“The synagogues! Save our holy temples!” And with that, we had a shield. Jews ran to block the mob surging into their quarter. Christians warned that their real goal was the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Mob collided with mob. In moments there was chaos.
With it, Farhi disappeared.
I grabbed the others. “We split up! Jericho and Miriam, you live here. Go home!”
“I heard Muslims call my name,” he said grimly. “We cannot stay in Jerusalem. I was recognized.” He glared at me. “They’ll sack and burn my house.”
I felt sick with guilt. “Then take what you can and flee to the coast.
Smith is organizing the defense of Acre. Seek protection with him there.”
“Come with us!” Miriam pleaded.
“No, alone you two can likely travel unmolested, because you’re native. The rest of us stand out like snowmen in July.” I pressed the seraphim into her hands. “Take these and secrete them until we meet again. We Europeans can run or hide, sneaking when it’s dark.
We’ll go the other way to give you time. Don’t worry. We’ll meet in Acre.”
“I’ve lost my home and reputation for an empty room,” Jericho said bitterly.
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“There was something there,” I insisted. “You know there was. The question is, where is it now? And when we find it, we’ll be rich.” He looked at me with a combination of anger, despair, and hope.
“Go, go, before it’s too late for your sister!” At the same time, Tentwhistle pulled at me. “Come, before it’s too late for us!”
So we parted. I looked back at brother and sister as we ran. “We’ll find it!”
I and the British sailors headed toward the Zion Gate. I looked back once, but Jericho and Miriam were lost in the mobs like flotsam in a tossing sea. We stumbled on, too slow and desperate. Little Tom, his arm sticky with blood, couldn’t hurry but kept manfully on. We entered the Armenian Quarter and came to the gate. Its soldiers had gone, probably to control the rioting or search for us: our first stroke of luck in this entire fiasco. We unbolted the great doors, pushed hard, and passed into open country. The sky was just pinking. Behind, flames, torchlight, and the coming dawn had turned the sky orange above the city’s walls. Ahead was sheltering shadow.
To our right was Mount Zion and the Tomb of David. To the left was the Valley of Hinnom, the Pool of Siloam somewhere in the darkness below. “We’ll circle the city wall to the north and take the Nablus Road,” I said. “If we travel at night we can make Acre in four days and get word to Sidney Smith.”
“What about the treasure?” Tentwhistle asked. “Is that it? Do we give up?”
“You saw it wasn’t there. We have to figure where next to look. I hope to God they didn’t catch Farhi. He’ll know where to try next.”
“No, I think he’s betraying us. Why’d he slip off like that?” I wondered that too.
“It’s our own skins first,” said Big Ned.
And with that his lieutenant jerked and the sound of a shot echoed up the hill. Then another and another, bullets whapping into the dust.
Tentwhistle sat down with a grunt. Then I heard the words in French:
“There they are! Spread out! Cut them off!” It was the group that had tried to brick us up in the tunnels, the t h e
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same Frenchmen who had accosted Miriam. They’d crawled back out of the Pool of Siloam, heard the chaos, and waited under the wall for someone to appear.
I crouched by Tentwhistle and aimed. My lens found one of our ambushers and I fired. He went down. Pretty rifle. I feverishly reloaded.
Ned had taken Tentwhistle’s pistol and he fired too, but our assail-ants were not within pistol range. “All you’ll do is draw their aim with your flash,” I told him. “Get Tom and the lieutenant back through the gate. I’ll hold them here a moment and then we can lose them in the Armenian Quarter.”
Another bullet whined overhead. Tentwhistle was coughing blood, his eyes glazed. He would not live long.
“Right, guv’nor, you buy us time.” Ned began dragging Tentwhistle back, Tom groggily following. “Potts dead, two more of us wounded.
Bloody inspiration, you are.”
It was getting lighter. Bullets pinged as the Frenchmen swarmed closer. I fired again, then glanced behind me. The sailors were back through the gate. No time to reload, time to go! In a crouch, I sidled backward toward it. Dark forms were closing like circling wolves.
Then I heard a creak. The gate was closing! I scuttled rapidly, and just made it to the city wall when the gate boomed shut, locking me out. I heard the thud of its bar being slid home.
“Ned! Open up!” There was a French command and I threw myself flat just before a volley went off. Bullets hammered against the iron like hail. I was like a condemned man at an execution wall. “Hurry, they’re coming!”
“I think we’ll be going our own way, guv’nor,” Ned called.
“Own way? For God’s sake . . .”
“I don’t think these frogs will care that much about a couple of poor British sailors. You’re the one with the treasure secrets, ain’t you?”
“What, you’re leaving me to them?”
“Maybe you can lead ’em on like you did us, eh?”
“Damn, Ned, let’s stand together, as the lieutenant said!”
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“But I didn’t cheat, I outsmarted you!”
“The same bloody thing.”
“Ned, open this gate!”
But there was no reply, just the mute slab.
“Ned!” Lying prone, I hammered on the unyielding iron. “Ned!
Let me in!”
But he didn’t, of course, as I strained to hear their retreat over the city’s tumult. I turned back. The French had crept to just yards away, and several muskets were trained on me. The tallest one smiled.
“We said good-bye beneath the Temple Mount and yet we meet again!” their leader cried. He doffed a tricorn hat and bowed. “You do have a talent of being everywhere, Monsieur Gage, but then so do I, do I not?” His was a torturer’s grin. “Surely you remember me, from the Toulon stage? Pierre Najac, at your service.”
“I remember you: The customs inspector who turned out to be a thief. So is Najac your real name?”
“Real enough. What happened to your friends, monsieur?” Slowly I stood. “Disappointed in a game of cards.”
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Iknew I was in hell when Najac insisted on showing me his bullet wound. It was the one I’d given him the year before, red and scabby, on a torso that couldn’t have seen soap or a washcloth for a month. The little crater was a few inches below his left nipple and toward his left side, confirming that my aim had been off by degrees. Now I knew he smelled bad, too.
“It broke a rib,” he said. “Imagine my pleasure when I learned after my convalescence that you might be alive and that I could help my master track you down. First you were stupid enough to make inquiry in Egypt. Then, when we came here we caught a doddering old fool who squealed about meeting a Frank carrying Satan’s gold angels, once we’d roasted him enough. That’s when I knew you must be close.
Revenge is sweeter the longer it is delayed, don’t you think?”
“I’ll let you know when I finally kill you.” He laughed at my little joke, stood, and then kicked the side of my head so hard that the night dissolved into bright bits of light. I toppled over by the fire, bound hand and foot, and it was the smoldering of my clothes and resulting pain that finally jarred me enough to wriggle away. This greatly amused my captors, but then I always 1 0 2
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did enjoy being the center of attention. Afterward the burn kept me feverish. It was the night after our departure from Jerusalem, and fear and pain were the only things keeping me conscious. I was exhausted, sore, and frightfully alone. Najac’s party of bullyboys had somehow swelled to ten, half of them French and the rest bedraggled Bedouin who looked like the kitchen grease of Arabia, ugly as toads.