The questioning was thorough, relentless and competent. What had they been doing in Morocco? How long had they been there? Had they been there before? If so, why? All repeated again and again, the questions the same, though the way they were asked changed frequently as the interrogators looked for any discrepancies or alterations in their answers. Bronson, who had considerable experience in sitting on the other side of the table, interviewing suspects, was impressed by their thoroughness. He hoped that his police warrant card and Angela's British Museum identification were helping to establish their bona fides.
Only towards the end of the interviews, when they were apparently satisfied with what they'd been doing in Morocco, did the officials begin asking why they'd come to Israel. Bronson had discussed this with Angela on the flight out, and they'd decided that the only right answer to this question had to be 'holiday'. Any other response would simply cause problems and certainly lead to more questioning.
It was mid evening before they were finally allowed to leave the interview rooms by the unsmiling Israelis.
'I don't mind the security checks they do here,' Angela said. 'At least you can feel fairly safe on an El Al flight.'
'We flew British Airways,' Bronson pointed out.
'I know. I mean, when you're flying out of an Israeli airport, the chances of anyone being able to smuggle a weapon or a bomb on to a departing flight are almost nil. Did you know that all hold luggage is subjected to a pressure drop in a sealed bomb-proof chamber that simulates a high-altitude flight, just in case there's a bomb in a suitcase that's linked to a barometric switch? And that's in addition to everything being X-rayed and passing through explosive sniffers?'
'No,' Bronson admitted, 'I didn't. And that is comforting, especially when you compare it to somewhere as leaky and slapdash as Heathrow. The security there is a joke.'
Angela looked at him with a quizzical expression. 'I'm so glad you didn't tell me that before we took off.'
Ben Gurion International airport is close to the city of Lod, about ten miles to the south-east of Tel Aviv, so the train journey only took a few minutes. The railway line followed the route of the main road into the city – in fact, for some of the distance it ran between the two carriageways – and they got off at HaShalom Station, at the edge of the industrial zone, and almost in the shadow of the hulking Azrieli Centre.
Most of the hotels in Tel Aviv are unsurprisingly strung along the Mediterranean coast, but their prices are fairly high, so Bronson had booked two rooms in a more modest establishment tucked away in the side-streets near Zina Square, not far from a tourist office.
They caught a cab from HaShalom to Zina Square, checked into the hotel and deposited their bags, then walked the short distance to the Lahat Promenade that borders Frishman Beach, found a restaurant and enjoyed a reasonable meal. Bronson wished fleetingly that they were going to return to the same room but he decided not to push this. They were in Israel, working together. This, for the time being, would have to be enough.
The BMI flight had landed at Tel Aviv on time late that afternoon; two of the three passengers travelling together on British passports cleared customs and immigration without any particular delays. The third man, Alexander Dexter, was pulled aside and subjected to about an hour of detailed questioning before he was allowed to proceed. But he'd expected that to happen because of the Morocco exit stamp in his passport, so it didn't bother him.
Outside the airport, he rejoined Hoxton and Baverstock, who'd already collected their pre-booked Fiat Punto hire car, and the three men drove off together, heading for the centre of Tel Aviv and their hotel.
Just over two hours after the BMI flight landed at Ben Gurion, a flight arrived from Paris. On board were four men of distinctly Arabic appearance. Their French passports, which lacked any signs of transit through Morocco, raised no suspicions at all, although their luggage was thoroughly checked by the Israeli customs officers.
Once they had left the airport in their Peugeot hire car, heading for a hotel they'd already booked on the outskirts of Jerusalem, the man in the passenger seat made a telephone call to a number in the city on a pay-as-you-go mobile that he'd bought just before they boarded the aircraft in Paris. Once he'd ended the call, he leant back and looked incuriously through the windscreen.
'Everything OK?' the driver asked.
'Yes,' the tall man known only as Yacoub said shortly. 'I know exactly where they are.'
47
The morning sun woke them both early – their rooms were side by side and faced east, towards the Haqirya district of Tel Aviv rather than towards the coast – and Bronson and Angela walked into the dining room just before eight to get some breakfast.
'So what do we do first?' Bronson asked, as they sat over coffee afterwards.
'I'll need to call Yosef and see if we can see him today.'
'Who?' Bronson asked.
'Yosef Ben Halevi. He works at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. He was involved in a project at the British Museum a few years ago and I met him then.'
'And why do we need him, exactly?'
'We need Yosef because he's an expert on Jewish history, and I'm not. I do know something about this area – about Qumran, for example – but not enough about the history of Israel to be able to interpret everything that's on that tablet. We need somebody like him, and he's the only authority I know over here.'
Bronson looked doubtful. 'Well, OK,' he said, 'but you don't really know this man, so don't let him see the pictures of the tablet or the translations. I think we should keep all that to ourselves, at least for the moment.'
'I was planning to,' Angela said. 'I'll call him right now.' She crossed to the reception desk.
She was back in a few minutes. 'He's tied up all day, but he's agreed to drive over here to meet us this evening. Now, we'll need to try to translate the inscription on the tablet, obviously, but it might be useful if we visited Qumran as well, because it's the one location that we know is quite definitely mentioned in the combined inscriptions and so it's as good a place as any to start. I don't expect we'll find much of interest there, but at least it'll give us a feel for the kind of terrain we'll be searching here in Israel.'
'Is it difficult to get to?'
'It shouldn't be. Like Masada, it's a renowned archaeological site, so I'd be surprised if there weren't regular trips out there.'
'There's a tourist office about a hundred yards away,' Bronson said. 'We passed it last night when we walked over to the beach. Let's nip over there and see if we can buy tickets for an organized tour.'
In fact, there were no tours to Qumran. Or rather, there were, but only on certain days of the week, and the next one that had availability wasn't scheduled for another three days.
'Not a problem,' Bronson said, as they left the tourist office. 'We'll hire a car. We'll need to be able to get around while we're out here. Do you want to go now?'
Angela shook her head. 'No. I'd like to work on the inscription first. We'll drive over this afternoon.'
'I don't want you to think I'm paranoid,' Bronson said, 'and I can't see any way that we could have been followed out here, but I still think we should keep out of sight. So I'd rather we didn't work in the hotel lounge or one of the public rooms.'
Angela linked her arm through Bronson's. 'I agree, especially after all we've been through. My room's a bit bigger; why don't we work in there?'
Back in her hotel room, Angela pulled a large paperback book out of her computer bag. 'I found this fairly decent Aramaic dictionary in one of the specialist bookshops near the museum in London. With this and the online translation site, I think we'll manage.'