The Temple Mount Code (18 page)

‘You shouldn’t have done that, girl.’

The fear inside Miriam grew stronger. She dropped the broken neck of the bottle and almost drew the Czech pistol she’d bought from a caravan of black market dealers going up into the mountains that day.

Franz reached for her.

Uncoiling, letting her body flow into the movements her instructor had taught her, Miriam batted the man’s arm aside with her right forearm, reaching across her body and bringing her hips around automatically to load a side kick. She fired the kick into Franz’s stomach with enough force to double him over slightly. Actually, he looked more dented than doubled.

Rotating on the ball of her left foot, Miriam lifted her right leg, loaded another kick, and swept this one across her opponent’s face. The hard collision of cheekbone against the bottom of her foot jarred her, but she kept her balance.

Moving quickly, Miriam withdrew slightly, stepped to the side, then brought her left foot down in a stamp strike to the side of Franz’s left knee. Something snapped, but she didn’t know if it was bone or cartilage. Franz’s left leg gave out under his weight, and he fell forward, landing hard on his injured knee.

As the big man yelled, Miriam stepped behind him and smacked the palms of both hands against Franz’s ears. The concussive blows were enough to rupture eardrums. She didn’t know how much damage she’d actually done because Franz tumbled forward face-first and lay there, unconscious.

Breathing hard, more from her fear than any physical adversity, Miriam wheeled on Franz’s friend.

The man held up both hands in surrender and backed away.

Satisfied, Miriam looked back at Lourds and Big Mike. The Uighur man sat on his haunches and stared at her in amazement. Lourds sprawled inelegantly.

Miriam grabbed the professor’s hat, then grabbed one of Lourds’s arms. She glared at Big Mike. ‘Get over here.’

‘Sure.’ He got to his feet with effort and grabbed Lourds’s other arm. Together, with the unconscious man’s arms spread over their shoulders, the pair carried the professor out of the bar.

Miriam cursed her luck but was secretly excited now that the danger was past. Outside, she swayed uncertainly across the uneven terrain toward Lourds’s rented room and remembered how she had been so impatient while studying in New York. More than anything, she’d wanted to be an agent out in the field.

She’d gotten a more glamorized view of the job, though. As a Mossad agent, she was supposed to be saving Israel from her oppressors. Not carrying drunken professors home at night. She still didn’t know why Lourds might be so important to the Mossad.

That night was, quite frankly, disappointing.

‘Where’d you learn to fight like that?’ Big Mike staggered and almost fell.

‘Watching Jackie Chan movies.’

‘Cool. I like Jackie Chan.’ Big Mike seemed satisfied. ‘I like Bruce Lee better. I like UFC better than WWE.’

Miriam didn’t care to get into a discussion of martial arts with the man. She didn’t want to be remembered in the morning and thought she still might have a shot at that.

As she trudged under Lourds’s weight, she noticed two men closing on them. Both of them seemed professional, and they even pointed their pistols professionally when they drew them.

24

Namche Bazaar

Solukhumbu District

Nepal, Sagarmatha Zone

August 2, 2011

One of the two hard-faced men in front of Miriam waved his weapon. ‘We’ll take Lourds from here.’ His words were clipped and efficient, with a German accent. ‘No one has to get hurt.’

‘Who are you?’ Miriam glared at the two men and dropped her right hand behind Lourds’s back to the pistol at her waistband. She did that without thought, but once she felt the cold metal in her hand, she had all kinds of doubts about what she was going to do next.

‘The men who are going to take Lourds.’

‘Wow.’ Big Mike belched. ‘This is turning out to be some night, huh?’ He grinned, let go of Lourds, then threw himself at the nearest man.

Idiot!
Miriam couldn’t believe the big man wouldn’t fight the guys in the bar, but he’d
throw
himself at men with guns.

The move either caught the pair off guard or they hadn’t wanted to reveal themselves, because the man Big Mike grappled with got knocked backwards and barely stayed on his feet. Pushing his opponent away, he snap-fired his pistol, the bullet tugging at Big Mike’s sleeve as it passed through.

