by Chris Ryan
He had to get to Jerusalem. There he could become anonymous and work out his next move. He estimated that the city was thirty to forty miles away. His deadline was 11.00 hrs the following day, but he had to get there sooner than that if he was to have any chance of stopping whatever Stratton had planned. He had to get there now.
Luke killed his lights. It made no difference to a chopper with thermal imaging or night-sight capability, of course, but such an asset would take time to mobilise. He pushed the vehicle as hard as it would go along the unpopulated road that led from the military base and within a few minutes he’d covered at least five klicks and was in sight of the main road that had brought them from Ben Gurion. He hit the brakes when he was about twenty-five metres from the junction.
He knew he had to ditch the WMIK. It wouldn’t take long for the guys back at base to realise what he’d done and the whole fucking Israeli police force would be looking for the vehicle. He wanted to hide it, but his options were limited. There were no buildings by the side of the road behind which to secrete it. Just a ditch on the right-hand side, perhaps a metre deep. Luke swung the vehicle off the road and it jolted and bumped into the ditch. A chopper would still see it, but it would now be a bit more difficult to pick out from ground level.
He allowed himself thirty seconds to rummage in the Bergen that had been left on the passenger seat. Its contents were neatly packed. Luke pulled everything out: a thin base layer that didn’t smell too good, an IDF cap, two packets of rations and a wallet containing a military ID card and a small sheaf of used banknotes. Luke didn’t bother to count the money. He just shoved the notes in a pocket and returned everything else to the Bergen, along with his Sig and the scope that was still in his waistcoat. He then removed his waistcoat and body armour to leave just a black T-shirt. Hardly much protection, either from a round or from the rain, but nothing would make him stand out like his ops gear. Shouldering the Bergen, he ran from the WMIK through the rain towards the main road.
It was busy in both directions – cars passing each way at a rate of one every ten seconds – and fully dark. The headlamps shining at him through the rain obscured the shape of the cars that passed, and dazzled him. He ran across the road – that had to be the Jerusalem direction, he figured. Within a minute his clothes were drenched from the spray of passing trucks as much as from the rain. He tried to flag one down, all the while keeping an eye over his shoulder in the direction from which he’d come.
Panic rose in his stomach. No one was stopping. He didn’t blame them. He looked like a down-and-out, wild-eyed, dirty and drenched. And with the region on the brink of war, everybody was suspicious and on edge. But he couldn’t stay by the side of the road – might as well have a fucking firefly on his head. He found himself shouting at the passing traffic. ‘Stop! Fucking stop!’
Nobody did.
He checked over his shoulder and his stomach tightened with dread. Lights. Airborne. A couple of klicks? They were hazy in the rain, but they came from the direction of the military base and they were heading his way. Luke started to run, against the line of the traffic but frantically waving his arms in a desperate attempt to persuade someone to stop.
Still nobody did.
The chopper was approaching. Impossible in these conditions to judge its distance or its speed. Certainly too close for comfort, and Luke reckoned he had no more than thirty seconds. Decision time. Did he go offroad? He couldn’t tell in the dark what kind of cover there was. Perhaps he’d risk standing out even more. But to stay here, waving down cars . . . He tried to put himself in the position of a search team. How much time would he need to track someone down in his position?
No time at all, he realised. No fucking time at all.
He could hear the chopper. It was hovering just beyond the junction with the main road, clearly scanning the area below. It was only seconds before . . .
Suddenly another wave of spray hit him, chill and muddy. Luke cursed – but then he saw that the vehicle which had caused it hadn’t driven past but had come to an abrupt halt just five metres up ahead. Luke ran back. The vehicle was a VW minibus, its front half painted yellow, its rear half white and with Hebrew lettering along the side. Underneath, much smaller, was the word ‘Sherut’.
