 817 weapons experts who traveled in the schooners with the dynamite would sit roughly 4 to each of the two-hundred trucks. One to drive, one to sit passenger side and watch for any counter-operations, and two to preserve the condition of the cargo. Thirteen hundred forty-two soldiers would post themselves within easy running distance of the road every fifty meters between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem carrying knife and pistol. With desert conditions allowing for easy visibility, a further sixty-nine sharpshooters were placed every kilometre between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem at a distance from the road greater than a kilometre, each sniper outfitted both with the latest Gwehr rifles. Three thousand thirty-three plain clothes soldiers placed themselves around Jerusalem streets and public spaces, looking for potential subversives who might get wind of the operation and look to subvert it - all soldiers were instructed to shoot immediately upon suspicion. A further 467 soldiers would stand armed guard around the gates of the Old City. 203 would guard inside the Temple Mount. 78 would guard inside the Mosque. The German army's six best engineers would venture into the Well of Souls and within six hours will have expanded the Well of Souls to 36 meters by 36, six times its size. Once in place, the eight hundred weapons experts would load the explosives into the six-by-six-by-six enlarged Well of Souls within a half-hour. All the soldiers standing within the blast radius would explode along with the Temple Mount. Our estimated death toll was 373 soldiers, whom the Kaiserreich would memorialize for all time.
There was not a single Arab or Jewish construction worker. They were thousands of Turkish, Greek, Persian, and Afghan workers, imported from their countries' smallest towns so there would be no likelihood of any worker speaking Arabic. Their mission was simply to demolish half the comparatively small Jewish quarter and 10% of the comparatively enormous Muslim quarter, then rebuild that 15% of the Old City on a series of inclines leading up to the Temple Mount, and do it all in three days. Their sleeping quarters were not near in Jerusalem but the Judean desert where they slept in tents and were shuttled every day to the worksite by truck convoy. There was much discussion of what to do with the workers after they completed their assignment.
The Old City's entire residential population was ordered to leave their homes temporarily and resettle, on the excuse that Jerusalem had a terrorism threat so sinister that the Old City itself may be blown up, and every resident of the Old City must be treated as a suspect. Further residents near the old city were required to evacuate their homes in the neighborhoods of Yemin Moshe, Mamilla, Nahalat Shiv'a and Musara - all sealed off with the severest penalties imposed for intrusion. A further two-thousand soldiers were placed undercover around the remaining neighborhoods of Jerusalem. The nearest place to the Old City to remain open was the Train Station, which we required to remain open so that the majority of undercover soldiers can get into place.
For the duration of the operation, Christians were relocated to Bethlehem, Jews to Jericho, and Muslims to Ramallah with constructed temporary housing for all. Most of the Old City would remain untouched and within a week's time, residents would return to their homes; almost all finding them exactly as they'd been left. Those in the Jewish Quarter who'd lost their homes would receive handsome compensation from the German government in the disguised form of relief organizations. By the time suspicion truly fermented, the operation would long since be complete and all objections to it irrelevant.
It was decided that the entire operation should take four days at most. Two days' journey is the amount of time it would take an above average suspicious person to reach Jaffa by foot. All telecommunications from Jerusalem would be cut, and remaining Jerusalemites would be told it was for their own safety. If a suspicious Jerusalemite near the Old City had bypassed the order to leave, they'd likely be seen by the thousands of undercover German soldiers patrolling Jerusalem. Were they missed by those soldiers, they'd be apprehended by the undercover soldiers who'd been secretly policing every car of Palestinian trains for three years - on lookout for any persons of interest who may have reason to profit from learning our German secret. The only authorities such eavesdroppers would be able to notify are people brought to the Old City of Jerusalem from the Mediterranean by foot. The Ottoman police departments in Jaffa and Haifa were instructed to remain strictly uninterested in any reports of suspicious activity in Jerusalem. Let's just posit, on happenstance, that such a busybody saw what we're doing to Jerusalem.. They would immediately be arrested. Were they not arrested in Jerusalem and boarded a train, they would immediately be apprehended on the train through psychological profiling of the anxious. The only transit they could travel with any hope of success was by foot, and any person of authority they could interest in Jerusalem happenings would not be immediately convinced. Perhaps the strongest walker could do the walk to Jaffa in a single day and the walk back in another, it still would take him day at very least to convince any policeman to return with him back to Jerusalem, and two more days to bring any other authorities with them. The likelihood of any of this was astronomically small. With all these variables in place, four days was the amount of time it would take for absolutely no variables to be out of place.
