The Temple Mount Code (40 page)

Hunkered down in the mountains only a few hundred meters away, Mufarrij removed the blanket he’d had covering the Dragunov SVDK sniper rifle. The weapon was a favorite of his, an upgrade from the SVD. The SVDK chambered a 9.63x64mm round capable of punching through vehicles and heavy body armor up to ten millimeters thick.

It had taken his men and him an hour to creep this close to Davari, then Mufarrij had waited till the Revolutionary Guardsmen had deployed from their vehicles and taken up positions. Mufarrij didn’t want to leave any of them alive behind him to organize any kind of pursuit.

He knew he wasn’t at his best. The day after the attack on Evin Prison, he didn’t think he was going to survive. During the last three days, he’d been living on pain pills and antibiotics to combat the fever from his wounds. The injuries on his skull and the side of his face still looked horrible and would leave him disfigured. If it weren’t for his
keffiyeh,
which he used to cover his face, he couldn’t have walked around without drawing intense scrutiny.

The riders kept coming closer, unaware of the death waiting above them.

Mufarrij was frustrated that he couldn’t get a clear shot at Davari. The Revolutionary Guards colonel was concealed in the rocks too well to make a good target. Mufarrij faulted himself for not taking the shot sooner, but he also wanted the chance to intercept Lourds. If he fired too soon, there’d be no chance of capturing the American at all.

But the time to act was now, before Davari and his dogs could attack.

Mufarrij put the sniper reticule over one of the Revolutionary Guardsmen and squeezed the trigger. The massive rifle recoiled against his shoulder, and the thunder of the shot echoed off the nearby mountains.

Three hundred and sixty-seven meters away, the Revolutionary Guardsman’s head exploded like a smashed pumpkin. The shot initiated a barrage of fire that chopped into the riders below. A few dropped, but Lourds and the woman remained alive. Davari had surely ordered that they be left unharmed.

The riders bolted to the right, heading for shelter behind a ridgeline. A horse went down before it reached safety, but the rider ran into the rocks.

The second wave of Mufarrij’s offensive lit up the night as his team fired flares into the midst of Davari’s people. The Revolutionary Guards drastically outnumbered the Saudis. The flares robbed the Ayatollah’s butchers of their night vision, preventing them from locating their enemies. It also kept the Guardsmen from firing on the American and the people with him.

Mufarrij searched among the bright landscape and shadows for his next target, found it, and fired again.

Lourds squatted behind a tall stand of rocks, holding the bridles of Miriam’s and his mount. Both the horses were mountain-bred Kurd stock, used to warriors and weapons. They shivered in the cold night air, but didn’t bolt when the gunfire began. For that, Lourds was thankful. If he didn’t end up shot dead in the next few minutes, he didn’t look forward to being dragged to death over the rocky terrain.

Adan dragged Foad to safety. Blood streamed from Foad’s leg, and he couldn’t put any weight on it.

Farther up the mountain, Miriam stood with both pistols in her fists, totally unlike any graduate assistant Lourds had ever seen. She also seemed to be talking to herself. Or maybe she was praying. That would have been the more understandable alternative.

Lourds didn’t know who had shot at them from the top of the mountain, but it now seemed that the two groups were battling it out. One group was limned by flares that burned their shadows out of harsh yellow-white light.

Suddenly, the sound of far-away bumblebees filled the air. Curious, Lourds glanced up and saw aerodynamic shapes zoom across the skies. For a moment he thought he was looking at something out of science-fiction movies because what was coming at them were scaled-down, futuristic flying machines.

In the next second, however, the machines did a lot more than just fly overhead. Flashes from machine guns and rockets lit up the sky. Bullets sprayed into the rocks along the ridgeline, smashing everything they touched, flesh and blood as well as stone. Missiles dug craters in the ground and blew bodies into the air.

Drones.
Lourds recognized their handiwork now. Though he’d never seen them close-up before, he’d seen documentaries and read magazine articles on the next generation of aerial weaponry.

The advantage in the battle along the ridgeline shifted dramatically. The unmanned weapons slew mercilessly, like vicious monsters out of legend whose thirst for blood would not be slaked.

