The Templar Heresy

42

In another hotel room not that far away from the one occupied by Bronson and Angela, another debrief — or quite literally and more accurately a post-mortem — was being carried out.

‘So who was this man?’ Khaled demanded.

‘I don’t know,’ Farooq replied. ‘We saw him in the light from our torches for less than a second, and Salim immediately fired at him. That was a mistake, I agree, but it was a reflex action. Obviously we then needed to find him, so we could decide whether or not to kill him, but we never saw him again. At least, neither Mahmoud nor I saw him again.’

‘But you did see him, even if it was only for an instant, so what was your impression? Did he look European or Middle Eastern? You must have been able to tell if his skin was white or black at the very least.’

Farooq shut his eyes, trying to visualize the fleeting image that he had had of the man a little over an hour earlier. Then he nodded, and looked across at Khaled.

‘He was definitely white,’ he replied. ‘My impression is that he was quite heavily built, and he was wearing dark clothing, presumably because, just like us, he was down there for a different purpose. Because of what happened next, I’m quite certain he wasn’t just some passer-by who’d found the outer gate of the place unlocked and wandered inside. If that had been the case — or if he had been something to do with the Western Wall Tunnel — then he would have switched on the lights. But this man had obviously been very circumspect in his approach and had probably been observing us in that chamber for quite some time. We were only aware that there was anyone there when we heard a noise from the open doorway.’

‘You said he fired at you,’ Khaled said. ‘Could he have been a policeman, or an army officer, something like that?’

‘If he’d been police or army, he would have been armed, he wouldn’t have been by himself, and he would almost certainly have returned fire immediately. But he didn’t,’ Farooq pointed out. ‘Instead, he ran off along the tunnel. But what I don’t understand is why he only shot the once. He could have stayed within the safety of the chamber, shone his torch into the tunnel and picked off Mahmoud in a matter of seconds. So why didn’t he?’

‘Is that a rhetorical question,’ Khaled asked, ‘or are you expecting an answer?’

‘It would be good to have your thoughts.’

‘If the roles had been reversed, we both know that you would have fired, so that implies that the intruder has a different mindset, and in my opinion that almost certainly means that we know who it was.’

This time Farooq nodded.

‘Exactly,’ he said, ‘it must have been the woman’s husband, the man Bronson.’

‘And that means she is probably here with him. I know you found nothing under the Temple Mount, and I’m going to have to work out what that means. But in the meantime, I want you and your men to scour the streets and check all the hotels. If that was Bronson in the tunnel, then he and his interfering wife must be staying here in Jerusalem, and it’s not that big a place.’

‘So you want us to find them?’

‘Precisely. I want you to find them and then I want you to kill them.’