Newton’s Fire (30 page)

‘Ana is the best I’ve got,’ Danel protested. ‘And Ruth is
hungry
. They murdered her man.’

‘She’ll still get to eat,’ said Avram. ‘But with the Predators instead.’

Danel nodded. It wasn’t exactly a surprise, for they’d discussed and planned for the possibility. ‘I’ll let them know.’

‘Thank you.’

They returned to the others. Avram checked the supplies against his list. No point taking more than they needed. They returned the surplus to the sump then packed everything but the missiles into a mix of tourist and army backpacks. The tourist backpacks went onto the minibus, so that a cursory inspection would find nothing more sinister than a group of kibbutzim on their way for a night or two in Jerusalem. He turned on the Predators, entered the GPS coordinates for their targets, then had them loaded, along with the three dust carts, onto the back of his own truck. They packed the army backpacks into the dust carts then laid the assault rifles, handguns and spare clips on top of them, before covering them up with sanitation workers’ jackets, caps and bibs. It was a tight fit, but Avram had calculated well. They packed all this contraband as far inside the truck as it would go, then hid it behind a false wall of old white goods and second-hand furniture.

Avram checked his watch. By some miracle, they were half an hour ahead of schedule. Just as well, considering Jerusalem’s traffic. ‘We should leave,’ he said.

Danel shook his head. ‘Not yet. You still owe us something.’

‘The rest of your money?’ Avram pulled a face of distaste. ‘I told you:
after
this is done.’

‘I’m not talking about the money,’ said Danel. ‘I’m saying isn’t it time you told us the fucking plan.’

Climbing the steps to the dome was like fighting a waterfall, hundreds of tourists pouring down on them, many a little bit panicky from the continued shrieking of the alarms. Luke forced a passage for himself and Rachel, ignoring the guides and wardens who kept trying to stop them, making theatre with his hands, pointing upwards and shouting that they were looking for a friend. They reached the Triforium door, slipped inside, and walked briskly along the deserted corridor to the library. But it was closed and locked and there was no sign of Trevor, no sign of anyone.

A door banged behind them. They turned to see the fair-headed man walking purposefully towards them along the corridor, shouting into his mobile to make himself audible over the still-clamouring fire alarm. Luke swore as he and Rachel hurried away. The door to the rear gallery was locked, so they went left instead and found themselves at the top of a spiral staircase with a dizzying view down to the ground below. They’d barely started down it when Blackbeard appeared at the foot and began climbing. Luke hesitated. He didn’t much fancy taking on fair-hair, but he had far more chance against him than against Blackbeard.

‘Back up?’ asked Rachel.

‘Back up,’ he agreed.

There was a small fire extinguisher on the stairs. Luke grabbed it to use as a weapon. Fair-hair stopped when he saw them, even took a step backwards, doing wonders for Luke’s confidence. But then he drew his taser and a moment later the bruiser appeared behind him at the far end of the corridor. They were cornered.

A large oak door had a vast No Entry sign on it. It looked as though it hadn’t been used in decades. Rachel slid the bolts, lifted the latch and pulled it open. The reason for the No Entry sign immediately became apparent. There was an organ on the other side. She got down onto her hands and knees and crawled beneath the keyboard, Luke following immediately behind. He stood up on the far side and found himself on the balcony that girdled the inside of the cathedral like a belt. Far below, two guides were helping the last of the stragglers out the main doors. Luke shouted for help, but the alarms drowned out his voice. And then they were gone.

The balcony to their left was blocked by fat organ pipes, so they headed right instead. But then a door opened ahead of them, and the bruiser came out. They turned back. They couldn’t escape back beneath the organ, for fair-hair was on guard with his taser. Luke looked over the railings. The balcony floor jutted out a couple of inches or so. Not much of a toehold. But by clinging to the rail, they could crab their way along it, bypassing the organ pipes to reach the rear gallery. And from there they could cross to the other side of the cathedral and make their escape. It meant braving an eighty-foot drop to the cathedral floor, however, and one false step would be the end of them.

Rachel shook her head. ‘I can’t,’ she said.

‘We have to,’ he said. ‘We’re out of options.’

