The Temple Mount Code (41 page)

The huge rock face in the center of the Dome, surrounded by gorgeous pillars, was steeped in the emotional history of the Bible, the Koran, and the Talmud.

It was here that Abraham had come to sacrifice his son, Isaac, as commanded by God, and it was from this Rock that God had created the world. It was here that Mohammad had arrived on the winged beast, al-Buraq, and – some believed – his footprint was still upon the rock. It was here that the Ark of the Covenant was delivered to the First Temple, which was built by King Solomon after his father, King David, was denied the task by God. That temple had been destroyed by the Babylonians and rebuilt, renamed Herod’s Temple, and was destroyed by the Romans in
AD
70.

Lourds’s chest swelled at the sight of the Rock. Even though he knew the location was argued over by the different theologies, and they even disagreed if this was
the
Rock, he knew there was something hugely significant about it. He could feel it. That bothered him because he preferred his feelings based in history and fact.

This, though, was pure faith.

And he’d come to plunder this holy place. Thinking that wasn’t a most auspicious beginning, especially since Lourds was immediately reminded of the penalty he faced if he got caught. But he put one foot in front of the other and got to it.

Men and women were allowed to enter through different doors, and had to occupy different parts of the Dome. Neither Miriam nor Lourds was certain where the entrance to the underground labyrinth – if it even existed – was.

Lourds walked in a semicircle around the Rock, watching carefully through the ornate pillars. He followed the small morning crowd of Muslims and tourists through the tour, ending up in the Well of Souls. The cave was located below the Foundation Stone.

He peered through the small hole that showed the interior of the cave, then continued to the entrance on the southern side, where the stairs were. The stairway was lined in brown-and-white carpet, but the hard stone underneath was evident. At the bottom, he walked through the gap between the Stone and the rock wall.

In wonder and frustration, he surreptitiously searched the room. If there was a clue to the location of Mohammad’s Book and Scroll, he didn’t see it. A steady resonance filled the room, and Lourds was reminded again of the sound of the sea. Many people believed the phenomenon was created by the enclosed space and the presence of so many people above and around the Well of Souls.

‘You see, my son, this is where the souls of the dead come to await Judgment Day.’ A man in American clothing stood holding the hand of his small son.

‘When I die, I’m going to come here?’

‘Some say that.’

The boy looked at the cave thoughtfully. ‘Seems small. And there’s no bathroom.’

Lourds chuckled, then masked the sound with a small coughing fit. Frustrated, knowing Miriam would be worried, he turned to go back up the stairs. Then the feeling he’d first gotten when he’d entered the Dome slammed into him again. This time he thought he was going to fall.

Several people around him got excited and nervous.

‘That was a tremor!’

‘The ground moved! Did you feel it?’

‘Was that an earthquake?’

All the voices spoke different languages, but Lourds understood them all. What he didn’t understand was the tremor. He’d never experienced one inside the Dome before though he knew the earth shifted and moved constantly, and that this region was overdue for a major earthquake.

At the bottom of the stairs, behind the stairwell, Lourds spotted a crack in the wall that he was pretty certain hadn’t been there before. As he stared at it again, another tremor surged through the cave, and the crack grew wider. He walked closer and saw that the crack actually outlined a section of the wall. Standing next to it, he felt a stone at his feet shift.

Looking down, he saw that the carpet had shifted slightly to reveal a winged horselike beast. ‘Al-Buraq.’ His heard his own whisper though he couldn’t remember speaking.

The cavern shifted again, and this time a new exodus began, this one involving panicked flight from the Well of Souls. Hasty feet and frightened voices echoed up out of the cave.

Lourds stood his ground, hiked up his
thobe,
and took out his pry bar. Inserting the hardened tip into the crack, he pushed hard.

The wall section slid open to reveal a small crawl space beyond. On the lip of the entrance, another image of al-Buraq was cut into the stone.

Lourds took a flashlight from his pocket, turned it on, and crawled inside. He paused long enough to push the wall section back into place, then started crawling forward into the darkness.

