The Jerusalem Puzzle (2 page)

The best thing that had happened, out of everything that had gone on, was that Isabel and I were getting on so well. She had taken an early retirement package at the Foreign Office. She wanted to leave her old life behind. She didn’t tell me all the details, but she told me enough for me to understand why she wanted out.

The rest of that weekend was uneventful. But on Monday morning I got another shock. I was checking the BBC News website before heading to Oxford for a meeting at the institute, when I spotted an article about a fire in Cambridge in which one person had died. The article didn’t name the person, but the fire had taken place in Elliot Way, a fact that made something twist inside me.

A conversation I’d had with Dr Hunter came back to me, in which she’d mentioned she wanted to move out of her house in Elliot Way, as it was too big for her needs now.

It had to be a coincidence. Was I getting paranoid?

Maybe my GP was right. It was going to take a long time to settle back into a normal life. He was the Zen master of common sense. I’d only gone to him because of Isabel’s pestering. Having your sleep disturbed week after week was the sort of problem I usually tried to solve myself. That’s a male thing, isn’t it? We think we should be able to fix everything, even ourselves.

I checked my email.

My mind was put to rest. There was an email from Dr Hunter. I opened it quickly. ‘Sean, I’m in Jerusalem. I’ll be back in London on Friday. Will call you then. There’s something we need to talk about. SH.’ It had been sent on Sunday afternoon.

I thought about replying, asking her what was so important, but I decided not to. I would find out soon enough. And I had to work on being patient.

I kept my mobile at hand all day on Friday, even though Isabel said I was losing the plot. I even left it on vibrate in a management meeting. Finances have been the main issue in these meetings for the past year, and we’ve all taken a pay cut. Our survival is not in question but what we spend our money on is. That evening I checked my junk mail to see if a new email from Dr Hunter had ended up in the wrong place. It hadn’t. I wasn’t overly concerned, but I looked up Dr Hunter on the internet. What I found out disturbed me.

Five minutes’ walk from Amsterdam’s flea market in Waterlooplein there is a side street with a bricked-up end wall. The red brick building at the end of the street had been a squat for a long time. Recently it had been converted into small apartments, rooms really, and let out by the week.

The two young men who had taken the top floor room ten days before had the appearance of derelicts. They were unshaven and dressed in dirty jeans, t-shirts and thin jackets when they arrived, though the sun in February in Amsterdam is a cool affair.

The fact that they didn’t appear out of their room for a week attracted no notice. It was only when the manager of the building, a big mousy-haired woman, knocked on their door that their existence came into question. That was because of the pungent smell that filled the tiny area between the door and the rickety stairs. When she opened the narrow door using her key the sight that greeted her was one she had never seen in all her sixty-six years. And she’d seen a lot, especially in the old days in the red-light district.

Both young men were tied to the bedstead. The mattress had been stripped from it and the iron frame had been upended. Both were naked. That wasn’t what upset her.

Their skin was black and shrivelled to the point where they resembled burnt wooden sculptures rather than humans. The window behind them was open and the room was freezing.

The Amsterdam Medical Office would later determine that local pigeons must have spent many hours feasting on the bodies, particularly the faces, before they were found. The cause of death was obvious. Both of them had suffered one hundred percent burns. But not in one go.

They had been burnt by a blowtorch or some other flammable device on each part of their body, without damaging the room, except for scorch marks on the bedstead. The cloth that had been stuffed into their mouths to keep them quiet must have caught alight, as in each case all that remained of it was a black mulch.

The coroner confirmed that one of the men had died five days before, the other four days before. It was likely that the torture of one of these men was used to encourage the other to talk. Whether he did or not is hard to know. He certainly didn’t benefit.

It would be another twenty-four hours before the National Criminal Database in the United Kingdom would tell the authorities who these men were and what they had been involved in.

Dr Hunter’s house had burnt down and her husband had died in the fire.

