‘It’s a nuclear bomb, isn’t it?’ Gabriel asked, raising his eyes off the floor to look at Stratton. ‘That’s what the madman found in England and what he is now carrying.’
There was obviously no further point in lying to Gabriel. In fact, there was every reason to tell him the truth since this operation was far from over. If Stratton had any doubts about Gabriel, they were now gone. But he did not need to confirm Gabriel’s accusation. Gabriel could see it in his cold, dark eyes.
‘He’s here,’ Gabriel said. ‘But why are you? Aren’t you afraid?’
Stratton wanted to say it was his job, but that would have sounded pathetic. It would also have been a lie. Stratton was not about to die for anyone. It was his instincts that kept him chasing the Russian, but to analyse that any further would place him in the same confused netherworld as Gabriel.
‘I don’t like you, Stratton . . . No, that’s not entirely true. It’s your kind I don’t like.You’re the same as that man carrying his bomb.You may be the antithesis, but together you are one.You create each other and feed off each other. If you didn’t exist, he wouldn’t either.
Stratton could not agree with Gabriel. He wanted to say that for every force there had to be an opposing force.The concept of good could not exist without evil. If there was a question it was who were the good guys and where did the true evil lie. Perhaps Gabriel was right and that was why Stratton’s life often felt meaningless to him.
‘How big is the bomb?’ Gabriel asked.
‘Five miles.’
Gabriel shook his head sadly. ‘My God,’ he murmured. ‘It’s not just you . . . We’re all mad.’
A heavy knock on the door startled both of them, and Stratton got to his feet. Another energetic knock and Stratton opened the door to see Abed in the hallway.
‘He’s here,’ Abed said. ‘I saw him.’
‘The Russian?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’ Stratton asked with urgency as he stepped out of the room.
‘I was at the top of the road, opposite the shops, when I saw him leave the hotel. It was not until he passed me that I recognised him.’
‘When?’ Stratton asked as he headed down the hall.
‘I came straight here but it took me a while to find you.’
‘Stratton,’ Gabriel called out from the door of his room.
Stratton stopped at the corner to the stairwell and looked back to see Gabriel holding on to the doorway.
‘Number seven,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Seven,’ Gabriel repeated. ‘I don’t know what it means, but it’s important to the Russian . . . It’s today, Stratton.’
Stratton stared at him, a myriad thoughts crashing through his mind, including how to get away from Jerusalem as quickly as possible. He forced that to the back. ‘I thought viewers could only see the present. ’
‘That’s true.’
‘Then the future. If it hasn’t happened yet, it can be changed?’ It was more of a question than a statement, and his immediate actions depended largely on the answer.
‘Not mine,’ Gabriel said darkly.
Stratton stared at him a moment longer, then he ran down the stairs at the sprint, Abed close behind him.
A minute later, they were running out of the hotel entrance and up the road.
‘Was he carrying anything?’ Stratton asked.
‘A bag, a sack, over his shoulder.’
Stratton clenched his teeth and increased his pace up the hill, past the shops and towards the bend at the top.
They passed a van outside a photographic shop, daubed in various colourful slogans advertising photographic equipment. There was no one in the front of the vehicle and the interior was concealed from view by a panel behind the front seats with a mesh screen in it. The Shin Bet agent inside videoed Stratton and Abed running towards him, then he moved to the back of the van and operated another camera and recorded them heading around the bend and out of sight.
Chapter 14
Manachem Raz sat in the cramped press office that dealt with international media, which was situated on the third floor of the government building beside the busy Ben Yehuda precinct known for its cafés and tourist boutiques. He was scrolling through data on a computer screen, the smell from the Chinese restaurant on the floor below wafting in through the window.As he scanned through the most recent applications for press passes he had to wonder why a government building had rented one of its largest rooms to a private catering business, and a Chinese one to boot, when there was a general shortage of office space. It was indicative of the country’s poor economy where every avenue to making money was being explored. He wondered how many other governments rented out public buildings to private shops. It was all the more annoying because he didn’t like Oriental cuisine.
