‘I could have gone with him.’ I said it forcefully.
‘You told me he insisted on going alone.’
She was right of course, but I could have stayed in contact with him more. He might have told me that he’d found that cavern under Hagia Sophia. I could have gone out there, intervened. He might be alive if I had.
‘You’re not going to wait and see if they find her?’
I shook my head. ‘I can’t.’
‘I have to go out there.’ I spoke fast. ‘Waiting’s not an option. Nobody in Jerusalem will know anything about what Susan might be caught up in, her connection to the book.’
‘Well, I’m coming too,’ said Isabel. ‘It’ll be fun.’
I looked at her. Her loyalty impressed me, and if I was to be honest I was pleased she wanted to come. Her intelligence and wit were an asset – she’d already saved me from being kidnapped in Istanbul. ‘You need me, Sean. Admit it.’ She smiled.
I leaned and reached for her. She pulled away.
‘Have I ever denied it?’ I pushed the plates aside, leaned further and pulled her gently to me.
The following day I called Beresford-Ellis.
‘The authorities can do this a lot better than you, Sean,’ he said.
‘I want to see what’s going on for myself.’
He snorted. ‘This is not your business.’
‘It is my business. She’s been translating the book we found. Now she’s missing and her husband is dead.’
He made a honking noise, like a startled pig. ‘Have you gone stark raving mad, Ryan? You’re a research director, not a private investigator. This sort of stuff is not in your job description. Not in it at all.’ Mr Nice was long gone now. ‘Do you know anything about the situation out there?’ He didn’t wait for me to answer.
‘It’s a bloody powder keg waiting to go off. Think about it, Ryan. This is crazy. You’re crazy even talking about it.’
That made me more determined than ever.
‘Crazy or not, I’m going. And I’m doing it on my own time too, so it doesn’t have to be in my job description.’ I breathed deeply, working on keeping cool.
Now there was a bonus to going. I could enjoy Beresford-Ellis’s discomfort.
‘I’ve quite a lot of holiday time coming up and I can’t think of a better way to spend it. You told me yourself that I hadn’t taken off enough time after Istanbul.’ Check, mate.
‘Your contract is something we need to talk about, actually.’ The frustration in his voice told me everything I needed to know about what he thought of my contract.
‘Sure, when I get back.’
He hummed loudly. ‘Make sure to tell the authorities everything you get up to. I don’t want any policemen ringing me. Every department is having its budget revised this year, Ryan, particularly the wasteful ones. I was planning to tell you in a few days, but I think you should bear it in mind. We may need to make further cuts. That may include staff numbers too.’
It was as veiled a threat as a knife poked in your face. If he could persuade the management committee that I was wasting the institute’s funds, my chances of continuing Alek’s work and of buying new equipment for other projects, would rapidly approach zero. I was angry, but with myself now too. I should have expected this.
‘Keep me informed,’ he said.
I cut the call.
On the way to the airport Isabel showed me an online article about people being burnt to death. It listed the thousands killed by fire and brimstone in Soddom and Gomorrah, the people burnt to death for making the wrong offerings, and lots of other weirdness.
We stuck out among the corporate types on the train. Isabel was in her trademark tight indigo denims. I was in my thin suede jacket and black jeans. We both had black Berghaus backpacks. We might as well have put up a sign saying ON HOLIDAY over our heads.
This was my first time visiting Israel, but not for political reasons. If I was honest, I’d have to say I was glad I had a good reason to go now.
The queue for the flight was moving like a film being downloaded over a slow connection. We went through three separate security checks. Given the daily media reports about Israel, I wasn’t too surprised.
‘Do you think it’s going to kick off out there?’ said Isabel, pointing at a headline in a newspaper about Israel denouncing Iran.
I shrugged. The man ahead of her turned the page.
‘We certainly got our timing right,’ she said. ‘To get there for the start of the third world war.’
5
Henry Mowlam, a senior desk-based Security Services operative, threw the bottle of water towards the blue plastic recycling bin next to the back wall of MI5’s underground control room in Whitehall, central London.
It missed the bin and burst open. A shower of water sprayed over the pale industrial-yellow wall.
‘Bugger,’ said Henry, loudly.
Sergeant Finch was at the end of the row of monitoring desks. She looked up, then walked towards him.
‘You all right today, Henry? Working weekends not suit you?’
Her starched white shirt was the brightest thing in the room.
‘They do, ma’am.’ He saluted her abruptly.
She went over, pushed the plastic bottle towards the bin with her foot. It looked as if she was checking what the bottle was at the same time. Then she came back to him. The simulated outdoor lighting hummed above her head.
‘Are you sure you’re okay?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ He was staring at his screen.
She walked away.
The report on the screen, which was the latest summary of the electronic monitoring of Lord Bidoner, a former member of the House of Lords only because of a title his father had inherited, had given him nothing new to go on. Lord Bidoner was one of those lords who didn’t apply himself to his responsibilities, and whose shady connections and wheeler-dealing made sure he’d never get an invitation to Buckingham Palace for a garden party.
But they still had nothing definite on Lord Bidoner. Taking a phone call from someone two steps removed from a plot to spread a plague virus in London was enough to put you on a watch list and get you investigated, but it was not enough to get you arrested.
