The figure ran forward, crouched down to check both the bodies, then stood up and looked around.
“Yacoub!” Angela said suddenly. “Where the hell’s Yacoub?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see where he went.” Bronson looked cautiously over the circular stone altar to the area where the dark-clad men had appeared, then looked to his sides. But he saw no sign of the tall Moroccan.
Then a pistol shot rang out a few feet directly behind Bronson.
The man holding the Galil twenty feet away clutched at his chest and fell backward, the assault rifle falling from his hands. Almost immediately, a tall dark shape materialized beside him and seized his weapon, just as the flare guttered briefly and then went out, plunging the hilltop into sudden darkness.
Bronson stood up, and pulled Angela to her feet. “That was Yacoub,” he muttered, “and now he’s got an assault rifle. We’ve got to get out of here.”
But as he stood, there came a noise like thunder, then a thudding sound and a tremendous wind, and the blackness of the night was suddenly banished by a brilliant blue-white beam of light from directly above.
Bronson and Angela turned to run, but instead they found themselves staring into Yacoub’s face, his milky-white eye and twisted mouth startlingly clear in the brilliant light from the Nightsun lamp on the helicopter hovering above.
“Stand still,” Yacoub snarled, jamming the barrel of his pistol into Bronson’s stomach. “You two are my ticket out of here.” He gestured with the barrel of the Galil toward the area next to the circular altar. “Put your hands in the air and get over there. Both of you.”
“Stay on my left, Angela,” Bronson whispered as he turned to obey, “and walk a little in front.”
Obediently, Angela moved forward, naked terror etched into her features.
“Quickly,” Yacoub snapped, jabbing Bronson hard in the back, the barrel of his pistol pressed against his spine.
And that was just what Bronson had wanted, and why he’d told Angela to move in front of him.
He moved forward a couple of steps, took a deep breath, then swung his left arm, his fingers straightened into a blade, down and back as hard as he could. The side of his hand smashed into Yacoub’s left forearm, the force of the blow driving the Moroccan’s hand—and the pistol he was holding—to one side, away from Angela.
Then it was just a matter of speed. Bronson spun round, his left arm continuing to force Yacoub’s pistol off aim, and drove his clenched right fist straight into the Moroccan’s face. Yacoub staggered backward, desperately trying to bring his pistol to bear.
Bronson hadn’t finished. He took a half-step closer to Yacoub and punched upward with his left hand as hard as he could. The heel of his hand smashed into the base of Yacoub’s nose, splintering the fragile nasal bones and driving them deep into the Moroccan’s brain. It was a killing blow. Yacoub fell backward, his limbs twitching and his body going into spasms as his brain began to die.
Bronson grabbed the pistol that the Moroccan had dropped as he fell, took aim and fired two shots directly into his chest. The twitching ceased. Yacoub gave a final convulsive shudder, then lay absolutely still.
For a few seconds, Angela and Bronson stared down at the body of the man who’d caused them so much grief.
Then they turned round. Three of the black-clad figures were standing about ten feet away, their Galils aimed straight at them. One of them gestured at Bronson. He looked down at the pistol he was still holding, and tossed the weapon away. Both he and Angela raised their hands in the air in surrender. Bronson didn’t know who these men were, though he could make an educated guess, but they were clearly no friends of Yacoub, so it was at least possible they were on the same side. And with three assault rifles pointing at them, there was no choice anyway.
One of the figures issued an order in a language Bronson thought sounded like Hebrew, and another man stepped forward and briskly handcuffed their arms behind them, then checked they weren’t carrying any concealed weapons. As soon as he’d done that, the air of tension eased noticeably.
With a roaring, clattering sound that was completely unmistakable, the helicopter landed on a patch of level ground about fifty yards away, the rotors kicking up a huge cloud of dust and debris that billowed out across the site. Bronson and Angela turned away and closed their eyes.
As soon as the chopper touched down, the roar of the jet engines diminished and the dust cloud dispersed. Bronson turned back to look across at the helicopter, a bulky black shape just visible against the deeper black of the night sky, its navigation and anticollision lights now switched on. In the light from the flashlights held by the men around them, he could see two figures walking slowly toward them.
The men stopped directly in front of them and, immediately they could see their faces, Angela gave a gasp of surprise. “Yosef!” she said. “Why are you here?”
Yosef Ben Halevi smiled slightly. “I could ask you the same question,” he replied. “Why are you and your ex-husband digging around on one of Israel’s most important ancient sites in the middle of the night?” He smiled again. “But I think I already know the answer to that one.”
He turned to his companion and murmured something. The other man nodded, and at a gesture one of the men removed their handcuffs.
“Who are you?” Bronson asked the other man. “Shin Bet? Mossad?”
There was no reply, and after a couple of seconds Yosef Ben Halevi turned to his companion. “We’ve just watched Bronson kill a man in front of half a dozen witnesses. Whether or not he knows your name and who you work for really doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, I suppose you’re right. OK, Bronson. My name’s Levi Barak, and I’m a senior officer in the Mossad.”
Bronson pointed to the black-clad figures standing a short distance away. “Are they IDF?”
Barak shook his head. “Not exactly. They’re members of the Sayeret Matkal, a special operations unit that works for the Israeli Defense Forces Intelligence Command. It’s a deep reconnaissance unit with counterterrorist responsibilities, something like your British SAS.”
“I’ve heard of it,” Bronson said. “Weren’t they the people responsible for the Entebbe rescue? When PLO terrorists hijacked an Air France plane and flew it to Uganda?”
Barak nodded. “That was an outstanding piece of work. But we’re not here to discuss past military operations. We need to decide what to do with you and Angela Lewis.”
“And what to do with what you found,” Ben Halevi interjected. “Where are the relics?”
