The Temple Mount Code (13 page)

Ziya, how are you?

I am well, Professor Strauss! Good to hear from you!

They caught up for a few moments, then Lev made his decision.

Have you heard from Thomas lately?

No, but I see he is in the news! Again!!!

I know. He was always the lucky one.

Lev sent that, then immediately thought better of it and appended the message with another.

No, let me take that back. Thomas has put nothing ahead of his work. Those kind make their own good fortune.

And Lev had decided that what his own project needed was a little luck.

I have a favor to ask, my friend.

Anything.

Can you get someone to carry a message to Thomas for me?

You cannot call him?

I’d rather this be private. The only communications they have up in those mountains will be whatever the BBC provides. Or perhaps a short-wave radio.

Sure. But it will take a few days to get someone up there where they are.

I can wait. Thomas isn’t going anywhere for a while if he can help it.

Lev felt guilty for what he was asking Lourds to do, but it couldn’t be helped. Maybe if Lourds looked at the material for a day or two, he could help break the problem. Or at least provide a fresh perspective to work from.

I appreciate this, Ziya.

No sweat, prof. If it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t ever have been able to go to college. I owe you.

Thanks.

They talked a bit longer, then Lev passed on the message to Lourds, signed off, and returned to his work. At first, he thought he’d been too quick to send for Lourds, but tonight wasn’t the first time he’d considered getting in touch with his old friend. The Israeli government people Lev was dealing with wouldn’t be happy, though. They didn’t want outsiders involved in this project.

Gazing back at the television in the living area, Lev saw another television spot about Lourds and the find at the temple.

The Israeli government definitely wasn’t going to appreciate the way Lourds seemed to draw the public eye.

But Lev was convinced there was no other choice. He’d taken his search as far as he could on his own. It was time for new blood.

The cell phone on the desk vibrated. Lev picked it up and punched the button. ‘Hello.’

‘Lev?’

He tried to place the female voice and couldn’t.

‘I’m in trouble. I need help.’ The speaker sounded hurt and afraid. ‘Please, Lev.’

His fist tightened on the phone.

‘Lev, it’s Alice.’

Lev remembered her then. Alice Reinstadler had been Lourds’s lover when they’d all been attending the Vienna School of Languages. He’d always had a crush on her, but he’d never acted on it out of respect for Lourds. Then, after whatever had happened between Lourds and Alice had happened, she’d gotten married off by her parents to that racist imbecile, Klaus Von Volker.

‘Alice.’

‘Yes.’ She choked back a sob, but sounded happy that he’d recognized her voice. ‘I need help, Lev.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘It’s Klaus. I … He …’ Her voice broke, and she couldn’t go on.

Lev had never met Klaus Von Volker, but what he’d seen of the man on the news had convinced him that he wouldn’t like the man. ‘It’s all right. Where are you?’

‘In Jerusalem. I didn’t have anywhere else to go. My parents wouldn’t understand. I told you how they were when we were in school together in Vienna.’

Lev remembered. Whenever
Herr
and
Frau
Reinstadler showed up at the university to visit, Alice had always become incredibly tense and unhappy.

She went on. ‘Maybe this was the wrong thing to do. So much time has passed. I’m sorry to have bothered you.’

‘Alice …’ Lev let out a breath. He’d been scared for months, knowing he had enemies out there, but Ezra’s story about the two dead guards made him feel even more vulnerable.

‘It’s all right. I understand.’

Afraid she would hang up, Lev responded immediately. ‘I’m coming to get you. Tell me where you are.’

She was quiet for a moment, and Lev feared she’d thought better of contacting him and hung up. Then she spoke again. ‘On Saint Mark’s Road. Near the Lutheran Hostel.’

‘I’ll be there. Give me just a few minutes.’ Lev stood and took up his coat, already heading for the door.

16

Lutheran Hostel

St. Mark’s Road

Jerusalem, the State of Israel

July 28, 2011

Ezra hadn’t agreed to the rescue trip, but in the end Lev hadn’t given him a choice. After Alice’s call, Lev had escaped from the apartment. Unfortunately, Ezra had discovered his getaway and come looking, finding him through a tracking device in his prosthesis Lev hadn’t known about. The young Mossad agent hadn’t caught up to Lev until he’d reached his destination, though, and his argument had proven persuasive enough to stay.