‘We have new threats, Henry. We checked him out. You know there’s been a flood of suspects coming in from Pakistan and Egypt. We have to put Lord Bidoner on the back burner,’ was what Seageant Finch had said to him a week before.
But Henry wasn’t convinced.
He’d mentioned it again at their Monday morning meeting. The head of the unit had brought up Bidoner’s file on the large screen and had reeled off the details of the vetting he’d been subject to over the past six months.
‘He’s passed every check. His father was well respected, a pillar of the house. I know his mother was Austrian, but we don’t hold that against people anymore, Henry.’ There had been titters around the room. Henry hadn’t replied.
It wasn’t having an Austrian mother that made Henry suspicious. It was Bidoner’s use of encrypted telephone and email systems, his endless profits on the stock market from defence industry shares he picked with an uncanny prescience, and his political speeches at fringe meetings about population changes in Europe and the rise of Islam. Taken one by one they were all legitimate, but together they made Henry’s nose twitch.
He stared at his screen. He had other work to do. His hand hovered over the Bidoner report. He should delete it. And he should request that the Electronic Surveillance Unit discontinue the project.
He clicked another part of the screen. He would ask for the surveillance reports to be cancelled later. He had to review an incident in Amsterdam.
The victims of a bizarre double burning had been identified. They were a brother and a cousin of the men who had been arrested in London as part of the virus plot the previous August. The men arrested had known nothing about what they were doing that day. They had been dupes. But they were still in prison on remand.
I
t looked very much like whoever was behind that plot had just disposed of some people who could betray them.
There was another fact about this incident that concerned Henry. All these dupes were exiled Palestinians, from a village south of Jerusalem. A village where some sickening incidents had taken place.
6
In front of us in the queue there was a bald-headed giant of a man and his stony-faced partner. He must have been six foot eight. I was six one and he towered over me. I overheard a few words in Russian between them.
‘They look like they’re auditioning for the Organizatsiya,’ whispered Isabel.
I shook my head.
‘The Russian Jewish mob,’ she said.
‘That’s a bit harsh,’ I said. ‘What does that make us?’
‘Generation Z dropouts.’
‘Speak for yourself. I haven’t retired at thirty-six like some people I know.’
She gave me one of her smiles, then glanced away, as if she was looking for someone. I turned. There were too many people behind to work out who she’d been staring at.
‘Expecting a friend?’
‘No, it’s not that.’ She leaned toward me. ‘I thought I saw someone I know.’ She shook her head. ‘But it wasn’t him.’
On the plane I spent most of the time reading a guidebook about Israel. About halfway through the flight a small group of skull-capped men went to the front of the cabin and swayed back and forth, their heads down. They were praying.
Later, I looked out of the window when I heard someone say they could see the island of Mykonos. It was barely visible through a blue haze near the horizon. There wouldn’t be many people on the beaches there now.
As we began the descent and the seatbelt sign turned on again, I saw a plume of smoke spreading across the sky.
‘It’s a forest fire on Mount Carmel,’ said Isabel.
‘How the hell do you know that?’
‘There was an article about it on the Jerusalem Post website this morning.’
When we landed at the airport near Tel Aviv I felt the buzz of excitement around me. We reached immigration by passing along a wide elevated sunlit passage. There was a big queue for passport control in the area beyond, but it was moving quickly. Isabel’s ‘Russian mob friends’ allowed us to pass in front of them. I nudged her. There was a rosary in the woman’s hand.
Isabel made a face at me, as if to say, okay you were right.
We passed through immigration quickly. Outside the building there were young soldiers to the left and right in brown, slightly oversized uniforms with machine guns hanging from their shoulders and watchful looks in their eyes.
We took a taxi to Jerusalem, to the Hebron Road not far from the Old City. Coming towards the city on a modern motorway, with large green signs in Hebrew, Arabic and English was a surreal experience. We passed dark green tanks on dark green transporters going the other way. There must have been ten of them. As we neared the city, a glint of gold sparkled near the horizon, set against low hills and a crust of buildings.
‘That must be the Dome of the Rock,’ I said, pointing out the window. ‘Where Solomon built his famous temple.’
Isabel held my hand. ‘I’ve always wanted to come here,’ she said.
The highway turned. The spark of gold was gone. Pale cream, modern two and three-storey apartment buildings filled the low hills around us. As we got close to the city there were older buildings, and long tree-lined boulevards of apartments.
There was a lot of traffic too. Sunday’s the start of the week here, our driver said.
He had given us a running commentary on the latest news from Egypt and on the situation in Israel almost all the way from the airport. Our hotel, the Zion Palace, was a four-star, but it didn’t look it from the outside. The entrance was down a set of wide steps, like descending into a cave, but inside, the lobby was wide and marble-floored. There were brass coffee tables at the back, surrounded by chocolate-brown leather high-backed chairs. Huge blue ceramic pots sat in the corners of the lobby and paintings of Old Jerusalem hung on the walls.
The view from the small balcony in our room made me want to hold my breath. We stared out at the city. To our right were the pale gold sandstone walls of the Old City.