“The stone tablets are resting against the side of the altar over there,” Angela said, pointing, “but I have no idea where the Silver Scroll is. The man that Chris killed took it away from us in the water tunnel.”
Barak issued an order, and two of the men walked around the circular altar, picked up the stone tablets and brought them over to where Ben Halevi was standing. They rested them carefully against a low wall.
The academic crouched down in front of them and, as Barak illuminated the tablets with the beam of his flashlight, he gently, almost lovingly, ran the tips of his fingers over them, caressing the ancient script. “Old Aramaic,” he muttered, then stood up.
“Are they what you thought they were?” Levi Barak asked.
Ben Halevi shook his head. “It’s far too early to say, but to me they look right.”
“And to me,” Angela said. “You do mean the Decalogue, don’t you? The original Covenant? The second set of stones that Moses himself carried down from Mount Sinai?”
Yosef Ben Halevi nodded slowly, barely able to take his eyes off the ancient relics.
“Right,” Barak said briskly. He looked back at Bronson. “You just killed a man,” he stated flatly, “and as a police officer you know what that means.”
“It was self-defense,” Angela said hotly. “If you saw what happened, you’d know that.”
“I did see it, but there’s a problem. The Sayeret Matkal officers are properly authorized members of Israel’s armed forces, able to carry weapons and use them. That man”—he pointed at Yacoub’s body—“was killed by a pistol, and not the type we carry.” Barak turned and beckoned one of the officers toward him. “Give me your weapon,” he instructed.
The officer hesitated for a second, then undid the Velcro strap on his holster and handed over the pistol.
“This,” Barak said, “is an Israeli Weapons Industries SP-21 nine-millimeter pistol. One of its characteristics is the polygonal rifling in the barrel. That pistol”—he pointed at the weapon Bronson had dropped on the ground—“is a Czechoslovakian CZ-75, with conventional rifling. When we carry out a post-mortem on the body, we’ll find one or two deformed nine-millimeter slugs in the torso, and the rifling marks will clearly show the make and model of pistol that fired them. That will tell the pathologist that this man wasn’t killed by any of the troops I ordered to come here. That’s the problem.”
Barak stepped across to where Yacoub’s body lay, and with a single quick movement raised the pistol and fired a single round into the corpse’s chest. The body twitched with the impact.
Then he walked back and returned the pistol to the Sayeret Matkal officer. “Now,” he said, “the pathologist will find a bullet fired from an SP-21 in that man’s body, and will come to the appropriate conclusion.”
“What about the other two slugs?” Bronson asked.
“I think that the post-mortem will show that they passed straight through his body and were not recovered. And now,” Barak said, “it’s time for you to leave. We have to tidy up this place before the tourists start arriving tomorrow morning, and we’ve still got to find where that one-eyed bastard hid the Silver Scroll.”
Three minutes later, Bronson and Angela stared down through the open side door of the helicopter as it lifted away from Har Megiddo. Below them, banks of floodlights were being set up to enable the search for the Silver Scroll to get under way, and the top of the old fortress seemed to be swarming with black-clad men.
77
The rays of the early-morning sun were just striking the roofs and upper levels of the buildings around them, turning the white stone to silver, when Bronson pulled the hire car to a stop in a parking space just off Sultan Suleiman, close to the bus station and at the very edge of the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem.
He and Angela got out and started walking southwest, toward the Damascus Gate. It was three days later, and they were booked on a flight back to London out of Ben Gurion late that afternoon, courtesy of the Mossad. They’d spent most of the time since the showdown at Har Megiddo in an interview room in an anonymous ministry building in Jerusalem, explaining precisely what had happened since Bronson had been briefed to fly out to Morocco what seemed like weeks earlier. Eventually, Levi Barak and Yosef Ben Halevi had decided that there was nothing else they could usefully tell them, and Barak had suggested it would be best for all concerned if they left Israel as soon as possible.
On this, their last day in the country, they’d decided to take a look around the Old City. As they crossed the street to walk along beside the massive city wall, Bronson glanced behind him.
“Are they still there?” Angela asked, taking his hand.
“Yes. Two gray men in two gray suits.”
Levi Barak had made it clear that they could go where they liked before their flight, but insisted that they would be watched at all times, and they’d quickly got used to the sight of their two silent shadows.
There were no tourists anywhere, and precious few locals, and the day was pleasantly warm, but the pink and turquoise sky was redolent with the promise of baking heat later.
“It’s like having the place to ourselves,” Angela said.
The sense of quiet and calm lasted until they reached the open area in front of the Damascus Gate.
Despite the early hour, there were already crowds of people milling round the dozens of temporary stalls—many of them little more than small wheeled carts with umbrellas to shade the produce and the seller—that had been set up among the stately palm trees. Angela and Bronson walked past elderly women wearing traditional embroidered dresses selling snap peas from open sacks, and the air was heavy with the scent of fresh mint. In several places Bronson saw colorful posters, all depicting handsome young men, spread on the ground almost like prayer mats.
“Arab pop stars,” Angela said, in answer to his unspoken question.
They walked down stone steps, worn smooth by the passage of countless feet over numberless years, through an impressive archway topped by turrets and into the noisy, bustling and vibrant world of the Khan ez-Zeit
souk
. A world of narrow cobblestoned alleys; of coffee shops where men played cards and talked as they bubbled tobacco smoke through water pipes; of cobblers and tailors and spice sellers and stalls selling brilliantly colored fabrics; of boxes of vegetables and vendors surrounded by hanging meat; of men dropping balls of chickpeas into huge cauldrons of boiling oil to make falafel. Arab music—discordant to Bronson’s ears—blasted from tinny transistor radios and the occasional ghetto-blaster, almost drowning out the cries of the vendors hawking their wares and the constant buzz of conversation, of haggling and arguing over the prices and quality of the goods on offer.