Lost Temple

Two

The castle stood on a promontory, a thumb of land sticking out into the calm Mediterranean. French knights had built it some eight hundred years earlier, to keep out invaders tempted by the flat coast and the tranquil sea. In the end they had failed, but the castle survived: a monument to the crusaders' extraordinary aptitude for war, gently crumbling through the centuries.

Now a new generation of colonisers had revived it, embellishing the medieval ramparts with innovations unimaginable to the men who built it. Barbed wire ran along the massive walls, and the crossbowmen in the towers had been superseded by Bren guns. But they were no longer there to keep enemies away. The castle had been turned in on itself, and the stout fortifications now protected the realm by keeping men in rather than out.

The car pulled up outside the gate just before midnight. Leaving the engine running, the driver jumped out and ran to open the rear door. If he had learned one thing on the long drive from Jerusalem, it was that his passenger was not a man to tolerate delay.

'Wait here,' came the curt instruction. 'I won't be long.'

A wand of light cut through the darkness and in a moment a fair-haired man in an officer's uniform emerged from the arched gateway carrying a torch. 'Lieutenant Cargill, sir.'

'How do you do?' The visitor didn't introduce himself, nor take the hand that hovered in front of him as it wondered whether to shake or salute. 'Don't you have electricity here?'

'The generator conked out this afternoon, I'm afraid.' Cargill seemed eager to please; he hadn't yet discovered that this was a lost cause where Muir was concerned. 'How was your journey, sir?'

'Fucking terrible.' Muir followed Cargill through the arch, down a vaulted passage and out into a courtyard that had become home to a colony of Nissen huts. 'Have you been to Jerusalem recently? Our esteemed government's turned the centre of town into some sort of miniature Birkenau and locked themselves inside it. Wrapped themselves in barbed wire. Even then they can't protect themselves against these fucking Irgun guerrillas.' He shook his head in disgust. 'Anyway, our man's still here?'

Surprised by the change of tack, Cargill took a moment to answer. 'I've had him moved to the interrogation room ready for your arrival. Actually, we weren't sure what time you would arrive — he's been there a few hours now.'

'Good. Soften him up. He's a hard bastard, this one, according to his file. All sorts of heroics in the war. Picked up a DSO, and they didn't hand those out for digging latrines.'

'Really?' Cargill sounded surprised. 'Not a man you'd expect to find running guns to the Zionists.'

Muir chuckled. 'Three months after they pinned the medal on his tit he disappeared. Deserted. A complex fellow, our Mr Grant.'

They reached the far corner of the courtyard, an old stable that had been fitted with a corrugated iron roof and a steel door. Cargill unlocked it.

'Will you need help, sir? I could fetch a couple of sergeants…'

'No need. Wait here in case there's any trouble. You're armed?'

Cargill touched his holster.

'Keep it ready, then. If anyone walks out through that door without knocking twice on the inside, shoot him.'

'Do you really think…' Cargill looked appalled.

'I told you: he's a complex fellow.'

The door clanged shut behind him as Muir stepped into the cell. Like the rest of the fortress, it was a strange mix of old and new: medieval stone walls topped and tailed with an iron roof and a hastily poured concrete floor. As in the Middle Ages, it was lit by flame: in this case a Coleman lantern hung from a crossbeam. In the middle of the room, two wooden chairs faced each other across a steel table, and there, his right arm handcuffed to the table leg, sat Grant.

Muir studied him for a moment. The file photograph must be almost ten years old, but it was impossible to say whether the intervening decade had been good to Grant or not. He had aged, of course — but so had most men who survived the war. In Grant's case the changes were neither better nor worse. He had scars — one on his left forearm that snaked almost from the elbow to his wrist — and lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes, but they hadn't changed the underlying face. It was as if the years had taken the young man in the photograph and simply sharpened him up, clarified him somehow. Even cuffed to the table, he managed to slouch back and offer Muir an easy, sardonic smile.

