The Jerusalem Puzzle

by Laurence O'Bryan

  All it would take would be some jumpy pilot to stray into a military zone, rockets to be fired in retaliation, and the slide to war would accelerate down a cliff.

  The news from Jerusalem was only making matters worse. Already there had been vociferous international condemnation of the mass murder of priests and the significant damage to Christianity’s holiest site. Commentators were speculating that Christ’s tomb had been destroyed in the fire. Other media channels, Twitter among them, had leaked that clues pointing to a Palestinian terror group’s involvement had been found.

  The US news networks were running interviews with Christian preachers who were talking about signs of the second coming, Armageddon.

  An email message came into his inbox. He scanned it.

  The message was an automatically generated report on Lord Bidoner. It had arrived in a secure PDF format.

  The report showed the contents of an email Lord Bidoner had sent to a private US security company. The message, which had been intercepted by GCHQ, was a request for a global ‘all archives’ search for any current or past references to a symbol, a picture of which was attached.

  The picture was, he was surprised to see when he opened it, of the square and arrow symbol that was in the manuscript Susan Hunter had been translating.

  Henry put his head in his hands. He was tired. It was approaching 1 a.m.

  Had he uncovered a connection between Lord Bidoner and what was going on in Israel?

  And why was the good Lord recruiting a global security company to instigate an expensive search which would include internet, academic libraries, museum libraries and a hundred other non-internet enabled repositories of data?

  And why had the search request specifically suggested an international search of graveyards, mausoleums and burial places?

  What the hell was going on?

  Was it time to call Sergeant Finch back in? He reached for the phone on his desk. Then his hand hesitated.

  53

  The cream, flat-roofed houses, rising up the sides of the hills, were lit up with strings of lights. The steep hills behind the houses went up, almost perpendicular into the air, the houses covering the hills layer upon layer, precipitously on top of each other.

  We sped on, curving and twisting between hills. Two black flags flipped past at a turn-off. I heard a popping sound, a burst of gunfire. The Israeli army maybe, or Palestinian factions fighting each other.

  Then the lights all disappeared and we were curving through empty rock-covered, twisting hills, visible as shades of grey beyond our headlights. Ten minutes after that we pulled off the main road. The road we turned onto had no lights and no sign posts.

  A line of scrawny trees to the right petered out after a while, as did a bent and mostly broken mesh fence on one side. After a minute travelling, our headlights picking out the rough tarmac road ahead, we turned onto another side road.

  Ariel turned all our lights off. We drove slowly forward, our eyes getting used to the near darkness. The only light in the car was a low blueish glow from a GPS by Ariel’s knees. He adjusted it and the glow almost disappeared.

  To our right and left all I could see was the outline of rocks nearby and a ridge of hills rising beyond. Occasionally I saw bushes near the car, like round spiky beach balls, and a stunted tree. Everything looked dried out. After a minute, Ariel increased his speed. His eyes must have gotten used to the dark, though we were still only travelling at ten miles an hour.

  Then, as my own eyes adjusted, I saw we were driving on a single width track now, and that our wheels were sending dust up behind us.

  There was a smell in the air, a mixture of something like cinnamon and something dead. The car stopped where another track crossed over it.

  ‘This GPS is a total loss,’ said Ariel.

  ‘Are we far from where the signal was picked up?’ said Mark.

  ‘No, no, it was around here, within a hundred metres. I can’t get it any more precise.’ Ariel bent down, adjusting the GPS until the blueish glow came up briefly, then disappeared again.

  ‘Let’s take a look around,’ I said. ‘Do you have torches?’

  ‘We’re not advertising we’re here,’ said Ariel. ‘And we won’t be staying long. All we’re doing is looking for a vehicle or bodies. I have three night vision goggles. They’ll pick up heat sources.’

  ‘Do we have back-up?’ I asked. I turned in my seat to see if there were any cars behind us. There weren’t.