Raz received copies of new press-pass applications at the beginning of each week which included a colour photograph of the applicant, but the next batch was not due for a couple of days and he was curious about something. He had received a report about a member of the BBC entering Ramallah late the night before, and the soldier on duty at the DCO checkpoint remembered the date on the pass showed that it had been issued that very week. The soldier could not remember the man’s name, but then it was not the checkpoint’s task to record the details of media personnel passing in and out of Ramallah.
Raz reached the end of the list and leaned back to think. Only one member of the BBC had applied for a pass in the last two weeks and that was a female assistant producer. What had prompted Raz’s curiosity was Stratton’s early arrival at the American Colony that morning, yet he had not been seen leaving. If Raz showed a picture of Stratton to the soldier, he was confident it would fit the description of the BBC journalist. The driver with him had a press pass from the Ramatan studios in Ramallah, a Palestinian media group, but it would be more difficult to identify him since there were so many of them. If the BBC journalist was Stratton, then the driver was no doubt a member of the British spy network in the West Bank. That was no surprise to Raz. He would find the Ramatan spy eventually but there was no urgency. Besides, he did not have the manpower to spare, and the spy would be replaced before he was exposed. The British were always the most difficult to work against, but then they should be.They had been doing it longer than anyone else. The foundations of their intricate spy network had been set up during the days when they owned a quarter of the world and much of it was still in place today, even in countries they no longer had any influence over, including Israel.
Raz was interested in Stratton and what he was doing here, and his gut instinct warned him something was in the wind, but that hunch did not come from Stratton, who gave little away, but from his companion. He had looked stressed and nervous during the drive from the airport and appeared half-dead from worry. Raz had authorised a costly surveillance operation against Stratton and would soon have to provide his bosses with his reasons, and a hunch was not good enough to maintain it. He planned to keep up the watch at least until he had received Stratton’s brief and then he would re-evaluate the situation.
He looked at the clock on the wall. It was ten thirty. Time to contact Mr Stratton and hear what he had to say, although he was not expecting very much. Whatever the Englishman was up to, Raz was no doubt going to have to find out for himself.
His mobile phone rang in his pocket and he dug it out, hit the key and put it to his ear. ‘Raz.’
As he listened, he got to his feet and headed for the door, knocking papers off a desk and not stopping to pick them up. Seconds later he was running out through the entrance, past the building’s security guard and down the broad stone steps, waving for his driver who was waiting outside reading a newspaper.
Stratton and Abed hurried along the street, passing a school on one side and a heavily secured government building on the other, and closed on a Y-junction which was the start of a densely populated shopping area. Stratton paused on the triangle in the road to study his options, Abed behind him, both men panting heavily.
‘Why are we chasing him?’ Abed asked.
‘He has a bomb,’ Stratton said. There was still no point in anyone knowing what kind of bomb, and, besides, he needed Abed and did not want him taking off in the opposite direction.
‘The Al Aqsa mosque in the old city,’ Abed said.
‘If he wants to attack Islam that is the place. Is he of the Islam faith?’
Stratton had not thought about that. It was an interesting question, but did not appear on Zhilev’s profile. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘If not, he will not be permitted into the square. Only those of the faith may enter.’
Zhilev did not need to put the bomb in the mosque to raise it to the ground, but the old city would be a good place for the explosion. It would read better in the press reports.
‘The old city straight ahead?’ Stratton asked, indicating the road crammed with shops, barrows and swarms of people.
‘I don’t know,’ Abed said. ‘I have never been to Jerusalem before.’Abed asked a passer by who pointed down the street.
They moved quickly into the throng, slowed by the density of the crowds, and headed down the steep, snaking road that became narrower as it divided into a fork. They paused at the split. Abed looked around for a sign, found one, and confirmed some information with a passing shopper.