Even worse, Dr Susan Hunter had gone missing from where she was staying in Jerusalem. It was only a small article, an interview with an Israeli policeman looking
for anyone who might have seen her. But the article said she hadn’t been seen since Sunday night, just about when she’d contacted me. And the police were now looking for her.

I sent an email to Beresford-Ellis. Things had been tricky between us for a while, but I knew what I had to do. I wasn’t going to let the rumours about the collapse of our project in Istanbul impact on what I’d decided, even for a second.

I checked the visa requirements for visiting Israel and booked a flight. I heard Isabel calling me from the kitchen as I was staring at my itinery. ‘I’m coming,’ I shouted.

Over dinner we discussed what I’d found.

I told her about my flight plans.

‘You really think it’s a good idea to go to Jerusalem?’ she said. Her right eyebrow was raised.

‘Yes.’ I said it softly.

‘You are crazy. You know that, don’t you?’ She leaned towards me. She had her serious expression on.

‘Getting burnt to death is an especially bad way to go,’ she said. ‘Way too many people have died that way.’ Her eyes gave away how worried she was. ‘Bloody hell, even God does it to the Innocents in the Bible.’

I put my knife and fork down. I’d been eating slowly. Rain was lashing at the door out to the balcony. I stared into the darkness, my appetite gone.

‘I feel responsible,’ I said. ‘That manuscript we found in Istanbul, it’s like a bloody curse. Now Kaiser’s dead. And Susan’s missing. I don’t like coincidences.’

She put her knife and fork down too. ‘It’s not your fault Alek died,’ she said. Her powers of perception were one
of the things I liked about her, even when they made me
uncomfortable
.

‘I could have gone with him.’ I said it forcefully.

‘You told me he insisted on going alone.’

She was right of course, but I could have stayed in contact with him more. He might have told me that he’d found that cavern under Hagia Sophia. I could have gone out there, intervened. He might be alive if I had.

‘You’re not going to wait and see if they find her?’

I shook my head. ‘I can’t.’

‘I have to go out there.’ I spoke fast. ‘Waiting’s not an option. Nobody in Jerusalem will know anything about what Susan might be caught up in, her connection to the book.’

‘Well, I’m coming too,’ said Isabel. ‘It’ll be fun.’

I looked at her. Her loyalty impressed me, and if I was to be honest I was pleased she wanted to come. Her intelligence and wit were an asset – she’d already saved me from being kidnapped in Istanbul. ‘You need me, Sean. Admit it.’ She smiled.

I leaned and reached for her. She pulled away.

‘Have I ever denied it?’ I pushed the plates aside, leaned further and pulled her gently to me.

The following day I called Beresford-Ellis.

‘The authorities can do this a lot better than you, Sean,’ he said.

‘I want to see what’s going on for myself.’

He snorted. ‘This is not your business.’

‘It is my business. She’s been translating the book we found. Now she’s missing and her husband is dead.’

He made a honking noise, like a startled pig. ‘Have you gone stark raving mad, Ryan? You’re a research director, not a private investigator. This sort of stuff is not in your job description. Not in it at all.’ Mr Nice was long gone now. ‘Do you know anything about the situation out there?’ He didn’t wait for me to answer.

‘It’s a bloody powder keg waiting to go off. Think about it, Ryan. This is crazy. You’re crazy even talking about it.’

That made me more determined than ever.

‘Crazy or not, I’m going. And I’m doing it on my own time too, so it doesn’t have to be in my job description.’ I breathed deeply, working on keeping cool.

Now there was a bonus to going. I could enjoy Beresford-Ellis’s discomfort.

‘I’ve quite a lot of holiday time coming up and I can’t think of a better way to spend it. You told me yourself that I hadn’t taken off enough time after Istanbul.’ Check, mate.

‘Your contract is something we need to talk about, actually.’ The frustration in his voice told me everything I needed to know about what he thought of my contract.

‘Sure, when I get back.’

He hummed loudly. ‘Make sure to tell the authorities everything you get up to. I don’t want any policemen ringing me. Every department is having its budget revised this year, Ryan, particularly the wasteful ones. I was planning to tell you in a few days, but I think you should bear it in mind. We may need to make further cuts. That may include staff numbers too.’