The hill of Mount Zion, crowned by the high upturned-funnel style roof of the Dormiton Abbey with its dome-capped tower was just visible to the far right.
There was an ancient magic to this view. There was history and religion in every glance, and something older overlaying it all. Countless wars had been fought over this patch of land and its fate was still in bitter dispute.
The hum of traffic, honking car horns and occasional shouts came up from the road below. Leaden clouds rolled slowly overhead.
I pointed at the Old City walls.
‘Just a bit further up that way is the Jaffa Gate,’ I said. ‘Do you see the valley to the right of the walls?’ Isabel nodded. ‘That’s where the followers of Ba’al and Moloch sacrificed their children by fire, while priests beat drums to hide the screams.’
‘Yeuch, that’s too sick.’
‘They call that place Gehenna, the valley of hell.’ I went to the edge of the balcony, as if drawn forward. The start of the valley, the part we could see, looked dried out, rocky, its low trees withered and dusty.
‘That’s where the entrance to hell is for a lot of Jews, and for some Christians and followers of Islam too. They think that’s where the wicked will line up to be punished at the end of the world.’
‘And now you can find it on a map,’ said Isabel.
Famished by the time we reached the hotel, we sat down immediately for dinner, eating in near silence, the fatigue of the journey capturing our thoughts. Back at our room I scoured Israeli websites for any news about Dr Hunter. There was nothing about her disappearance mentioned anywhere in the last few days. The only thing I found were the original articles about her going missing.
The main story on the Haaretz website was about a Jewish family that had been burnt to death in an arson attack the night before in a settlement near Hebron. The horror of it leapt off the screen. Pictures of a small blackened house with an ambulance in front of it, surrounded by Israeli soldiers, filled the news page. Isabel looked over my shoulder as I read it.
‘They’re blaming some local Palestinians,’ I said.
‘How many more people are going to get burnt to death?’ said Isabel.
‘You can get shot out here too,’ I said. I pointed at another article. It was about a funeral of a Palestinian youth who’d been shot in the back after being part of a demonstration in a village sandwiched between Jewish settlements. A Jewish settler was being blamed for that death.
‘It’s all sickening,’ said Isabel.
‘There’s a vicious fight going on here, unbending hatred,’ I replied. Opening my email, there was the usual array of special offers from every hotel, airline and social network I’d ever used and some I hadn’t. I spotted an email from Dr Beresford-Ellis. It had an attachment. I clicked on it. The message wouldn’t open. The screen just froze.
Had the internet stopped completely? I went to another tab and tried to download a page. It wouldn’t work either. Nothing would. I waited another minute.
‘I’ll go down and see if they can do anything about the signal; find out if it’s better in the lobby,’ said Isabel.
‘Can you see if you can get some fruit, I’m still hungry?’ I said.
The internet was still off ten minutes later and Isabel hadn’t come back. I let the door bang as I left the room, pushing the old-fashioned key into my pocket as I waited for the lift. I was hoping it would open to Isabel’s smiling face, but it was empty when it arrived.
In the lobby there was no sign of her either. I went to the reception. The dark-haired girl who’d checked us in was gone. In her place was an older guy with a bald spot he was trying to hide by brushing his hair over. He was standing in a corner of the reception area that was walled with blue and white Ot
toman-era tiles.
‘No, I haven’t seen a lady in dark blue jeans with straight black hair,’ he said, after I described Isabel. His expression was quizzical, as if he was wondering whether I was asking him to find me a date.
‘Maybe she went to the shop. It’s down the road. Not far.’ He smiled, showed me his yellowing teeth.
‘Is there a problem with the Wi-Fi?’ I asked.
‘No, sir. It’s working perfectly.’
‘Not for me. How far away is this shop?’
‘Not far.’ He pointed towards the front of the hotel, then to the left.
I walked to the glass front door, then up the steps to the road to see if Isabel was coming. I’d never been this protective of Irene, my wife, a doctor who’d volunteered and then been murdered in Afghanistan two years before, but after what had happened to her my urge to look after Isabel couldn’t be ignored. Irene had been robbed of her life. I couldn’t bear for anything like that to happen to anyone else.
It was dark outside.
I had to tell myself to stop being paranoid. I looked back down at the hotel doors.
A man’s face was peering up at me through the glass door.
‘What are you doing out here?’ said a friendly voice behind me. ‘Did you miss me?’
I turned. Isabel was coming towards me from the other direction to the shop. She had a brown paper bag in her arms. ‘I got you your fruit.’
She held the bag forwards, smiled, then touched my arm as she passed. A ridiculous iron weight of fear lifted from my chest. When we got back to the room the Wi-Fi was working perfectly.
‘I got a call from Mark while I was out,’ she remarked. ‘He’s stationed in Cairo these days. Not a million miles from here.’
I spoke slowly. ‘Why does he keep calling you? I thought you two were over.’
She’d dumped him a year ago.
‘You are so jealous!’ she said. There was a sympathetic note to her voice.
I gave her my best see-if-I-care smile.
‘He wants to meet me again.’ She shook her head as if the idea was outrageous.
The Jerusalem Puzzle Page 2