The Temple Mount Code

51

Keeping her head down, trying not to make eye contact with anyone, Miriam circulated through the Dome of the Rock. She tried to concentrate on finding Mohammad’s Koran and the Scroll, but her thoughts kept returning to Thomas Lourds. Even though she’d held no illusions about the intimacy they’d shared turning into something lasting, seeing Alice Von Volker’s obvious familiarity with him had been a bit much.

Even worse, Lourds didn’t even seem that upset by what had happened. He’d stayed focused — eyes on the prize. That was enough to undermine a woman’s confidence.

Get your head together. Concentrate on doing what you came here to do. If you do anything less, you’re going to be dead soon.

‘Orchid, do you have the package in sight?’ That was Katsas Shavit over the earpiece Miriam wore. The Muslim security people hadn’t caught that.

‘No. We’re still separated.’

‘You need to find him.’

Miriam glanced at her watch and realized that more time had passed than she had realized. She’d gotten lost in her thoughts. Getting back from Turkey had been a nightmare, and they’d been on the move almost constantly.

Almost.

They’d managed to find a hotel room last night before meeting with Alice Von Volker this morning. Miriam hadn’t been happy about Lourds’s choosing to share information with the woman, but she hadn’t been able to do anything about it without blowing her cover. Such as it was.

Though Lourds hadn’t said anything, she was fairly sure he wasn’t buying the ‘graduate assistant’ story anymore.

‘I’m looking for the package now.’

‘Where would it have gone?’

Miriam wanted to point out that the ‘package’ had the distraction level of a two-year-old and could forget it was in danger. ‘It was en route to the Well of Souls.’

‘Can you get there?’

‘Yes. I’m on my way.’ Miriam turned and headed for the Well of Souls.

‘Hold your position.’

Casually, Miriam stopped and adjusted her hijab. One of the buttons on her burqa had been replaced with a minicam. Signal boosters for the earpiece and the camera had been built into her shoes. Getting through security had been nerve-wracking, but she’d worked with the hardware before and trusted that the modifications were undetectable.

‘Do you see the man at your three o’clock?’

Looking forward, Miriam used her peripheral vision to look at the man Katsis Shavit had pointed out.

He was lean and bearded, with a haughty demeanor. A scar from a knife wound bisected his nose and scored his left cheek. Miriam was certain she’d never seen him before, and just as certain that she would remember him.

‘That is Bozorg Alavi, a member of the Revolutionary Guards. He’s an associate of Colonel Imad Davari.’

Miriam’s stomach churned a little at the man’s name. Those hours she’d spent in Evin Prison were still too close. They haunted her dreams, and only lying next to Lourds had prevented them from overwhelming her.

She felt a flush of guilt then as she realized why she’d been drawn to him. She’d been using Lourds as a security blanket. That was not what she wanted in a man.

‘Then Davari is here.’

‘We couldn’t confirm him as a casualty during the skirmish at the Turkish border.’

Miriam took a deep breath. ‘I’ve got to get to the package.’ She headed toward the Well of Souls, hoping she would be in time. At that moment, another of the strange tremors that had manifested only moments ago shook the Dome.

At the stairwell, a crowd of people emerged from below, and the wailing noise inside the cave intensified. An electric pang of fear passed through Miriam.

Bozorg Alavi had headed for the Well of Souls, too.

Colonel Davari paused at the top of the staircase and peered down as the crowd of people fled up the steps. He despised them, knowing they’d gone down into the cave and frightened themselves over the small tremors. Those were nothing.

At the bottom of the stairs, Lourds paused at the wall. Something long and metal glinted in his hand as he worked on the wall. In the next moment, Davari watched in astonishment as the American professor pulled out a section of the wall, crawled inside, and pushed the section back into place behind him as though it had never been disturbed.

All the frightened idiots fleeing up the stairs didn’t notice the professor’s disappearance.

Davari called to his men over the earpiece he wore, summoning them as he descended into the Well of Souls.

Pausing for a moment, still on his hands and knees, Lourds shined his flashlight around and saw the surrounding stone was worn smooth. Obviously, the tunnel had been used frequently in the past, but had sealed over and been forgotten long ago.

Pointing the flashlight forward again, he kept crawling. After a couple of turns, he came to a large cavern. He slid out of the tunnel headfirst, landing on his hands, losing the flashlight for a moment, then rolling to his feet.

The light didn’t span the distance across the dark cavern, and his footsteps echoed in the emptiness, but he also heard the sound of running water. The water was a constant flow, but it wasn’t a rush.

Something snapped underfoot. When he shined the flashlight down, he discovered he’d stepped on a rat skeleton, snapping the rib cage like small firecrackers.

Realizing he was walking out into the darkness with no point of reference, he turned back around. He felt panicked for just a moment when he discovered he’d walked farther than he’d thought. Gratefully, he reached the cave wall again, then lifted the flashlight to peer into the tunnel.

His light struck the eyes of the man hiding within the tunnel. Before Lourds could back away, the man leaped at him and knocked him backwards. Lourds tried to stay on his feet, but the man’s speed and strength overwhelmed him and drove him farther back and back, until he finally tripped and went down.

The man crashed on top of him, forearm pushed up under his chin and so heavy on his throat that he couldn’t breathe. Lourds swung his flashlight at the man’s head, but the man simply shifted his forearm and smashed it into Lourds’s face.

The blow on his still-sore nose brought tears to his eyes as his head rebounded from the cavern floor hard enough to fill his vision with spots and make blood roar in his ears. Lourds gasped for breath, and the man shoved the snout of a vicious-looking pistol into the professor’s mouth.