Muir flipped open a notebook and began reading. 'Grant, C. S. Born October 1917, County Durham. Educated… nowhere that matters. Left school 1934. Emigrated to South Africa, then Rhodesia. Travelled extensively in southern Africa as a prospector for the Kimberley Diamond Company. Rumoured involvement with indigenous anti-Belgian elements in Congo. Returned England 1938, recruited to Military Intelligence, later transferred to Special Operations Executive. Active service in Greece, North Africa, Balkans and Soviet Union. July 1944, awarded Distinguished Service Order; October 1944 missing, presumed deserted, following an incident near Impros, Crete. Subsequently linked to black marketeering in London; later rumoured to be working in the eastern Mediterranean, running guns to the so-called Democratic Army of Greece, the Irgun, the Haganah and other elements in the Zionist underground. Whereabouts currently unknown. Correction: where-abouts currently handcuffed to a table in a shitty little cell in the arsehole of nowhere, looking at a long stretch at His Majesty's pleasure for supplying arms to the enemies of the Empire.'

Muir snapped shut the notebook and dropped into the empty chair. Grant stared back, his eyes wide with mock awe. 'Anything else?'

His voice was not what Muir had expected. Somewhere at the bottom of it he could detect the rough vowels of a boy from the north, but it had been layered with so many other accents and inflections that it was impossible to pin down: a true mongrel.

'Only that the arms you've been smuggling appear to have been looted from caches that were supposed to supply the Greek resistance in the war.'

Grant shrugged. 'No one was using them. The Jews spent most of the last ten years looking down the wrong end of a gun. I thought the least I could do was give them something to shoot back with.'

'But they're our fucking guns. And they're shooting them at us.'

Grant shrugged. 'Us? I didn't think I belonged in the club any more.'

'So you thought you'd get your revenge by selling our guns to our enemies?' Muir breathed a contemptuous stream of smoke through his nostrils.

'Just the money.'

'I suppose that's the benefit of working for Jews.'

Grant didn't answer, but held Muir's gaze across the table.

Muir tapped a fresh cigarette on his ivory case. 'Anyway, I couldn't give a squirrel's shit what you're doing at the moment. I came here to talk about Crete and a Mr John Pemberton.' A spark of flame. 'You knew him.'

'Did I?'

Grant did well to keep his face impassive, but Muir had conducted enough interrogations to see past the facade.

'Crete — the day the Nazis arrived. We'd sent you to look for the King near Knossos. Instead you bumped into Pemberton. You were the last man to see him alive.'

'And the first to see him dead. So?'

'According to your report, he handed over his notebook before he died.'

'And?'

Muir leaned across the table. The glowing tip of his cigarette hovered a few inches from Grant's face, and smoke drifted into his eyes. 'I want to know what you did with it.'

'I gave it to his widow.'

'Pemberton didn't leave a widow, you prick. She predeceased him.'

'Maybe it was his sister.' Grant's eyes were tearing from the smoke, but he never blinked. He held Muir's gaze for a long moment — then blew the cloud of smoke straight into Muir's face, so suddenly that Muir shrank back. 'What do you think I did with it? I didn't have time to visit the library. I binned the book and tried to find some Nazis to kill. If you read my report, you'll know I managed that pretty well too.'

Muir leaned back in his chair. 'I don't believe you.'

'I don't suppose you spent much time on the front line.'

'I don't believe that a man spent his dying breath giving you this book and the first thing you did was throw it away. Weren't you curious why it was so important to him?'

'He could have given me his lucky matchbox and a locket with his lover's hair and I'd have done the same.' Grant shook his head. 'I flipped through the book, but it was all gibberish and mumbo-jumbo. I had a lot of ground to cover and I couldn't afford to be weighed down. So I lost it.'

Muir stared at him a moment longer, then abruptly stood. 'That's a pity. If you'd had it, or knew where it was, I might have been able to help you out of here. Might even have been some money in it. After all, I don't suppose the Yids will be paying you now.' He looked down expectantly. 'Well?'

'Go to hell,' said Grant.

The car nosed into the copse of trees and rolled to a halt. Its headlights threw a pool of yellow light round the clearing, illuminating a battered Humber truck with its canvas sides rolled down. A group of young men in mismatched combat uniforms lounged against it, smoking and checking their guns. They made a terrifying sight — but if the occupants of the car were worried they didn't show it. No one got out. In the back of the car a handle squeaked as the passenger wound down the rear window.

One of the men walked over and stooped to look inside. The night was warm, but nevertheless he wore an overcoat and a black beret jammed down over his close-shaved grey hair. He carried a machine pistol.