‘That leads to the Damascus Gate,’ Abed said to Stratton, indicating the right fork. ‘And that one to Herod’s Gate.’
‘You take that one.’
‘What do I do if I see him?’
‘Stay with him,’ Stratton shouted as he continued down the busy hill. Without communications there was not much else he could do. If Abed did find Zhilev, he had a better chance of following him unnoticed since he wasn’t white. Stratton did not think he needed to tell Abed to tackle Zhilev if he thought the Russian was about to detonate the device. He had a feeling Abed would have a go if he thought there were no other options.
The bottom of the street got even narrower and became crammed with mini-buses, obviously the local bus depot, and Stratton pushed through and broke out into a broad street that ran across his front. Beyond the street the ancient white stone walls of the old city spread in front of him, the great, gold, bulbous dome of the Al Aqsa mosque rising out of the city in the distance.
He crossed the street, dodging traffic, and stopped at the top of a broad, jagged semi-circle of steps that formed an amphitheatre in front of a large fortress façade with battlements on top and an arch at the centre that led into the city. Stratton paused to scan the people milling around the amphitheatre where several traders had set up shop on the steps offering shoes, clothes, cheap electronics and fruit and vegetables. There was no sign of a big white man so Stratton ran down the steps to the floor of the amphitheatre and followed it across a stone bridge over a moat that once helped protect the gate from being stormed. The entrance led immediately into a hall packed with vendors, and beyond was the entrance into the city proper, around a tight corner guarded by half a dozen Israeli police and soldiers, the police armed with pistols, the soldiers with M16 assault rifles.They were watching everyone who passed in and out, occasionally selecting someone to search. Stratton was suddenly aware of the gun in his pocket, but the need to press forward and find Zhilev was greater than avoiding the risk of being searched. Stratton reduced his speed to a normal pace as he approached. One of the soldiers studied him as he passed. Stratton could feel the man’s eyes on his back as he walked into the city but no one called after him.
A few yards in Stratton stopped at a fork in the walkway.Vehicles could not navigate this part of the city. In fact, all but a couple of the central roads were closed to wheeled traffic except the numerous barrows. The walkway straight ahead was crowded with people and tightly lined with kiosks and one-room shops, their wares spilling into the walkway leaving barely enough room for the barrows and people to move along. The path to the left dropped steeply away and led into a less crowded residential area. There was trash everywhere and grey water, thickened by filth, trickled along gutters and formed stagnant pools in the cracks and depressions of the stepped walkways. Every surface was stone: the walls, the road underfoot and the surrounding battlements, disfigured in places with patches of modern concrete sloppily applied, and graffiti could be found everywhere, some of it hundreds of years old. Only the older men wore traditional Arab dress, black-and-white, or red-and-white
kaffiyehs
which defined their tribes, held on to their heads with black
aggals
, their bodies covered in
dishdashas
or
abayas
, long one-piece outfits which reached the ground. Most of the younger men wore plain, or sometimes colourful, Western clothes. The women were also divided between Western and traditional dress but not so much by age, with many young girls wearing scarves over their heads and
thawbs
, a traditional gown sometimes decorated with colourful sequins.
Stratton took the map he had picked up from the hotel reception from his pocket and studied it. He decided on the busy route through the market and headed down the widely stepped walkway that had a narrow central path levelled out for the barrows. There was a loud shout behind him and he stepped out of the way just in time to avoid a young boy navigating an overburdened barrow down the path through the crowd, using his sandal on the wheel as a brake and looking as if he was only barely in control.
All the while Stratton scanned in every direction and inside the shops for the giant Russian. The Palestinians were not a tall race and he hoped it would be easy to spot Zhilev, but there was no sign of him.
The crowded walkway threaded into the central mass of buildings where it became a low, narrow tunnel still lined with shops. It was well lit with electric lights but there were nooks, crannies and even tighter alleyways branching off on both sides into residential areas, a veritable labyrinth.