by James Becker
‘I think we’re wasting our time here,’ Angela said. ‘There’s been so much damage to the castle, and so much dismantling, that I have no idea what that notation could possibly mean.’
Bronson nodded agreement, his expression grim as he surveyed the piles of old stones and half-listened to the guide explaining the function of each structure when it had been standing.
‘I think you’re right,’ he said. ‘I hate to say it, but I think this might be the end of the trail.’
For another few minutes, they continued following the guide and the group of tourists, in the absence of any better ideas, their attention wandering because both of them now believed they were essentially just wasting their time.
‘I can’t believe we’ve come all this way only to find that the final link in the chain isn’t here – or if it is here, that we can’t find it because of the damage the castle has suffered over the centuries. That’s just so bloody unfair.’
The frustration in Angela’s voice was unmistakable.
Bronson shook his head. ‘It is,’ he agreed, ‘but because of the state this place is in, I just don’t think there’s any way of even working out where we should be looking.’
But just a few seconds later, he seized Angela’s arm and pulled her to a stop.
‘Did you hear what he just said? The guide, I mean?’ he asked.
Angela shook her head. ‘No, not really. I was thinking dark thoughts about the amount of time we’ve wasted, chasing shadows.’
‘Chasing shadows, maybe,’ Bronson said, a smile on his face, ‘but I think I know exactly where we need to look now that we’re here. It’s so obvious that I should have guessed it sooner.’
‘You know?’
‘I think so, yes.’
‘So tell me,’ Angela demanded.
‘I’ll do better than that,’ Bronson replied. ‘I’ll show you.’
He led her over to the edge of the path and to the remains of the internal boundary wall, then pointed down into the valley below, to the south of the fortification.
‘Do you see that, down there?’ he asked.
‘I see a lot of stuff. What am I supposed to be looking at?’
‘Pretty much at the bottom of the valley. What looks like a very small building or perhaps just a biggish box shape. Made of the same sort of stone as the castle. It’s not an old structure, though what’s underneath it has been there for millennia.’
Angela kind of sighted down his outstretched arm, then nodded.
‘Yes, now I see it,’ she said. ‘What is it?’
‘What every castle needs if it’s going to have the slightest hope of surviving a siege.’
For a moment, Angela looked blank, then she smiled and nodded.
‘Got it. A cistern, or a spring. Some kind of a source of water, anyway.’
‘Precisely,’ Bronson said. ‘I didn’t hear exactly what the guide said it was, but that was where they obtained their water when the place was under siege. And,’ he added, turning back and pointing towards an opening in the ground encased by two walls, ‘that’s the start of the staircase that they had to walk down in order to reach the water. Think it through. That staircase would have been one of the first things the Crusaders constructed when they built this castle, because there would have been no point in erecting any kind of a fortress here without having a water source and a protected access to reach it. And irrespective of what construction and destruction went on here over the centuries, the steps leading down to the well or the cistern would never have altered. So that’s where the clue is, on or near the sixty-second step below the entrance – that has to be what the reference to sixty-two down means – and all I have to do now is get down there and find it.’
‘Don’t you mean we have to go down there and find it?’
‘I think it’s best that I go alone,’ Bronson replied. ‘That staircase is almost certainly off-limits to visitors, and if both of us vanish somebody might well notice, which would be bad news. In fact, I think the best thing would be if you go back to the visitor centre right now and get in the car ready to leave. That way, if I am spotted and have to make a run for it, you’ll be ready and waiting to pick me up.’
Angela glanced at the deep shadow that filled the entrance to the long staircase and shook her head, apprehension washing over her.
‘You’ve got a torch and a camera?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’ Bronson handed her the keys to the hire car and then looked around them.
The party being escorted around the perimeter of the castle walls was virtually out of sight in front of them and, apart from two men who appeared to be examining the stones on the wall about forty yards behind them, there was nobody anywhere near them.
‘This is as good a time as any,’ Bronson said. ‘Go now. I’ll be as quick as I can.’
Angela stretched up, gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, then turned and walked away, heading back towards the castle gate and the road that led down to the visitor centre.
After a few seconds, she looked behind her, but Bronson was already out of sight.
55
Shobak Castle, Jordan
Farooq and Amir had entered the castle less than five minutes after their quarry, and had had no difficulty in locating Bronson and the woman. With Khaled’s specific instructions fresh in their minds, they had hung well back, making sure that neither of the people they were following realized that they were under surveillance. That wasn’t difficult, because there were plenty of visitors wandering around the old stones, looking at the view, taking photographs and examining the tumbledown remains of the fortress.
They’d seen Bronson stop and talk to the woman, and lead her over to the edge of the path to show her something that lay outside the fortress, but a few moments later, something unexpected happened.
The woman had turned and started walking straight towards them. Immediately, both men had turned away, pretending to be engrossed in an examination of a surviving part of the fortress wall, until she walked past them, apparently heading for the castle gate. As she moved away, both men turned to stare at her retreating figure, and when they looked back to where Bronson had been standing, they were stunned by the realization that he had vanished.