As Luke came alongside, he saw that the side door had slid open to reveal a ramshackle, poorly cared-for interior with banks of worn seats, about half of them occupied. The driver had one arm on the wheel and was leaning over in Luke’s direction, calling impatiently to him in Hebrew. As Luke threw himself into the vehicle and slammed the door behind him, the driver grew more irate and Luke felt the eyes of the other passengers on him.
He turned to the driver and blinked stupidly at him. It took a couple of seconds to work out where he was. All the passengers had some kind of luggage next to them or at their feet; the driver himself had stretched out his palm. Luke twigged that he was in a shared taxi. He’d seen vehicles like this – usually in a state of profound disrepair – up and down Africa, but he hadn’t realised they were a feature of the Israeli transport system. He plunged his hand into his pocket and pulled out the sheaf of notes he’d taken from the stolen Bergen. He peeled off a couple and thrust them into the fist of the driver, whose instant silence suggested that he’d overpaid. Luke took a seat by the window and silently urged the taxi to slip back into the lane of traffic. But the driver was taking great pains to stow away the money in a leather purse, and it was an agonising twenty seconds before the vehicle moved again.
Luke’s wet clothes clung to him and cold rainwater dribbled down his neck. Trying not to alert the other passengers, he kept an eye on the chopper, still hovering over the junction. He pictured the crew staring intently at the violent colours of a thermal-imaging screen as they scanned the surrounding area; and he found himself holding his breath.
The heli’s searchlight swung round in the direction of the taxi and momentarily blinded Luke. He became vaguely aware of the passengers muttering to each other, no doubt wondering what the chopper was looking for and perhaps suspecting it was their bedraggled new companion. Luke ignored them. As his vision returned, all his attention was on the helicopter. And on the searchlight, which he could see had lit up an abandoned WMIK in a ditch by the side of the road leading back to the military base . . .
The taxi moved beyond the chopper’s position.
Fifty metres.
A hundred.
Looking back, Luke saw that it was still hovering there. And then suddenly it turned – not in Luke’s direction, but the other way.
He sat back in his seat, closed his eyes and tried to control his breathing. He was safe, for now. But as the minibus sped along the main road, the knot in his stomach refused to go. His mind churned over everything that had happened over the past few days. Suze McArthur. Gaza. His men, dead.
But above it all were two faces. Alistair Stratton and Maya Bloom.
He suddenly turned and looked at the passenger behind him – an elderly man with silver hair and a tanned, lined face.
‘Do you speak English?’ he muttered.
The man looked taken aback. ‘Of course,’ he said.
‘What is the next stop?’
The elderly passenger was looking at him like he was a lunatic.
‘Why . . . Jerusalem, of course,’ he replied.
Luke blinked.
He checked his watch. 18.35. Less than seventeen hours till Stratton’s spectacular came off.
Less than seventeen hours to stop him.
20.15 hrs.
The taxi ride was painfully slow. The road was good, but it was busy and the weather was fucking awful. Every time one of the travellers started talking into a mobile phone, Luke had to fight the paranoia that they were raising the alarm about his presence. It made him want to reach for the Sig that he’d stashed in the Bergen, but he kept his cool.
After nearly two hours the rain eased and Luke could make out the outskirts of a city.
It wasn’t much more t
han twelve hours since he’d been in Jerusalem. Christ, it seemed like a lifetime. He felt like he was returning a different person. Through the rain he saw flashing blue lights. A hundred metres further on, parked by the side of the road, he even caught sight of the slanted turret of a Merkura battle tank and its 120mm MG253 gun. When the taxi got stuck behind a military truck heading towards the centre of the city, Luke felt his fingers twitching for his own weapon again. When the taxi finally stopped, Luke was the first to grab his bag and jump out. He found himself on a wide boulevard, indistinguishable from almost every other street they’d driven down since they’d hit the centre. The pavements were fairly crowded, but the road itself was jammed with vehicles. Those restaurants that were open appeared to be doing a good trade. Despite that, he could sense tension all around. Hardly fucking surprising. Troops were camped out on the Israeli plains. West and East were mobilising and when it came to a head – if it came to a head – chances were these streets would be the battleground . . .