Her face was pale, but she nodded. He clambered over the rail first, then helped her. He let her go first so that she could set her own pace. The narrow stone ledge was hard on their toes as they sidled along. Organ pipes protruding over the balcony forced them to hunker down like backstroke swimmers before a race. The sharp edges of the wrought-iron stanchions were cruel on their fingers. Still crouched, they reached the junction with the rear gallery. Rachel slipped as she made the awkward turn, lost her footing. She clung to the stanchions and scrabbled stonework with the sides of her shoes. Luke anchored himself with one hand, grabbed her wrist with the other. He tried to lift her but he didn’t have the right posture. She’d have to do it herself. She hooked one foot back up, then the other. But she slipped again and the jolt ripped her grip from the stanchions. She’d have plunged to her death had Luke not had her by her wrist, but her sudden weight forced him down onto one knee on the narrow ledge, so that now he was holding her swinging above the drop, screaming and screaming. He tried to lift her back up, but he couldn’t, not with just one hand. The strain on his fingers, arm and shoulder was extraordinary. His tendons stretched; his grip grew weaker. He grimaced and cried out with the unbearable knowledge that this was a battle he couldn’t hope to win.

Throughout it all, he’d been vaguely aware of scrabbling noises at the rear gallery’s locked door. He’d hoped the lock would buy them time to make good their escape, but now the hinges creaked and he looked up to see Blackbeard arrive on the other side of the balcony. All he had to do now was break Luke’s tenuous hold on the stanchion to send both him and Rachel plummeting to their deaths.

That decision was evidently above his paygrade, however. For, even as Luke watched, he glanced across at the balcony behind him, for all the world like a gladiator looking up from the Coliseum floor for his emperor’s thumb.

‘You know the plan,’ said Avram. ‘We’ve been through the plan a dozen times.’

‘We know the plan for getting in,’ said Danel. ‘We know the plan for placing the charges so that they bring down the Dome. What we don’t yet know is the plan for getting away afterwards. It seems to us that if we’re still inside when it comes down, we’ll be crushed to death. It seems to us that if we’re
not
inside, then we’ll be outside being ripped limb from limb by ten thousand Arab scum. You may think us cowards, Avram, but neither of those options exactly appeal.’

‘And neither will happen.’

‘You’ve always said that you couldn’t tell us until the day itself, because it would put too many other people in jeopardy if any of us were captured and interrogated. Fair enough. We accepted that. But today is the day itself and now we want to know.’

‘It’s still too early.’ He held up his hands to quell their protests. ‘You all knew there’d be risks. We’re about to take one of the biggest right now: driving two vehicles filled with munitions and other supplies into the heart of Jerusalem, then hoisting them onto our backs and carrying them in plain sight into the Old City. Anything could go wrong.
Anything
. And if it does, the more of us who know the whole plan, the more dangerous it will be for our other partners.’ He turned to Danel. ‘You didn’t believe that I’d get you your first tranche of money. I did. You didn’t believe that I’d come through with the missiles, the explosives, the guns and all our other supplies. I did. Everything I’ve promised, I’ve delivered. So please trust me just a little longer. Wait until we’re safely inside the Old City and—’

‘Once we’re inside the Old City it will be too late for us to back out.’

Their faces were implacable. Avram knew he had to give them something. ‘Very well,’ he sighed. ‘What exactly do you want to know?’

‘I just told you: we’re going to be in a building that’s set to blow, completely surrounded by the police and the army, with an Arab mob baying for our blood. You promised us a foolproof plan for getting away, free and clear. We want to know what it is.’

‘Ah,’ said Avram. He smiled around at them all. ‘Then I’m afraid I may have misled you a little. We’re
not
going to be getting away free and clear. We’re going to be giving ourselves up.’

The woman at the minicab company had promised to have a driver at Jay’s house within ten minutes. It had actually taken twenty-four minutes and thirty-seven seconds from the moment he’d put down the phone. Jay had therefore sat wordlessly in the back as they’d headed north, his arms folded, glaring daggers at the driver’s nape. Roadworks around Elephant & Castle squeezed traffic into a single lane, bringing them to a virtual standstill. And now, to cap it all, Blackfriars Bridge had frozen up altogether.

