“Come on, we may need your young strength.”
Martin felt a flush of shame at his indecision when these two old men had no hesitation in running into the burning building. He jumped from the van, clicked the locking mechanism into place and ran after them, catching up in the lobby, as they looked around at the bodies of the guards.
“Are they alive, Sebastian?” Ben asked, hand on his chest as he wheezed.
Martin watched as the other man quickly touched his fingers to the pulse points in their necks.
“Doesn’t seem like it,” Sebastian said, “but I’ve called for the emergency services, so they should be here soon enough. Morgan must be upstairs in the temple. Come, we must hurry.”
Martin ran ahead with Sebastian’s trim form leading the way down the corridors. Ben slowed behind them to a walk, holding his chest and waving them ahead.
“Go, I’ll catch you up. Find her, please.”
Martin noticed that the place was resplendent with symbols, mosaics and gold leaf, but all he wanted right now was to find Morgan. When he had heard them torturing her, he couldn’t imagine how she could survive. Sebastian pushed the bronze doors open and they were met with clouds of billowing smoke.
“Get close to the floor and follow me,” he said, dropping to his knees and crawling into the smoke filled room.
Martin stood there, looking into the dark, rolling clouds of smoke curling up to a mosaic frieze where he could see the sunburst of Jehovah about to be subsumed in flame. This was a hell made reality by evil. This was what he fought against in the cleanliness of his lab, from the distance of his laptop, with the impersonality of programming, but now it was here in the heart of London and he could avoid this confrontation no longer.
Martin fell to his knees and crawled after Sebastian, coughing as he went. It took an age to cross the marble floor and then he felt Sebastian grab his arm in the smoke, shouting over the roar of the flames.
“The Ark sanctuary is this way. I’m going in but you stay here, hold this rope. When you feel me pull it twice, haul it back out.”
Martin nodded, grateful for Sebastian being there to take charge. He clutched the ceremonial rope and bent closer to the floor, where the air wasn’t so thick with smoke but he could still feel the heat of the flames from the room ahead. How could anyone survive in there? Seconds passed and he wondered whether they would now lose two people instead of one. Then two sharp tugs came, almost pulling the rope from his hands.
Martin pulled hand over hand, bracing himself against the steps of what he thought must be the dais of the Temple throne. It was hard going, a dead weight. The morbid thought raced through his brain and he stamped it down. Not dead, surely, just wounded.
He moved to a crouch and started to pull back the way he had come, towards the direction of the double bronze doors. Halfway back, the weight increased again, but Martin pulled onwards, finally reaching the door. There Ben waited and together they pulled the rope out the door, revealing Morgan’s bloody, black body, her hand wounded and streaked with blood. She was wrapped in a shroud of tapestry, the rope tied around her middle.
“Oh Lord,” Ben cried, bending to her, feeling for her pulse. “Weak, but she’s alive. Where’s Sebastian?”
Martin looked back into the smoke, tendrils of soot forming the faces of demons that mocked him to return to their embrace.
“He’s in there. I felt him drop. I’m going back in.”
Martin crawled back into the temple, feeling his way with outstretched arms in wide arcs, trying to locate Sebastian’s body in the smoke. He must have succumbed to smoke inhalation with the strain of rescuing Morgan and now Martin was the old man’s only chance.
Finally, his fingertips touched cloth, then an arm. Martin grabbed the back of Sebastian’s tweed jacket and pulled, dragging the man along the black and white checkered floor, inching towards the doors and safety. He wheezed and coughed and the devils of smoke wrapped their tendrils around his neck and shoved them down his throat. He retched, spitting up bile and dark clots of ash, but he pulled onwards.
Just as he thought he couldn’t go on anymore, a pair of strong hands dragged him forwards and he felt another set pull Sebastian free. Martin felt an oxygen mask being placed onto his face and his body being rolled onto a stretcher. The fire service and ambulance had arrived.
