The Jerusalem Puzzle (34 page)

Most of the riders were holding rifles in their hands. There were at least four pointing directly at me.

The man above me made a loud hawking noise. Then he spat. I heard it, rather than saw it fall. I think it ended up near me, but I didn’t look down. I kept staring up at him.

‘You people have the smell of death on you,’ said the man. There was a murmur from some of the other riders, as if he’d given a signal. The horses’ shoulders shifted menacingly. Their manes were long, ragged, their skin mottled shades of brown. Two of the horses had big white patches. The smell of horse sweat was heavy, pungent.

‘You are spies,’ said the rider. ‘On that there can be no argument.’

‘We’re not spies,’ I said loudly.

‘You are an American, and that one.’ He pointed at Ariel. ‘He is a Jew. Admit your falsehood and it will be easier on you.’ His horse shifted again, inching aggressively forward, as if it knew what its master was saying.

I expected my toes to be crushed at any moment, that a bullet would land in me somewhere.

‘I have every right to be here,’ said Ariel. His tone was aggressive.

There was a rustle around us, a low growl. The tension could almost be touched.

‘You have no right to be here.’ The rider’s tone was affronted. ‘This is Palestinian territory. I should shoot you all for trespassing.’ The rider above me leaned down
precariously
. He swung his fist through the air, shook it towards Ariel.

His hand was dirty. There were strap marks on the back, like lines of treacle, and his knuckles were scuffed with dust that glistened in the starlight.

‘You won’t do that,’ I said. If they wanted us dead they would have killed us already. No, there was a reason we were still alive.

He leaned down towards me. ‘I should give you over to our friends in Hamas. They’re always looking for spies.’

He spat. Spittle hit my face. I didn’t move. He leaned closer. I could smell sharp spiciness on his breath.

‘They’ll keep you locked in an underground room without sun for a year, maybe more. Then they’ll tell your family to raise a million dollars to get you released, or they’ll start sending body parts. Would you like that?’ His teeth glistened in the torchlight that was reflecting off the rocks.

I didn’t answer. If that was what was going to happen, I had to look for my chance to make a run for it.

The first hour after a kidnap presents some of the best possibilities for escape, before they hide you away.

One of the other riders said something fast in Arabic. The man above me responded equally fast. The first one slipped off his horse, came to me, patted me down roughly. Then he moved to Ariel. There were words exchanged. Then the sound of rifles being cocked around us. The Palestinian continued his search. He held a black pistol and the goggles in the air a few moments later. He passed them to the guy above me.

‘What do you need a gun for, if you are not spies?’ he said, as he examined Ariel’s pistol. He spoke softly, as if he was even more sure of what he was saying now.

‘I am an officer in the Israeli Immigration service,’ said Ariel. ‘These men are not Israelis. And they are not spies.’ It sounded brave. He had no idea if the next thing that was going to happen was that he was going to get a bullet in the head.

‘I am an official with the British Consular service in Egypt,’ said Mark. ‘You have no reason to hold me. I am looking for a British subject, this man’s girlfriend.’ He pointed towards me.

‘No lies,’ said the rider, kicking his leather boot tip in my direction. ‘Which government do you work for?’

‘I don’t work for any government. I’m looking for someone, like he said. These men are helping me. We have no quarrel with you’

The laugh that emanated from him spread like an infection through the other riders. Then a shout echoed from somewhere to the right. The leader said something to the rider beside him. Then he bent down, gripped my shoulder.

‘What is your name?’ he said.

‘Sean Ryan.’

‘Well, Mr Sean Ryan, if you want to see home again, on this side of the curtain of death, you will go with my friends without making trouble.’

He turned his horse and went quickly back the way he had come. About half the riders followed him. The others remained. There were six of them left. Each had a rifle trained on us.

‘Walk this way,’ said one of them. ‘Follow that horse.’ The accent sounded French, and it was a woman’s voice.

I looked at Mark. He shrugged. We were going with them. We walked through the rocks. One of the riders led the way. After a few minutes I realised we were following a path that wound down the centre of the valley. Its sides were getting steeper, rockier.

