The Boudicca Parchments (31 page)

However after Mohamed’s death, his successors – the caliphs – embarked upon a campaign of imperialism in which they conquered many neighbouring territories, including Jerusalem. To strengthen their claim to the city, in the minds of the faithful, they restored Jerusalem to the pre-eminent status it held in Mohamed’s mind before he had massacred the Jews of Medina, and built sacred buildings in Jerusalem upon the already sacred Jewish shrines, thus asserting Islamic supremacy over the conquered and the vanquished.

But now one of them was helping Daniel and Ted as a favour to a relative, showing that goodness – as much as villainy – transcends the religious divide.

After using hena to darken their faces and kitting them out in Arab robes – not by any means de rigeur in east Jerusalem, but useful for allaying suspicions – he led them into the subterranean Marwani Prayer hall and through it to an almost concealed entrance at the back. This led them into a stark dank chamber with stone walls. Daniel shone his torch all around to take a look at the walls, hoping to find inscriptions. Ted tried likewise. But the walls were bare, carved into the rock beneath the Temple Mount. This was an untouched chamber that had been this way for centuries.

“Help me with this.”

Daniel and Ted turned round to see Salim struggling to prise up the edge of a stone slab with what seemed like little more than the tips of his fingers. For an old man he appeared to be remarkably strong, as the edge of the stone slowly rose a few inches from the floor in his firm grip. But it was obvious nonetheless that Salim was struggling and he would surely drop the stone back in place. So they rushed over and helped him, quickly inserting their hands and lifting in unison.

Even with all three of them combining their efforts, the weight of the block was apparent and they struggled to lift it.

“Over there,” said Salim indicating where they should move it.

The direction meant that Ted would be moving backwards and Daniel forward, while Salim himself moved sideways. But it was Daniel who nearly fell into the hole, as the stone slab obscured his view. He just about managed to avoid it, moving partly around the hole and then stepping over it as they laid the slab on the side. Then Daniel turned round to see the opening in the ground into which he had very nearly fallen. It led to a lower chamber.

It was Daniel, the youngest and fittest of the three who went first, followed be Ted whom he helped down. They looked around to see that they were at the beginning of a horizontal shaft. But as they waited for Salim to follow, they heard him saying something in tense Arabic, in a tone that spoke of surprise and fear. Ted didn’t know what the words meant, but Daniel did. They meant “Who are you? What do you want?”

In the silence that followed, Daniel strained to hear a reply. But all he heard was nothing except silence, followed by a volley of gun fire. Then when the reverberating echo subsided, the silence returned.

“Salim!” Daniel shouted. “Salim are you all right?”

The fear began to set in. Daniel moved to a position just under the entry point and reached up, trying to pull himself up. But as he did so, he noticed a man standing over him in the chamber above – a big man.

And Daniel recognized him. The beard was gone, or most of it had, but the face was unmistakeable. It was the man who tried to kill him when the police van was attacked. The man that Sarit had told him was Baruch Tikva – or simply Bar Tikva, as he liked to call himself.

And once again, the man was armed. But this time it was an assault rifle that he was pointing at Daniel.

Chapter 72

“So you’ve been blogging about Israel for how long?”

“Quite a few years now.”

Nili was enjoying this man’s company, even if he was a lot older than she. He had a warm sophisticated charm and an air of
bon vivant
about him, that made her feel comfortable, perhaps even somewhat aroused. He had come around after everyone had left and she was getting ready to leave herself, just finishing up. He wanted to see one of the professors about the project. He had heard that a friend of his – Daniel Klein – was helping them with the translation and he wanted to blog about it, especially if Danny had got some results.

But they had all gone home.

She suggested that he call “Danny” who was after all in Israel, but the man had explained that the call would be routed through England and Danny “really hated” getting calls like that because the mobile phone company charged him a fortune for rerouting those calls. He said never mind, he would hook up with Danny back in England.

It was at that point that Nili took pity on him. She explained that she didn’t know where Danny was staying or how to contact him but that he had got some good results on the translation and that they would be published in due course, but that she couldn’t reveal any of the details without permission.

