The security men gave them only the most cursory of nods as they entered the hotel. They weren’t leaving their posts for anyone. Inside, the foyer was deeply carpeted and there were plush leather sofas and armchairs dotted around, but Luke was more interested in the four security cameras he spotted hanging from the ceiling. Two of them were pointing at him and Finn. A handful of guests were milling around – no more than six – and the three receptionists behind the faux-mahogany counter were chatting idly. Their day had not yet begun in earnest. As Luke scanned the foyer, he was aware of one of them – a heavily made-up woman in a blue uniform – tugging on her male colleague’s sleeve and pointing in Luke’s direction. Luke ignored them and continued to scan. He was looking for their point man and he picked him out five seconds later. The guy was sitting in a comfortable armchair in the far left-hand corner of the foyer, a
Washington Post
that he wasn’t reading spread out in front of him. He put one hand to his ear, then looked directly at Luke and Finn. Someone had just alerted him to their arrival. He stood up and walked in their direction.
‘Gentlemen,’ he greeted them in a thick Israeli accent. Luke immediately noticed the covert earpiece in his right ear, and a tiny microphone clipped to the lapel of his suit.
Luke and Finn nodded at him.
‘I’ll need you to surrender your weapons while you’re in the building, gentlemen.’
They’d left their 53s in the Land Cruiser, but were still carrying their Sigs, and as far as Luke was concerned, it was going to stay that way. ‘Sorry, buddy,’ he told him. ‘No can do.’ He gave the Israeli intelligence officer a flat stare and there were a few seconds of impasse. The officer turned and walked about ten metres away from them, and Luke could see him talking quietly into his mike. A minute later he returned, an unfriendly look on his face.
‘All right,’ he told them. ‘Follow me.’
He led them behind the reception counter where two lifts were already waiting at the ground floor. The three men stepped inside the left-hand one, the Israeli pressed the button for the twenty-third floor and the doors hissed shut.
‘He’s a handful, your man,’ he commented as the lift lurched upwards.
‘Not
my
man, buddy,’ Luke replied.
‘Are you taking him into Gaza?’
Luke said nothing.
‘Rather you than me.’
But Luke wasn’t in the mood for small talk. The lift came to a halt, the doors opened and the men filed out.
It was clear which suite was Stratton’s: it was at the far end of the corridor, manned by another two guards in pale khaki uniforms. A lot of muscle for a peace envoy, Luke thought to himself as they approached. A nod from the Israeli intelligence man and one of the guards knocked on the door.
‘Come,’ a voice called from inside. The guard opened the door. Luke and Finn exchanged a look, then the three men walked inside.
As he entered the room, Luke squinted. The far wall was a floor-to-ceiling window, looking out over the Mediterranean, where the early morning sun was by now blindingly bright. A figure was standing with his back to the window, silhouetted by the sun, so it was impossible to see his face or even the full shape of his body. But Luke knew who it had to be and his skin prickled.
The door shut behind them.
Silence.
It was only when the figure walked to the left, out of the glare of the sunlight, that Luke made out his features. Stratton looked thinner than he did on TV. Smaller. Gaunt. He was wearing a grey business suit with a red tie and he looked unusually relaxed, given what the day ahead held.
He stepped towards Luke and Finn.
‘SAS?’ he asked. His voice was very soft.
Luke and Finn nodded.
‘Are we ready to go?’
‘Ready, sir. Israeli secret service officers will take you as far as the border. We’ll follow as a counter-attack-team escort. Once we cross over into Gaza, you’ll be with us.’
Stratton nodded, then turned his back on them to look out over the sea.
‘We’ll be making a diversion,’ he said.
The three men looked at each other.
‘With respect, sir,’ Luke replied carefully, ‘diversions aren’t a good idea. Our route has been carefully planned.’
A pause, and then Stratton turned round again. He walked straight up to Luke – who was almost a head taller than him – and looked the SAS man up and down. ‘With respect, sir,’ he said, ‘you’re here to escort me. Not advise me.’
