He bent down to examine the lock on the outer gate, while Angela shone a light so that he could see what he was doing.
That afternoon, as well as buying the tools that were now in his pocket, Bronson had also purchased four torches, two small and two larger and more powerful, and half a dozen spare batteries for each. He’d then taken one of the small torches and placed electrical tape over the glass so that the beam of light it emitted was reduced to little more than the diameter of a pencil. That, he knew, would give him more than enough light to work by, but hopefully would not be bright enough to attract the attention of any passers-by.
He gripped the handle of the gate firmly, but even as he did so, something totally unexpected happened: the gate swung open silently at his touch.
‘What?’ he muttered.
‘It’s already open,’ Angela whispered, stating what was surprisingly obvious to them both.
‘They definitely wouldn’t have forgotten to lock it,’ Bronson said, equally quietly. ‘I don’t think we’re the first intruders to get inside here tonight.’
Angela gripped his arm.
‘You mean they’re already here? Somewhere inside the tunnel? We should go back, just forget this.’
‘I really don’t want to do that.’ Bronson’s tone was firm. ‘Whatever they’re doing in the tunnels, they’re bound to leave traces. That means the Israeli authorities will know that someone was in here, and they’ll immediately step up their security. The only chance we have of getting in there is tonight. Right now, in fact. Whoever’s inside won’t know that we’re behind them, so hopefully we can just follow them while they do the searching for us.’ He paused. ‘Look, are you still up for this?’ he asked. ‘You know, right now you can still walk away. I can do this by myself.’
Angela didn’t respond for a moment, her face a pale oval in the dim moonlight. Then she shook her head.
‘If those are the same people that massacred my colleagues in Iraq,’ she whispered, ‘then I definitely don’t want to go in there tonight. Walking into a black tunnel where there are men carrying guns isn’t my idea of good thinking, and you shouldn’t go in there either, not without a weapon.’
He touched her arm in reassurance.
‘If it is those men, then if they’re armed at all they’ll be carrying pistols, and pistols aren’t going to be too much use in a confined space like the tunnel and spaces under the Temple Mount.’
He reached down and picked up a length of rebar — the steel reinforcing bar used in concrete — that was lying on the ground just outside the doorway.
‘Down there in the dark, this will probably be more use than a pistol. I’ll be okay.’
Angela’s face was barely visible in the moonlight, but Bronson could still see from her expression that she was terrified for him.
‘There could be a dozen of them in there,’ she said, ‘just waiting for you to walk in. We should go, just forget all about this,’ she added, repeating herself.
For a few seconds, Bronson contemplated doing just that, taking the easy option. But he knew that if they didn’t get to the bottom of the mystery neither he nor, more importantly, Angela, would ever be safe. There was no option. He had to get in there, no matter what the risks. And having come this far he was desperate to solve this mystery too. He shook his head.
‘I doubt very much if there are that many inside. And they’ll be looking in front of them, searching for this key thing, not behind, where I’ll be.’
For a long moment, Angela just stared at him, her eyes unblinking as if she was committing his face to her memory. Then she bowed her head and nodded.
‘I really don’t want you to do this, Chris. But I know I won’t be able to stop you. I can’t go with you, I just can’t, but I’ll stay out here and listen. And if I hear anything, then I’m going to call the police.’
‘Good.’ He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Stay close and keep your ears open. I’ll be fine.’
And a second later Bronson, a black-suited figure barely visible against the night sky, was gone, stepping inside the gate and out of sight.
In the square, Angela took out her mobile and checked the signal strength and the amount of charge remaining in the battery — both indicated nearly the maximum — then made herself as small as she could, squatting down beside the entrance to the Western Wall Heritage, where hopefully she would not be seen, but would still be close enough to the entrance to hear anything happening inside.
39
The Western Wall Tunnel runs under the outmost portion of the Temple Mount, part of it behind the Wailing Wall, though this section of the tunnel is only about ninety yards long, while the structure as a whole extends to about five hundred yards.
Over the years, various excavations, authorized and unauthorized, have been made in and around the area, with the result that within the tunnel there are a number of closed-off spaces to which visitors have no access.
Of course, that presupposes that the visitors have not entered the tunnel complex equipped with bolt croppers, pry bars and other tools that would facilitate the opening of a locked gate or door.
Farooq was keenly aware of the problems he would face in the dark and confined spaces beneath the Temple Mount, and he had chosen only two of his men to come with him on his nocturnal expedition. All were carrying their pistols, as well as the tools that they had thought they would need.
They had done their best to prepare themselves as well. The previous evening he and Khaled had spent a considerable length of time online researching everything that was known about the subterranean structures within the Temple Mount, including the detailed maps produced by Charles Warren, the British army officer who had entered the spaces during his three-year dig in Jerusalem in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
They didn’t know exactly what they were going to find when — or rather if — they managed to get into the chambers under the Temple Mount itself, but thanks to Charles Warren at least they had a good idea of where they needed to go.
If Khaled’s assumption was correct, and the inscription’s ‘lost temple’ was one or both of the vanished Jewish temples that had originally stood on the Temple Mount, then what they needed to do was to get into one of the chambers below the Dome of the Rock. As Muslims, both men already knew that one famous chamber existed underneath the present mosque.
Accessible by a stairway was a carpeted prayer chamber known as the Br al Arwah, the Well of Souls, from which could be seen the crack in the Foundation Stone supposed to have been caused by Muhammad ascending from it to heaven and the rock splitting as it tried to follow him. In early Jewish times, the chamber was reputed to have been where the Ark of the Covenant was placed for safety while Jerusalem was under attack, and according to legend the relic might still be hidden somewhere in that cave. Islamic teaching states that the Well of Souls is where all the spirits of the dead will assemble at the end of the world, awaiting the final judgment of God.
But that cave was accessible only from within the Dome of the Rock, and was in any case so well used and documented that the presence of any mysterious inscriptions or carvings would have become common knowledge long ago. No, Khaled was quite certain that the chamber — the hypogeum — that they sought lay below, perhaps some distance below, the Well of Souls, and would only be accessible from underneath.
If they were to take the translated text of the inscription literally, then they should be searching the area that lay directly below the Dome of the Rock. And that meant surveying the wall that had been constructed around the buried portion of the Foundation Stone to form a large chamber, and checking the areas that Charles Warren had named on his map the Great Sea and Cohain’s Mikva, their original purposes and reasons for their names forgotten in the grey mists of ancient history. They might even have to go as far over as the Eastern Wall and the Shushan Gate.