‘Whoa!’ Big Mike said, as the gunshot echoed off the buildings around them.

Hesitation gone, Miriam freed her weapon and brought it up, slapping her left hand around her right to set up the familiar push/pull hold she’d been taught. She flicked off the safety with her thumb, aimed at the shooter’s center mass, and squeezed the trigger three times.

With three rapid-fire rounds in the man who had fired first, and him already stumbling backwards as crimson covered his coat, Miriam moved her pistol toward the other man. He was just getting his weapon up to fire.

Miriam stood her ground, centered her pistol on the man’s chest, and squeezed the trigger, certain she was going to feel bullets rip into her flesh at any second. Instead, the man staggered as one of her rounds tore into his shoulder. Two of his shots went wide of her, and his face turned panicked, then slack as he stumbled and fell.

Heart hammering, afraid she was going to throw up because she was so afraid, and the adrenaline was sending her senses into overdrive, Miriam stepped forward, toe to heel, toe to heel, never crossing her feet to avoid tripping herself in case she had to move quickly.

She kicked the pistol from the dead man’s hands, shifting her gun back and forth between the two men. Kneeling, she checked the second man’s pulse with her fingers. He was dead as well.

Voices sounded behind her. Glancing over her shoulder, she spotted the bar patrons crowding the open doorway, but none of them was brave enough yet to come outside. It wouldn’t take long, though. They had liquor in them, tended to be men with too much testosterone and not enough common sense, and Miriam was willing to bet the bartender or one – or several – of them had a weapon.

She rifled the men’s pockets, taking papers and personal items. This wasn’t a random event. Her superior would want to know who they were, and who they were working for.

The crowd at the door grew bolder. ‘What’s going on out there?’

‘What happened?’

Big Mike stared at her and looked dumbfounded.

Miriam stood and stuffed her haul into her jacket pockets. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yeah, but that was wicked.’

‘They pulled their weapons first.’

‘I know. That’s what makes it so wicked.’

In training, her instructors had commented on her natural proficiency and quickness with a pistol. When she’d been a child, her father had trained her to shoot. By the time she entered the Mossad training, she was very comfortable with weapons and targets.

Tonight was the first time she had knowingly shot – and killed – a man.

Kneeling once again, this time beside Lourds, Miriam checked the professor. The man snored peacefully though his nose had swelled, and one eye was already turning black.

She stood. ‘Get him to his room. If you can’t do it yourself, have someone help you.’

‘Sure. Aren’t you going to help?’

‘No. I’ve done enough already.’ Miriam shoved the pistol into her pocket and walked into the shadows. She couldn’t stay. She had to hope those two men were the only ones who had been sent after Lourds.

In her rented room, Miriam paused only long enough to wedge a chair under the doorknob. Then she went to the bathroom and threw up. When she was finished, she washed her face, brushed her teeth, returned to the room, and sat on the edge of the bed.

Automatically, so suddenly glad for all the things her Mossad masters had taught her to do, finally understanding what all of the grueling hours of training had been about, she field-stripped the pistol and cleaned it with the kit she’d bought with the weapon. The familiar activity calmed and focused her.

When she was satisfied that the pistol was clean and battle-ready, when she was satisfied she was calm, she put the gun on the bed beside her and took out her satphone. She punched in one of the numbers she had been given for the cutouts.

‘Hello. You have reached Best – ’

Before the message could continue, Miriam punched in the code to break free of the answering service.

Another voice, this one calmer and in control, answered. ‘May I help you?’

‘I’m an agent.’ Miriam gave the telephone operator her ID number. ‘I need to speak to my field officer.’
Katsas
Shavit was another number. The connection was made quickly even though it was night in Israel.

‘Is something wrong?’ Even over the phone, Shavit wasn’t going to use names.

‘Two men tried to take the package tonight. They used force. I had to kill them.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes.’

There was a moment of silence. ‘This was an unfortunate occurrence.’

More unfortunate for the dead men.
Miriam tried not to think about that, or the fact that the men might have had families that would miss them. In her job, she’d learned that usually even the worst of men were loved by someone. Someone’s heart would soon break with the news.

