The Jerusalem Puzzle (35 page)

‘Let us sit by the fire and warm ourselves,’ said Xena.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ I said.

‘Looking for you, until your friends found me.’

It was cold and the night air was still. We had been warm while we were walking, but I could feel the cold now.

We went to the fire. I sat near Xena. Mark sat on the other side of her. Ariel sat beyond him. I raised my hands, taking in the welcome warmth. The fire glowed an orangey-red and was built with thicker branches and dry brush. A burnt pine smell filled the air near the fire. The smoke from it was thin. It drifted slowly up towards the stars.

‘You took your time,’ said Mark, as he sat down.

Xena shrugged.

The woman who was tending the pot hanging over the fire stood back and to one side and stared at us with suspicion.

‘What the hell’s up with these people?’ I said. ‘Why have they brought us here?’

Xena leaned towards me. ‘They call this the valley of the evil eye.’ She waved around her. ‘They say everything here is cursed.’

‘Did you tell them I’m looking for Isabel?’

‘I told them I’m your translator, that you treat me like an insect and that I hate you all.’ She spat into the fire, turned to me, smiled. Her teeth were very white. One of them had a gold filling.

‘They do not believe any part of your story,’ she continued.

‘Why are they roaming around in the middle of the night?’ I said.

‘They are looking for someone, like we are.’

‘Who?’

‘A slave of evil.’

‘They told you this?’ I said.

She turned to me. ‘I am their sister. I speak their tongue. Why wouldn’t they?’

‘How can we get away from them?’ I said. ‘I need to look for Isabel.’

Our eyes met. She leaned forward. ‘They can help us,’ she whispered.

‘How?’ I wanted to believe her, but I was sceptical.

Xena reached down to the earth between us, wiping away small loose stones and pieces of dried bush. Then she drew a symbol I recognised in the dirt. It was the arrow in a square symbol.

‘They found this symbol,’ she said. ‘Near where your Toyota is.’ She nodded back in the direction we had come.

‘There are many caves in that area. They say a marker like this could be used to help someone find their way back to a cave. They have gone back there to wait and see if the person they are looking for returns.’

My heart was beating faster. They had found a connection to the book, and to Susan, and maybe Isabel too. I wanted to get up, race back to the car, find the symbol, and figure out where the cave it pointed to was. My hands pushed down into the dirt. I made a fist with sandy earth in it, let it trickle through my fingers. I had to go.

‘Do not make any false moves,’ said Xena. ‘They are watching us.’ She patted the earth, dusted the sign away from where she’d drawn it.

‘How can we convince them we’re the good guys?’ I glanced over my shoulder. There were at least five sets of eyes on me. What would we have to do to be free from these people?

‘Do what I say. I will find a way.’

Mark coughed, tapped her arm. She turned to him. They spoke for a few minutes, their heads close together. I looked around, trying to work out what the best way to run would be if I got a chance to make a dash for freedom.

Xena turned back to me. ‘Mark thinks you and me can convince them we are on their side,’ she said. ‘He wants us to talk to them.’

‘So who are they out here looking for and what did he do?’ I said.

She leaned towards me. ‘A man recruited that woman’s brother, and his friend.’ She nodded towards the woman watching over us, who had ridden in front.

‘The man came to their village early last year. He spoke perfect Arabic, claimed he wanted to help them. Her brother was living in England at the time, in London. She gave the man his phone number. A few months later her brother sent a lot of money home. That was last spring. Last week her brother was found dead in Amsterdam. His body was burnt, terribly. They believe these things are connected.’

‘So why are they out here in the middle of the night?’

‘The man has returned. He was seen by someone out looking for lost sheep yesterday evening. They’ve been riding these hills since, searching for him. There are caves all over this valley. They are perfect for hiding things, because people avoid this area. They think the man may have found out about this from her brother.’

That would explain a lot. Isabel and Susan could have been moved to a cave in this area yesterday. It all sounded right.

Relief rose up inside me. Isabel might be alive. I’d been right to have hope. I closed my eyes, said a prayer.

