The Templar Heresy

by James Becker

  What he needed was somewhere to hide, because if he kept running down the straight section of the tunnel, they’d be able to cut him down the moment they stepped out from the void.

  An archway beckoned on the right-hand side, and he dodged through it, swinging the torch beam around to get an idea of where he was, before extinguishing the light. Leaving the torch switched on would simply advertise his presence. He stood as motionless as he could, trying to steady his ragged breathing.

  A moment later, the darkness of the tunnel was torn apart by the beams from three powerful torches as his pursuers stepped through the gateway and attempted to seek him out.

  Bronson’s brief inspection had revealed a space perhaps twenty feet square, with stone walls, ceiling and floor, and entirely empty. As a place to hide, it was far from ideal. But there was nowhere else he could go. He was trapped.

  It all depended on what the three men – and he was now certain because of the torch beams that there were at least three of them – decided to do next.

  He heard quiet voices echoing along the tunnel, while the three torch beams continued to illuminate the passage outside Bronson’s temporary refuge. Suddenly, two of the torches were extinguished. The third continued to shine up the tunnel, but at a slightly changed angle, illuminating the wall closest to his refuge rather than the entire width of the tunnel. By doing that, the man with the torch was ensuring that his two companions, who Bronson guessed would already be making their way silently towards him, would not cast shadows that would give away their position.

  He calculated he had perhaps fifteen or twenty seconds before the armed men would reach the entrance to the chamber. But he also realized something else. The moment the men stepped through the doorway, the light from the tunnel would be of no further help to them and they would be effectively blind as they moved towards him. They would have to then use their own torches both to see where they were going and to locate him.

  That gave him a tiny window of opportunity – at least a chance to save his life and walk away – and that was a chance he was going to take.

  Bronson crouched down and felt around on the floor. In a structure made entirely from stone there must, he rationalized, be the odd pebble or chipping or something. His probing fingers closed around a small piece of stone, about the size of a marble. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do.

  He heard a faint shuffling sound from somewhere in the tunnel outside, very close. Then another torch beam snapped on, the light shining through the archway, and moving left and right as the man holding it did his best to see inside the chamber.

  Then the light was extinguished, leaving only the original torch beam shining. That meant that one or perhaps both of the men outside were about to come in and look for him.

  Bronson gripped the length of rebar with his right hand, flattened his back against the wall on the right-hand side of the archway and held the pebble in his left hand, ready to lob it.

  He sensed the presence of somebody before the dim light revealed the outline of a man dressed entirely in black and holding a pistol in his right hand.

  Bronson knew he had just one chance.

  He flicked the pebble into the far corner of the chamber at the precise moment the man stepped inside the room. The stone clattered on the floor and immediately the intruder turned on his torch, the beam seeking out the source of the sound while he raised his right arm, aiming the pistol towards that corner.

  And then Bronson swung the rebar down with all his strength, a short vicious arc that connected with the man’s right arm about midway between his wrist and his elbow, instantly breaking both bones.

  The man screamed, a high wailing sound that echoed from the walls. He dropped the pistol and the torch, the beam immediately extinguished when it hit the stone floor, his left hand reaching to support his right arm as he bent forward in agony.

  But Bronson wasn’t finished. He lifted the rebar again, higher this time, and brought it down just as hard on the back of the man’s skull. The screaming stopped instantly and the man dropped to the floor and lay still. Dead, dying or just unconscious, Bronson didn’t know. Or particularly care. He’d been forced to choose between his life and someone else’s. And now he had a proper weapon.

  The man outside in the tunnel switched on his torch in panic, obviously having heard the noises but without knowing what had happened. Then the torch beam illuminated the unmoving shape of his companion, and Bronson guessed he’d now be looking for a target.

  He reached down and grabbed the pistol the other man had dropped. The weapon felt instantly familiar, and he identified it by touch as a Browning Hi-Power, a pistol he’d used frequently during his Army career. The safety catch was off and the hammer was all the way back, ready to fire.

  The man outside must have realized the stupidity of switching on his torch, because doing so had instantly identified his location. As soon as the light appeared it was extinguished. An instant later, the other torch was also switched off.

  In the darkness, Bronson crouched down beside the archway, adrenalin pumping through him, aimed the pistol more or less at where he thought the torch had been, and squeezed the trigger once. He didn’t want to risk a second shot because he didn’t know how many rounds were in the magazine, though from the weight of the weapon he guessed it was at least half full.

  He heard a curse, the voice raised in anger rather than pain, and at the same instant two shots rang out, the faint muzzle flashes in the blackness showing that the shooter was already on the move, heading back down the tunnel towards his companion.

  Bronson rose slowly to his feet and eased himself through the stone archway until he could look back down the tunnel. About forty yards away, near the open gate, he saw the outline of two figures, the intermittent glow of light from their torches as they flicked them on and off, obviously trying not to become targets, showing that they were heading away from him.