The two men stared at each other, while Finn and the Israeli looked on.
‘Where are we diverting to?’ Luke asked finally. ‘
Sir
.’
‘Jerusalem.’
Luke recalled the mapping he’d examined. Jerusalem was about twenty-five klicks south-east of Tel Aviv. It would only take them an hour to get there, but it knocked the whole fucking op out of shape. He heard Finn swear under his breath.
‘Can I ask,’ Luke said, his teeth gritted, ‘whereabouts in Jerusalem?’
‘Of course,’ Stratton replied mildly. He smiled a dazzling smile. ‘The Garden of Gethsemane, at the foot of the Mount of Olives.’ He paused. ‘The name means nothing to you?’
Luke shook his head. ‘Should it?’
‘It certainly should, if you’d listened to the scriptures at school.’ He inclined his head. ‘Perhaps you weren’t the type.’
‘Perhaps I wasn’t.’
‘The Garden of Gethsemane is where Our Lord prayed on the night he was betrayed.’ He turned to look out of the window again. ‘The world,’ he said, ‘is on the brink of war. If my negotiations go well, perhaps it can be avoided. I shall go there for a few moments of quiet reflection before we enter the lion’s den.’ Suddenly the smile was gone and he started walking towards the exit of the room. ‘We leave now.’
Luke, Finn and the Israeli officer gave each other a look. But Stratton had already left the room and they had no option but to follow him.
07.15 hrs.
‘Zero, this is Tango 17.’
‘Tango 17, this is Zero. Send.’
‘The Cardinal’s demanded a diversion. Requesting permission to travel via East Jerusalem, Garden of Gethsemane.’
A pause. ‘What the fuck . . . ?’
Luke scowled at Stratton, who was striding on ahead through the hotel foyer. ‘Tell me about it,’ he muttered. He and Finn followed him through the doors of the hotel and out to where the Land Cruiser was waiting, along with a black Mercedes and two police outriders. ‘You’d better come back with that permission sharpish, buddy,’ he said. ‘Or even better than that, refusal. He looks pretty eager to move.’
‘Roger that,’ said the radio operator, and the connection to the ops room fell silent.
07.18 hrs.
Julian Dawson, OC B Squadron, looked at his radio operator in disbelief. ‘
Diversion?
Half the fucking IDF are mobilised to get this wanker into Gaza. What’s he playing at?’
The radio operator could only shrug.
‘Get me London,’ Dawson ordered. ‘Now.’
07.30 hrs.
It was not by chance that the Director Special Forces and the Director General SIS were sitting in the same office in the SIS building when the call came through. Today was a major operation for both services. High-profile. If either of them had their way, the Middle East peace envoy would be safely tucked up at home. But they didn’t have their way – it was the politicians who made the decisions, leaving others to live with the consequences. Today it was crucial that their lines of communication stayed open. Both men knew that if it all went to shit today, their actions would be scrutinised minutely. The two men didn’t always see eye to eye, but today they had a common purpose.
And a shared sense of foreboding once they heard what the Regiment representative had to say.
Neither of them had any love for Alistair Stratton. But they knew what was riding on him. They knew how he was the darling of the Israeli administration, and the Americans too.
They knew that what he said went.
They barely needed to discuss it. Within less than a minute the DG had picked up his phone. ‘I need the PM,’ he instructed. ‘And after that the Israeli Defence Minister.
Quickly.
’
08.16 hrs.
‘I can’t
believe
we’re screwing around like this so some bastard can go
pray
. . .’
It was the third time Fozzie had said it. The rest of the guys just sat there with scowls on their faces, none of them quite able to accept that the plans they’d been briefed on so carefully were being altered on a whim.
‘Pray, my arse,’ Finn muttered. ‘He’s probably got a bit of skirt hidden away. Wants her to wring him dry before he goes to meet the ragheads.’
Fozzie snorted. ‘He’s not the fucking type.’