  Mark turned to me. ‘There will only be back-up if we call it in. We’re supposed to get the Palestinian police involved if we mount a major search out here. But that will take too long. The Palestinians cooperate on missing persons, but it will take hours to wake up the right people and explain everything. We can’t wait.’

  ‘We should have left him at his hotel,’ said Ariel. ‘He asks too many questions.’

  ‘No, he’s useful. It’ll be good to have him with us if the Palestinian Authority turn up.’ Mark opened his door.

  ‘I told you not to worry about them,’ said Ariel.

  ‘And I told you what I think of that attitude,’ said Mark.

  I got out and walked around the vehicle. I could see bushes, the outline of rocks, black hills.

  Ariel opened the back. He took out three sets of night vision goggles. They had one large, round eye facing forward and two eye pieces for your eyes at the back. They also had a large round adjusting screw on the right side. They were lighter than they looked.

  ‘Make sure they’re strapped on tight,’ said Ariel. ‘And don’t lose them.’

  The three of us must have looked like aliens after we put them on.

  ‘We won’t go far,’ said Ariel. ‘We’ll work our way forward between each of the four tracks, head out maybe fifty metres. This is just an unofficial check to see if there is any evidence of your girlfriend being here, any leftover heat sources.’

  I knew what he meant; any bodies.

  I wanted to get going, get it over with. ‘Why are we waiting? Let’s do this.’

  I walked off among the stones. I could see them and the trees and bushes clearly in shades of green, in front of me. I could also see the occasional flapping thing too, which could have been a giant moth or bat. The centre of the flapping thing was orange hued from the heat it was giving off.

  ‘Are there any houses around here?’ I asked as Ariel came up beside me. His face was also orange, as were his clothes.

  ‘There was a settlement near here. But it was razed. We might find the foundations.’

  It was deathly quiet. The distant traffic noises from the highway, like when we’d been at the villa, were all gone. Here, there was nothing but stars and scrub and a blanket-like hush. Suddenly, a distant shriek, sounding as if it was from some prehistoric bird, cut through the air.

  I looked up. The stars were a green blanket, pinpricks of light. We were seeing everything because of starlight, I realised. The moon was behind some clouds, but I could see the scraggy bushes and the hills around us clearly. An orange flash passed overhead. A bird. It had to be.

  The hills looked steep. They were covered in scree and got higher on our left, but I couldn’t see much detail further than maybe fifty feet away. Beyond that it was all green gloom.

  I kept walking. Mark and Ariel followed behind. Blocking our path occasionally were stones as big as dining room tables. Others, scattered pieces of white lava, as big as cars, were jumbled up and leaning against each other in places. We walked on.

  ‘Shusshh,’ said Ariel.

  I hadn’t realised we were making any noise.

  We stopped. There was deep quiet for half a minute, then, a rustling off to our left. It stopped as quickly as it had started. I saw a tinge of orange behind some green bushes.

  My head was hurting again. My stomach was aching too, but I was glad I hadn’t taken any painkillers.

  ‘It’s an ibex,’ said Ariel softly. ‘This is ideal ground for them.’

  ‘Let’s keep go
ing,’ I said.

  ‘We should turn back,’ said Ariel nonchalantly, as if we’d been looking for a lost set of car keys.

  I kept walking.

  ‘Come on, Sean. You can’t just walk off into the hills!’ Mark’s voice echoed oddly.

  ‘We have to cover a lot of ground. Let’s go back,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not just doing fifty metres in each direction,’ I said calmly. ‘I’m going as far as I think I should go, depending on what we find.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘If you want to prove you love her more than anyone else, be my guest. But walking off isn’t going to get you any brownie points from me.’ He sounded bitter.

  ‘I’m not looking for brownie points.’

  He didn’t get it at all.

  I stopped. There was a wall of spiky bushes and taller rocks ahead. To our right the hill became way steeper, almost impossible to climb. To our left there was a patch of open ground. I went there, and walked in a circle. Mark was right beside me.