The Mughrabi Gate, also referred to as the Dung Gate, would be expanded from the size built by the glorious architects of Suleiman the Magnificent, who never had to countenance transit larger than a caravan. A road of pure Jerusalem limestone would gradually incline the trucks from the Dung Gate to the heights of the Temple Mount, and a second limestone ramp would descend the trucks from the Temple Mount to St. Stephen's Gate in the East, just over the end of the Muslim quarter. Regrettably, the Western Wall, so holy to the Jews, would be sealed off by the road to near-completion.
Whispers among the Stumper household held that the Kaiser telegraphed every day himself for information on progress.
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We chose October 20th to begin the operation. To my astonishment and Doktor Stumper's prediction, the plan went off as if in a dream in September. Two hundred trucks formed a convoy of explosives from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in perfect formation at exactly 17 kilometers per hour with a precise 19.6 meter distance between each truck.
On the morning of October 23rd, Herr Doktor and I arrived at our temporary perch atop the Dung Gate where we would witness two hundred trucks enter the Old City from the south. Herr Doktor was dressed again in his regalia of an Arab knight and of atypically warm disposition. For the only time, he spoke unguardedly of his aims: "Mein Freund, you will soon drink from the juices of your heroic contributions to our quest. He who drinks from the Grail will receive the blessing of eternal life from Christ. All Germany and its peoples shall gain eternity, and the German soldier can fight a war of conquest invincibly against the very Ottomans with whom we collaborated. Please understand, mein weisser bruder, the Kaiserreich in no way means to conquer the world, we wish merely to compare our empire unashamedly to our Saxon and Frankish brethren to the West. We mean to share in this conquest with all of Germanic bloodlines. We shall offer drink from the Grail to Britons, Scandinavian, the Niederlanders, and even Northern Europeans in the United States. All from pure Germanic and Northern European bloodlines are welcome to the Cup of Christ, and all all other peoples will be bred under us to live at our service.
"Excuse me Herr Doktor, but I might inquire, as my parents were German Jews, would I qualify for this great service?"
"Herr Miller..." The Doktor hesitated before giving answer and for the first time seemed genuinely flummoxed.
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It was a mere ten seconds later when when our unblemished road was permeated by the bleat of a sheep. The first truck was a mere half-kilometre away. With every honk of the first truck's newly invented car horn, the sheep would bleat back, unmoved. This interchange between carhorn and sheep continued a dozen and a half times, yet as the trucks advanced, and the sheep was intractable from its place. For the first time in my experience, the Doktor grew flummoxed and visibly sweat amid the Jerusalem heat.
It was at this moment that a very dirty windswept man of unshaven countenance ran up to collect the sheep.
As the Doktor was a speaker of Aramaic and I merely of Hebrew, I managed to basically peace together the conversation between the shepherd and the Doktor:
"I'm so sorry. This sheep's a difficult one who's never responded well to loud noises. I think he might be hard of hearing."
"How are you in this area?"
"What is your name?"
"What?"
"What is your name!"
"My name is of no consequence!"
"My name is Shalom Shalom, and I live just over this gate."
"Why did you come back here?"
"Why did I come back here? This is my home! Jews have always lived here! I've lived next to Mughrabi Gate all my life, my father lived next to Mughrabi Gate, his father lived next to Mughrabi Gate, his father lived next to Mughrabi Gate, hi...
"Why are you here?"
"Why shouldn't I be here? I went to the deserta for a month so that I wouldn't have to spend the high holidays with my in-laws."
"Have you heard nothing of what's going to happen?"
"What's going to happen?"
"I demand you to leave right now."
"What's the rush?"
"You must leave immediately."
"Why are you white and dressed like an Arab?"
"What?"
"Why are you wearing an Arab dress?"
"My Emir's clothing is no concern of yours."
"I'm just saying it looks weird."
"Leave this place immediately!"
"Why should I leave? Do you know how much trouble it was to get here? I took my brothers' sheep too and you see how hard some of them are to keep together."
"You have more sheep?"
"I have a hundred sheep." The shepherd Shalom turned around to call "Eretz!"
And there appeared on the other side of the road a boy who was clearly Herr Shalom's son, and crossing the road with him a flock of 99 more sheep just 75 meters behind him.
