The Temple Mount Code

49

The phone rang, and Sarah Shavit picked up the handset. ‘Hello.’

‘Ketsas Shavit, I have a phone call from Orchid.’

Sarah let out a sigh of relief. She had worried for the past two days, ever since Miriam Abata had abruptly gone missing. Despite years of experience as a ketsas, the job still took its toll because there was no way to completely divorce herself from the fears that arose on a daily basis.

‘Put her through.’

Connections clicked, then Miriam was there.

‘Hello, Auntie.’ Miriam sounded worn, but she also sounded like she was handling herself.

‘Hello. I haven’t heard from you lately.’

‘It’s been busy here. I think you saw the troubles in the news.’

Meaning the prison attack? ‘There has been some mention of local discontent.’

‘I was in the middle of it.’

Sarah’s stomach filled with cold lead. She’d heard the stories that came out of Evin Prison. The place was a pit of blackest evil. ‘Are you all right?’

‘My professor saw me through.’

‘Really?’ Sarah couldn’t believe Lourds would have had the wherewithal to manage something like the assault on the prison.

‘He’s met some really good friends here. They’re going to take us to our next destination.’

‘The northwest section?’ Meaning the Kurds.

‘Yes. We thought we’d visit Turkey before we returned home.’

‘I will let your uncle know to expect you.’

‘Good. The professor’s friends will be helpful, but I’d like to know that family is looking out for us as well.’

‘They will be there.’ Sarah made a quick notation of the Mossad teams she would put into the area. ‘I want to send you a care package.’

‘I would love something from home.’

Sarah wrote a quick e-mail to get one of the local Mossad spies to deliver an encrypted phone to Miriam. ‘It will be there soon. The same place?’

‘That would be fantastic.’

‘What about your professor? Did he get the chance to finish his work?’

‘He did, although he still needs to explore the matter further.’

‘He’s returning as well?’

‘Yes. We hope to see you soon.’

Despite the relative safety of his hiding place, Lourds’s stomach still tightened when the trapdoor opened. He was relieved and confused when he saw Miriam descending the ladder with a bag in one hand. She’d been gone almost two hours, and he’d begun worrying about her.

‘Where have you been?’

‘Shopping.’ Miriam dropped the burqa to the floor and stood there in a new blouse and business slacks. The shoes were new, too. ‘I seem to lose more clothes in this country.’ Without another word, she divested herself of the blouse and slacks as well, hanging those carefully over the back of a nearby chair.

She stood there in lime green bra and panties.

‘I can see how you’d have a problem losing clothes.’

‘Get over here, and you can help me lose these.’

Lourds got up and went to her. He kissed her deeply as he slid his arms around her. Her small, hard body pressed into his, and he felt her hunger. They kissed passionately for a time, then she started stripping him as he stood there. As she unbuttoned and unzipped his clothing, he stroked her breasts and hips, making her breath quicken in anticipation.

Then, when he was nude, she pulled him toward the bed.

‘I do hope you locked the trapdoor.’

She grinned at him as she backed onto the bed. ‘I told them to leave us alone unless the Revolutionary Guard comes calling.’

‘I certainly hope they don’t.’ Lourds kissed her deeply again. ‘For several reasons.’ He removed her bra with a deft twist of his fingers that made her giggle in delight. Then he slid her panties off.

When he went to her, she was warm, wet, and ready. He sheathed himself and rode her tenderly, bringing her to a surprisingly quick climax that ended in tears.

‘I’m sorry.’ Lourds tried to back away.

She caught him and held him, smiling. ‘Don’t you go anywhere. I’m not done with you.’ She looked up at him. ‘Three days ago, I thought I was going to die. Now I want to celebrate the fact that I didn’t. This … this is a big part of the celebration.’ She grinned at him impishly. ‘Bigger than I’d anticipated, actually.’

Lourds leaned down and started kissing her again, then started moving, finding her more and more accepting, till the mutual rush of pleasure swept them away.

Davari stood on a craggy rock shelf and looked down at the treacherous mountain terrain. Even though the trail was used often enough to be clear, it would be hard to follow at night. But the people he sought were desperate. The American professor and the woman had been largely undetectable until a few hours ago, when one of his Kurd spies had called the Revolutionary Guards from a short-wave radio.

There had been a chance that Lourds and the traitors that helped him would get through, but Davari had spread the word — and the Ayatollah’s wealth — to arrange a spotting network. The Kurds were their own people, as hard and as unforgiving as the mountains they lived in. They knew no masters and very few friends, but they appreciated the weapons Davari had offered in exchange for information.

The expedition had set out on horseback nearly eight hours ago and obviously intended to keep riding till they crossed over into Turkey a few kilometers farther north.

‘Is that them?’

Davari looked back over his shoulder.

Klaus Von Volker stood in the cold, looking decidedly unhappy. He’d been a reluctant guest in the Ayatollah’s palace since he still hadn’t dealt with the investigation awaiting him in Austria for the attempted murder of Thomas Lourds.

‘Yes.’ Davari identified Lourds’s hat. The American’s conceit was going to be the death of him one day. The colonel waved to his men, and they took up their positions along the mountain ridge. He lifted the assault rifle and peered down at the line of horses, curling his finger around the trigger and waiting for the right moment to spring his ambush.

Hunkered down in the mountains only a few hundred meters away, Mufarrij removed the blanket he’d had covering the Dragunov SVDK sniper rifle. The weapon was a favorite of his, an upgrade from the SVD. The SVDK chambered a 9.63x64mm round capable of punching through vehicles and heavy body armor up to ten millimeters thick.

