Angela looked at him.
‘Now that,’ she began, ‘is a very interesting idea. Not a new idea, but definitely interesting. It’s been claimed, but of course we can’t definitively prove it, that the Ark was hidden in a special chamber located deep underneath the temple before Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian forces swept through the city back in about 600 BC. Herod’s construction of the Temple Mount came much later, of course, but I don’t see any reason why they couldn’t have made a similar arrangement. The Ark of the Covenant, their most precious relic, could well have been hidden in that way, which could explain why the Arch of Titus in Rome has a very clear carved image on it of the Jewish Menorah, an important part of the spoils of war from the Judaean campaign, but no image at all that could possibly be the Ark itself.’
Bronson inclined his head in an ironic bow.
‘It is only an idea,’ he emphasized, ‘a simplistic deduction based on what little I know of this area, and I can’t offer you a shred of evidence in support of it.’
‘However,’ Angela went on, ‘if that hypothesis is correct, I don’t quite know how it helps us. Your idea, basically, is that the Jewish priests could have hidden treasures within the Temple Mount, and over a millennium later the Knights Templar could have tunnelled inside and dug them up and then, presumably, secreted them somewhere else, possibly to indulge in a little creative blackmail of the Pope, depending on exactly what they’d found. So these two separate events — hiding the treasure or relics or whatever and the Templars discovering them — would have taken place in the first and twelfth centuries respectively. But the Latin translation of the inscription seems to me to refer to the Temple Mount, and the author seems fairly clear that this key — this word or whatever that we need to translate the second half of the text — is inscribed on stone in one of the subterranean chambers. So if the chambers were sealed when Herod built the platform on the Temple Mount, Mount Moriah, how did somebody get inside the structure during — and I’m guessing here — the mediaeval period?’
‘It wouldn’t have been that difficult,’ Bronson said. ‘Although the Temple Mount is basically closed and off-limits to everybody today, that wasn’t always the case. There’s a large vaulted cavern on the south-east side of the Mount that’s usually referred to as King Solomon’s Stables, though Solomon had nothing to do with it and the chamber was actually built by Herod when he enclosed Mount Moriah. We’re almost certain that the Templars used it as stabling for their horses, so obviously access to it was open in that period, which is kind of early mediaeval, I suppose. There are also about half a dozen cisterns within the Temple Mount that were obviously used for water collection, but more importantly there are several gates, all now bricked up but which were open in antiquity. Most of these led into the Mount itself and terminated in sets of steps that gave access to the platform where the two mosques now stand. Basically, most of these gates and the tunnels and steps inside the Mount simply served as shortcuts for people from Jerusalem who wanted to climb up to the temple to worship.’
‘So actually,’ Angela said, ‘although the chambers in the centre of the Mount were sealed, there were plenty of passageways where our unknown author could have inscribed the key.’
‘Exactly. And that’s why we need to take another look — a careful look — at the Latin translation.’
44
Salim’s death had been something of a shock to the other members of the group. But they were freedom fighters, battling for Islam and any paymaster who saw fit to use their services, and in that line of work deaths were inevitable. In fact, they all believed — and hoped — that they would die with a weapon in their hands.
Even so, none of them had ever expected to meet their fate in a dark tunnel deep underground, a tunnel under the control of the Jews, and especially not at the hands of an infidel who was actually unarmed. That seemed to all of them to be a shameful death, dishonourable in almost every way, and the best way to avenge their companion was to find the man who had killed him as quickly as possible, and then ensure that his death would take a long time to come.
So when Farooq issued his new orders, there had been no dissenting voices, and a few minutes after dawn the group split up to begin surveillance on the hotels near the Temple Mount. Khaled had been unable to find a decent photograph of Bronson, but he had obtained several good-quality pictures of his former wife. And in a country where almost every woman had brown skin and black hair, Angela Lewis, blonde and with a fair complexion, unmistakably Western European, should stand out.
‘If you see her, either by herself or with the man Bronson,’ Farooq instructed, ‘do not attempt to kill them immediately. Even after we have disposed of these two we will still have things to do here in Jerusalem, and we must not get involved in a firefight on the streets of the Old City. So if you spot them, do two things. First, follow them and do not lose sight of them, otherwise you will answer to me. Second, call me with the exact location, so that I can begin directing your comrades into appropriate positions. There will be a small bonus for the man who locates them.’ Farooq paused and smiled at the group. ‘This will not necessarily be in the form of money. The woman has to die as well as the man, but her death need not be immediate.’
A couple of minutes later, the five-man group, plus Farooq, slipped out of the café they had selected for their early-morning meeting, each man clutching a street map of the city, a colour photograph of Angela Lewis and a sheet of paper on which Farooq had written the names and addresses of the hotels that they were to check individually, and the streets they were to patrol.
As he stepped out of the building, Farooq glanced up at the sky. It was a powdery blue, and the first rays of the morning sun were spearing over the buildings and craggy terrain that lay over to the east. It was going to be hot, there was no doubt about that, and already he could smell the streets, that strange mixture of ancient dust and humanity crowded together in one spot, a scent that seemed unique to Jerusalem.
If Khaled solved the problem of the key, and he and his men were able to find and take care of Bronson and Lewis, then they could be heading out of Jerusalem that very same day.
45
Farooq’s plan was a good one, but it did rather rely on their quarry making themselves visible, which is what both he and Khaled had expected. Because the spaces under the Temple Mount had not yielded the results they had anticipated, they had assumed that Bronson and Lewis would be back out on the streets, still searching for the key, perhaps at the Wailing Wall or somewhere nearby. Khaled assumed that the English couple must have broken the code and read the first part of the inscription, just as he had done, otherwise they would not be in Jerusalem at all.
What he hadn’t anticipated, though, was that Bronson and Angela were one step ahead of him in terms of the trail they were following.
After their breakfast, Angela and Bronson had returned to their room just minutes before Mahmoud, smartly dressed in a dark suit, had walked into the hotel as if he was just another guest, or perhaps a businessman meeting a guest, and had looked at the handful of occupants of all the public rooms. Just as in the previous establishments he’d visited, he had hoped to find a fellow Muslim with whom he could have struck up a conversation and discreetly enquired about the whereabouts of his ‘young female English friend’. Farooq had suggested this approach as being less likely to arouse suspicion than a direct approach to a concierge or receptionist. After all, it was just a short step between simple suspicion and contacting the police, especially in a city as laced and riven with racial tension as Jerusalem. And they definitely needed to keep the police out of their business.