She took a last lingering glance across the square, emitted a sound that was almost a moan of pain, then turned away and began walking slowly through the streets, heading back towards the hotel because she had no idea where else to go or what else to do.
As she walked, she was aware of more sirens sounding in the streets around the Old City, and a couple of times she ducked out of sight into sheltered doorways when she heard the sound of running feet nearby. She guessed these were people making for the Kotel Plaza and the growing commotion there, but nobody actually passed her as she walked away from the scene, head down.
She walked slowly and appeared calm, but her mind was racing, selecting and discarding possibilities and scenarios. The only glimmer of hope she had was that she had clearly heard two shots and then — she was almost certain of this — a third, and then two more. Bronson didn’t have a pistol, and that meant that it had to have been one or both of the two men she’d seen coming out of the Western Wall Heritage who’d been doing the shooting. And the fact that it hadn’t just been two quick shots might have meant that the bullets hadn’t killed Bronson, otherwise there would have been no point in firing again. So maybe, just maybe, he’d been spotted in the tunnels and they’d shot at him but missed, and then made their escape when they heard the sound of the sirens.
So if her hopeful reconstruction of events was right, it was possible that her ex-husband might still be alive. Wounded, perhaps, and by now in police custody, but alive. She would have to wait until the normal routine of the city had started later in the morning, and then she could start searching by phone, checking the hospitals and of course the local police station.
And then all her tentative plans and schemes vanished completely from her mind as a dark figure stepped out of an alleyway just a few feet in front of her.
Angela gave a gasp of surprise, then a murmur of recognition. She ran the few paces that separated them, wrapped her arms around him and squeezed as if she would never let him go.
‘Dear God,’ she murmured, her voice muffled by the clothes he was wearing, ‘I thought you were dead. When I heard those shots—’ She broke off, stifling a sob, and stared into his face. ‘You’re hurt,’ she said.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Bronson said. ‘It’s just a scratch. I got hit by a ricochet from one of the first shots they fired.’
‘Let me see,’ Angela said tenderly, and steered him back into the alleyway from which he had appeared, where the light from her torch would hopefully not attract attention.
She shone the dim beam at his forehead, altered the angle a couple of times to see better, and then nodded.
‘It might just be a scratch, but it has bled rather a lot.’
She reached into her pocket, pulled out a packet of tissues and wiped off the blood, which was already starting to clot.
She took out another tissue, folded it to make a pad and then instructed Bronson to spit on it.
‘What the hell happened in there?’ she asked, ignoring his quizzical expression. She cleared more blood from Bronson’s forehead with the dampened tissue. ‘You can’t infect yourself,’ she added. ‘That’s why you’re spitting on the tissues, not me.’
‘There were three of them,’ Bronson began, but Angela stopped him almost immediately.
‘I only saw two come out.’
Bronson sighed.
‘Yes,’ he said, in a low voice. ‘The third one is still down there in the tunnel.’
‘But couldn’t he identify you?’ Angela began, but then stopped as Bronson gave a small shake of his head. ‘Oh… You mean he’s in no fit state to talk? To ever talk?’
‘Let me put it this way: he won’t be causing us, or anybody else, any problems in the future. He was about to shoot me so I didn’t really have a choice. It was him or me.’
‘Are you okay?’ she whispered. ‘Who was he?’
‘I have no idea. I checked his pockets before I left, but all he had were a few spare rounds for his pistol and a wallet containing some cash. I took them both, because he obviously wasn’t going to be able to use either. And his pistol as well, just in case we need a bit of firepower before all this is over.’
‘You’ve always told me that professionals never carry ID,’ Angela said, a look of worry again crossing her face. ‘So do you think that’s what he was? A professional, but a professional what? I mean, what did he look like?’
‘Black hair, dark skin and fairly pronounced features, but basically unremarkable. I’ve never been a believer in coincidence, and in my view the chances of there being another group of people — a group unrelated to those people in Iraq, I mean — exploring the interior of the Temple Mount at the same time as us is nil. I don’t know who he was, but I’d bet money that he was a part of the group that hit your camp and destroyed the inscription. So that’s another reason why I don’t feel too bad about what happened to him.’
Angela didn’t respond, and Bronson glanced at her as they walked along the street.
‘And are you OK?’ he asked.
‘No, not really. I had kind of hoped that when we got here we’d be well ahead of our pursuers, so we could find whatever clue there’s left under the Temple Mount and then get out of Israel to somewhere a bit safer. But if you’re right, that means those people have also cracked the hidden message in the inscription, otherwise they wouldn’t be here.’
‘Well, the decryption wasn’t all that easy, but it also wasn’t desperately difficult. I’ve no doubt that whoever these guys are, they would have done exactly the same thing and reached precisely the same conclusion that we did. And as they’re here now, assuming I’m right, it even took them roughly the same length of time to crack it as us.’
‘That makes sense,’ Angela said, sounding subdued. ‘And obviously it’s wonderful that you got out of the tunnel before the police arrived, but we can’t be too blasé about the fact that you killed a man tonight. Whether or not he deserved to die doesn’t matter, because pretty soon the entire Israeli police force will be looking for his murderer.’
They were silent for a moment.
‘And how did you get out?’ she asked as another thought struck her. ‘I kept watch until the police arrived, and the only people who came out of the entrance were those two men I told you about.’
‘I used the other entrance, or rather the exit from the Western Wall Tunnel. Just picked the lock and walked away. I didn’t dare risk going out the way I’d come in, just in case one of the men was still waiting for me or — maybe even worse — if the police had got there quicker than I’d expected and found me standing there holding a length of rebar covered in blood and with an unlicensed pistol in my pocket.’
‘Where did you put it? The rebar, I mean, because your fingerprints and obviously his blood would be all over it.’
‘You don’t have to worry about that,’ Bronson replied. ‘This city is full of holes and crevices because of all the different layers that have been built on it over the centuries. I found a narrow slit between two buildings, wiped the bar and then dropped it down into the opening. It fell quite a long way before I heard a clunk, so I reckon the chances of anybody finding it are pretty much nil.’
‘And because you left a dead man down there, I suppose now we have to get out of Jerusalem as quickly as we can. So that’s the end of it? The search, I mean?’