Lev sat in the passenger seat and tried calling the cellphone number Alice had used to contact him. She wasn’t answering.

‘Still no reply?’

‘No.’ Lev closed the phone unhappily.

‘Perhaps she’s in a place where she cannot talk.’ Ezra handled the car smoothly, negotiating the light evening traffic with ease. His gaze shifted relentlessly, always tracking and evaluating their surroundings. A machine pistol lay between the seats.

Lev wore a bulletproof vest despite his protests. The heavy garment itched in the heat. ‘You didn’t hear her. She was beside herself.’ Every time he replayed the conversation in his mind, Alice sounded more desperate.

Ezra shrugged. ‘Maybe she and her husband made up. A lot of people have arguments. Too much to drink, a few harsh words, then they make up later.’

‘Her husband is Austrian People’s Party leader Von Volker. He wouldn’t show his face in this city.’

‘Ah.’ Ezra shook his head. ‘That man I do not like. Anti-Semitic with ties to Iran. A partnership forged in hell for certain. What is this woman doing with him if she is such a good friend to you?’

‘Her parents arranged the marriage.’

‘What were they thinking?’

‘They wanted Alice to marry into nobility. They think the same way as Von Volker when it comes to a unified Germany and Austria.’

‘Are you sure she’s a friend?’ Ezra braked, then turned right onto St. Mark’s Road.

‘I am.’

‘With parents like that …’

‘Alice thinks her own thoughts.’

‘She just doesn’t pick her own husbands.’ Ezra shook his head. ‘My apologies. That was uncalled for.’

‘It’s all right. You don’t know Alice. If you did, you wouldn’t wonder about this. She was coerced by her parents, and she’d recently had her heart broken.’ Lourds hadn’t meant to do that, and Lev never faulted his friend. Anyone who knew Lourds should have known he’d never give himself to anything but his work. ‘Alice was hurt, confused, and wanted someone to love her. I’m sure Von Volker looked like quite a prize at the time.’

‘What does she look like?’ Slowing the car, Ezra scanned the nearly deserted sidewalks.

Another car, this one also carrying Mossad agents, trailed after them. Ezra had called in the second line of defense, and Lev couldn’t even imagine the flak the young man had endured to put that together.

‘Blond. Petite. Very pretty.’ Lev searched for her along the sidewalks as well.

‘How long has it been since you’ve seen her?’

‘Years. Her husband doesn’t let her stray far.’ Lev felt sad for Alice when he mentioned that, but there’d been nothing he could do.

‘Maybe she’s changed.’

A moment later, a feminine form stepped out of the shadows near a coffee shop whose neon signs still shone. The moonlight and neon highlighted the pale blond hair, but the darkness masked her face.

‘There she is.’ Lev pointed.

‘I see her.’ Ezra applied the brakes and reached for the machine pistol. He spoke into the headset comm he wore. ‘I have eyes-on. The subject is in the alley by the coffee shop.’

‘Understood. Do you want us in close?’

‘No. Just play everything loose.’ Ezra pulled the car into the alley only a few feet from the woman.

Lev popped the door open and got out, avoiding Ezra’s desperate grab. ‘Alice?’

She turned to him then, and the neon lights from the coffee shop took away just enough of the night to reveal her features in profile. Even then, Lev knew the woman wasn’t Alice.

Before he could say anything, she turned and ran, and he knew something was very wrong. He turned to shout a warning to Ezra, but the young Mossad agent’s neck blossomed bright blood that spattered Lev’s face. Ezra staggered, managed to get the machine pistol in his hand, and went down.

The second car shrieked to a stop behind them. Before the two agents in it could get out, the vehicle exploded, leaping into the air and flipping over. Flames enveloped it, and the heat drove Lev backwards.

Three men dressed in black erupted from the alley. They bristled with weapons, but one man carried a curious pistol. The weapon hissed rather than detonated, and something sharp struck Lev in the throat.