'Are you ready?' The tip of a cigarette glowed in the back seat, but the face behind it was invisible in the shadows. 'You found what you needed?'

The man in the beret nodded. 'It was in the truck — as you promised. We are ready.'

'Then don't cock it up. And make sure he gets out alive.'

They took Grant back to his cell, a vaulted cellar from the crusader castle crammed with three wooden bunks. In the utter darkness he had to feel his way to his bed. He flopped on to the mattress, not even bothering to take off his shoes.

A match flared, illuminating a young face with floppy dark hair and olive skin on the bunk beside him. He lit the two cigarettes pursed between his lips, passed one to Grant and blew out the match before it burned his fingers.

Grant took the gift gratefully. 'Thanks, Ephraim.'

'Did they beat you?' The boy couldn't have been more than fifteen or sixteen, but his voice was matter-of-fact.

And why not?

Grant thought. Ephraim had been in the prison far longer than he had, almost three months now, sentenced for throwing rocks at a British policeman in Haifa.

'They didn't beat me.'

'Did they want to know where they can find Begin?'

'No.' Grant lay back, arms behind his head, and blew smoke at the ceiling. 'It wasn't the usual goons. Some spook from London. Wasn't interested in the Irgun — just wanted to dig up some ancient history.'

'Did you tell him?'

'I…'

Even through the metre-thick walls they felt the explosion. The bunks rocked and dust rained down from the ceiling. Grant swung round and leaped to the floor, pulling the boy Ephraim with him. They crouched in the darkness. Shots rang out — first panicked and sporadic, then methodical and constant as the Bren guns started up.

'They're getting closer.' Holding Ephraim's shoulder, Grant led him across the room until his hand felt the cold metal of the door — still locked. Flattening himself against the wall, he pushed Ephraim to the opposite side of the door frame.

'Get ready — someone's coming.'

Lieutenant Cargill returned to his office and poured a long drink from the bottle he kept in his desk. He had met plenty of disagreeable men during the war, and afterwards here in Palestine, but few who exuded the same calculated unpleasantness as his nameless visitor.

A knock sounded at the door. Whisky slopped over the rim of the glass. Had the visitor forgotten something?

'Engineer, sir. Come to repair the generator.'

Cargill sighed with relief. 'Come in.'

The engineer was a small man, with wire-rimmed spectacles and an ill-fitting uniform that looked as though it had been cut down from a larger size.

'Rather late to be mending the generator, isn't it?' Cargill dabbed at the spilt whisky with his handkerchief. 'Wouldn't it be easier to wait for daylight?'

The engineer shrugged. He seemed to be sweating profusely. 'Orders, sir.' He was still walking towards Cargill, a holdall clutched in his left hand. 'Now, sir, if you'll just give me your keys.'

'You don't need my keys to get to the generator. You'll find it…'

Cargill looked up, to see the muzzle of a Luger hovering six inches from his nose.

'What the hell?'

'Your keys.'

As the man stretched out his hand, the sleeve of his ill-fitting shirt rode up. Tattooed on his wrist, in a bruise-purple colour that would never fade, ran a row of tiny numbers.

'You will not be the first man I have watched die. Give me the keys.'

Followed every inch of the way by the Luger, Cargill unclipped the ring of keys from his belt and laid them on the table. Then the engineer -

the Jew,

Cargill corrected himself- took a length of electrical wire from his holdall and tied Cargill's wrists to the back of his chair and his ankles to the legs of the desk. Cargill bore the humiliations in stoic silence.

'Those keys might unlock the cells, but they won't get you through the front gates. You won't just walk out with all your Irgun gangster friends trailing behind you.'

'We will find a way.'

The words were hardly out of his mouth when a massive explosion shook the castle to its very foundations. It must have been close by. Cargill rocked on his chair, couldn't keep his balance and toppled over with a yelp of pain, his legs still tied to the desk. Through the dust and smoke that swirled around the room, he saw the Jew snatch the keys, then touch his cap in farewell.

'Shalom.'