  Forty yards is too far for accurate shooting with a pistol, and in any case Bronson would never have shot anybody in the back, so he stepped back inside the chamber and switched on his torch. The man he’d hit was lying in precisely the same position and in the light from the torch Bronson could see the black hair on the back of his head was soaked in blood. He inhaled deeply, steeling himself, and checked the pulse in the man’s neck, but found nothing.

  He realized his hands were shaking and took a moment to compose himself. Better that the anonymous man – who had after all been carrying a loaded and cocked pistol and presumably had intended to use it – should be lying there dead than Bronson himself.

  Very faintly in the distance he thought he heard the sound of approaching sirens, and knew he had to get out as quickly as possible. He placed the pistol on the ground within easy reach and quickly searched the dead man, recovering a handful of nine-millimetre bullets from his pocket and a wallet that only contained cash, and not that much of it. He pocketed the wallet, tucked the pistol into the waistband of his trousers and picked up the length of rebar. His fingerprints were certainly all over it, along with the blood of the dead man, and he couldn’t risk leaving it behind.

  Then he stepped out of the chamber and back into the tunnel.

  41

  Jerusalem

  Angela had been as good as her word.

  She’d waited in the shadows by the entrance to the Western Wall Heritage, doing her best to keep out of sight and listening intently. The sound of the two shots from somewhere deep inside the tunnel complex had both shocked and alarmed her and she’d immediately dialled the Israeli police. But not from her mobile. She’d jogged away from the Kotel Plaza and made the call from the first public phone she’d found, telling the person who responded that she’d heard shots from inside the complex and that the door to the building was open.

  The officer or dispatcher or whoever it was had told her firmly to remain exactly where she was, but Angela had replaced the receiver and immediately walked to an entirely different location which
gave her a good view of the entrance to the Western Wall Heritage and just waited.

  She looked and had sounded calm and in control on the phone, but her mind was in turmoil. Those shots could only have meant one thing: Chris must have been spotted by whoever had entered the complex before they got there. Even while her mind raced, imagining him dying alone and in the dark, lying in a spreading pool of his own blood on the ancient stones of some anonymous chamber or passage, another part of her brain was silently cursing him for his stupidity in going inside the tunnel complex at all, knowing that somebody else was already in there. And perhaps worse than that, for thinking he could take on men armed with guns when all he had with him was a length of steel.

  For a few minutes, nothing happened. Then she faintly heard what sounded like another single shot, quickly followed by two more, but she was now so far away from the entrance to the tunnel complex that she couldn’t be sure. And moments after that she heard the unmistakable sound of a police siren.

  She didn’t move, apart from slinking further back into the shadows and making sure that she could not be easily seen. She was determined to hold her position and to wait there until, hopefully, she would see the bulky figure of Bronson emerge from the open gate.

  But that didn’t happen. Instead, two men stepped out of the gate, glanced in both directions and then exchanged a few brief words. Then they set off, heading away from the Kotel Plaza in opposite directions, not running but moving quickly. In the light from the moon, all she could tell was they had dark hair, and appeared to have swarthy complexions.

  Less than two minutes later, four uniformed police officers ran into the square and headed straight for the Western Wall Heritage entrance, briefly examined the lock on the open gate and then vanished inside, pistols drawn and torches in their hands.

  At that moment Angela knew that there was no point in waiting where she was any longer. If Bronson was still alive somewhere in the tunnels, the police would arrest him and he’d spend the rest of the night in a police cell, and probably the next several months or years in some Israeli jail. If he was dead, they’d remove the body, and if he was wounded but still alive, they’d take him to hospital.

  Those, as far as Angela could see, were the only possible outcomes, and there was nothing she could do to influence or help Bronson with any of them if she stayed where she was. In fact, the longer she remained in the area, the more chance there was of being arrested herself, if only because she was on the spot and might have been the woman who had made the call about the gunshots. If, against all the odds, Bronson had survived and had been arrested, then the best place for her to be was out on the streets so that she could find him a lawyer or talk to the embassy or consulate or whatever British government presence there was in the city.

  She took a last lingering glance across the square, emitted a sound that was almost a moan of pain, then turned away and began walking slowly through the streets, heading back towards the hotel because she had no idea where else to go or what else to do.

  As she walked, she was aware of more sirens sounding in the streets around the Old City, and a couple of times she ducked out of sight into sheltered doorways when she heard the sound of running feet nearby. She guessed these were people making for the Kotel Plaza and the growing commotion there, but nobody actually passed her as she walked away from the scene, head down.

  She walked slowly and appeared calm, but her mind was racing, selecting and discarding possibilities and scenarios. The only glimmer of hope she had was that she had clearly heard two shots and then – she was almost certain of this – a third, and then two more. Bronson didn’t have a pistol, and that meant that it had to have been one or both of the two men she’d seen coming out of the Western Wall Heritage who’d been doing the shooting. And the fact that it hadn’t just been two quick shots might have meant that the bullets hadn’t killed Bronson, otherwise there would have been no point in firing again. So maybe, just maybe, he’d been spotted in the tunnels and they’d shot at him but missed, and then made their escape when they heard the sound of the sirens.

