Several people around him got excited and nervous.
‘That was a tremor!’
‘The ground moved! Did you feel it?’
‘Was that an earthquake?’
All the voices spoke different languages, but Lourds understood them all. What he didn’t understand was the tremor. He’d never experienced one inside the Dome before though he knew the earth shifted and moved constantly, and that this region was overdue for a major earthquake.
At the bottom of the stairs, behind the stairwell, Lourds spotted a crack in the wall that he was pretty certain hadn’t been there before. As he stared at it again, another tremor surged through the cave, and the crack grew wider. He walked closer and saw that the crack actually outlined a section of the wall. Standing next to it, he felt a stone at his feet shift.
Looking down, he saw that the carpet had shifted slightly to reveal a winged horselike beast. ‘Al-Buraq.’ His heard his own whisper though he couldn’t remember speaking.
The cavern shifted again, and this time a new exodus began, this one involving panicked flight from the Well of Souls. Hasty feet and frightened voices echoed up out of the cave.
Lourds stood his ground, hiked up his thobe, and took out his pry bar. Inserting the hardened tip into the crack, he pushed hard.
The wall section slid open to reveal a small crawl space beyond. On the lip of the entrance, another image of al-Buraq was cut into the stone.
Lourds took a flashlight from his pocket, turned it on, and crawled inside. He paused long enough to push the wall section back into place, then started crawling forward into the darkness.
51
Keeping her head down, trying not to make eye contact with anyone, Miriam circulated through the Dome of the Rock. She tried to concentrate on finding Mohammad’s Koran and the Scroll, but her thoughts kept returning to Thomas Lourds. Even though she’d held no illusions about the intimacy they’d shared turning into something lasting, seeing Alice Von Volker’s obvious familiarity with him had been a bit much.
Even worse, Lourds didn’t even seem that upset by what had happened. He’d stayed focused — eyes on the prize. That was enough to undermine a woman’s confidence.
Get your head together. Concentrate on doing what you came here to do. If you do anything less, you’re going to be dead soon.
‘Orchid, do you have the package in sight?’ That was Katsas Shavit over the earpiece Miriam wore. The Muslim security people hadn’t caught that.
‘No. We’re still separated.’
‘You need to find him.’
Miriam glanced at her watch and realized that more time had passed than she had realized. She’d gotten lost in her thoughts. Getting back from Turkey had been a nightmare, and they’d been on the move almost constantly.
Almost.
They’d managed to find a hotel room last night before meeting with Alice Von Volker this morning. Miriam hadn’t been happy about Lourds’s choosing to share information with the woman, but she hadn’t been able to do anything about it without blowing her cover. Such as it was.
Though Lourds hadn’t said anything, she was fairly sure he wasn’t buying the ‘graduate assistant’ story anymore.
‘I’m looking for the package now.’
‘Where would it have gone?’
Miriam wanted to point out that the ‘package’ had the distraction level of a two-year-old and could forget it was in danger. ‘It was en route to the Well of Souls.’
‘Can you get there?’
‘Yes. I’m on my way.’ Miriam turned and headed for the Well of Souls.
‘Hold your position.’
Casually, Miriam stopped and adjusted her hijab. One of the buttons on her burqa had been replaced with a minicam. Signal boosters for the earpiece and the camera had been built into her shoes. Getting through security had been nerve-wracking, but she’d worked with the hardware before and trusted that the modifications were undetectable.
‘Do you see the man at your three o’clock?’
Looking forward, Miriam used her peripheral vision to look at the man Katsis Shavit had pointed out.
He was lean and bearded, with a haughty demeanor. A scar from a knife wound bisected his nose and scored his left cheek. Miriam was certain she’d never seen him before, and just as certain that she would remember him.
‘That is Bozorg Alavi, a member of the Revolutionary Guards. He’s an associate of Colonel Imad Davari.’
Miriam’s stomach churned a little at the man’s name. Those hours she’d spent in Evin Prison were still too close. They haunted her dreams, and only lying next to Lourds had prevented them from overwhelming her.
She felt a flush of guilt then as she realized why she’d been drawn to him. She’d been using Lourds as a security blanket. That was not what she wanted in a man.
‘Then Davari is here.’
‘We couldn’t confirm him as a casualty during the skirmish at the Turkish border.’
Miriam took a deep breath. ‘I’ve got to get to the package.’ She headed toward the Well of Souls, hoping she would be in time. At that moment, another of the strange tremors that had manifested only moments ago shook the Dome.
At the stairwell, a crowd of people emerged from below, and the wailing noise inside the cave intensified. An electric pang of fear passed through Miriam.
Bozorg Alavi had headed for the Well of Souls, too.
Colonel Davari paused at the top of the staircase and peered down as the crowd of people fled up the steps. He despised them, knowing they’d gone down into the cave and frightened themselves over the small tremors. Those were nothing.
At the bottom of the stairs, Lourds paused at the wall. Something long and metal glinted in his hand as he worked on the wall. In the next moment, Davari watched in astonishment as the American professor pulled out a section of the wall, crawled inside, and pushed the section back into place behind him as though it had never been disturbed.
All the frightened idiots fleeing up the stairs didn’t notice the professor’s disappearance.
Davari called to his men over the earpiece he wore, summoning them as he descended into the Well of Souls.
Pausing for a moment, still on his hands and knees, Lourds shined his flashlight around and saw the surrounding stone was worn smooth. Obviously, the tunnel had been used frequently in the past, but had sealed over and been forgotten long ago.
Pointing the flashlight forward again, he kept crawling. After a couple of turns, he came to a large cavern. He slid out of the tunnel headfirst, landing on his hands, losing the flashlight for a moment, then rolling to his feet.
The light didn’t span the distance across the dark cavern, and his footsteps echoed in the emptiness, but he also heard the sound of running water. The water was a constant flow, but it wasn’t a rush.
Something snapped underfoot. When he shined the flashlight down, he discovered he’d stepped on a rat skeleton, snapping the rib cage like small firecrackers.
Realizing he was walking out into the darkness with no point of reference, he turned back around. He felt panicked for just a moment when he discovered he’d walked farther than he’d thought. Gratefully, he reached the cave wall again, then lifted the flashlight to peer into the tunnel.
His light struck the eyes of the man hiding within the tunnel. Before Lourds could back away, the man leaped at him and knocked him backwards. Lourds tried to stay on his feet, but the man’s speed and strength overwhelmed him and drove him farther back and back, until he finally tripped and went down.