The Boudicca Parchments (13 page)

“Open-eye,” Sarit explained. “She may have
initially
been motivated by an argument she had with a Jewish woman about Lefou’s extravagance when arranging charity dinners. But after that she just went overboard, first venting her spleen for the sake of it and then realizing that she could actually make money out of it.”

“But how did you know about her?”

“I didn’t. I called in to Dovi. He checked the address online at the UK Land registry and got the owner’s name. He also checked it against the voting register to see who was actually registered as living there. Then he cross-checked the name against the various watchlists and needless to say it came up, with a whole long case file.”

“How many names of you
got
on the watchlist?”

“There are several lists, ranging from terrorists, to enemy-recruitables, to friendly recruitables to non-violent critics,
etc.
She’s on the non-violent critics and enemy-recruitables list. She’s seen as some one who would actively work against us if she could. Until now she’s been basically a talker. But the fact that Bar Tikva arranged to see her after Sam Morgan tried to kill you while he was working for them, meant that the meeting might have something to do with the attempts on your life. And of course because she’s on the enemy-recruitables list, she might be ready to do more than just talk. We knew that Bar Tikva didn’t go there just to have a chat.”

“What do you mean ‘arranged to see her’?”

Sarit looked confused.

“Pardon?”

“You said ‘Bar Tikva
arranged
to see her.’ That means it was pre-planned. How did you know?”

Sarit blushed. She wasn’t supposed to reveal more than she had to.

“Well we didn’t get it on an intercept, as we should have done. He used a new phone and we didn’t get its details until after that. His old phone actually went dead and we didn’t initially have the number of the new one. He probably ditched the old one for security reasons.”

“So he
knows
he’s being watched?”

“Not necessarily. He was probably just being cautious. But he may know
now
of course.”

“And when you said ‘we didn’t get its details
until after that
…’.”

Daniel smiled. Sarit smiled back.

“You’ve got it. That’s how we tracked him.”

“Tracked him?”

“After I followed him to the Lefou woman, I waited down the road, keeping the place under surveillance. When he emerged, I followed him to a hotel in Golders Green. Then Dovi called me and told me that they’d got a lock on his new phone number and they were tracking him. So I stood down and checked into another hotel there. I got a call bright and early telling me that he was on the move and got dressed quickly and followed him again. He was picked up at the hotel by three men in a car and I followed them.”

“They didn’t spot you?”

“Obviously not.”

“And where did they…”

“They drove through north London into Hertfordshire to the court where you were appearing. I saw them going into the court building but obviously I couldn’t follow them in, because Bar Tikva would have recognized me from the plane. But I figured they wouldn’t try anything inside the court building.”

“So you
knew
they were going to try and kill me?”

“I suspected. I mean, after the last attempt, it seemed reasonable that they’d try again. And the fact that Shalom Tikva sent his son here after Sam Morgan botched it, plus the fact that they went to the court building, suggested that they were up to something along those lines.”

“And you couldn’t have got some back up?”

“Not at such short notice. Time was of the essence and we didn’t have enough specific information to go to the police.”

“So my life was in your hands.”

“Don’t worry Daniel. You’re
safe
in my hands.”

Daniel smiled.

“I suppose they’re registered as lethal weapons.”

“Not quite. But I am trained to do my job.”

She decided not to tell him that she was an assassin and not merely a field officer.

“But I thought you guys always work in small teams – or even large ones.”

She knew what he was talking about: the assassination in Dubai. Maybe she didn’t
need
to tell him that she as an assassin.

“We work in small teams. We work in large teams and we work alone. We do whatever we have to do. The question is why do they want you?”

He told her about the blurred picture sent to his phone, the text exchanges with Martin Costa and dropping the phone in the house when it went up in flames.

“So you have no idea what was in the picture, other than that it was a Hebrew manuscript that he claimed to have found at the dig site?”

“Yes. I mean either Hebrew or Aramaic. Martin Costa may have thought himself to be a great Theology scholar, but he wouldn’t have known the difference.”

“So it looks like they’re trying to kill for nothing?”

“Well assuming that what they’re doing has something to do with Costa, I guess so. But then again they don’t know that.”

“Well regardless, Dovi regards you as an asset to be protected and if you want to come to Israel, we can keep you safe there.”

“I can’t stay there forever. I have my career. I have my life to lead.”

“Well we’ve got enough evidence to intercede on your behalf on the murder charge and to get them to arrest Bar Tikva. It’s just a pity that we don’t know what it is they’re after.”

Daniel realized that he could trust Sarit, so he decided to come clean.

“I
did
upload a copy to my cloud account.”

“You
did
?”

“Uh huh.”

Daniel was enjoying Sarit’s display of enthusiasm.

“Can I see it? There’s a computer here.”

“With internet?”

“High speed broadband.”

“Then you may.”

She led him upstairs to a room packed with computer equipment: a PC with four screens in one corner and a Mac with another four in the other. This wasn’t a computer room: it was a control centre for World War Three. Sarit threw the switch and the computer sprang to life. Daniel had expected the boot-up to be the bottleneck in this entire process. But the computer was on and ready for action in almost the blink of an eye.

“Solid state hard drives,” said Sarit when Daniel looked at her quizzically.

She eased the keyboard over in Daniel’s direction. He keyed in the URL of his cloud account, typed in one of his eMail addresses and then looked at her again, as if he expected her to look away while he logged on.

“You’re worried about your password?” she asked incredulously. “You think we couldn’t get it if we were interested?”

“Dovi probably already
has
,” he said with a shrug, and typed it in.

In another blink of an eye, the screen refreshed with his account summary. A couple of clicks opened up the image that he had uploaded. Sarit looked at it. She was somewhat less equipped to read it than Daniel, although she was able to make out the shapes of some of the Hebrew letters.