Davari ran for his life. He knew the drones were from the United States or the Israelis. No one else had that kind of technology. Instead of laying a trap, he’d been lying in one. In two, actually, because he suspected the people who’d fired on his men had been the Saudis. He didn’t think Mufarrij still lived – didn’t know how the man could have survived being shot in the head – but someone must have taken over his unit and come after Lourds.

Scrambling along the ridge, Davari headed for one of the armored vehicles, hoping he could get away. He reached the passenger door of one as it started rolling forward, and tugged on the handle, but it was locked.

Looking inside, Davari saw Von Volker at the wheel. The Austrian glanced over at him and laughed. Davari raised his pistol, wiping the smile from Von Volker’s face. The colonel fired, but the bullet only fractured the bullet-resistant glass and ricocheted away.

Laughing harder, Von Volker accelerated and drove away. Unable to keep up, Davari tripped and fell face forward just as he saw a drone fire a missile at the car. In an eye-searing instant, Von Volker died in the fiery hell unleashed by the remote-controlled weapon.

‘Who has the last laugh now?’ Davari lay in the shadows as the battle raged around him. There was nothing he could do to stop Lourds. They would already be making their way around the ridgeline on horseback. Even if Davari could get a car, he wouldn’t be able to trail them. They could make it into Turkey on horses now.

But Davari knew where they were heading. Lourds was going back to Jerusalem – and if he had solved the mystery of Mohammad’s Koran and the Scroll – the professor would only be going to one place – the Dome of the Rock.

Davari would be there waiting for him.

50

Dome of the Rock

Temple Mount

Jerusalem, the State of Israel

August 18, 2011

Lourds sat in the passenger seat of the rental car with his backpack at his feet. The morning heat was sweltering, and he felt sweat trickling under his shirt. The
thobe
,
bisht
, and
keffiyeh
he wore made the heat even more oppressive. Part of that was nerves, though.

Although he’d chafed to return to Jerusalem for the day and a half it had taken Miriam and him to get back there, now he was extremely nervous.

‘Having second thoughts?’ Alice sat behind the wheel. She was elegantly dressed, as befitting a happy widow.

Klaus Von Volker’s death was currently the subject of an ongoing investigation that investigators felt would tie back to his proclivities for black market weapons. The consensus was that one of Von Volker’s unhappy customers had blown him to smithereens – though enough of him was left over for identification. As a result, Alice wasn’t just getting what she’d absconded with. She was getting it all. And widowhood seemed to agree with her.

‘Oh, I’m well past second thoughts and into near panic.’

Alice reached over and took his hand. The dark sunglasses hid her eyes, but worry tightened her lips into a near frown. ‘You could let someone else do this.’

Lourds saw Miriam tense up in the backseat. He wasn’t sure if it was because of Alice’s suggestion or the casual familiarity the older woman showed with him. Lourds suspected it might be a combination of the two and knew he might have some explaining to do later.

Provided he survived the trip into the Dome of the Rock.

‘Who would I let do this?’ Lourds shook his head. ‘If I told the Israelis about this, and they got caught, it would turn into – at the very least – an international incident, if not a war. And I’m not interested in telling the Ayatollah that he might have the very objects that he killed Lev to obtain at his fingertips. That’s not going to happen.’

‘If you’re caught, they may kill you.’

‘If I’m caught, they’ll be killing a curious American professor of linguistics who wandered into a place he shouldn’t have been. That’s not an international incident.’ Lourds couldn’t believe he was talking so casually about his own death. He told himself he was worrying needlessly, that he wasn’t going to get caught.

After all, no one even knew to look for him – or Mohammad’s Koran and Scroll – there.

‘And if that should happen, you go to the United States embassy and give someone in the State Department all the information I’ve given you.’ Lourds had made copies of Lev’s journal and all the translations he’d rendered, including the map from the corner pieces.

‘I will. But I’d much rather you come back safe and sound, whether you find anything there or not.’

