It was quieter here. More sheltered. He passed two old ladies wrapped in black robes and headscarves and deep in conversation as they walked towards him, but nobody else. Luke was shivering with cold from his earlier soaking and his brain felt like it had shut down. He needed to get something hot inside him to raise his body temperature. When he passed a shop with its grille open and a picture of a steaming cup painted on the window, he checked for security cameras inside. Seeing none, he entered.
It was warm in here, and almost empty. That suited Luke just fine. There were four tables, each with foil ashtrays, and a Formica counter behind which stood a young woman of about twenty with dark hair, dark eyes and a good couple of inches of cleavage on show. She smiled and looked him up and down. She didn’t seem at all put off by his dishevelled state. Quite the opposite, in fact. She gave Luke an appealing smile, which he didn’t return.
‘Coffee,’ he said. ‘Black.’
She inclined her head. ‘English?’ she asked in a throaty voice.
Luke nodded and continued to look around the room. There was only one other customer — an incredibly ancient man dressed in an old black suit and with a black hat perched on the table in front of him next to his coffee cup. He looked up at Luke with piercing blue eyes. Just behind him, against the left-hand wall, was a low shelf with an old beige computer and a stool at which to sit. Alongside the screen was a Perspex rack of free postcards and tourist leaflets.
‘But not on vacation?’ the woman said. ‘Who would come to Jerusalem on vacation right now…?’
‘Can I use that?’ Luke interrupted her, pointing at the computer.
She looked a bit offended by his lack of interest. ‘Sure. I’ll get your coffee.’
Luke sat down at the terminal, flicked through the tourist brochures and pulled out a map of the city. Then he nudged the mouse. Immediately the screen flickered on, already open on the Google.co.il homepage. His fingers hovered over the keyboard for a moment as he thought over the events of the day. He put himself back on the roof in Gaza and closed his eyes as he recalled Stratton’s rant. The troops of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary…
He typed the words slowly, his cold, dirty fingers feeling too big for the keys, then pressed enter. A bewildering array of results appeared in front of him. He clicked through to a few at random to find some dense religious texts, in English but so impenetrable that they just seemed to dance in front of his eyes. Bullshit.
A mug of coffee suddenly appeared next to the keyboard. Luke only glanced up when he realised the young woman was standing over him.
‘You don’t look the type,’ she said.
He reached out for his coffee and took a gulp. The hot liquid scorched his throat. ‘What do you mean?’ he grunted. She wore a musky perfume and it smelled good.
‘All that millennialist shit,’ she said pointing at the page he had open. ‘Ben kalba, we see it all in this city. All the lunatics and the…’
‘What’s a millenni…?’ Luke interrupted her. But the young woman had turned her back on him and was sashaying back to the counter. It crossed Luke’s mind that she was moving her hips more than she would had he not been looking. A week ago he’d have been like a dog on heat. Not now. For a brief, irrational moment he considered storming up to her, putting one hand round her pretty little throat and asking her what the hell she was talking about.
‘Daniel, chapter nine.’
It was the old man who had spoken. His voice was dry and croaky and his lined old face surveyed Luke without expression.
‘What?’
The elderly customer glanced at the screen. ‘“The troops of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war…” You’re shaking, young man. You need to put some warmer clothes on.’
But Luke went on staring at the screen, and from the mass of text in front of him picked out the very words the old man had just spoken. ‘What does it mean?’ he asked. ‘What’s the sanctuary?’
‘The Temple, of course,’ the old man said quietly. He gave a sad little smile. ‘Some people say that it has already been destroyed. That the prophecy of Daniel has already been fulfilled and the Western Wall is all that remains of that holy place.’
Luke blinked as Stratton’s voice echoed in his head. When the wall falls, no one will be able to stop the war that is coming…
‘Our poor city has been the scene of much fighting over the ages.’ The old man raised his coffee cup with trembling, bony hands, the veins blue and pronounced. He drank slowly, thoughtfully, before putting the cup back down. ‘Some, of course, think that the destruction is soon to come.’ He smiled. ‘That the tour guides don’t tell you.’
The old man looked down at his hands, which were clasped on the table. He looked like he’d lost interest in the conversation.
‘Who thinks that?’ Luke pressed. ‘Who are you talking about?’
The old man suddenly pulled a white handkerchief from his sleeve and blew his nose noisily before he turned back to Luke. ‘Those who believe,’ he replied, ‘that a sequence of violent events will announce the Second Coming of the Messiah, and that his reign on earth will last for a thousand years.’ He paused. ‘You look shocked that people might hanker after such things, young man?’
He took another sip from his coffee.
‘Violent events…’ Luke muttered.
‘That’s what they say.’ He waved his hand dismissively at the computer. ‘I’m sure your… machine knows all about it. I’m told they know about everything.’
But Luke wasn’t looking at the computer. Alistair Stratton was a warmonger. Violent events stuck to him like shit to a shovel.
‘You know,’ the old man continued, almost as though he was talking to himself, ‘the world makes a mistake when it believes the only fundamentalists belong to Islam. Oh, it’s true that there are many who would destroy the Western Wall and return the Temple Mount to the sole control of the Arabs. But there are many Christian men and women who live in expectation of Armageddon, and who believe it will be preceded by a great conflict in the biblical lands…’ He stopped short. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I’m boring you.’
He picked his hat up from the table, placed it on his head and started to stand.
‘Wait,’ Luke said.
The old man inclined his head.
‘If the Arabs destroyed the Western Wall, what would happen?’
For a moment he didn’t answer. Halfway between sitting and standing, he forced his gnarled body upright.
‘Destroyed the Western Wall?’
Luke nodded.
‘With the countries of the world on a knife’s edge and armies circling the Middle East like vultures around carrion?’ The old man glanced towards the computer screen where the webpage Luke had been reading was still up. ‘Well then, it will be as the Book of Daniel has foretold,’ he said. ‘To the end there shall be war.’ He smiled, then raised his hat a little. ‘Good evening to you,’ he rasped, ‘and happy Hanukkah.’ He headed to the exit and didn’t look back before he disappeared into the night.
Luke sat there stunned. He was vaguely aware that the woman behind the counter was still looking at him, that her lips were slightly parted and her dark eyes full of meaning.
But his thoughts were elsewhere.
The pieces of the jigsaw were falling into place.
Alistair Stratton had already persuaded Maya Bloom to orchestrate one atrocity in Britain. Now it was just a matter of time before she orchestrated a second here in Jerusalem. And with the world on the brink of war, this was the final act that would push it over the precipice. Stratton hadn’t got into bed with the Grosvenor Group for money. His aims were altogether more apocalyptic than that. He was insane, of course, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous. Quite the opposite. He was manipulating the Palestinians into bringing about their own destruction. And when that happened…