  So if her hopeful reconstruction of events was right, it was possible that her ex-husband might still be alive. Wounded, perhaps, and by now in police custody, but alive. She would have to wait until the normal routine of the city had started later in the morning, and then she could start searching by phone, checking the hospitals and of course the local police station.

  And then all her tentative plans and schemes vanished completely from her mind as a dark figure stepped out of an alleyway just a few feet in front of her.

  Angela gave a gasp of surprise, then a murmur of recognition. She ran the few paces that separated them, wrapped her arms around him and squeezed as if she would never let him go.

  ‘Dear God,’ she murmured, her voice muffled by the clothes he was wearing, ‘I thought you were dead. When I heard those shots—’ She broke off, stifling a sob, and stared into his face. ‘You’re hurt,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Bronson said. ‘It’s just a scratch. I got hit by a ricochet from one of the first shots they fired.’

  ‘Let me see,’ Angela said tenderly, and steered him back into the alleyway from which he had appeared, where the light from her torch would hopefully not attract attention.

  She shone the dim beam at his forehead, altered the angle a couple of times to see better, and then nodded.

  ‘It might just be a scratch, but it has bled rather a lot.’

  She reached into her pocket, pulled out a packet of tissues and wiped off the blood, which was already starting to clot.

  She took out another tissue, folded it to make a pad and then instructed Bronson to spit on it.

  ‘What the hell happened in there?’ she asked, ignoring his quizzical expression. She cleared more blood from Bronson’s forehead with the dampened tissue. ‘You can’t infect yourself,’ she added. ‘That’s why you’re spitting on the tissues, not me.’

  ‘There were three of them,’ Bronson began, but Angela stopped him almost immediately.

  ‘I only saw two come out.’

  Bronson sighed.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, in a low voice. ‘The third one is still down there in the tunnel.’

  ‘But couldn’t he identify you?’ Angela began, but then stopped as Bronson gave a small shake of his head. ‘Oh … You mean he’s in no fit state to talk? To ever talk?’

  ‘Let me put it this way: he won’t be causing us, or anybody else, any problems in the future. He was about to shoot me so I didn’t really have a choice. It was him or me.’

  ‘Are you okay?’ she whispered. ‘Who was he?’

  ‘I have no idea. I checked his pockets before I left, but all he had were a few spare rounds for his pistol and a wallet containing some cash. I took them both, because he obviously wasn’t going to be able to use either. And his pistol as well, just in case we need a bit of firepower before all this is over.’

  ‘You’ve always told me that professionals never carry ID,’ Angela said, a look of worry again crossing her face. ‘So do you think that’s what he was? A professional, but a professional what? I mean, what did he look like?’

  ‘Black hair, dark skin and fairly pronounced features, but basically unremarkable. I’ve never been a believer in coincidence, and in my view the chances of there being another group of people – a group unrelated to those people in Iraq, I mean – exploring the interior of the Temple Mount at the same time as us is nil. I don’t know who he was, but I’d bet money that he was a part of the group that hit your camp and destroyed the inscription. So that’s another reason why I don’t feel too bad about what happened to him.’

  Angela didn’t respond, and Bronson glanced at her as they walked along the street.

  ‘And are you OK?’ he asked.

  ‘No, not really. I had kind of hoped that when we got here we’d be well ahead of our pursuers, so we could find whatever clue there’s left under the Temple Mount and then get out of I
srael to somewhere a bit safer. But if you’re right, that means those people have also cracked the hidden message in the inscription, otherwise they wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘Well, the decryption wasn’t all that easy, but it also wasn’t desperately difficult. I’ve no doubt that whoever these guys are, they would have done exactly the same thing and reached precisely the same conclusion that we did. And as they’re here now, assuming I’m right, it even took them roughly the same length of time to crack it as us.’

  ‘That makes sense,’ Angela said, sounding subdued. ‘And obviously it’s wonderful that you got out of the tunnel before the police arrived, but we can’t be too blasé about the fact that you killed a man tonight. Whether or not he deserved to die doesn’t matter, because pretty soon the entire Israeli police force will be looking for his murderer.’

  They were silent for a moment.

  ‘And how did you get out?’ she asked as another thought struck her. ‘I kept watch until the police arrived, and the only people who came out of the entrance were those two men I told you about.’

  ‘I used the other entrance, or rather the exit from the Western Wall Tunnel. Just picked the lock and walked away. I didn’t dare risk going out the way I’d come in, just in case one of the men was still waiting for me or – maybe even worse – if the police had got there quicker than I’d expected and found me standing there holding a length of rebar covered in blood and with an unlicensed pistol in my pocket.’

  ‘Where did you put it? The rebar, I mean, because your fingerprints and obviously his blood would be all over it.’

  ‘You don’t have to worry about that,’ Bronson replied. ‘This city is full of holes and crevices because of all the different layers that have been built on it over the centuries. I found a narrow slit between two buildings, wiped the bar and then dropped it down into the opening. It fell quite a long way before I heard a clunk, so I reckon the chances of anybody finding it are pretty much nil.’