51

Dome of the Rock

Temple Mount

Jerusalem, the State of Israel

August 18, 2011

Keeping her head down, trying not to make eye contact with anyone, Miriam circulated through the Dome of the Rock. She tried to concentrate on finding Mohammad’s Koran and the Scroll, but her thoughts kept returning to Thomas Lourds. Even though she’d held no illusions about the intimacy they’d shared turning into something lasting, seeing Alice Von Volker’s obvious familiarity with him had been a bit much.

Even worse, Lourds didn’t even seem that upset by what had happened. He’d stayed focused – eyes on the prize. That was enough to undermine a woman’s confidence.

Get your head together. Concentrate on doing what you came here to do. If you do anything less, you’re going to be dead soon.

‘Orchid, do you have the package in sight?’ That was
Katsas
Shavit over the earpiece Miriam wore. The Muslim security people hadn’t caught that.

‘No. We’re still separated.’

‘You need to find him.’

Miriam glanced at her watch and realized that more time had passed than she had realized. She’d gotten lost in her thoughts. Getting back from Turkey had been a nightmare, and they’d been on the move almost constantly.

Almost.

They’d managed to find a hotel room last night before meeting with Alice Von Volker this morning. Miriam hadn’t been happy about Lourds’s choosing to share information with the woman, but she hadn’t been able to do anything about it without blowing her cover. Such as it was.

Though Lourds hadn’t said anything, she was fairly sure he wasn’t buying the ‘graduate assistant’ story anymore.

‘I’m looking for the package now.’

‘Where would it have gone?’

Miriam wanted to point out that the ‘package’ had the distraction level of a two-year-old and could forget it was in danger. ‘It was en route to the Well of Souls.’

‘Can you get there?’

‘Yes. I’m on my way.’ Miriam turned and headed for the Well of Souls.

‘Hold your position.’

Casually, Miriam stopped and adjusted her
hijab.
One of the buttons on her
burqa
had been replaced with a minicam. Signal boosters for the earpiece and the camera had been built into her shoes. Getting through security had been nerve-wracking, but she’d worked with the hardware before and trusted that the modifications were undetectable.

‘Do you see the man at your three o’clock?’

Looking forward, Miriam used her peripheral vision to look at the man
Katsis
Shavit had pointed out.

He was lean and bearded, with a haughty demeanor. A scar from a knife wound bisected his nose and scored his left cheek. Miriam was certain she’d never seen him before, and just as certain that she would remember him.

‘That is Bozorg Alavi, a member of the Revolutionary Guards. He’s an associate of Colonel Imad Davari.’

Miriam’s stomach churned a little at the man’s name. Those hours she’d spent in Evin Prison were still too close. They haunted her dreams, and only lying next to Lourds had prevented them from overwhelming her.

She felt a flush of guilt then as she realized why she’d been drawn to him. She’d been using Lourds as a security blanket. That was
not
what she wanted in a man.

‘Then Davari is here.’

‘We couldn’t confirm him as a casualty during the skirmish at the Turkish border.’

Miriam took a deep breath. ‘I’ve got to get to the package.’ She headed toward the Well of Souls, hoping she would be in time. At that moment, another of the strange tremors that had manifested only moments ago shook the Dome.

At the stairwell, a crowd of people emerged from below, and the wailing noise inside the cave intensified. An electric pang of fear passed through Miriam.

Bozorg Alavi had headed for the Well of Souls, too.

Colonel Davari paused at the top of the staircase and peered down as the crowd of people fled up the steps. He despised them, knowing they’d gone down into the cave and frightened themselves over the small tremors. Those were nothing.

At the bottom of the stairs, Lourds paused at the wall. Something long and metal glinted in his hand as he worked on the wall. In the next moment, Davari watched in astonishment as the American professor pulled out a section of the wall, crawled inside, and pushed the section back into place behind him as though it had never been disturbed.

All the frightened idiots fleeing up the stairs didn’t notice the professor’s disappearance.

Davari called to his men over the earpiece he wore, summoning them as he descended into the Well of Souls.