‘Are you there?’

Miriam realized Shavit had been speaking. ‘Sorry. I am now.’

‘Can you do this?’

‘Of course.’

‘I know this is hard. Something like this … it’s always hard.’

‘I am fine.’ Miriam brushed at the tears that had started running down her cheeks.

‘Has your situation with the package been compromised?’

‘No.’ Miriam didn’t even want to go into the situation because it was ludicrous in light of what had happened. This terrible thing she’d done couldn’t be linked to something so trivial. ‘He still doesn’t know who I am. I can make the rendezvous points without his being any the wiser.’

‘We will pick him up at this end.’

‘All right.’

Shavit’s voice softened. ‘Try to get some sleep if you can. Even though you are there, you are not alone. What happened tonight wasn’t your choice. We put you in the position you found yourself, and those men decided their own fates.’

‘I know.’

‘You did well. I will see you soon.’

Even after Shavit hung up, Miriam clung to the phone a little longer, not wanting to let go of that human contact.

Standing in the shadows just outside the yellow glow spilling from the bar, Mufarrij let his frustration flow from him and disappear into the cold wind blowing around him. He had been close to getting his hands on Lourds, to finding out what the man knew about Lev Strauss’s secret, but the German mercenaries had been hanging around too closely for him to snatch the man.

He’d almost interceded in the bar when Lourds had so stupidly risked himself over the young woman. She was a surprise, though. The way she’d handled herself in the bar had impressed him. Of course, taking out a drunken man was no great feat, but she had done it with no wasted movement.

She was young, though. A more practiced agent wouldn’t have stepped into the limelight so quickly or so strongly.

In the street with her pistol, she had been death incarnate. In all his years fighting against hard, desperate men, Mufarrij had seen few people who possessed that kind of speed and accuracy.

The two dead men lay in the street beside the jeep used by the local police. Sullen-faced policemen carried assault rifles and asked questions of the bar’s patrons. Most of the bar guests were only too willing to step forward and tell their stories. They were from out of country and this was probably the most exciting thing that had ever happened to them.

Mufarrij sipped his coffee and lamented that it had already gone cold. He also lamented the fact that the local police were taking Thomas Lourds and his Uighur friend into custody.

The chase was not over yet.

Lourds’s head pounded as he sat on the uncomfortably thin mattress on the jail cot and looked in the metal mirror he’d finally been able to borrow from his jailer. His nose was swollen, and his left eye had a huge mouse underneath that promised a spectacular shiner later. He sighed and placed the mirror on the cot beside him. Having a hangover and a possible concussion was not how he’d wanted to wake up.

‘It could be worse.’ Big Mike sat on the other side of the room, lounging on the cot bolted into that wall. He’d rolled up one of his socks and was playing catch with it, throwing it up into the air and catching it when it came back down.

‘How?’

‘You could have gotten your nose broken. And you missed the whole gunfight.’

That was the part that really made Lourds’s head hurt. He shook his head and regretted it immediately. ‘Tell me again about that.’

Big Mike did, and this time the story grew even grander. By tomorrow morning, the young woman – whoever she was – would be plucking their attackers’ bullets from the air and throwing them back at the men.

‘I never saw anyone so fast.’ Big Mike smiled dreamily. ‘I thought I was a dead man. Truly. I threw myself at one of those men, intending to save you.’

‘Save me?’

‘They said they were there for you.’

‘You heard them say that?’

‘Yes.’

‘You couldn’t be mistaken?’

‘No. They told the woman they were going to take you.’

Lourds took a deep breath and released it. He thought back over the last few months and couldn’t think of a single reason why anyone would come gunning for him. He’d made some enemies over the last few years, over the Atlantis thing and the problems in Saudi Arabia, but those people had bigger problems than a relatively obscure professor of linguistics.

It didn’t make any sense. And that was what scared him. He didn’t know if he was leaving trouble behind or heading straight for it.

‘Anyway, I threw myself at one of the men, intending to save you. He tried to shoot me, but this woman shot that man, then she shot the other. She was so fast, she was like Clint Eastwood.’