The Templar Heresy

52

‘Where are you planning on crossing the border into Jordan?’ Angela asked, looking up from a map of Israel she had open on her lap and staring through the windscreen.

‘The only obvious junction, as far as I can see, is near Jericho, so we might as well try that first. After all, we’re just a couple of tourists, so there shouldn’t be a problem. If we can’t get across there for some reason, my Plan B is to head south and drive all the way down to Eilat, because I know there’s a border post there, and we could cross into Aqaba. Then we’d basically have to do a U-turn and head north again, but this time on the Jordanian side of the border. It’d take us longer to do that, but it would work as an alternative.’

Angela nodded and looked back at the map, tracing the route with the tip of her finger and looking at the roads on the Jordanian side of the border, which were also marked on it.

‘Well, I just hope we’re right about all this, and there’ll be something at Shobak Castle that makes sense. Have you got any idea at all what might be meant by that number sixty-two?’

Bronson shook his head.

‘I was rather hoping that inspiration might strike us when we see the place.’

‘From what I gathered when I looked on the Internet, there didn’t seem to be a huge amount of the structure left. The original castle was about seven storeys high above the top of the hill, and I think that all that’s left now are the foundations, then the lowest level, which is more or less intact, and some bits of the level above that.’

‘Then we may have to do a bit of lateral thinking to identify the location, and just hope that whoever left the clue there inscribed it in a fairly permanent fashion on a bit of stone that’s still in place. I’m assuming that we’ll be looking for a carving or an inscription again, because that seems to be the one common feature about the trail that we’re following.’

Angela nodded and laced her fingers together on her lap.

‘And the other obvious question that we need to answer,’ she said, ‘is whether or not we’re being followed.’

Bronson shrugged, but didn’t take his eyes off the road.

‘I don’t know. I didn’t see any sign of anyone behind us when we picked up the hire car. And for anybody to have followed us, they would have had to find out which hotel we were staying in, which we made as difficult as possible.’

He glanced briefly at Angela.

‘So far I haven’t spotted a tail. There was a taxi a couple of cars behind us for a while, travelling on exactly the same route as us, but he turned off a few minutes ago. The traffic is heavy, though, and there are just too many cars out there for me to keep track of all of them. It’ll be a lot easier to see if anyone is following us once we get outside the built-up area.’

A few minutes later the traffic did begin to thin out as they drove along a twisting road that skirted the southern edges of a patch of woodland — according to the map Angela had in front of her, it was called the Hatsofim Forest — and then drove under the 417 dual carriageway to pick up the northbound lane. The road curved around to the north-east, past Mishor Adumim and Mitspe Yeriho, and then continued east as far as Beit HaArava. There, Bronson turned north on route 90, driving past the site of biblical Jericho, and a little under ten miles later turned east again towards the Jordanian border.

He stopped the car a short distance beyond the junction and pulled it off the road.

‘We might be stopped and searched at the border,’ he explained, ‘so I just need to get the pistol out of sight.’

Bronson wasn’t certain how thorough any search might be, and in the end opted for wrapping the weapon in a piece of cloth, tucking it under the carpet in the boot of the Renault, putting one of their bags on top of it and hoping for the best.

As it turned out, he needn’t have bothered. Because they were leaving the country, the Israeli border guards were indifferent, and as soon as Bronson and Angela showed their British passports and confirmed that they were tourists on holiday, the Jordanians waved them on with a minimum of formalities.

There was still quite a lot of traffic on the road because in a few miles it linked up with one of the main routes leading to Amman, the Jordanian capital. Shortly before they reached a development called Al Khersee, Bronson turned right and then right again, following the signs towards the Dead Sea.

He was still trying to make sure that nobody was following them, but in practice this proved impossible. There was considerable traffic in both directions, making overtaking a risky business that few of the drivers appeared to want to try, with the result that Bronson and Angela’s car was just one vehicle in a kind of loose convoy of cars and trucks heading south.

But as they approached the northern end of the Dead Sea, that situation changed when they joined a dual carriageway and the faster drivers were finally able to overtake the slower vehicles. Bronson didn’t accelerate, because he thought there was more chance of spotting a vehicle following them if he kept his speed down, although that didn’t really work either, because he could still see about a dozen vehicles in his mirrors.

And then they saw the brilliant blue waters of the Dead Sea over to their right, the cobalt shade a stark contrast to the burnt brown of the desert and low hills that surrounded the landlocked lake, and Bronson involuntarily eased up even more on the accelerator pedal.

‘Wow. That really is quite beautiful,’ Angela said, staring through the windscreen. ‘Beautiful, but implacably hostile to almost all forms of life, apart from a handful of microscopic bugs, which proves that life can and will exist just about anywhere.’

‘It’s the lowest water surface on Earth,’ Bronson said, dredging some obsolete information from his memory banks, ‘about fourteen hundred feet below sea level, if my memory serves me correctly, and nine times more salty than any ocean. I remember seeing pictures of people lying on the surface reading newspapers and books because it’s so buoyant. Swimming in it, or trying to swim in it, must be a strange sensation — a bit like swimming in soup.’

The road swung gently to the right to follow the shoreline of the Dead Sea.

‘According to this map,’ Angela said, ‘the road stays right beside it pretty much all the way down, and there’s no point in us going cross-country until we’re a few miles south of it.’

She looked again towards the shimmering waters.