Anxiety was a mangle inside his chest. He didn’t trust Croke, that was the truth of it. Which meant that Luke and Rachel weren’t safe. He couldn’t just sit passively in the back of the cab any longer. ‘I’m walking,’ he told the driver, handing him the exact sum on the meter, for he knew it was important not to give tips for shoddy service.

‘Fuck you too, mate,’ said the driver.

Jay half walked, half ran across the remainder of the bridge then up Ludgate Hill to St Paul’s, the obvious cause of the gridlock. The police had surrounded it and an evacuation was in progress, hundreds of tourists milling around on the plaza while fire alarms shrilled away inside. He looked for but couldn’t see either Luke or Rachel. Maybe they’d got away. Or maybe they were still in there. He nodded good morning to the police officers by the main entrance as he tried to walk between them. They laughed and told him to scram. He went around the corner. A teacher, in tears, was counting pupil heads. Apart from her, everyone seemed remarkably calm, almost jovial. But then he heard a cry by the Paternoster Square exit. A ring of spectators quickly formed around an elderly woman who’d collapsed on the flagstones. Police officers from the crypt café entrance came to help, leaving the door unguarded. Jay glanced around then ducked his head and slipped inside.

‘Oi!’ shouted one of the policemen. ‘Come back!’

‘I’ll only be a moment,’ Jay assured him. He hurried down the steps and through the café. He heard noise behind him and looked to see three policemen chasing hard. They looked so red-faced and mean that some primal instinct kicked in and Jay simply fled. He stumbled up some steps and spilled out onto the cathedral floor. He reached the aisle and ran along it towards the main doors.

He was halfway down when the alarm finally switched off. It had been ringing so loudly that Jay could hear it still in his ears. Then he realized it wasn’t ringing. It was screaming. He looked up and saw Luke clinging to the balcony rail high above, fighting to hold on to Rachel as she dangled helplessly beneath him, while a black-bearded man on the gallery watched them as if it was entertainment.

Behind Jay, the policemen slowed too. Slowed and looked upwards. And still Rachel screamed out for help. And still it didn’t come.

They said your life would flash before your eyes at the moment of maximum danger. But as Rachel looked up at Luke, straining with everything he had to hold on to her as she flailed above the cathedral floor, all she
experienced
was a terror so complete that it left no room for anything else. All she experienced was the certainty of her own imminent death and the knowledge that she was powerless to prevent it.

Then the alarm stopped and she heard shouting and she looked down to see Jay and the police arriving like a miracle on the cathedral floor beneath her; and their presence gave Blackbeard no choice but to reach down between the stanchions, take her free hand, and help Luke hoist her back up and over the balcony rail to safety.

She fell onto her knees on the cold stone, arms across her stomach, retching and retching as her gut tried to expel its surfeit of chemical fear; but nothing came out. Luke knelt beside her, hugged her tight against him. ‘It’ll be okay,’ he kept saying. ‘I promise.’ But his words did little to reassure her. Her father, after all, had said something similar when he’d first broken the terrible news of his diagnosis, and
that
hadn’t turned out okay. His slide had been astonishing in its speed and remorselessness. And then, in the weeks after his death, her mother had simply fallen apart from grief and loss and fear and guilt at having spent the family’s small wealth on futile quack remedies. And so, two months to the day after her husband’s funeral, she’d parked her battered old Renault by a level crossing, fortified herself with a bottle of gin, then had walked out onto the tracks. And, just seven months after that, Bren’s body had been shredded by an IED.

Never show weakness; never show vulnerability. An irony of human nature, that the more you needed help the harder it was to ask for. In the wreckage of her family, Rachel had built a shell around herself in which she’d learned to rely on nobody but herself. But that shell had been shattered into a million tiny pieces as she’d hung there looking up at Luke, utterly dependent upon him, the strain of holding her written so clearly in his grimace and the blood rushing to his face and the tendons like stretched steel in his shoulders and throat. And now all the unexpressed grief and loneliness and despair of recent years sobbed itself out onto his shirt, while he held her tight and whispered words of comfort.