The footsteps were closer now. There was a definite rhythm to them: approach, pause, approach, pause. With each pause, Grant could hear shouts and the clink of metal. Another burst of machine-gun fire from outside drowned the sounds for a moment; when it stopped there were keys jangling right outside the door. Grant tensed in the darkness. There was no handle on the inside — all he could do was wait as the key slid into the lock, turned, clicked…

'Rak kakh.'

The door swung in, but the squeak of the hinges was drowned out by the squeal of delight from Ephraim.

'Rak kakh!'

he shouted back, repeating the Irgun slogan.

'Rak kakh.

Praise God you came.'

'Praise God when we get out of here,' muttered Grant.

Their rescuer had already moved on to the next cell by the time they stepped out, but the corridor was teeming with freed prisoners. At the far end an Irgun commando was standing by the exit doling out small arms from a sack.

'Like a bloody Hebrew Father Christmas,' said Grant.

Ephraim looked at him in confusion. 'Who's Father Christmas?'

They pushed their way down the corridor, past the commando — who had run out of guns — and into the main castle courtyard. Eight hundred years had raised the ground almost a metre above the original foundations and a trench had been dug along the front of the building to allow access. Now it was filled with the ex-prisoners and their rescuers, engaged in a furious firefight with the English garrison by the gatehouse. On the far side of the courtyard a pile of smoking rubble and a massive hole showed where the Irgun had blown their way through the castle wall.

'Who's in charge?'

He had to bellow it in the ear of the nearest fighter, a lean young man blasting away with what looked like a First World War carbine. In the time it took him to jerk back the bolt, slot it home again and aim, he somehow managed to indicate a tall figure in a black beret and overcoat, halfway down the trench. Grant crawled across.

'Where's your escape route? Through the breach?'

The Irgun commander shook his head. 'That's how we came in,' he said in English. 'We go out the back door.' He nodded to his left, where the western wall pushed out into the sea. As Grant stared, he could see a file of men creeping along the shadows at its base, invisible to the British soldiers who were concentrating all their fire on the prison block.

'Do we swim?'

'Not if you hurry.'

Grant glanced back to the gatehouse. From the top of the tower the lightning muzzle flash of a Bren gun burst through the ancient arrow loops. While they were in the trench they were safe, but the moment they abandoned their position they'd make easy pickings in open ground.

'You'll need to shut that up before we go.'

The commander looked at him. 'Are you volunteering?'

'Why not?'

Lieutenant Cargill's night had been going to hell ever since the mysterious visitor arrived. His ankle ached where it had twisted when he fell, but that was nothing against the agony of having to lie on the floor, tied to the office furniture, and listen impotently as the battle raged outside. He couldn't even tell who was winning. Nor was he under any illusion that things would improve when it was over.

The door burst open. Trapped behind his desk, Cargill saw a pair of worn brown boots pound across the room. He craned his neck up, just in time to see a motley, unshaven face peering over the desk in surprise. A plea for help died stillborn on Cargill's lips.

'You're the gun-runner.' A horrible thought crossed his mind. 'This isn't to do with your visitor, is it?'

Grant didn't answer: he was pulling the drawers from Cargill's desk and turning them out on the tabletop. He lifted a brown leather holster from the bottom drawer. The walnut handle of a Webley revolver jutted from under the flap. Grant pulled it out and checked the chamber.

Helpless and defenceless, Cargill nonetheless put on a brave face. 'Are you going to shoot me in cold blood?'

Grant shook his head. 'No point. I'll leave it to the army, when they find out what a balls-up you've made of this.' He thought for a moment. 'What's your hat size?'

Outside Cargill's office a worn flight of stairs climbed to the ramparts. Grant took them two at a time and ran along the wall towards the gatehouse tower. In the confusion no one had remembered to lock the door. Grant slipped inside. This part of the tower had been gutted, except for four steel pillars supporting the gun platform on the roof. They gleamed in the darkness, flickering with the reflections of light from the battle outside, while the draughty chamber echoed like a drum with the thump of the Bren gun above. Grant jammed Cargill's peaked cap over his tousled hair, touched the Webley that was now buckled securely round his waist, then shinned up the wooden ladder bolted to the wall.

The gunner on the roof could hardly have heard Grant, but he must have noticed the movement out of the corner of his eye. He eased off the trigger and glanced round.

'What the hell do you think you're doing?' Grant bellowed, in his best regimental English. 'Keep those Yids pinned down.'