‘It’s amazing how often the name of this body of poisonous and lifeless water crops up in archaeology,’ she said. ‘I mean, almost everybody must have heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls that were recovered from Khirbat Qumrān, and the lake has a very close association with biblical history. Plus, of course, it’s also believed to be the location of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. They were supposed to have been destroyed by a rain of brimstone and earthquakes, and the remains of both are thought to be at the bottom of the Dead Sea. If you believe that kind of thing, that is.’

The Dead Sea was clearly a popular attraction, because they passed a number of cars parked near the water’s edge. Children and adults could be seen in the water itself, and in one or two places men were working in the shallows with shovels and large buckets. Bronson glanced across at them and pointed an interrogative finger.

‘What are they doing?’ he asked.

‘They’re probably collecting salt. There’s such a high concentration in the water that you can just shovel it up in the shallows. They extract a lot of other stuff from it as well, things like potash, gypsum and bromine, so it’s quite an important local resource.’

For about thirty miles the road stayed very close to the edge of the water. Then the body of water began to narrow and for roughly ten miles the road continued south through a harsh desert landscape before once again meeting the eastern shore of the Dead Sea, the part of it that consisted largely of potash solar evaporation pans, before the lake finally disappeared from view.

Without the illusory benefit of the blue waters to the west, the terrain appeared less forgiving and more hostile. The road ran straight for much of the time, but occasionally diverted around a large hill or other feature of the landscape. On either side of the road the ground was largely flat, even in the clefts and valleys that snaked between the craggy hills that bordered the highway.

‘You need to look for a left turn,’ said Angela. ‘The place we have to head towards is called Al Tafile.’

Bronson drove past a settlement on the right and then another on the left called Al Maamura, and then saw the junction right in front of them. The volume of traffic had diminished significantly after they’d cleared the southern edge of the Dead Sea, and there were even fewer vehicles on route 60, the road that they were now on, but there were still at least two trucks and nearly a dozen cars behind the hired Renault. There were so few roads in that part of Jordan, he realized, that there would inevitably be a large volume of traffic on every road, probably for most of the time.

This road was noticeably narrower than the one they had just left, the surface poorer, and the terrain even more unforgiving, the hills and valleys not permitting a straight course to be followed. As it climbed and descended significant heights, there were a few hairpin bends to be carefully negotiated before the road finally straightened out towards a settlement called Arfah.

‘Al Tafile is over to the east,’ Angela said. ‘Just follow this road until you reach a Y-junction, then bear right. It’s a new road, the King’s Highway, and it’s one of the main routes out of Aqaba on the coast up to Amman. Hopefully it’ll be a bit better than that last stretch we were on.’

The road was better, and also much busier, and Bronson again found himself part of a loose convoy of vehicles all heading south at about the same speed. They passed through or close by a number of dusty settlements, while the hills on both sides of the highway were characterized by their rugged and uneven flanks, many of them reaching quite impressive heights.

After a few miles, the road straightened out and they left the small towns and villages behind, the only obvious signs of life then being the occasional Bedouin encampment, the infrequent petrol stations, usually attached to small cafés, and the even less frequent sight of a man on a camel or a shepherd surrounded by the sheep or goats that were in his charge.

The road gradually swung around towards the west, and when Angela spotted a sign for a village called Al Muthallith, she checked the map again.

‘We’re getting fairly close to the castle now,’ she said. ‘There’s a right turn at the other end of this village.’

The village was busy and the road congested, cars parked somewhat haphazardly and locals wandering about apparently oblivious to the vehicles passing in both directions.

‘That’s it,’ Angela said, pointing straight ahead towards a narrow road that angled off the main street.

Bronson took the turning, and immediately they started to climb, the road rising quickly above the settlement that they had just left.

Within a couple of minutes, Angela pointed over to the east, to where an ancient grey-brown stone structure crowned the crest of a substantial hill.

‘There it is,’ she said. ‘That’s Shobak Castle.’

The road didn’t really go anywhere else apart from the castle, and as they descended the hill they saw the visitor centre on the left-hand side of the road, where Bronson pulled in and parked the Renault.

There were already half a dozen cars and a coach — all empty — in the parking area, and when they climbed out of the vehicle they could see people milling about in the courtyard of the visitor centre, some holding guidebooks and cameras, others sipping drinks. Beyond the visitor centre, the castle itself and the approach road to it were both clearly visible, as were several groups climbing up to the castle or descending from it.

‘Here’s where we do our impersonations of tourists, I suppose,’ Bronson said, opening the boot of the hire car. ‘Just stand in front of me,’ he added, ‘while I grab the pistol.’

‘Is that really necessary?’ Angela asked. ‘We’re just a couple of visitors taking a look at an ancient ruin. Surely you don’t think we’ll have any problems here? I thought nobody followed us from Jerusalem.’

‘I can’t see how they can be here already,’ he agreed, ‘but just because I didn’t spot anybody following us, that doesn’t mean that they didn’t. There was so much traffic behind us on that road that there could have been half a dozen cars tailing us, and I wouldn’t necessarily have been able to spot a single one of them. So, yes, I do think taking the pistol with us is a sensible precaution. Let’s just hope we don’t need it.’

He recovered the weapon from its hiding place and slipped it into the rear waistband of his trousers, ensuring that his light jacket covered it completely. Angela picked up her camera and a spare battery pack, while Bronson took two small but powerful flashlights from his overnight case and half a dozen spare batteries. Then they headed towards the castle.