  It was a good place to turn.

  We got back to the car five minutes later. The next section of the desert we searched had even more rocks. We had to walk over or around them constantly. Some of the bushes between the rocks had white spikes two inches long, just to keep our attention from flagging.

  The biggest rocks here were truck-sized. They looked out of place too, as if they’d been scattered by giants playing some weird game. I wondered if Isabel had seen these.

  If you wanted to hide something, this area would be a great place to do it in. I walked on. After another few minutes, with Mark and Ariel distant behind me, and about to disappear, and the car lost far away, I headed back. This was not looking good. I was running out of luck. So was Isabel.

  When I reached the others, Ariel was fuming. His face actually looked puffed out.

  ‘If you get lost in these hills, I’m not calling out a search party. You stay behind me in the next section. We have to get out of here soon.’

  I shook my head. If he thought I was going to follow his direction he had another thing coming.

  ‘Maybe you don’t understand, Mr Ryan. I can arrest you now and have you locked up for weeks, maybe months, if you keep this up. You are illegally in this country.’

  I spoke slowly as I replied. ‘We will do this search properly. And as for arresting me, which country am I in anyway? This is Palestinian territory, isn’t it?’

  ‘You two stop this crap,’ said Mark. ‘We’ll do this search properly, and fast. Now both of you shut up.’

  We headed off again into the third section. This part was similar to the last in having large boulders, if anything even bigger than in the other sections. We walked for two hundred metres or so, finding nothing but a torn blue plastic bag that looked as if it had been out here for decades.

  This time Ariel didn’t ask to turn back until the car had disappeared completely.

  ‘There’s nothing else for miles out here. Let’s go! If we lose our way back we could walk around out here until morning.’

  ‘We’re not going to die,’ I said.

  ‘That’s not the point, Sean,’ said Mark. ‘You know there’s talk of a war starting. This is not the time to do this. Anyway, we could be doing something useful somewhere else, rather than spending the rest of this bloody night out here looking for our car.’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ I looked around. There was nothing. Not one single other heat source except for us.

  We turned back, spreading out once we saw the car, all scanning the area around us. Then, as we neared the crossroads, I noticed clear car tracks heading off past me into the scrub. I hissed for the others.

  ‘Someone’s been here!’ Hope flooded through my exhausted body. In seconds all the aches and pains I’d been feeling disappeared.

  ‘Let’s get the car.’ I was half running already. The Toyota was glistening in the starlight just beyond some rocks.

  ‘Okay,’ said Ariel. ‘But don’t run. You’ll knock yourself out in the dark.’

  He was almost right. I stubbed my toe, nearly tripping over, but I kept going, adrenaline tingling through me. It was a long shot that we would find Isabel, even longer that we would find her alive, but it was better than walking around getting desperate.

  Ariel had locked the car. I had to wait for him to reach me before I could get in. We set off with no headlights as we were still wearing our night vision goggles, and headed slowly along the valley following the tracks. Ariel seemed to be checking around for something as we went. His head kept swivelling. He was muttering to himself too. I was in the front seat beside him this time.

  After half a minute I opened the window on my side. Mark did the same.

  ‘I’m gonna stop now,’ said Ariel, a minute later.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘Can you not see?’ he shouted. He pointed ahead.

  All I saw was a greenish hue, an open area in front of us, and beyond that a patch of small rocks and spiky dried up bushes.

  ‘See what?’

  ‘Someone came out here to hunt. Look at the marks in the dirt. Then they turned back. You can see where they turned!’

  ‘We have to take a look,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, yes, we will look around.’ He turned off the engine. ‘But when we are finished we will do the last section quickly. We can’t waste anymore time out here. We can’t search all night.’

  I didn’t bother telling him that I would search until I dropped if I wanted to. Mark looked at me as if he was torn about what to do. He looked worn out. For all our exertions we had achieved nothing.