It was as veiled a threat as a knife poked in your face. If he could persuade the management committee that I was wasting the institute’s funds, my chances of continuing Alek’s work and of buying new equipment for other projects, would rapidly approach zero. I was angry, but with myself now too. I should have expected this.

‘Keep me informed,’ he said.

I cut the call.

On the way to the airport Isabel showed me an online article about people being burnt to death. It listed the thousands killed by fire and brimstone in Soddom and Gomorrah, the people burnt to death for making the wrong offerings, and lots of other weirdness.

We stuck out among the corporate types on the train. Isabel was in her trademark tight indigo denims. I was in my thin suede jacket and black jeans. We both had black Berghaus backpacks. We might as well have put up a sign saying ON HOLIDAY over our heads.

This was my first time visiting Israel, but not for political reasons. If I was honest, I’d have to say I was glad I had a good reason to go now.

The queue for the flight was moving like a film being downloaded over a slow connection. We went through three separate security checks. Given the daily media reports about Israel, I wasn’t too surprised.

‘Do you think it’s going to kick off out there?’ said Isabel, pointing at a headline in a newspaper about Israel denouncing Iran.

I shrugged. The man ahead of her turned the page.

‘We certainly got our timing right,’ she said. ‘To get there for the start of the third world war.’

Henry Mowlam, a senior desk-based Security Services
operative
, threw the bottle of water towards the blue plastic recycling bin next to the back wall of MI5’s underground control room in Whitehall, central London.

It missed the bin and burst open. A shower of water sprayed over the pale industrial-yellow wall.

‘Bugger,’ said Henry, loudly.

Sergeant Finch was at the end of the row of monitoring desks. She looked up, then walked towards him.

‘You all right today, Henry? Working weekends not suit you?’

Her starched white shirt was the brightest thing in the room.

‘They do, ma’am.’ He saluted her abruptly.

She went over, pushed the plastic bottle towards the bin with her foot. It looked as if she was checking what the bottle was at the same time. Then she came back to him. The simulated outdoor lighting hummed above her head.

‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ He was staring at his screen.

She walked away.

The report on the screen, which was the latest summary of the electronic monitoring of Lord Bidoner, a former member of the House of Lords only because of a title his father had inherited, had given him nothing new to go on. Lord Bidoner was one of those lords who didn’t apply himself to his responsibilities, and whose shady connections and wheeler-dealing made sure he’d never get an invitation to Buckingham Palace for a garden party.

But they still had nothing definite on Lord Bidoner. Taking a phone call from someone two steps removed from a plot to spread a plague virus in London was enough to put you on a watch list and get you investigated, but it was not enough to get you arrested.

‘We have new threats, Henry. We checked him out. You know there’s been a flood of suspects coming in from Pakistan and Egypt. We have to put Lord Bidoner on the back burner,’ was what Seageant Finch had said to him a week before.

But Henry wasn’t convinced.

He’d mentioned it again at their Monday morning meeting. The head of the unit had brought up Bidoner’s file on the large screen and had reeled off the details of the vetting he’d been subject to over the past six months.

‘He’s passed every check. His father was well respected, a pillar of the house. I know his mother was Austrian, but we don’t hold that against people anymore, Henry.’ There had been titters around the room. Henry hadn’t replied.

It wasn’t having an Austrian mother that made Henry suspicious. It was Bidoner’s use of encrypted telephone and email systems, his endless profits on the stock market from defence industry shares he picked with an uncanny prescience, and his political speeches at fringe meetings about population changes in Europe and the rise of Islam. Taken one by one they were all legitimate, but together they made Henry’s nose twitch.

He stared at his screen. He had other work to do. His hand hovered over the Bidoner report. He should delete it. And he should request that the Electronic Surveillance Unit discontinue the project.

He clicked another part of the screen. He would ask for the surveillance reports to be cancelled later. He had to review an incident in Amsterdam.