Lev wrapped his hands around his neck and felt the small dart lodged in the hollow of his jaw. A warm lassitude filled his head, invaded his brain, and he was falling.

The men were good.

Watching from the shadows, Rayan Mufarrij appreciated the simple, brutal attack. If he’d had the manpower, the ability to manipulate the target as these men had, he would have done the same thing. The woman – not the one that had been there, but the one she was supposed to represent – meant something to Lev Strauss. She wasn’t who she’d claimed to be, though. Strauss had started moving away before his attackers had struck. He’d recognized her as a stranger, or someone other than who he thought she was.

Mufarrij stayed where he was and kept watching. He was a patient man. A man in his calling either learned patience quickly or died. Muffarrij was forty years old, and twenty-five years into his chosen vocation.

If anyone intercepted him and recognized him, his life would be forfeit. The Israelis wanted him dead for assassinations of their people. The Shiites would kill him on general principles, and Colonel Davari had lost key personnel on operations that had brushed too closely to ones Mufarrij had been conducting. Al-Qaeda had placed a bounty on him for all the death and destruction he’d wreaked on their numbers in his native Saudi Arabia.

All in all, Jerusalem wasn’t a good place for him to be, and an even worse place for him to get caught playing in the backyards of others.

He stood in the alley with the motorcycle he’d had waiting for him when he’d followed Von Volker’s mercenary team to Jerusalem. Local contacts, men he trusted and had worked with before, had supplied him with it and his weapons.

Across the street, working in the light and twisting shadows given off by the burning car, Lev Strauss’s kidnappers gathered him up and carried him to a small cargo van at the back of the alley. Mufarrij knew the alley was a dead end from his earlier recon of the area.

Knowing the men would be back, Mufarrij pulled on his full-face helmet and climbed aboard the motorcycle. He pressed the ignition button, and the engine caught smoothly. The flat black motorcycle blended perfectly into the darkness. He wore black riding leathers, just another shadow in the city.

A small Fiat raced from the alley, followed by the cargo van and trailed by a second sedan. Von Volker’s mercenary team had seven men. Three had been on the capture, two on the rocket launcher, and two more acting as lookouts.

Mufarrij engaged the clutch and dropped the shift lever into first gear with his left foot. He followed the caravan as it shot through the twisting streets. They were driving too fast, certain to draw the attention of local law enforcement. Mufarrij knew from that action that they didn’t have far to go. If they intended to drive out of the city, they would have driven more slowly.

If they were acting quickly, he had to as well. He reached into his jacket and drew the Glock 18C from its shoulder leather. He smiled at the thought of using it. Glock had developed the vicious little 9mm machine pistol at the insistence of EKO Cobra, the Austrian counterterrorist force that was formed to protect Jewish immigrants chased through Austria by Palestinian militants. Mufarrij knew that Von Volker would not have approved the pistol’s use.

Holding the motorcycle steady with his body, the cruise control on, Mufarrij removed the seventeen-round magazine and took one of the thirty-three-round magazines from the small duffel strapped to the handlebars. After sliding it into place, he held the Glock in his left hand and sped up alongside the rear car. He saw the two men inside – both Europeans – as he raced by.

They stared at him as he passed, and he knew they’d alert their teammates, but it was already too late. The motorcycle left him vulnerable to a degree, but he was nimble as a falcon in flight. He preferred the nimbleness.

The van driver swerved across the street in an effort to knock him aside. Mufarrij dodged the clumsy side-swipe with a smile. Pointing his pistol at the driver, he scared the man into moving away. The van’s passenger shoved himself through the window on his side, hoisted himself into a sitting position so he could fire, but Mufarrij accelerated as he squeezed the trigger. The blast from the man’s weapon stitched across a line of parked cars. Holes appeared in their fenders and windows blew out in clouds of flying glass.

Drawing abreast of the lead car, Mufarrij aimed the Glock at the driver from a few feet out. Panicked, certain he was about to die, the driver cut the wheels sharply left, trying to use the car as a weapon.