The Moses Legacy

Chapter 20

Sarit arrived in Cairo from Cyprus, entering the country using her Irish passport under the name Siobhan Stewart, after they had tracked down Goliath via the Urim telecommunications monitoring unit, the same unit where Sarit had served.

The unit functioned like a well-oiled machine. Anything that was flagged by the system as important was then sent for human analysis to ‘Unit 8200’, the Signals Intelligence centre in Herzliya. Any intercepts that were found to be encrypted were also sent there. From there, the messages were deciphered or simply analysed for relevant content and disseminated to the appropriate department or organization, such as the Mossad – based in the same building – or military intelligence.

In this case, the key word that they had picked up on was the name ‘Joel Hirsch’ that Audrey Milne had given them. This had given the monitors at Urim both the number of Goliath’s cell phone and the means to track him in the future.

But Sarit’s initial instructions were to proceed to the hospital and find out what was going on on the ground. When she arrived, she saw several police cars, and police milling about, along with dozens of onlookers both outside the building and in the reception area.

‘What happened?’ she asked a nurse in Arabic.

‘A nurse was killed.’

‘How?’ She made sure to sound surprised.

‘By a madman. A big man. He ran away.’

‘How did he kill her?’

‘With his bare hands. He broke her neck.’

The nurse seemed to be enjoying herself as she told the story. But at the back of Sarit’s mind, a question was nagging away: had he got the sample of Joel’s clothes? She went to the reception desk.

‘I’m here to find out about a patient called Joel Hirsch.’

The receptionist looked mildly alarmed.

‘Are you related to him?’

She had to think carefully. If she said yes and it didn’t check out, she’d have some explaining to do. She knew why he had been brought in and she understood the panic. She decided to use it to her advantage.

‘No. I’m a journalist. I heard that he was ill. I was just wondering if it was contagious?’

‘We have no evidence to suggest he was contagious.’

The receptionist’s tone was defensive, and her left hand looked like it was itching to reach for the intercom.

‘ Was contagious?’

‘He died last night.’

‘From what?’

‘I’m afraid we don’t know that yet. There’ll have to be a post-mortem.’

‘Yes, but I mean it was from the illness, right? He wasn’t killed or anything?’

The receptionist looked puzzled.

‘Why do you ask?’

Sarit knew that there was no backing down now.

‘Well, I just heard about a nurse being killed. I was wondering if there’s any connection.’

‘I’ll have to refer you to my superiors,’ said the receptionist, reaching for the intercom. ‘What did you say your name was?’

Sarit turned sharply on her heel and left.