Martin glanced sideways and saw Sebastian wearing a mask, and then Morgan, her face blackened with smoke. Ben was by her side, squeezing her hand, stroking her brow. Martin could see how much he loved her and thankfully they hadn’t left her to die, but they had lost the Ark.
Jerusalem, Israel. 12 noon.
The malevolent forces of chaos gathered above the Old City as hatred and rage boiled over in the midday summer heat. The crowd started to jostle one other as they walked briskly down El Wad HaGai street towards the Western Wall, the shouting sporadic, not yet a chant.
Avi Kabede, al-Hirbaa, pulled the hood of his jacket up to shield his face as he didn’t want to appear in any media reports of this event. He stayed at the edge of the crowd, instant messaging with key extremists in his team who were among the throng of right-wing extremist Jews. Technology meant that he could direct the mayhem without being part of it. He knew that they wouldn’t notice a Falasha anyway, and none of the men had seen his face, they had only received his money and directions virtually.
Avi looked around the streets as he walked, noting the different faces and clothing that denoted the races that co-existed here. For in Jerusalem cultures clash, religious ideologies collide and families become collateral damage in an unending struggle. The Holy City is a cesspit of lies, violence and revenge, he thought, for the wars that rage in the human heart spill over into these streets.
The worship of God is torn into three here, Jews, Muslims and Christians all jostling for position as their prayers mingle with one breath and curses taint the air with the next. Prostitutes of faith hawked their wares to gullible pilgrims who trekked after guides through the winding streets. It is a city that exists both on earth and as the heavenly Jerusalem, a myth perpetuated by those who return from it trying to patch lies over the truth they saw here. Avi looked around him at the crowd, a foretaste of violence in his mouth, for this was also where the great religions of the world would end in a blaze of fire when the glory of God came again.
Avi frowned as he checked his smartphone for the fifth time in as many minutes. He had been trying, and failing, to reach Natasha El-Behery for the last eight hours. In the previous communication she had confirmed that the pieces of the Ark had been recovered from the Freemason lodges of England and that the team were on a plane bound for Israel, but the plane had never arrived. Natasha and her team had vanished and with them, the Ark that he needed to galvanize the crowds into storming the Temple Mount and triggering the escalation into religious war.
But now events had been set in motion and it was too late to pull people back. After stoking the violence for days through right-wing media reports and his own special brand of extremist rhetoric, the summit signing was in two hours. Avi needed to engineer the violence to steal press attention from peace and towards the prospect of war, and he had a slim window of opportunity. He clung to the hope that Natasha would still come through as the swelling crowd marched onwards to the Wall.
Avi watched the men around him, their faces etched with anger, fists clenched and he knew that he had chosen his partners well. The Temple Mount Alliance were dedicated to building a Third Temple on the site of the first two. To do this they were intent on liberating the Temple Mount from Muslim control and destroying the existing mosque, for no Jewish Temple could be consecrated to God there without the removal of what they considered to be offensive shrines. In the past year, Jews had been kept from the holy place, and today they were determined to take it back. Placards punctuated the air above the crowd, as shouts began to coalesce into chanting.
“Jerusalem, undivided.”
“Liberate the Temple Mount.”
“Shoah for the Arabs.”
Avi had also used his contacts to stir unrest within the fundamentalist Muslim groups in the city, and they were waiting on the other side of the wall. Some were at prayers at the mosque and others outside the gates in the Muslim Quarter, waiting for signs of violence before they streamed in. Avi cursed Natasha, for everything but the Ark was in place, and the city teetered on a knife-edge of violence that should be sparked by this single event. If she didn’t deliver the Ark as a rallying sign, the Jews on the edge of the plaza wouldn’t join the violence, for most of the city sat on the fence. They preferred to keep the peace than to take by force what they quietly considered to be rightfully theirs.