Then the man took the initiative and asked if she was doing anything this evening. For a moment she had hesitated, feeling a bit on the defensive. But before she could say no, he had smiled at her and said “just dinner. I like to dine in fine restaurants and perhaps you could advise me on which is a good one, while I’m here in Jerusalem.

The truth of the matter was she didn’t know good restaurants from bad because most of them were out of her price range. She knew which were the expensive ones, but price didn’t necessarily guarantee quality and if she was going to avail herself of this man’s generosity – or loneliness – then she didn’t want to make a fool of herself. So she agreed to let him take her to dinner and then, on a pretext of going to the bathroom, she had put in a quick mobile call to a friend.

Two minutes later, when she emerged, she suggested that they go to the Colony restaurant, which in fact was not expensive at all, but came highly recommended.

Now they sat there enjoying their main courses, he eating the grilled entrecote steak in red wine sauce, she enjoying the stuffed chicken breast – after starting with shared plates of stuffed mushrooms and sweet potato ravioli.

“So no juicy titbits,” the man said, hopefully.

“Unfortunately not,” said Nili. “But I mean if you can catch up with your friend Danny, I’m sure he’d be happy to tell you.”

“But you don’t know where he’s staying?”

“No, sorry.” Then she brightened up. “You could try calling Ted, if you know him.”

The man looked up from his food, surprised, but quickly gathered his wits.

“Oh Ted’s with him?”

“He was when they did the translation. I mean it was Ted who did the translation. Your friend Danny just transliterated the Hebrew.”

“We are talking about the same Ted, I hope. You mean Ted Hynds, yes?”

Nili inclined her head in silence for a moment.

“I think that was his name.”

“I
did
have his number. But it’s probably in my old address book back in England. I haven’t been in touch with him for a long time. Oh well.”

He carried on eating.

“I suppose the other thing you could do is call the office in the morning and get the contact details. Professor Peres will be there.”

“Whose he?”

“She. Irene Peres. She’s a scientist who did the tests on the manuscript and prepared the digital copy that Danny and Ted used for their translation. She’s related to him apparently – to your friend Danny I mean.”

“Okay I’ll do that. I just hope I don’t end up missing him. You’re sure he said he’s staying in Jerusalem aren’t you. It would be a pity if he jumps on a plane to another destination like the USA or Greece or somewhere and I end up missing him again. It’s happened before you know.”

“Oh I don’t think there’s any chance of that. They’ve still got more work to do on the translation and writing the paper.”

“Yes but knowing Danny they’ll probably end up working long distance via the Internet. He’s very peripatetic is our Danny.”

“Perri…”

“He travels a lot.”

“Well he won’t be leaving the country tomorrow, because I think he’s got plans to visit Masada before he leaves.”

“Masada?”

Nili blushed. She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to have mentioned that. It had been the Temple Mount Parchment that had drawn his attention to Masada. She realized that she had effectively given away something that she should probably have kept silent about.

“Oh well,” the man continued. “I’ll call tomorrow and ask this Professor…?”

“Peres.”

“
Peres
… whether she can give me his local contact details. Maybe you can tell her to expect my call.”

“Sure.”

Nili looked a little uncomfortable.

“Is there a problem?” he asked.

She blushed again.

“I’m sorry… only I’ve forgotten your name.”

She squirmed. But the man just smiled.

“Oh is that all? It’s Sam… Sam Morgan.”

Chapter 73

Daniel leapt aside just as Bar Tikva fired off a volley of rounds at him. But he knew it wasn’t over yet, when Bar Tikva crouched down and stuck the rifle through the hole of the floor that he and Ted had dropped though less than a minute before.

“Move!” he shouted at Ted, who was frozen with momentary panic. Ted moved just in time to give Daniel the space he needed to avoid the shots. Because of the angle at which the man had been able to insert the gun, there was no danger of the shots being fired along the entire stretch. Instead the last rounds of the volley embedded themselves in the plastered walls while Daniel and Ted raced along the underground cavern.

