The man crashed on top of him, forearm pushed up under his chin and so heavy on his throat that he couldn’t breathe. Lourds swung his flashlight at the man’s head, but the man simply shifted his forearm and smashed it into Lourds’s face.
The blow on his still-sore nose brought tears to his eyes as his head rebounded from the cavern floor hard enough to fill his vision with spots and make blood roar in his ears. Lourds gasped for breath, and the man shoved the snout of a vicious-looking pistol into the professor’s mouth.
‘Professor Lourds, my name is Colonel Imad Davari. I have traveled very far to find you, and what you seek. I will not be denied. If I have to, I will shoot you. I will not kill you, but I have learned from great personal experience that you can shoot a healthy man a number of times without any of those wounds being lethal. To do what I need you to do, you don’t need to be able to walk or to move your arms. Therefore, I will shoot out your knees and your elbows to begin with.’
Lourds focused on the man. Miriam had mentioned the colonel in her description of the events that had happened in Evin Prison. There was no doubt that the man would do exactly what he said.
‘Do we have an understanding?’
It was hard speaking around the gun barrel in his mouth, but Lourds was a trained orator, used to making himself understood in many languages. ‘Yeth.’
Davari smiled. ‘Good.’ He patted Lourds’s cheek with his free hand, then pushed himself to his feet. ‘Get up.’
As Lourds stood, he noticed the other five men standing behind Davari. All of them wore thobes and keffiyehs. His heart sank.
The Revolutionary Guards colonel shined his flashlight around the cavern. ‘What is this place?’
‘Before the Dome was built, this was the site of the First and Second Temples.’ Despite his fear, Lourds studied the walls. Some of Davari’s men carried high-powered lanterns. ‘The Temples were carved out of the mountain, taking advantage of natural caverns here. This one was evidently forgotten.’
‘Where are Mohammad’s Koran and the Scroll?’
‘I don’t know.’
Davari grinned at him. ‘Then perhaps we need to explore a little further.’ He waved Lourds forward with his pistol.
The colonel needn’t have bothered with the weapon threat. Lourds picked up his flashlight and went willingly. He didn’t know what he was going to do if there was no Koran and no Scroll.
Except die. Only he felt pretty sure that was going to happen no matter what.
Mufarrij watched as the last of Davari’s men clambered into the hole in the wall beside the stairs. Two other Revolutionary Guards remained on the main floor, keeping an eye on the exiting tourists. They had talked briefly before most of them had split off to follow Davari into the Well of Souls.
Moving swiftly and fearlessly, his wounded face still throbbing, Mufarrij threw himself over the side of the stairs and dropped. When he landed on his feet, his injuries filled his head with such screaming pain that he almost dropped to his knees. He forced himself to move through the agony, reaching out and yanking the stone section back before it completely closed.
The action caught the man in the tunnel off guard. Still holding the wall section, he got dragged forward. His hand flashed to the pistol holstered on his hip, but the thobe got in the way.
Grabbing the man’s neck, Mufarrij twisted violently, shattering his spine like a rotten stick. The body fell to Mufarrij’s feet, and he knelt beside it, searching him. Beneath the loose folds of the thobe, the man carried a silenced 9mm pistol and a machine pistol, an ammo belt around his waist holding extra magazines for both weapons, and a boot knife.
Evidently Davari had an agreement with the Ministry of Awqaf that most visitors didn’t enjoy.
With the ammo belt around his own waist, the pistol in his hand, and the machine pistol looped over his shoulder, Mufarrij climbed into the tunnel. He was doing God’s work now, and he intended to see that Mohammad’s Book and the Scroll did not fall into the Ayatollah’s bloodthirsty hands.
Only a short distance away, Lourds discovered the source of the water noise. A short flight of steps led down into a cistern filled halfway with water. He supposed it had been built during the time of the First or Second Temple and used to supply the people that had lived there. Or, since the Muslim builders of the Dome had lived there as well, perhaps it had been used by them as well.
‘Where are Mohammad’s Koran and the Scroll, Professor Lourds?’ Davari glared at him.
‘I don’t know.’
‘This is a trick.’
Lourds glared back at the man in disbelief. ‘How can it be a trick? I’ve never been here before. I’ve never seen this place. The first time I got here is the first time you got here.’
For a second he thought Davari might shoot him just on general principles. Then a thought occurred to him.
He cocked his head. ‘I hear running water.’
‘What does that have to do with anything?’
‘Running water has to go somewhere.’ Ignoring the pistol in the man’s hand, drawn by his own curiosity, Lourds tracked the noise. ‘Water is a notorious destroyer. Give it the tiniest little crack, and it will cut a chasm through the earth if there is an endless supply. It destroys things more completely than a fire, because you can reconstitute something from ash, but once water has its way with something, there’s usually nothing left.’
Lourds walked to the end of the cistern area, tracking the noise. Directing his light down, he discovered that the cistern had been built in sections. He thought perhaps it might be for rotating the water supply and keeping it fresh.
Set into the center of the last chamber was a block of stone. Water seeped around and under it. Lourds knelt and shined his light into the center of the cistern chamber.
‘What is that?’ Davari was at his side, adding his light to Lourds’s.
‘That is a drain that has evidently worn down over time.’
‘A drain?’
‘Possibly to keep the water fresh, or to get rid of any that was contaminated.’ Lourds shined his flashlight across the tops of the section walls. ‘See there? Those are built like dams.’ He played the light over the sections. ‘Open them up, and the water in that section drains into the one next to it.’
‘Where are the things we came in search of?’
Lourds paced back along the cistern, puzzling it out for himself. Then, in the next-to-last section, he spotted the image of a flying beast lightly chiseled into the stone. Leaning low over the murky water, he directed his beam at the bottom of the cistern.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t strong enough to penetrate the murk. He looked up at Davari and held out a hand. ‘I need your flashlight.’
Davari hesitated a moment, then handed it over. ‘What do you see?’
‘Nothing yet, but that carving wasn’t done for no reason.’ Even though Davari and the Revolutionary Guardsmen were all around him, Lourds couldn’t draw back from the puzzle before him. He leaned down, his face only inches from the still water.
The more powerful beam barely penetrated the water, but there at the bottom of the cistern chamber, a bronze disk nearly a yard across gleamed dully in the light.
52