For a few seconds, neither man moved, then Farooq roused himself.
‘Find him,’ he snapped at Amir as he pulled his mobile from his pocket. ‘He can’t have gone far. I’ll tell Khaled what’s happened.’
Predictably, Khaled was unhappy at the news.
‘Find him as quickly as you can,’ he ordered. ‘I’m quite certain it’s him we need to pursue, not her. He probably sent the woman away while he investigates. I’ll watch for her coming back down from the castle. You two find him, and more importantly find whatever it is he’s looking at.’
Farooq ended the call just as Amir came trotting up to him.
‘He’s not with the group they were following before,’ Amir said. ‘And I went far enough beyond those people to make sure he hadn’t overtaken them, and he’s nowhere in sight.’
‘He didn’t pass me heading back to the gate, so he must still be here somewhere,’ Farooq said. ‘When we last saw him, he was over by that wall, so that’s where we’ll start looking.’
The two men walked over to the ancient L-shaped wall, and as soon as they reached it they were able to guess precisely where Bronson must have gone.
‘There’s a staircase going down,’ Farooq said, gesturing at the dark opening.
Then he held up his hand for silence, and the two men just listened. Barely audible above the ever-present sighing of the wind, they both heard the sounds of faint movement from somewhere below their feet.
Farooq made an instant decision.
‘You don’t speak English,’ he said to Amir, ‘so I’ll have to follow him. I’ll pretend to be one of the guides, and I’ll try to persuade him to come back up here, once I’ve seen what it is he’s looking for. Call Khaled right now and tell him what’s happe
ned, and what I’m going to do. And,’ he added after a moment’s thought, ‘if I do manage to discover the clue that Bronson’s hoping to find, as soon as he comes back up the staircase, he can have an accident. I think he’s going to stumble and fall and pitch himself over the wall. It’s a long drop to the rocks underneath.’
Amir made the call while Farooq started to investigate the first few steps of the underground staircase. A few seconds later, he slid his mobile back into his pocket and nodded to Farooq.
‘Khaled says you can kill him, but only if you’re completely certain that you have identified the clue. And you can kill him down there, underground. It doesn’t have to look like an accident. Just get it done.’
‘Right,’ Farooq said, and promptly disappeared from view down the staircase, his pistol in his right hand.
56
Shobak Castle, Jordan
One of the obvious problems Bronson had was not knowing precisely which step he should use to begin counting. There were about half a dozen steps leading from the level of the path in the castle itself to the entrance to the staircase proper, but he figured that if he started looking for some kind of carving or inscription from about the fiftieth to the seventieth step that ought to cover all possible permutations.
So he included those first six steps in the total number in his mental count as he strode as quickly as he could down the broken and uneven stone stairs that angled away from the castle and towards the location of the cistern or well. The light from his torch illuminated his path well enough. Constructing the tunnel had clearly been a major undertaking, hacking a route through solid rock, and the marks of the picks were still visible on the walls and roof of the narrow passageway. In several places, he had to duck when the roof level was even lower than elsewhere, a reminder that adult males of the twenty-first century were appreciably taller than their mediaeval counterparts.
As well as avoiding cracking his head on the stone, Bronson was also checking for any kind of marks or carvings on the walls, but apart from a handful of initials near the tunnel entrance within the castle itself – and they were most probably comparatively recent judging by the lettering – he saw nothing.
It didn’t take long for him to reach the nominal start of his search, the fiftieth step below the level of the path, and immediately he slowed his progress to a virtual standstill, playing the light of his torch over the walls and ceiling in search of whatever it was that the anonymous mediaeval scribe had carved there. He advanced one step at a time, making sure that he looked at every square inch of the walls on both sides, but all appeared to be featureless stone, the only marks those obviously made by the masons when they had first constructed the passageway.
After a few steps, when he assumed he would be getting close to the sixty-second tread on the staircase, he shone his torch further down the passageway, illuminating the wall and ceiling below him. But still he saw nothing – no indication of letters or of a carving or anything else that could possibly be the clue he was seeking.
Bronson’s frustration and irritation grew with every step that he took. They had to have been reading this right. The only possible interpretation of the phrase they had deciphered had to apply to this one unique and immovable staircase, the only stones that could not have been moved because both the steps and the walls had been hacked out of the solid rock. There was nothing else at Shobak Castle that fitted.
He carried on for another half-dozen steps, with precisely the same lack of any concrete result.
And then he heard the unmistakable sound of movement in the passageway somewhere above him, and an authoritative-sounding voice called out to him.
‘Sir, sir, this area is out of bounds to visitors. You must leave now and return to the castle above. At once, please.’