‘Professor Lourds, my name is Colonel Imad Davari. I have traveled very far to find you, and what you seek. I will not be denied. If I have to, I will shoot you. I will not kill you, but I have learned from great personal experience that you can shoot a healthy man a number of times without any of those wounds being lethal. To do what I need you to do, you don’t need to be able to walk or to move your arms. Therefore, I will shoot out your knees and your elbows to begin with.’

Lourds focused on the man. Miriam had mentioned the colonel in her description of the events that had happened in Evin Prison. There was no doubt that the man would do exactly what he said.

‘Do we have an understanding?’

It was hard speaking around the gun barrel in his mouth, but Lourds was a trained orator, used to making himself understood in many languages. ‘Yeth.’

Davari smiled. ‘Good.’ He patted Lourds’s cheek with his free hand, then pushed himself to his feet. ‘Get up.’

As Lourds stood, he noticed the other five men standing behind Davari. All of them wore thobes and keffiyehs. His heart sank.

The Revolutionary Guards colonel shined his flashlight around the cavern. ‘What is this place?’

‘Before the Dome was built, this was the site of the First and Second Temples.’ Despite his fear, Lourds studied the walls. Some of Davari’s men carried high-powered lanterns. ‘The Temples were carved out of the mountain, taking advantage of natural caverns here. This one was evidently forgotten.’

‘Where are Mohammad’s Koran and the Scroll?’

‘I don’t know.’

Davari grinned at him. ‘Then perhaps we need to explore a little further.’ He waved Lourds forward with his pistol.

The colonel needn’t have bothered with the weapon threat. Lourds picked up his flashlight and went willingly. He didn’t know what he was going to do if there was no Koran and no Scroll.

Except die. Only he felt pretty sure that was going to happen no matter what.

Mufarrij watched as the last of Davari’s men clambered into the hole in the wall beside the stairs. Two other Revolutionary Guards remained on the main floor, keeping an eye on the exiting tourists. They had talked briefly before most of them had split off to follow Davari into the Well of Souls.

Moving swiftly and fearlessly, his wounded face still throbbing, Mufarrij threw himself over the side of the stairs and dropped. When he landed on his feet, his injuries filled his head with such screaming pain that he almost dropped to his knees. He forced himself to move through the agony, reaching out and yanking the stone section back before it completely closed.

The action caught the man in the tunnel off guard. Still holding the wall section, he got dragged forward. His hand flashed to the pistol holstered on his hip, but the thobe got in the way.

Grabbing the man’s neck, Mufarrij twisted violently, shattering his spine like a rotten stick. The body fell to Mufarrij’s feet, and he knelt beside it, searching him. Beneath the loose folds of the thobe, the man carried a silenced 9mm pistol and a machine pistol, an ammo belt around his waist holding extra magazines for both weapons, and a boot knife.

Evidently Davari had an agreement with the Ministry of Awqaf that most visitors didn’t enjoy.

With the ammo belt around his own waist, the pistol in his hand, and the machine pistol looped over his shoulder, Mufarrij climbed into the tunnel. He was doing God’s work now, and he intended to see that Mohammad’s Book and the Scroll did not fall into the Ayatollah’s bloodthirsty hands.

Only a short distance away, Lourds discovered the source of the water noise. A short flight of steps led down into a cistern filled halfway with water. He supposed it had been built during the time of the First or Second Temple and used to supply the people that had lived there. Or, since the Muslim builders of the Dome had lived there as well, perhaps it had been used by them as well.

‘Where are Mohammad’s Koran and the Scroll, Professor Lourds?’ Davari glared at him.

‘I don’t know.’

‘This is a trick.’

Lourds glared back at the man in disbelief. ‘How can it be a trick? I’ve never been here before. I’ve never seen this place. The first time I got here is the first time you got here.’

For a second he thought Davari might shoot him just on general principles. Then a thought occurred to him.

He cocked his head. ‘I hear running water.’

‘What does that have to do with anything?’

‘Running water has to go somewhere.’ Ignoring the pistol in the man’s hand, drawn by his own curiosity, Lourds tracked the noise. ‘Water is a notorious destroyer. Give it the tiniest little crack, and it will cut a chasm through the earth if there is an endless supply. It destroys things more completely than a fire, because you can reconstitute something from ash, but once water has its way with something, there’s usually nothing left.’

Lourds walked to the end of the cistern area, tracking the noise. Directing his light down, he discovered that the cistern had been built in sections. He thought perhaps it might be for rotating the water supply and keeping it fresh.

Set into the center of the last chamber was a block of stone. Water seeped around and under it. Lourds knelt and shined his light into the center of the cistern chamber.

‘What is that?’ Davari was at his side, adding his light to Lourds’s.

‘That is a drain that has evidently worn down over time.’

‘A drain?’

‘Possibly to keep the water fresh, or to get rid of any that was contaminated.’ Lourds shined his flashlight across the tops of the section walls. ‘See there? Those are built like dams.’ He played the light over the sections. ‘Open them up, and the water in that section drains into the one next to it.’

‘Where are the things we came in search of?’

Lourds paced back along the cistern, puzzling it out for himself. Then, in the next-to-last section, he spotted the image of a flying beast lightly chiseled into the stone. Leaning low over the murky water, he directed his beam at the bottom of the cistern.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t strong enough to penetrate the murk. He looked up at Davari and held out a hand. ‘I need your flashlight.’

Davari hesitated a moment, then handed it over. ‘What do you see?’

‘Nothing yet, but that carving wasn’t done for no reason.’ Even though Davari and the Revolutionary Guardsmen were all around him, Lourds couldn’t draw back from the puzzle before him. He leaned down, his face only inches from the still water.

The more powerful beam barely penetrated the water, but there at the bottom of the cistern chamber, a bronze disk nearly a yard across gleamed dully in the light.