I was walking near Mark. ‘Do you think we should make a break for it?’ I whispered when our heads came close, as I came up beside him.

He shook his head.

‘Do nothing to make them start shooting,’ he said. ‘That’s how you’ll make all this go bad, very, very bad.’

The woman rider moved her horse up close and leaned down towards me. Her face was brown, her forehead high, her eyes dark and wide. She wore a thin black cloth, like something out of Laurence of Arabia, around her mouth.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ she said. ‘We may not be the best shots, but you are very big targets, and when the sun comes up you will not be able to hide anywhere. We will find you and use you for target practice.’

‘Where are you taking us?’ said Ariel. ‘We have every right to be here. When I report this, there will be trouble for you and your whole village.’

‘Shut up,’ said the woman. ‘My brother is dead. We will not let it pass. You will come with us.’ She spat on the ground.

‘What happened to him?’ I said.

‘That is not your business.’ She moved her horse further away, then said something in Arabic to the rider in front of us. He began moving faster. We had to hurry to keep up. The clip clop of the horses reverberated among the rocks as we went.

As we reached a low point in the valley the rider ahead turned to the right. A row of silver bracelets, mostly thin, but one was at least two inches wide, glistened in the starlight as she turned.

The starlight was a fierce, almost neon glow above us now. The moon had come out from behind some clouds and was high in the sky. I scanned the horizon. There was a buzzing far off in the distance. It grew as we walked. The riders didn’t miss a step.

The helicopter must have been Israeli.

It went over us fast. And it had no lights. All that gave it away was the noise and finally, a rapidly moving shadow in the sky. I imagined all types of radar and infrared washing over us. I expected the helicopter to turn and pass back over us again, but it didn’t. It swept over the next ridge and was gone, buzzing into the distance as quickly as it had come.

We passed a giant house-sized lump of cracked white rock and I saw where we were headed. There was a fire in front of a building with empty sockets for windows. The two floors of the building had been constructed against the side of a steep hillock, which went on another twenty feet higher, and then ended in a jagged spine.

The spine, a spur of the Judean hills, circled around us.

At the fire there were more Palestinians. A woman with a hunched body, wearing a black chador, was stirring a giant cooking pot set over the fire. Children huddled together in the shadows near a wooden cart with solid wheels.

Long knives were hanging in a bunch from a tripod. I thought of how Alek had been beheaded in Istanbul.

As we came towards the light of the fire all conversation stopped. Everyone stared. It seemed as though the air itself was waiting for something to happen. Some of the men did more than stare, they put hands on their guns, raised them. We were obviously not a welcome sight.

The woman rode ahead and slipped off her horse as she neared the fire. She passed its reins to a young boy no more than eight years old. He was wearing a Spiderman t-shirt.

People were sitting around the fire. Most had hoods on, like the riders, and some were bent over, as if praying. Others had turned to look at us.

We stopped. I had a bad feeling. These people did not look happy. They looked as if they were getting ready for a funeral.

The woman rider strode towards me. She was a little shorter than me, but she didn’t lack confidence. Her eyes glared as she spoke.

‘Your woman is missing, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘What will you do to find her?’ she asked.

‘Whatever I have to.’

‘What does that mean, American?’

‘What I said.’

She leaned closer to me. Her eyes were bloodshot. As she came within inches of me, she pulled the cloth covering her chin down.

Her neck and chin were pock marked, the skin broken, scaly, all the way up to her lips. She was suffering from a rare skin disease, a relative of leprosy.

‘Would you kiss me?’

‘Whatever I have to do.’

A wave of revulsion rose up from somewhere deep inside me and passed through my whole body. I did my best to keep my expression impassive. I wasn’t sure if I succeeded.

She leaned closer. I could smell a sourness on her breath.

‘We shall see your lies,’ she said. ‘And then you will see what we do to spies and people who insult us.’

She dragged a finger across her throat, pushing her scaly skin hard until it went purple and flaky. A piece of it slipped off. The purple skin underneath grew darker, as if blood was about to leak out.