Two things gave Bronson immediate pause. First, why had the man spoken in English and not Arabic in the first instance, unless he somehow knew Bronson’s nationality? And, second, and just as significant, why didn’t the man have a torch? Or, if he did, why wasn’t he using it? Would a guide really risk his neck by climbing down an uneven staircase in total darkness just to tell a visitor that he was in the wrong place?
Bronson decided to reply, but in French, just to see what would happen.
‘Je suis desolé, mais je ne comprends pas.’
At the same moment, he swung the beam of his torch around to shine back up the passageway down which he had descended.
And as he did that, he realized exactly why he hadn’t found what he had been looking for, because he’d been looking in the wrong place.
Virtually at his eye level, neatly and accurately carved into the riser of a step that simply had to be the sixty-second from the top, was a series of letters.
The second reason for shining his torch up the passageway had obviously been to try to get a look at the man who had called out to him, but the moment Bronson saw the carving he temporarily forgot about him, pulled the digital camera from his pocket, pressed the button on the side of the casing to deploy the flashgun, and then took six shots of the carving in as many seconds, the flash strobing off the old stone walls.
Beyond the flash, in the beam of the torchlight, Bronson saw a dark-skinned man wearing a dark suit and looking straight down at him. He didn’t look like a guide, but he could easily have been one of the two men who had been walking round the castle behind him and Angela just a few minutes earlier. Bronson moved the beam of the torch very slightly, and in that same instant, he saw the torch in the man’s left hand and the unmistakable shape of a compact semi-automatic pistol in his right.
Bronson slid the camera back into his pocket, reached behind him and took the Browning from the waistband of his trousers. He clicked off the safety catch and, keeping the torch beam focused on the man above him, began silently backing down the staircase, testing each tread as he went.
He could see the indecision on the face of the other man, but then the stranger apparently made up his mind and raised his right hand, the hand holding the pistol.
Bronson made a split-second decision: he switched off his torch, aimed in the general direction of the man above him and squeezed the trigger.
The report of the nine-millimetre bullet firing was utterly deafening in the confined space, the sound echoing off the walls.
But outside the tunnel, almost nobody even noticed the sound, apart from Amir who was waiting by the entrance to the staircase and heard the shot clearly. To everybody else at the site, the noise was muffled by several feet of solid rock. It sounded like a distant thump, perhaps from a piece of heavy machinery like a pile-driver.
Bronson had no idea whether or not his shot had been on target, but a moment later the other man fired his own weapon. Bronson instinctively ducked to the side, though his action would have been far too late if the shot had been accurately aimed, and heard the bullet ricochet off the wall of the tunnel somewhere above his head. Two further shots followed, but both missed.
Bronson aimed his weapon up the staircase, sighting it from memory in the blackness, and fired three times. He dared not use his torch, because that would give the other man an immediate point at which to aim.
Then he crouched down, getting as low as he could to make himself the smallest possible target. He had two choices, and he didn’t much like either of them. He could either stay in the tunnel and try to shoot down his opponent or risk ending up like a rat in a trap and carry on down the tunnel, all the way to the end, in the hope that he could force the door on the small building that marked the location of the water source for the Crusader castle.
Bronson flipped a mental coin and, moving as silently as he possibly could, began making his way further and further down the ancient staircase.
He heard the sound of movement somewhere above and stopped, turning round and pointing his pistol back the way he’d come, waiting for a shot or for the beam of the other man’s torch to pick him out. But his unidentified opponent clearly knew that switching on his own torch woul
d immediately make him a target, and the passageway remained as dark as the grave.
Every step that Bronson took was hopefully moving him another couple of feet clear of the other man, increasing the distance between them and getting him out of the accurate range of a pistol. And then he received help from an unexpected source. The mediaeval masons who had laboured for months to create the hidden staircase had driven it quite straight down through the bedrock, but as Bronson slowly felt his way along the wall with the outstretched tips of his fingers, he was suddenly aware of a slight bend. The wall turned very slightly to the right, and continued to do so for perhaps another dozen steps.
And he hoped that would be enough.
A quick mental calculation suggested that there should now be solid stone between himself and the man pursuing him, a rock wall created by that gentle curve in the path of the staircase. As long as he stayed close to the right-hand side, anyway.
Bronson took out his torch again and for the briefest of instants flicked it on to show the staircase ahead of him. As he extinguished the light, the sound of another shot crashed against the walls of the tunnel, but the bullet hit somewhere on the left-hand side of the passage. Bronson guessed that the man above him could see the loom of the light from his torch, but couldn’t see him.
He switched on the torch again, and left it on, using the sudden flare of brightness to cover the remaining ground as quickly as he could.
Three more shots sounded, but they too hit somewhere on the left-hand wall, and Bronson knew that unless he was unlucky enough to be taken down by a ricochet, he should be safe enough. At least for the moment.
In fact, if the other man continued following him all the way down, at some point Bronson would have all the advantages, because when his opponent reached the bend in the staircase, Bronson could simply switch on his torch and place it well away from him, and then shoot down the other man the moment he stepped into view.