Let it be true.

I’d imagined her dying horribly, many times, but I’d pushed those thoughts away each time. I looked around. I had to convince these people we weren’t their enemy.

A noise, a soft drone, startled me. I looked up. It was still dark. It had to be the darkest part of the night. The stars were a glittering carpet of lights, the Milky Way visible like a path you could follow. The sound was coming from somewhere over the horizon. It was getting louder. It wasn’t like the sound of that helicopter either. This was something on a much larger scale.

All eyes went to the heavens.

Then we saw them. Dark shadows. It wasn’t just one plane flying over. It was lots of them. Nothing else could make such a noise. I’d heard the rumble of bombers and fighter jets crossing the sky before, at the air force base my dad was stationed at in England. And I knew that exercises with lots of aircraft over population zones was unheard off. There was only one possible explanation.

Why else do lots of planes fly together in the night, if it isn’t for war?

Was this the Israeli Air Force heading away on a
mission?

They had a few hundred F15s and F16s that could raid almost anywhere in the region. But where might they be going? To Iran? To Egypt? Had some General there crossed the border, launched an attack on Israel?

Was this the start of the big regional war that was going to drag us all into World War III?

The wind picked up. It whistled through the low bushes around the camp. It was a throaty howl. It sounded as if a wolf was echoing the thrumming noises fading in the sky.

Then something hissed.

Then hissed again.

There was a smell, as if the fire was spitting. Mark was the first to react. He looked around.

The bullet hit him in the back of the head.

It exploded in a shower of sticky grey matter, blood and spiky bone.

Part of it hit my face like a wet branch slapping into it.

A sense of total disbelief came over me. Something had happened that was more like a dream than reality. Seconds slowed, as if braking.

There was another hiss, a disturbance in the air near me.

‘Down,’ shouted Xena.

She was already at ground level, pressing into the earth. Ariel was leaning up looking the other way, out into the darkness. His jacket was speckled with pieces of Mark’s brain.

The thumping of blood in my ears was loud and insistent.

And then a bullet hit Ariel exploding a large red hole below his shoulder. He slumped forward with hardly a sound. No one could survive that.

Shots rang out from nearby. I heard running feet. There were two more hisses. They were further away this time. I scanned around, turning my head slowly. I couldn’t see who was shooting.

A shriek echoed. The woman who’d been watching over us went running into the darkness, a rifle held in front of her. Her shriek was cut off a few seconds later. I heard a thump as her body hit the dirt.

I was stretched out, my hands near my face. My head was up an inch and I was looking around, and hoping fervently that I wasn’t going to get a hole in my head for not burying myself in the dirt.

Every muscle in my body was tense, from my feet to my neck.

A Palestinian man who’d been nearby, ran crouching, half jumping in the same direction as the woman. A burst of hissing gunfire sent him reeling backwards, then falling face down. After a few twitches his body went still.

My heart was thumping faster. My mouth was paper dry. I inched forward. I could smell dust and blood. I reached for Mark’s arm. I’d seen him twitch a few times after he fell. Was he dead?

More shots rang out from somewhere to our left. A flurry of single shots. Then a groan echoed into the unfeeling sky. It was followed by another long burst of gunfire. The sound of every bullet echoed through my body.

A scream put my nerves onto another level.

And then all the shooting stopped. The sound of my own breathing filled the air.

I looked around. I couldn’t see anyone. Whoever was firing had either killed everyone or had sent them running into the darkness.

I looked around for a weapon. There was nothing nearby.

Whoever had been firing could easily be getting ready to come and see the results of their handiwork. That had to be what you would do after shooting up a camp site.

But was it a rival Palestinian group or some Bedouin doing this? Or was it my evil friend from the church out there?

‘You again,’ said a voice above me. I recognised it with a sickening feeling.

‘Death and you are friends, aren’t they?’

I turned my head, fast.

He was standing over me. How the hell had he done that? He was like a ghost.