  ‘We’ll need some rest, Sean, if we’re to be of any use tomorrow.’

  ‘You get some rest,’ I said.

  I got out of the car. Ariel turned the engine off. We walked around looking at the car tracks. Ariel was right. There was a definite turning circle and a place where a fire had been lit. The earth there was still faintly orange. And the car tracks didn’t go any further.

  We were nearly back at the Toyota when I heard a rumbling. It sounded like a distant train. That couldn’t be right. We stopped, looked around.

  There was a mass of orange coming towards us. Then I heard neighing.

  ‘Take off the goggles,’ said Ariel. ‘Pass them to me, quickly.’

  I did as I was asked. He pushed them into a black shoulder bag he’d been carrying.

  I looked up. My eyesight wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. The detail was all gone, but I could still see dark shapes. And the moving shape of a group of riders coming fast towards us on large horses and mostly wearing dark hoods. One of them shouted something in Arabic at us.

  I hadn’t a clue what he was saying. But it didn’t sound friendly.

  ‘Don’t make any sudden moves,’ said Mark firmly.

  The heavy breathing of the horses was filling my ears now, as they came near. And then I could smell them. The odour of horse sweat was almost enough to make me gag.

  54

  Isabel lifted her head. It had been a long time since the insects, whatever they were, had departed. But she hadn’t dared move since they’d crawled over her trousered legs. They’d seemed to be following each other and had passed over her as if she was a rock.

  What they would do if they came upon her bare arms or, God forbid, her face, if she slept, was another thing. She shuddered deeply as she thought of it, then moved Susan Hunter’s head. It was hurting her shoulder, it was lying so awkwardly.

  It was all she could do to keep Susan’s head and face from the floor of the cave. All hope of building a cairn to try to reach the hole in the roof was gone now. She would have to wait until Susan Hunter was dead to do anymore scratching around for stones.

  Isabel’s ears heard everything now, even her own breathing. She’d heard the insects approaching and them going away into some crack, most likely. She’d heard distant faint rumblings in the earth too. And now, suddenly, as she held Susan tight she heard a new sound. Another rumbling, like the sound of a distant
river.

  Could that be it?

  No. It was something else. It was a drumming, like the sound of horse’s hooves. And then it stopped. She put Susan’s head back against the wall and rose shakily to her feet. She shouted, ‘Help! HELP!’ She drummed her feet on the floor. The noise echoed hopelessly, then died.

  55

  The horses were right in front of me. Two of them were pawing the ground, no more than a foot away, as if they wanted to dig their hooves into me. I looked around slowly. There were at least ten riders surrounding us, their horses flexing their shoulders, jittering, snorting and neighing.

  We wouldn’t get away easily.

  The riders were wearing dark hooded outfits, all except the man on the horse directly in front of me. He was bare headed, almost bald, his skin pitted, as if from a long-forgotten childhood disease.

  He shouted something in Arabic. The horses inched closer to us, pawing the ground. Ariel responded in Arabic.

  One of the riders laughed.

  ‘You look like you speak English,’ said the man on the horse in front of me. His accent was oddly familiar, part Middle Eastern, part north London.

  I was relieved to hear a familiar accent. Then he said, ‘I am warning you not to run.’

  ‘Why would we?’ said Mark.

  ‘Well don’t, if you value your lives.’

  The starlight was barely enough to see by. It left detail beyond a few feet away in shadow. How they were moving around in this light was amazing.

  Most of the riders were holding rifles in their hands. There were at least four pointing directly at me.

  The man above me made a loud hawking noise. Then he spat. I heard it, rather than saw it fall. I think it ended up near me, but I didn’t look down. I kept staring up at him.

  ‘You people have the smell of death on you,’ said the man. There was a murmur from some of the other riders, as if he’d given a signal. The horses’ shoulders shifted menacingly. Their manes were long, ragged, their skin mottled shades of brown. Two of the horses had big white patches. The smell of horse sweat was heavy, pungent.