Isabel listened. The rumble had passed far into the distance. The only sound she could hear was her own breathing.

And it seemed to be getting louder.

She couldn’t tell whether that was because everything she heard seemed progressively louder anyway, the longer she was down here enveloped in blackness, or whether her throaty rasping was a sign of how her thirst was becoming more demanding, affecting her body as well as her mind.

She’d urinated into her cupped hands a few hours before and despite the awful acidy taste, had relished the liquid in her mouth and down her throat. But her throat was burning now with dryness and from the effects of drinking it. She wanted to scratch at it, pull it from her.

Where the hell was Sean?

Where the hell was this bastard?

She said another prayer for his return. It was ironic, she knew, that she was hoping for him to come back, the man who was treating her so cruelly, but he was her most realistic saviour right now.

Who else was going to rescue her? Sean was far away in Jerusalem. There was no way he could work out where she was. And any chance of rescue was highly improbable.

Then she heard it.

A faint hissing, a hundred thousand legs rubbing against each other. It grew louder and she could hear the rustling rise and fall, as if there was a conversation going on.

She reached in front of her for a rock to beat them away. As she felt through the stones, then raised the biggest one and held it to her chest like a sword, an idea came to her.

Yes, that was what she would do.

It would be better to be dead than to be eaten alive.

‘I’m not a spy and I haven’t insulted anyone.’ I pushed my face toward hers. I wasn’t going to be intimidated.

‘You are as innocent as driving snow. Isn’t that what you people say?’

‘What do you want us for?’ I wasn’t going to bother correcting her.

She knocked her hand against her head, then banged her knuckles hard into the side of her skull, as if she was tapping on wood. Her bracelets jangled, sparkled.

‘You think we’re all stupid. My brother was right.’

She leaned forward, pointing a dirty finger into my face. ‘You are a Westerner who has been softened by sitting down too long. Your legs have stopped working, and your brain too and the rest of you.’ She poked a finger towards my chest.

I swiped fast and caught her hand as she pulled it away. I held it, crushing it lightly.

‘You’re wasting your time insulting me. Kill me, if that’s what you plan to do, but I’m not a spy.’ I pushed her hand down and let her go.

Her expression hardened.

‘Allah will not save the likes of you.’ She said something fast and loud in Arabic, turned from me, raised her hands together as if in prayer, then started ululating. Her bracelets sparkled in the amber light of the fire.

I was a thousand miles out of my comfort zone. There was a cultural gap of a hundred traditions and fervent beliefs between us.

I looked around and saw the other Palestinians staring at us. It looked as if they were deciding whether to kill us or not.

There was some other tension in their expressions too. They looked as if they were running from something.

‘Ignore her,’ said Ariel loudly. I turned. He and Mark were right behind me. They both looked pale in the moonlight.

The woman pointed at Ariel. ‘And you, Ibn il-Homaar, son of a donkey,’ she said. ‘I bet you sent your mother to strangers to look after her, when she got old.’

‘Watch your tongue,’ he said. He pointed back at her. His finger was shaking.

She laughed.

A voice called out in Arabic.

I turned. It was Xena.

She was walking towards the fire, wearing a black scarf around her neck. It was wound tightly over the top of her head too, but her thin frame and face were unmistakable. Two men were with her. They both had rifles in their hands. I wasn’t sure if they were her bodyguards or her captors.

‘Welcome to the party,’ said Mark.

‘Who is your friend?’ said Xena.

The woman who had led us here shrieked in Arabic.

Ten rifles went to shoulders. Some of them looked ancient, but others were modern enough to blow big holes in us.

‘Don’t do anything sudden,’ said Xena.

Then she spoke in Arabic to the woman. She started softly. Then she turned to the men pointing their guns at us. She raised her hands as if to show they were empty. The guns pointing at us came down.

Then there was silence.

The rider with the skin disease waved her hand through the air, as if swatting a fly, said something in Arabic that sounded like a curse, spat on the ground, turned on her heel and walked away.