A chopper flew overhead, causing Luke to shrink instinctively against a shopfront. He told himself that the city was on high alert for reasons unrelated to his presence, but that didn’t make him feel any less nervous. Looking round, he saw a small tourist sign shaped like a pointing hand. It had Hebrew lettering on it, but underneath it was translated into English: ‘to the old town’. Luke took that direction, but he hadn’t walked more than ten metres before he stopped. Up ahead, perhaps thirty metres away, three Israeli soldiers were walking towards him with rifles slung across their fronts. He changed course, ducking into a dingy little side road at ninety degrees and hurrying down its length.
It was quieter here. More sheltered. He passed two old ladies wrapped in black robes and headscarves and deep in conversation as they walked towards him, but nobody else. Luke was shivering with cold from his earlier soaking and his brain felt like it had shut down. He needed to get something hot inside him to raise his body temperature. When he passed a shop with its grille open and a picture of a steaming cup painted on the window, he checked for security cameras inside. Seeing none, he entered.
It was warm in here, and almost empty. That suited Luke just fine. There were four tables, each with foil ashtrays, and a Formica counter behind which stood a young woman of about twenty with dark hair, dark eyes and a good couple of inches of cleavage on show. She smiled and looked him up and down. She didn’t seem at all put off by his dishevelled state. Quite the opposite, in fact. She gave Luke an appealing smile, which he didn’t return.
‘Coffee,’ he said. ‘Black.’
She inclined her head. ‘English?’ she asked in a throaty voice.
Luke nodded and continued to look around the room. There was only one other customer – an incredibly ancient man dressed in an old black suit and with a black hat perched on the table in front of him next to his coffee cup. He looked up at Luke with piercing blue eyes. Just behind him, against the left-hand wall, was a low shelf with an old beige computer and a stool at which to sit. Alongside the screen was a Perspex rack of free postcards and tourist leaflets.
‘But not on vacation?’ the woman said. ‘Who would come to Jerusalem on vacation right now . . . ?’
‘Can I use that?’ Luke interrupted her, pointing at the computer.
She looked a bit offended by his lack of interest. ‘Sure. I’ll get your coffee.’
Luke sat down at the terminal, flicked through the tourist brochures and pulled out a map of the city. Then he nudged the mouse. Immediately the screen flickered on, already open on the Google.co.il homepage. His fingers hovered over the keyboard for a moment as he thought over the events of the day. He put himself back on the roof in Gaza and closed his eyes as he recalled Stratton’s rant. The troops of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary . . .
He typed the words slowly, his cold, dirty fingers feeling too big for the keys, then pressed enter. A bewildering array of results appeared in front of him. He clicked through to a few at random to find some dense religious texts, in English but so impenetrable that they just seemed to dance in front of his eyes. Bullshit.
A mug of coffee suddenly appeared next to the keyboard. Luke only glanced up when he realised the young woman was standing over him.
‘You don’t look the type,’ she said.
He reached out for his coffee and took a gulp. The hot liquid scorched his throat. ‘What do you mean?’ he grunted. She wore a musky perfume and it smelled good.
‘All that millennialist shit,’ she said pointing at the page he had open. ‘Ben kalba, we see it all in this city. All the lunatics and the . . .’
‘What’s a millenni . . . ?’ Luke interrupted her. But the young woman had turned her back on him and was sashaying back to the counter. It crossed Luke’s mind that she was moving her hips more than she would had he not been looking. A week ago he’d have been like a dog on heat. Not now. For a brief, irrational moment he considered storming up to her, putting one hand round her pretty little throat and asking her what the hell she was talking about.
‘Daniel, chapter nine.’
It was the old man who had spoken. His voice was dry and croaky and his lined old face surveyed Luke without expression.
‘What?’
The elderly customer glanced at the screen. ‘“The troops of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war . . .” You’re shaking, young man. You need to put some warmer clothes on.’