It was ironic that both sets of extremists agreed on one thing - the peace talks must fail, as they had always failed before. Even after Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat had shaken hands on the White House lawn in 1993, it didn’t take long before the hawks ruled Israel again. There were moments of tentative calm where it seemed as if there could be some kind of religious unity. Then a bomb blast would shatter the quiet and bodies would be pulled forth from the rubble, martyrs to the next round of the blood feud. The Second Intifada was sparked when Ariel Sharon walked onto the al-Aqsa mosque complex, and children continued to grow up with racial stereotypes and no idea of who the people on the other side of the wall really were.
Avi wondered whether the final allegiance must be to the city itself, which stood above and beyond faith, for there could be no absolute truth when the layers of history and culture mingled so deeply. The city was built on death, cutting into its own body and self-harming until the blood of generations seeped into the earth. Perhaps today a blood sacrifice would appease the gods of the high places who once ruled here.
Avi glanced at his smartphone again, checking the time. He couldn’t wait for Natasha any longer, for they were drawing near to the plaza. The crowd couldn’t be restrained and they had to enter with brute force. They had kept things civil, but now it was time to rain havoc on the square in front of the Kotel, the Western Wall. He sent a flurry of messages to key individuals within the crowd.
At moments like this, he was torn by his desire to be at the head of the march, beating time on the drums as the chanting grew louder. But a greater authority lay in his anonymity, for the Temple Alliance and the extremist Muslim groups all believed that he fitted easily on their side. Avi looked up to the sky, brilliant blue studded by white clouds reminiscent of the Israeli flag. He felt that God was blessing this mission, setting his seal on a moment that would go down in history, the beginning of the end for Israel.
A yell came from the front of the march, then the rapid stamping of feet echoed through the streets as men started to run towards the Western Wall. Avi shouted along with the crowd and picked up the pace as they ducked around market stalls, spilling onto the pavements of the old city. One man tipped over a stall, igniting a trail of violence as the mob pushed over tables and kicked at vendors, breaking their wares with abandon. Some people shouted after them while others shrank back into doorways to avoid the conflict, for a mob on the run was wild and uncontrollable.
Avi glanced at his watch again. There was still time for Natasha to smuggle in the Ark while the soldiers were dealing with the riot to come. If the Ark was revealed, then at 1pm the shofar would sound across the plaza as a symbolic new beginning. The blast of the ram’s horn had been heard emanating from the thick cloud of Sinai in the book of Exodus and had sounded again when the Jewish soldiers liberated the Western Wall from the Jordanians in the 1967 war. Many believed that the hard-won sacrifice had been belittled by the domination of Islam on the Temple Mount and Avi believed that it was the sound that would galvanize those on the fence. They had fifteen minutes to get into position, then, God willing, they would storm the Temple Mount.
The narrow streets of the Old City funneled protestors into a tighter mob as they approached the plaza, and Avi’s phone vibrated with a message from the Muslim side. There was a group ready to defend the Temple Mount from the protestors and more waiting inside the al-Aqsa compound with weapons in place. Avi smiled, knowing that both sides were willing to die in the defense of this holy place.
The mob ran into the plaza, ugly chanting resounding in the holy place. Avi could see Israeli soldiers massing in defense at the bottom of the wooden walkway leading up to Mughrabi Gate, the only entrance to the Temple Mount compound from the Israeli side. He saw press vehicles and the reporters he had tipped off pushing their way through the curious onlookers. Avi smiled, for surely the Israeli soldiers couldn’t fire on their own people, not live on TV. He knew that many of them agreed with the stance of the protestors anyway and might let them in. For there was no freedom of religious expression in this part of Jerusalem, only segregation.
The mob surged against the soldiers, who linked arms and pushed them back. As the violence took hold, batons crashed down on the protestors but their sheer numbers began pushing the Israeli forces back. The sound of shouting and grunts of effort filled the air, smothering the sound of people praying at the Wall, most of whom scuttled away from the violence.