They drove in convoy: two police outriders, a black Merc with tinted windows carrying Stratton, and the Land Cruiser at the back. They’d left Tel Aviv forty-five minutes ago and the outskirts of Jerusalem were just coming into view. The moment Luke had returned to the vehicle from the hotel, the unit’s conversation had been a string of expletives. And it was even worse when word came through that Stratton’s demand had been indulged. Even now, local law enforcement were vacating the Garden of Gethsemane area of tourists. Someone somewhere clearly thought enough of Stratton to give him the full VIP. Luke had other ideas. ‘Something’s not right,’ he muttered in the back of the Land Cruiser, his hand resting gently on his 53.
‘What’s that, mucker?’ Fozzie asked, both eyes firmly on the traffic ahead.
‘You not suspicious?’
‘Suspicious of what?’
Luke looked out of the window. ‘I don’t know. I just don’t think this guy’s as holier-than-fucking-thou as he pretends.’
Silence.
‘I just can’t believe,’ said Fozzie, ‘that we’re screwing around like this so some bastard can go and
pray
. . .’
08.30 hrs. It was the height of Jerusalem’s rush hour and the convoy moved slowly as they headed east through the network of bland white-grey modern blocks, green open spaces and wide boulevards. There were well-heeled areas and those that were run-down, noisy, fume-filled. It could have been any other sprawling Mediterranean town, if you ignored the unusually high police presence. There seemed to be a blue and white patrol car on every street corner, and Luke noticed a fair sprinkling of uniformed soldiers and khaki military vehicles. He remembered being in London in the days after 9/11, not long before he’d been deployed to Afghanistan for the first time. Jerusalem had the same atmosphere. The same tension. It was a city waiting for something to happen.
08.45 hrs. The imposing walls of the Old City loomed into view, and beyond the walls, golden in the morning sun, the Dome of the Rock. Luke fixed his attention more firmly on the convoy ahead and the surrounding traffic, picking out potential firing points or suspicious activity, clocking the military presence, which was increasing the closer they came to the Old City.
Russ had been almost silent since they left the base. Now he suddenly spoke. ‘Holy city for ragheads, Yids and Bible-bashers,’ he murmured. ‘You ask me, they’re as bad as each other.’
The convoy didn’t head straight for the ancient walls of the Old Town, but skirted round to the north instead. Twenty minutes later they found themselves heading back south, down a road that ran between the elevated eastern wall of the Old Town and a gently sloping hill, covered with squat olive trees. It was quieter in this part of the city. Less traffic, fewer people. East Jerusalem, bordering on the West Bank: where Israel met the Arab world. Fifty metres ahead, he saw three Israeli police cars, their blue lights flashing. They had congregated beside a stone wall about three metres high. On either side of the road, Luke saw that the access panels at the bottom of each of the street lamps had been taped over to prevent anyone secreting anything there, and a couple of waste bins had been sealed too. The Jerusalem authorities had clearly responded very quickly to Stratton’s change in plan.
As the convoy approached the police cars, Luke saw a low rectangular gateway. Two armed Israeli soldiers stood outside. On the other side of the road a small crowd of locals had gathered. Why had the area been cordoned off? they wanted to know, and who was about to arrive?
Luke and the guys were the first to exit their vehicle. They brought their 53s with them, and as they approached, the soldiers and the Israeli police officers gave them the kind of look that you soon got used to in situations like this. Not friendly, certainly; but grudgingly respectful. They knew they were being approached by military personnel of a different tier.
‘Who’s in charge?’ Luke asked no one in particular, but one of the Israeli soldiers stepped forward. ‘Is the area secured?
‘My men are performing a final sweep.’
Luke gave a curt nod, then checked out the entrance. Above the gate was an inlaid stone with the words ‘Hortus Gethsemani’, and beneath it a small blue arrow indicating the entrance. Luke walked inside to see a walled garden, well tended, although the ground was dusty. There were olive trees dotted around, many gnarled and ancient. He could tell at a glance that the police and IDF had done their job. It was entirely deserted. Adjacent to the garden, and just visible through the trees, was an old church – more like a highly decorated temple. Famous, probably.