The voice, and the familiar silhouette of the officer's cap, was all the reassurance the gunner needed. He couched the Bren gun against his shoulder and let off another furious volley. It gave Grant all the time he needed. He crossed the roof and with one well-aimed kick sent the gunner rolling across the wooden floor in agony. Two more deft punches and the hapless gunner lay sprawled out, unconscious.

Grant pulled off the man's belt and used it to tie his wrists behind his back. That done, he returned to the Bren gun, shifted it round and loosed a long stream of bullets in the vague direction of the British troops. He grinned as he saw confusion overwhelm them. Some of the more alert soldiers sent a few shots back towards him, cracking splinters off the stone battlements, but most of them seemed in complete disarray. Over by the prison block, meanwhile, the shooting was tailing off as the Irgun used the distraction to make good their escape.

Grant squeezed off a final burst, then picked up the Bren gun — taking care to avoid touching the scalding barrel — and staggered across to the far wall. He heaved it into the dry moat. By the time anyone found it there,

Grant hoped he'd be long gone.

There were only half a dozen fighters left in the trench. A couple more lay dead on the ground, but most seemed to have escaped. Grant made his way to the black-bereted commander. 'Just in time,' he grunted. He broke off to slap another magazine into his machine pistol. 'We need to get to the boat.' He turned to his right and handed the gun to the fighter beside him. 'Keep those English pinned down until we're over the wall.'

The fighter's arms sagged as he took the weight, but the determination in his young face was unbending.

Grant's eyes widened. 'Ephraim?'

The boy hoisted the gun on to the earthen parapet and squinted down the barrel with fierce concentration. Grant turned to the commander. 'You can't leave him here.'

'We need someone to hold off the British until we're away.'

'I'll do it,' Grant said, without even thinking.

The commander shrugged. 'Do what you want, English. They hang you if you stay.'

'They'll hang the boy if I go.'

Ephraim shook his head and gave a white-toothed grin. 'They cannot — I am too young. By the time I am old enough to hang, Israel will be free.'

'You'd better hope so.'

Grant looked down at the boy, his floppy hair and his bright eyes shining with a desire to strike at the hated colonisers. Maybe Grant had looked the same at that age, the day he stepped on to the quay at Port Elizabeth with nothing but a suitcase to his name. Part of him — the young man who had run away to South Africa — wanted to stay with the boy and live his heroic dreams. But another, colder part knew what he had to do.

Grant reached out and ruffled Ephraim's hair. 'Keep moving around,' he told him. 'It'll make them think there's more of you.'

Ephraim smiled, then leaned over the weapon and squeezed the trigger. The gun almost leaped out of his hands, before he slowly wrestled it under control.

The Irgun commander tugged Grant's sleeve. 'We have to go.'

They ran along the base of the wall. Grant felt horribly exposed, but Ephraim's ragged bursts of gunfire were still keeping the garrison distracted. At the bottom of the furthest tower he found a rope ladder. With a quick scramble he was up it, standing on the rampart and looking out on a moonlit sea. Just off the rocks, where the wall met the waves, thirty men sat huddled in a motor launch.

'Down we go.' A rope dangled from one of the ancient battlements. Grant took hold of it, swung himself out and slid down — so fast he burned his palms on the coarse rope. Two steps on the slippery rock and he was looking down into the boat. Another step and an almost headlong plunge, and he was sprawled in the bilge. He heard a thud from nearby as the Irgun commander jumped down. Then the big engine opened up and Grant was tipped back as the launch gathered speed over the calm sea. No one spoke. Every man was tensed, waiting for bullets to rip apart the open boat. But none came.

Grant pulled himself up and managed to squeeze on to the bench that ran along the side of the boat. After about quarter of an hour one of his companions lit a match, and a few moments later the boat was alive with glowing cigarettes and whispered jubilation. Grant picked his way aft and found the Irgun commander. 'Where are we going?'

'We have a cargo ship waiting off shore. She'll take us up the coast to Tyre.' He opened his hands. 'After that, wherever you want.'

Grant thought for a moment. Muir's visit had planted an idea in his mind — though he had never expected to be able to act on it so quickly. He took a drag on his cigarette and blew smoke into the moonlight. 'Can you get me to Crete?'