When Ted felt he had got far enough from the volley, he stopped. He was mildly out of breath, but his regular health regimen meant that he had the stamina to run a lot more if he had to. Daniel stopped behind him.

“I think he’s out of ammo. But he might have another magazine.”

But Ted was not listening. The danger held less interest for Ted than curiosity. He was looking around, shining his torch at the plastered walls of the subterranean chamber.

“What is this?” asked.

Daniel took a moment to catch his breath.

“If my calculations are correct, Ted, we’re in something called the Lower Aqueduct. It supplied the Old City and the temple from springs outside the city.”

They heard sounds at the entry point of the chamber from whence they had run.

“Is he coming after as?” asked Ted.

“If he does, we’d better run,” Daniel whispered, shining his torch back in the direction that the sound had come from. But there was no sign of Bar Tikva – just more sharp, staccato, clanking sound. Daniel realized what was happening. Bar Tikva was putting the stone slab back, trapping them in the tunnel.

Ted looked at Daniel with a concerned expression in his face.

“Can we get out?”

Daniel nodded in the direction away from their starting point.

“That way. But it won’t be quick.”

“Why how long is it?”

“That depends on how far we need to go in order to get out. But I can tell you this tunnel runs all the way to Solomon’s Pools in Bethlehem.”

“Bethlehem?”

“Yes. And that’s over thirteen
miles
from here.”

“And because it had to work under gravity, I assume that it’s all uphill.”

There was resignation in Ted’s tone.

“Yes, but the good news is that it’s not such a steep gradient. Solomon’s Pools are at elevation of seven hundred and sixty five metres. The Temple Mount is seven hundred and
thirty
metres above see level. So that’s a drop of thirty metres in thirteen miles… I think that’s about twenty one and a half kilometres. So it’s a very small drop.”

“I’ll say. And presumably this was built by Herod the Great.”

“Actually no. It’s been dated back to the Hasmonean period – way before Herod.”

“Good God. And I thought only the Romans had that sort of engineering experience.”

“Well Herod brought his Romanized education later. But the ancient Jews had quite a lot of engineering experience.”

“Never mind that now. What about Salim?”

Daniel’s mind was brought back down to reality. Salim had been helping them and now he lay dead – murdered by the same madman who had been pursuing him since he had been arrested in London. The same madman who had tried to kidnap his niece. And probably the same madman who had killed Martin Costa and set fire to the derelict house in Ashwell. It all seemed so long ago and far away now.

But what did he really know about the lunatic? In London he had appeared as a religious Jew with a long beard. The beard was gone now and Daniel couldn’t think of why. Sarit had told him that the people who were after him were from
Shomrei Ha’ir
. But why had they targeted him? And why Martin Costa? It must have something to do with what Costa had found… but what? The
ketuba
? Perhaps. It showed that a Jewish leader had married out of the religion. But then again Bar Giora was himself a convert or a son of a convert.

Why would any of that matter?
Shomrei Ha’ir
might not approve of marrying out of the faith, but it happened long ago. And Bar Giora was hardly the most famous or most important of Jewish leaders through the ages. In the long line of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Daniel, Ezra, Jeremiah and Elijah, he was nothing. Even among the military leaders, like Joshua, Judah the Macabee and Bar Kochba, he was small fry. So what was the big deal? It was just another interesting footnote in the rich history of the Jewish people. Nothing to get hot under the collar about… hardly a reason to kill people .

And now Martin Costa was dead, the two criminals who had helped Bar Tikva when he attacked the police van were also dead and Salim was dead. Perhaps no one would shed any tears over Martin I Costa – and the two criminals that Chienmer Lefou had supplied him with would
certainly
not be missed. But Salim was another matter. Salim was a good man who was helping him because his distant relative Walid had called him all the way from Egypt and asked him to.

And now he would have to explain to Walid and to Salim’s family why their relative had died. And although they would hold the gunman responsible and not Daniel himself, it was hard for Daniel not to feel at least partially responsible. He had brought Salim into this, even if he could not have known of the specific danger that they faced.