Lourds gazed out at the Dome of the Rock. The octagon-shaped building looked beautiful and benign in the morning sunlight. Built in the shape of a Byzantine martyrium designed to hold saintly relics, the Dome was covered with mid-Byzantine art. The colorful mosaics included blue, white, orange, yellow, and green Iznik tiles in ornate shapes, giving the building its unique, glassy appearance.

At one point it was said that one hundred thousand dinars had been reforged into the Dome’s exterior. Originally, its construction had taken seven years, but considerable effort had gone into the maintenance, too. In 1960, the Dome had required additional protection, and the distinctive aluminum and bronze alloy had been added. Cast in Italy, the metal covering shone in the bright sunlight.

‘Me too.’ Lourds smiled. ‘I’m all about being safe and sound. It’s the situations and circumstances that keep disagreeing with me. If these things were hidden in safe places, however, everyone would find them.’ He opened the door and prepared to get out.

Alice caught him behind the head and pulled him to her in a passionate kiss. That surprised Lourds, as well as complicating the situation with Miriam, but it didn’t stop him from kissing her back.

She drew back. ‘I’ll see you soon.’

‘Yes.’ Lourds slid out of the car, regretting that he couldn’t take his backpack and hoping he’d brought everything he needed in his cargo pants. He also hoped the flashlight, pry bar, and other tools wouldn’t clank when he walked.

He pulled the
keffiyeh
into place to better shadow his face and turned to face Miriam as she got out of the car. Like him, she wore Muslim dress. They started walking toward the Dome.

‘Kissing in public?’ The note of disapproval in her tone was unmistakable, and it seemed to be even sharper because she spoke in Farsi. ‘That hardly suits a Muslim man.’

‘I don’t think anyone noticed.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘And there are several Muslim men who have American and European girlfriends. Even when they have several wives.’

‘Whatever.’

Whatever?
Lourds knew he was on dangerous ground. Not just from whatever waited on him in the Dome.

‘You know, Professor Lourds, I’m putting my ass on the line for you here, hoping you can hold up your end.’

‘I know.’

‘This is hardly the kind of thing that you should have brought your girlfriend to.’

‘She’s not my girlfriend. She’s just a … good friend.’

‘A
good
friend? That’s what you call it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Does she know she’s a
good
friend?’

‘Of course.’

‘And that you have other
good
friends?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you going to be
good
friends again anytime soon?’

‘I don’t know. I’m working hard on just surviving the next few minutes.’

‘That’s exactly why I want you to stay focused.’

Lourds stopped in the street and faced the young woman. ‘If I have hurt you in any way, Miriam, I’m sorry. That was not my intention.’

She stared at him for a moment, then let out a breath. ‘I know. Getting involved with you was my idea.’

‘Maybe I should have said no.’

Her eyes flared open wider. ‘You could have told me
no
?’

Lourds desperately backtracked in his mind. This was what he hated about trying to maintain a relationship that lasted more than a few days or weeks. There were just too many things to pay attention to and revisionist history regarding events and motivations shifted as suddenly and dangerously as quicksand. Translating dead and forgotten languages was much safer. ‘Of course I couldn’t have told you no.’

‘Your problem is that you can’t tell
anyone
no.’

Lourds felt like he’d walked out into the middle of a minefield. There were no right answers. He hated that. At least working translations, there were right answers.

‘Did you tell her about us?’

‘No. Why would I do that? I didn’t tell you about Alice and me.’

Miriam frowned.

Lourds sighed. ‘Might I suggest there’s a better time and place to work this out? We’re all consenting adults.’

Obviously not happy about the situation, Miriam turned and continued walking toward the Dome.

Lourds hurried after her. ‘Hey. As a proper Muslim woman, you’re supposed to walk behind me.’

Miriam turned and glared daggers at him, but waited until he passed her and trailed behind him. Somehow, that didn’t make Lourds feel any safer at all.

As with every other time he’d visited the Islamic shrine, Lourds found his breath taken from him when he stepped inside the wooden walkway adjacent to the entrance to the Wailing Wall. Already he could hear prayers at the Wall. Jews were not permitted inside the Dome to pray.

Muslim security guards from the Ministry of Awqaf checked all the visitors.