Dr. Stumper immediately put his intercom to his mouth and six times shouted "HALT UND ALLE RAUS!" but no one heard his run with all his might to the nearest stairwell, but realizing he would not have enough time to halt the passage, he sustained the 12 meter drop. One could hear the snap of his leg through any number of carhorns and sheep; and through what must have been unendurable pain he walked his way to the middle of the road and shouted "HALT UND ALLE RAUS!" literally eight times before the front driver understood and shouted "HALT UND ALLE RAUS" into his intercom. Hueing to our drilled automotive contingency plans, each of the drivers decelerated the slow-going trucks at exactly one kilometre per hour per second, and each came to a stop in exactly nineteen seconds, at which point each truck was put into park and every soldier evacuated and ran to a safe distance.
The Doktor had collapsed on the road itself and seemed unable to get up.
"Here, let me help you up Mr. Emir."
"I can help myself up."
"Your leg is broken there's no way for you to walk anywhere."
"Yes it is broken but it is a minor inconvenience."
"Eretz, watch the flock!"
Herr Shalom carried Doktor Stumper through the Dung Gate to his apartment which seemed to be one of the few unaffected by the rebuilding; carried the Doktor up his three flights to the presence of an attic door, which when opened led to the top of the wall, directly next to where we both had stood and I still was. Herr Shalom set the good Doktor leaning against the wall.
"Here, let me set the bone for you."
"I can set my own bone."
"I can help." and Herr Shalom set the bone before Doktor Stumper could object, instead Doktor Stumper replied with a curt.
"Very well, you've helped us and we thank you, now go about any business you like but leave the city."
"I don't understand why you want me to leave the city so much."
"It is not your concern, this city belongs to us now."
"Did somebody invade it again?"
Finally Doktor Stumper switched to English: "I do not have time for this! Where are my sharpshooters?"
"I'm just saying that if somebody invaded the city again the least my brother could have done is go to the desert and warn me about it!"
"Herr Miller, do you have a gun?"
"Wait. Why does the city look so different?"
"ICH BRAUCHE EINE WAFFE" the Doktor shouted off the rampart.
"Where are all the people?"
"Herr Miller I require your help."
"Yes?"
"Please lead this man to any German soldier and they can escort him to the proper place to deposit of such agitators."
"Don't worry. I never learned Arabic but I can tell when I'm not wanted. I'll leave, and you'll never hear from Shalom Shalom ever again."
"Leave immediately if you wish to live a moment longer."
"It's because of the mess, isn't it? I told my brother to clean up the hay and manure after I was gone but of course after a whole seven weeks he doesn't pick up anything at all."
Finally I venture my opinion, in English: "Herr Doktor, I don't think we need to eliminate this intruder. I think we can explain certain aspects of this project in a somewhat falsified view and he is not intelligent enough to sort truth from falsehood."
"Very well, you may proceed with an attempt."
I switched to biblical Hebrew, which he seemed to understand about as well as I understood Aramaic. "We are rebuilding the Jewish Quarter so that everyone may have better access to the Temple Mount. We've built ramps to get in and out and those trucks on the road are carrying more building materials into the city."
"Where are the apartments that used to be near mine?"
"They were regrettably demolished, and the residents will be resettled elsewhere."
"You mean, all my neighbors are gone?"
"I'm afraid so.
..."This is the greatest news of my life! You have no idea how bad Benvenuto Bendit is. He's a pig who thinks he runs the neighborhood because his family's been here since 1609. Well, the Shaloms and the Aravs have lived next to Mughrabi Gate since before they were Shaloms and Aravs! And then there are those German Jews across the street, they think they're so fancy with their western jackets and that scratchy music they play..."
"Mr. Shalom, if you went back into the desert for just one more day, I think you would be very happy with the results but we need the Old City to ourselves for just 24 more hours to finish the project."
Mr. Shalom was immediately convinced, came down to his son and their sheep, but saw that the sheep who'd caused the first commotion had not moved. "I'm so glad to hear about Benvenuto leaving, that pig may he rot. I'd leave for a month if you got rid of more enemies of mine.
"I regret we can't do that for you Mr. Shalom. Can you please take care of that sheep?"
"Eretz, call the sheep back with your pipes."
While the sheep stood perfectly still, Mr. Shalom's son produced a set of shepherd pipes and played melody so lulling it seemed utterly at one with this mysterious city, its people, and the very land which produced them.
"BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH" the sheep squawked and ran headlong into the front truck whose explosion sent sheep and carparts flying, some of which landed on the second car which landed on the third, then the fourth, causing a chain reaction that caused the sheep themselves to stampeed in the direction of the explosions. First one sheep flying, then two, then four, then eight. In ninety seconds, there were no cars and no sheep.
The Germans paid the Ottoman administration to rebuild the old city exactly as it was.
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