It had taken his men and him an hour to creep this close to Davari, then Mufarrij had waited till the Revolutionary Guardsmen had deployed from their vehicles and taken up positions. Mufarrij didn’t want to leave any of them alive behind him to organize any kind of pursuit.

He knew he wasn’t at his best. The day after the attack on Evin Prison, he didn’t think he was going to survive. During the last three days, he’d been living on pain pills and antibiotics to combat the fever from his wounds. The injuries on his skull and the side of his face still looked horrible and would leave him disfigured. If it weren’t for his keffiyeh, which he used to cover his face, he couldn’t have walked around without drawing intense scrutiny.

The riders kept coming closer, unaware of the death waiting above them.

Mufarrij was frustrated that he couldn’t get a clear shot at Davari. The Revolutionary Guards colonel was concealed in the rocks too well to make a good target. Mufarrij faulted himself for not taking the shot sooner, but he also wanted the chance to intercept Lourds. If he fired too soon, there’d be no chance of capturing the American at all.

But the time to act was now, before Davari and his dogs could attack.

Mufarrij put the sniper reticule over one of the Revolutionary Guardsmen and squeezed the trigger. The massive rifle recoiled against his shoulder, and the thunder of the shot echoed off the nearby mountains.

Three hundred and sixty-seven meters away, the Revolutionary Guardsman’s head exploded like a smashed pumpkin. The shot initiated a barrage of fire that chopped into the riders below. A few dropped, but Lourds and the woman remained alive. Davari had surely ordered that they be left unharmed.

The riders bolted to the right, heading for shelter behind a ridgeline. A horse went down before it reached safety, but the rider ran into the rocks.

The second wave of Mufarrij’s offensive lit up the night as his team fired flares into the midst of Davari’s people. The Revolutionary Guards drastically outnumbered the Saudis. The flares robbed the Ayatollah’s butchers of their night vision, preventing them from locating their enemies. It also kept the Guardsmen from firing on the American and the people with him.

Mufarrij searched among the bright landscape and shadows for his next target, found it, and fired again.

Lourds squatted behind a tall stand of rocks, holding the bridles of Miriam’s and his mount. Both the horses were mountain-bred Kurd stock, used to warriors and weapons. They shivered in the cold night air, but didn’t bolt when the gunfire began. For that, Lourds was thankful. If he didn’t end up shot dead in the next few minutes, he didn’t look forward to being dragged to death over the rocky terrain.

Adan dragged Foad to safety. Blood streamed from Foad’s leg, and he couldn’t put any weight on it.

Farther up the mountain, Miriam stood with both pistols in her fists, totally unlike any graduate assistant Lourds had ever seen. She also seemed to be talking to herself. Or maybe she was praying. That would have been the more understandable alternative.

Lourds didn’t know who had shot at them from the top of the mountain, but it now seemed that the two groups were battling it out. One group was limned by flares that burned their shadows out of harsh yellow-white light.

Suddenly, the sound of far-away bumblebees filled the air. Curious, Lourds glanced up and saw aerodynamic shapes zoom across the skies. For a moment he thought he was looking at something out of science-fiction movies because what was coming at them were scaled-down, futuristic flying machines.

In the next second, however, the machines did a lot more than just fly overhead. Flashes from machine guns and rockets lit up the sky. Bullets sprayed into the rocks along the ridgeline, smashing everything they touched, flesh and blood as well as stone. Missiles dug craters in the ground and blew bodies into the air.

Drones. Lourds recognized their handiwork now. Though he’d never seen them close-up before, he’d seen documentaries and read magazine articles on the next generation of aerial weaponry.

The advantage in the battle along the ridgeline shifted dramatically. The unmanned weapons slew mercilessly, like vicious monsters out of legend whose thirst for blood would not be slaked.

Davari ran for his life. He knew the drones were from the United States or the Israelis. No one else had that kind of technology. Instead of laying a trap, he’d been lying in one. In two, actually, because he suspected the people who’d fired on his men had been the Saudis. He didn’t think Mufarrij still lived — didn’t know how the man could have survived being shot in the head — but someone must have taken over his unit and come after Lourds.

Scrambling along the ridge, Davari headed for one of the armored vehicles, hoping he could get away. He reached the passenger door of one as it started rolling forward, and tugged on the handle, but it was locked.

Looking inside, Davari saw Von Volker at the wheel. The Austrian glanced over at him and laughed. Davari raised his pistol, wiping the smile from Von Volker’s face. The colonel fired, but the bullet only fractured the bullet-resistant glass and ricocheted away.

Laughing harder, Von Volker accelerated and drove away. Unable to keep up, Davari tripped and fell face forward just as he saw a drone fire a missile at the car. In an eye-searing instant, Von Volker died in the fiery hell unleashed by the remote-controlled weapon.

‘Who has the last laugh now?’ Davari lay in the shadows as the battle raged around him. There was nothing he could do to stop Lourds. They would already be making their way around the ridgeline on horseback. Even if Davari could get a car, he wouldn’t be able to trail them. They could make it into Turkey on horses now.

But Davari knew where they were heading. Lourds was going back to Jerusalem — and if he had solved the mystery of Mohammad’s Koran and the Scroll — the professor would only be going to one place — the Dome of the Rock.

Davari would be there waiting for him.