Pausing for a moment, still on his hands and knees, Lourds shined his flashlight around and saw the surrounding stone was worn smooth. Obviously, the tunnel had been used frequently in the past, but had sealed over and been forgotten long ago.

Pointing the flashlight forward again, he kept crawling. After a couple of turns, he came to a large cavern. He slid out of the tunnel headfirst, landing on his hands, losing the flashlight for a moment, then rolling to his feet.

The light didn’t span the distance across the dark cavern, and his footsteps echoed in the emptiness, but he also heard the sound of running water. The water was a constant flow, but it wasn’t a rush.

Something snapped underfoot. When he shined the flashlight down, he discovered he’d stepped on a rat skeleton, snapping the rib cage like small firecrackers.

Realizing he was walking out into the darkness with no point of reference, he turned back around. He felt panicked for just a moment when he discovered he’d walked farther than he’d thought. Gratefully, he reached the cave wall again, then lifted the flashlight to peer into the tunnel.

His light struck the eyes of the man hiding within the tunnel. Before Lourds could back away, the man leaped at him and knocked him backwards. Lourds tried to stay on his feet, but the man’s speed and strength overwhelmed him and drove him farther back and back, until he finally tripped and went down.

The man crashed on top of him, forearm pushed up under his chin and so heavy on his throat that he couldn’t breathe. Lourds swung his flashlight at the man’s head, but the man simply shifted his forearm and smashed it into Lourds’s face.

The blow on his still-sore nose brought tears to his eyes as his head rebounded from the cavern floor hard enough to fill his vision with spots and make blood roar in his ears. Lourds gasped for breath, and the man shoved the snout of a vicious-looking pistol into the professor’s mouth.

‘Professor Lourds, my name is Colonel Imad Davari. I have traveled very far to find you, and what you seek. I will not be denied. If I have to, I will shoot you. I will not kill you, but I have learned from great personal experience that you can shoot a healthy man a number of times without any of those wounds being lethal. To do what I need you to do, you don’t need to be able to walk or to move your arms. Therefore, I will shoot out your knees and your elbows to begin with.’

Lourds focused on the man. Miriam had mentioned the colonel in her description of the events that had happened in Evin Prison. There was no doubt that the man would do exactly what he said.

‘Do we have an understanding?’

It was hard speaking around the gun barrel in his mouth, but Lourds was a trained orator, used to making himself understood in many languages. ‘Yeth.’

Davari smiled. ‘Good.’ He patted Lourds’s cheek with his free hand, then pushed himself to his feet. ‘Get up.’

As Lourds stood, he noticed the other five men standing behind Davari. All of them wore
thobes
and
keffiyehs.
His heart sank.

The Revolutionary Guards colonel shined his flashlight around the cavern. ‘What is this place?’

‘Before the Dome was built, this was the site of the First and Second Temples.’ Despite his fear, Lourds studied the walls. Some of Davari’s men carried high-powered lanterns. ‘The Temples were carved out of the mountain, taking advantage of natural caverns here. This one was evidently forgotten.’

‘Where are Mohammad’s Koran and the Scroll?’

‘I don’t know.’

Davari grinned at him. ‘Then perhaps we need to explore a little further.’ He waved Lourds forward with his pistol.

The colonel needn’t have bothered with the weapon threat. Lourds picked up his flashlight and went willingly. He didn’t know what he was going to do if there was no Koran and no Scroll.

Except die. Only he felt pretty sure that was going to happen no matter what.

Mufarrij watched as the last of Davari’s men clambered into the hole in the wall beside the stairs. Two other Revolutionary Guards remained on the main floor, keeping an eye on the exiting tourists. They had talked briefly before most of them had split off to follow Davari into the Well of Souls.

Moving swiftly and fearlessly, his wounded face still throbbing, Mufarrij threw himself over the side of the stairs and dropped. When he landed on his feet, his injuries filled his head with such screaming pain that he almost dropped to his knees. He forced himself to move through the agony, reaching out and yanking the stone section back before it completely closed.

The action caught the man in the tunnel off guard. Still holding the wall section, he got dragged forward. His hand flashed to the pistol holstered on his hip, but the
thobe
got in the way.