“You do know,” she said “that blurring of an image is usually caused by jerking the camera in one or another specific direction while the picture is being taken?”

He looked at her blankly.

“So?”

“Well that means that the blurring has a certain specificity about it. If the picture is, say of black text on a yellowish background. Then the blurring involves a specific amount of black and yellow depending on the speed of the movement and the exposure time or digital equivalent.”

“You’re talking in jargon,” he said.

“What I’m trying to tell you is that we have people who can use image-enhancement technology to clean up this image and get the text.”

Daniel’s puzzlement turned into excitement.

“Let’s go for it.”

Chapter 29

Julia Sasson was now back in England along with Nat, Romy and the twins. She had heard about Daniel’s arrest and subsequent escape and had tried to contact him, but it went straight to voice mail. Although he had always been more of a scholar than a man of action, she knew from recent escapade in the middle east that her older brother could handle himself in a crisis. But not being able to contact him was worrying. She wanted the reassurance of hearing his voice. So far it had eluded her. She sensed however, that he would get in touch in his own time.

In the meantime, however, she had her children to look after. That was her immediate priority. As it was still school holiday, she was taking them on an outing to Holders Hill Park. She had brought with her the usual collection of footballs, Frisbees, tennis rackets and tennis balls.

She knew that they’d be hungry – probably sooner rather than later – but the café in the park was expensive, like almost all local monopolies. So she brought along a big collection of sandwiches, including egg and onions, smoked salmon and chicken schnitzel. She also brought along several bottles of water as well as grape juice and apple-and-pear juice.

It had taken her time to find a parking space, but she had driven around, keeping her keen eyes open until she spotted a car about to leave and then she pounced. She got them out of the car and marshalled them together before using the key fob to look the car doors. With three children, even a simple task like crossing a narrow side-street was fraught with peril.

As she crossed the road, she noticed a tall man dressed in the black attire of some ultra-orthodox sect. They were very near to Golders Green and ultra-orthodox Jews went to the park just like others. And the fact that he looked away from her when she met his eyes was typical of the ultra-orthodox. According to their belief system, they are not supposed to stare at women – especially with lust in their hearts – but they sometimes didn’t quite live up to their highest ideals.

But what bothered Julia was the feeling that it wasn’t just a momentary glance.

She couldn’t escape the feeling that he had been staring at her… and that he had been doing so for some time.

Chapter 30

“This really isn’t a good idea Daniel.”

“Why? If we use a mobile they can’t trace it.”

“They can.”

“Only if they know I’m going to call him, which I very much doubt.”

Daniel and Sarit were arguing. He was holding the mobile phone that he had found there. She wondered whether she could take it from him by force. She was well trained in Krav Maga. But he looked pretty fit and could probably fight too if he had to. Besides, it wasn’t her duty to protect him from himself. Now that he had given them the file, he had no further obligations towards them – or they to him. If he wanted to put himself in jeopardy, that was his right. Except of course, that
she
might then have to leave.

She decided to explain it to him more clearly.

“Look, if you call him, they can’t trace it now. But you don’t know how
he’s
going to react. If he tells the police then they’ll go round and get his phone details and then get the phone company to provide them with the records. Then they’ll go to the mobile phone company and do a trace to see which ground stations and relay stations the call went through.”

“Yes, but if I withhold the caller ID with 141 then they won’t be able to get the number of this phone. So they won’t know what to trace.”

“Trust me, they can.”

“Okay, but I need to contact him.”

“Okay, I’ll tell you what I’ll do… Give me a couple of minutes and I’ll arrange with Dovi to route a computer call through Israel.

Five minutes later he was making the call.

“Professor Hynds speaking.”

Edward Hynds, Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge was leading the dig at the site in Arbury Banks.

“Hallo Professor Hynds, my name is Daniel Klein. I’m a Professor of Semitic Languages at UCL.”

“Yes,” said Hynds cautiously.

“I don’t know if you’ve heard of me but – ”

“Do you mean your ‘ancient’ Egyptian adventures or your more recent ones with the police?”

And with that the ice was broken.

“I guess that means you’ve heard of both.”

“It would have been very hard not to.”

“First of all, I should explain that I had nothing to do with the death of Martin Costa. I mean I was there when the fire started – I was lured into a trap – but I didn’t kill him.”

“It wouldn’t make any difference to me if you did. He was a boil on the backside of humanity and his death was no great loss to humanity in general or the academic community in particular.”

Daniel felt relieved.

“I assume then that he wasn’t part of the official dig team.”

“Lord no! I wouldn’t have let him come within a mile of the dig. And if I’d known that he had an interest in the subject, I would have taken out an injunction against him.”

“So he didn’t openly approach the site.”

“Again, certainly not.”

“How would he have been able to get his hands on an artefact from the site?”

“Well first of all, any potentially valuable items from the site are taken immediately under tight security back to Cambridge.”

Daniel interrupted to tell the professor about the picture of the manuscript Costa had sent by SMS. Hynds picked up the thread, speaking in a tone that Daniel noticed was quite slow and measured, as if he were a man to weigh up each word carefully before letting it pass his lips. There was also a kind of baritone depth to the professor’s vocal pitch.

“That’s what I’m coming to. A few days before the incident that
you
got caught up in, we had a night-time breach of security at the dig site. The ground had been disturbed and it was clear that one particular area was dug considerably deeper than the others. It appears that some one was looking for something very specific – and based on what you’ve just told me, it looks like they found it.”

“Can I ask you this professor: although the manuscript appears to have some Hebrew letters on it, I can’t be sure that it is actually Hebrew… or Aramaic. What I was wondering is what are the chances that the manuscript Costa found might have been written in some local British language and alphabet?”