But Luke went on staring at the screen, and from the mass of text in front of him picked out the very words the old man had just spoken. ‘What does it mean?’ he asked. ‘What’s the sanctuary?’
‘The Temple, of course,’ the old man said quietly. He gave a sad little smile. ‘Some people say that it has already been destroyed. That the prophecy of Daniel has already been fulfilled and the Western Wall is all that remains of that holy place.’
Luke blinked as Stratton’s voice echoed in his head. When the wall falls, no one will be able to stop the war that is coming . . .
‘Our poor city has been the scene of much fighting over the ages.’ The old man raised his coffee cup with trembling, bony hands, the veins blue and pronounced. He drank slowly, thoughtfully, before putting the cup back down. ‘Some, of course, think that the destruction is soon to come.’ He smiled. ‘That the tour guides don’t tell you.’
The old man looked down at his hands, which were clasped on the table. He looked like he’d lost interest in the conversation.
‘Who thinks that?’ Luke pressed. ‘Who are you talking about?’
The old man suddenly pulled a white handkerchief from his sleeve and blew his nose noisily before he turned back to Luke. ‘Those who believe,’ he replied, ‘that a sequence of violent events will announce the Second Coming of the Messiah, and that his reign on earth will last for a thousand years.’ He paused. ‘You look shocked that people might hanker after such things, young man?’
He took another sip from his coffee.
‘Violent events . . .’ Luke muttered.
‘That’s what they say.’ He waved his hand dismissively at the computer. ‘I’m sure your . . . machine knows all about it. I’m told they know about everything.’
But Luke wasn’t looking at the computer. Alistair Stratton was a warmonger. Violent events stuck to him like shit to a shovel.
‘You know,’ the old man continued, almost as though he was talking to himself, ‘the world makes a mistake when it believes the only fundamentalists belong to Islam. Oh, it’s true that there are many who would destroy the Western Wall and return the Temple Mount to the sole control of the Arabs. But there are many Christian men and women who live in expectation of Armageddon, and who believe it will be preceded by a great conflict in the biblical lands . . .’ He stopped short. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I’m boring you.’
He picked his hat up from the table, placed it on his head and started to stand.
The old man inclined his head.
‘If the Arabs destroyed the Western Wall, what would happen?’
For a moment he didn’t answer. Halfway between sitting and standing, he forced his gnarled body upright.
‘Destroyed the Western Wall?’
Luke nodded.
‘With the countries of the world on a knife’s edge and armies circling the Middle East like vultures around carrion?’ The old man glanced towards the computer screen where the webpage Luke had been reading was still up. ‘Well then, it will be as the Book of Daniel has foretold,’ he said. ‘To the end there shall be war.’ He smiled, then raised his hat a little. ‘Good evening to you,’ he rasped, ‘and happy Hanukkah.’ He headed to the exit and didn’t look back before he disappeared into the night.
Luke sat there stunned. He was vaguely aware that the woman behind the counter was still looking at him, that her lips were slightly parted and her dark eyes full of meaning.
But his thoughts were elsewhere.
The pieces of the jigsaw were falling into place.
Alistair Stratton had already persuaded Maya Bloom to orchestrate one atrocity in Britain. Now it was just a matter of time before she orchestrated a second here in Jerusalem. And with the world on the brink of war, this was the final act that would push it over the precipice. Stratton hadn’t got into bed with the Grosvenor Group for money. His aims were altogether more apocalyptic than that. He was insane, of course, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous. Quite the opposite. He was manipulating the Palestinians into bringing about their own destruction. And when that happened . . .
Luke jumped to his feet, startling the young woman behind the counter. Recovering herself, she asked, ‘You don’t want another coffee? Something to eat?’
But Luke had already put a note on the counter and was heading for the door.
‘I get off work soon . . .’ the young woman called after him. A great crack of thunder echoed across the skies. Luke was already outside and running – sprinting – towards Jerusalem’s Old Town.