I felt cold, then hot, then oddly calm. I stared up at him, assessing my chances. He had a dangerous looking black machine pistol in the crook of his arm. His face was puffed up, bruised, all yellow and purple down one side and at his throat. Then I remembered; that was where I’d punched him, held him.

‘Do not get up,’ he said. His accent was clipped. He pointed his gun at my face.

‘Or you will die like all the others.’

Xena was half on her knees. She didn’t move as he walked quickly towards her, his gun still pointing at me. She looked ready to pounce. He backed away, transferred the gun from his right arm to his left as he walked, then put his right hand to his belt.

A moment later I saw a silver pistol in his right hand.

He was on the other side of her now, facing me, ten feet or so beyond her. She had her back to him at this point. Her head turned, as he walked slowly behind her. Her neck extended.

I thought about getting up, making a run for him. I might be able to distract him enough to let Xena escape.

He stepped closer to Xena and said, ‘Traitor.’

The pistol in his right hand fired. Then there was blood pouring from her chest, pumping, all shiny and red and splattering the dust.

‘No!’ I moved to get up, bile rising in my throat.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Bullets hit the earth in front of me, banging one after the other like giant fists boxing into the ground.

I stopped my rise, looked at their path.

I was going to die.

The iron smell of blood caught in my throat. I could feel splatters of it on my face, taste it on my lips. The ground felt hot under my hands, as if the temperature had gone up.

The bullets stopped.

Xena had jerked upwards, as if she’d been interrupted in getting up. Now she slumped forward soundlessly, her gaze fixed on me, unblinking, her blood flowing, pumping fast into the dirt.

He walked towards me, the hole at the end of his silver pistol pointing right at my eye. I could see the black emptiness of death. A wisp of smoke was coming from the end of the barrel.

‘I will kill you, Sean Ryan. You should not have come here, sticking your nose in once again.’

He moved his gun hand, pointed it down my body, as if deciding what part of me to shoot.

‘How do you know me?’ I said.

‘You disrupted us in London.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘A friend of mine died because of you. I remembered it after we met in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.’

‘You won’t get away with this,’ I said.

He laughed. ‘But I have. Though unfortunately you will not live to see how true that is. Now turn over!’

I stared up at him. ‘Go to hell.’ If I was going to die it would be while spitting into his face.

His boot struck somewhere on my cheek.

The side of my face blazed with pain.

Then another blow landed on the other side of my head. Darkness engulfed me. The next thing I saw was a face floating in a deep ocean.

It was Isabel’s face. It was floating away from me.

I struggled. But I was far from the surface. My hands and legs wouldn’t move. I had to kick but I couldn’t.

I willed my eyes to open.

They wouldn’t. In the distance, through a fog of pain, I heard a voice.

‘It is time for you to learn your lesson, Sean Ryan.’

The laugh that followed was the laugh of someone who had won.

The coffee machine was empty, but its service light wasn’t on. Henry Mowlem shook his head and put his one pound coin into the big confectionary machine instead. A Diet Coke rattled to the bottom exit. He put his hand in.

On his way back to his desk he drank more than half the can. He needed it. He needed to stay awake. He looked at the text and video feeds, then his eye went back to the satellite image. It showed a huge circle of white cloud. It looked benign, but Henry knew what it had done. On its travels down from the Caucasus it had killed five in Armenia and twelve in Syria. There hadn’t been a storm like it in a hundred years, so the Israeli weather service was saying.

And in the middle of all this, an air raid warning had sounded in Tel Aviv. The Israelis were getting twitchy. A rumour had gone around that the storm would be the ideal cover for Israel’s enemies to mount an airborne attack.

Henry looked through the text feed from Mossad. It was sparse, infuriatingly so. The last update had been fifteen minutes ago.

He downed the rest of the Diet Coke. It had been a big mistake letting Mark Headsell do a minimum personnel operation to investigate that Dr Susan Hunter lead. The very least he should have done was order him to wait until an Israeli commando unit was available.

Henry threw the empty Diet Coke can in the bin. It rattled as it went in. It was totally frustrating knowing all he could do now was wait and wait some more.