THE END-TIME
EVANGELIST
by
David J. Hegarty
SMASHWORDS EDITION 2012
* * *
PUBLISHED BY:
David Hegarty on Smashwords
The End-time Evangelist
Copyright 2008 by David Hegarty. All Rights Reserved.
This Edition Copyright 2012 by David Hegarty. All Rights Reserved. This publication is intended for personal use only. It is not to be re-sold or re-distributed.
David Hegarty has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
* * *
THE END-TIME EVANGELIST
Prologue
Jerusalem, Israel
People were stealing glances at him now. He ignored them, and continued to tap furiously at the keyboard. Sitting between rows of computer monitors in his jogging gear, he knew he looked agitated. His attempts at hammering out this email were being hampered by his nerves. Quick and clumsy, he was wasting precious seconds.
He checked his watch again, and risked another glance at the doors. Floor-to-ceiling windows fronted the upmarket internet café. Outside, bright sunshine bathed the street and lit up the shoppers walking past. He was too close to the hotel for comfort. One of the others might walk by at any time, look in, and see him.
Now that the spell had been broken, Seth Winters couldn’t understand how he had been taken in by it all. The speeches, the activities. The plans.
He made another mistake. Swallowing a curse, he smacked the delete key and started the sentence again. He needed to focus. Getting this email sent was all that mattered now. Focus.
His eyes flicked to the little clock in the corner of the screen. His few purchased minutes were about to expire.
He clicked send just before the email vanished behind a message inviting him to buy more time. But time was the one thing Seth couldn’t buy.
He logged off and stood. Ignoring the curious looks from other customers, he slipped out of the internet café and back onto the busy street. He started jogging in the direction of the hotel.
This was it. He wouldn’t get another chance. If he failed in this, he would pay for it with his life.
If he failed in this, thousands would die along with him.
* * *
New York City
Seven masked and hooded men sat around the table at the centre of the private library. Candles and the blaze in the fireplace were all that lit the room. The table was eighteenth century mahogany. One of the seven men, the man who called himself Ezekiel, had noted this triviality on his very first visit to the Lodge. He wondered if any of the others had noticed. Perhaps they wouldn’t care. Everything here was old. The silver-framed looking glass that hung above the enormous stone fireplace had been a gift from King George III to General Cornwallis during the American Revolution. He’d had to do a little research into that one. Ezekiel had a passion for antiquity; antiquities held mystery, and mysteries were what his life was all about. The mirror’s mottled and slightly rippled reflection lent the fire-lit room a further eeriness, distorting the image of the seven masked and robed men, surrounded on all sides by walls of ancient books that stretched away into darkness above.
Rain pattered against the panes in the south-facing window. There was no moon tonight, and no lamps in the street outside. There had never been streetlamps in this dark precinct.
“Well, then it’s agreed,” the man who called himself Isaiah said. “We’ll monitor events.”
A shadowy cowl shook. Jeremiah was not happy with this decision it seemed. For his own part, Ezekiel had reason to steer the resolution this way. Monitoring events would make things easier for him at this point. He had long ago established that the Freemasons did not hold one of the Molayan Shards. The higher echelons of the order did know a thing or two about them – secrets they had guarded closely for over two hundred years – but that these secrets were only the start of something far older and far more complex, they had no idea. Ezekiel was still unsure whether the Masonic order had any tangible links to the Knights Templar at all. He had stayed on in the Freemasons for one reason only: these meetings, secret even from the other Masons. He might consider this, the most famous of secret societies, little more than a childish club, but he never made the mistake of underestimating his opponents. These hooded figures were still some of the wealthiest and most powerful individuals in America. Knowing what these men were doing was essential.
“The whole area could be destroyed,” Jeremiah snapped. The man was imprudent, and he was not doing enough to disguise his voice. Ezekiel didn’t recognise the high-pitched tone, but some of the others might. Jeremiah was a risk. The man had no patience. “We need to stop them. This madness will ruin the Mount.”
“The Israeli government won’t allow it, Jeremiah,” Job interjected, ever the mediator. Ezekiel tried to think if he knew anyone at his Lodge who was like that. Of course, there was no reason why Job would be a member of Ezekiel’s Lodge. This was a special group. An elite within an elite. For all their power and wealth and knowledge, Ezekiel wondered if the rest of the men in this library had found their way here for the same reason he had – the desire to know things nobody else did. Important things. Mankind’s greatest secrets.
“How do you know that, Job?” Jeremiah asked. “You remember the visit that started an uprising? The truth is we have no idea what might happen if we allow them to carry out their plans.”
“What will happen is that they will bring us a step closer to a change of stewardship,” exclaimed a tall man in black, gold-trimmed robes. “And that, Jeremiah, is exactly what we want, isn’t it?”
“Not if all we manage to gain control of is a smoking ruin, Samuel,” Jeremiah retorted.
“Do we need to vote?”
Isaiah’s question silenced the conspirators. After a moment Jeremiah’s hood shook again.
“No,” he replied sullenly. “But we need to have someone on the ground. We need someone close if we are to ‘monitor events’, as you put it.”
“Fine,” announced Isaiah, who was the chair of tonight’s meeting. “Is there anyone here who can make themselves available to such a degree?”
“I can,” Ezekiel declared, and immediately wished he hadn’t been so hasty. All six masks turned towards him as one. “I will volunteer to monitor events for the council,” he went on in a more casual tone, “should that be the council’s wish. Perhaps we should send a second monitor? Independent from myself, I mean.”
There was silence. The cowls turned from one to another. As Ezekiel suspected, none of these men had the time – or indeed the will – to gallivant off to Israel for the foreseeable future. Oil barons, politicians and Wall Street moguls every one of them. Ezekiel, on the other hand, had spent many years of his life doing just what he proposed now. Monitoring events. Staying close to the Temple Mount. Sniffing out any clue to the whereabouts of the lost Shards. Uncovering this particular secret was Ezekiel’s life’s work, and he had been on the trail for over thirty years.
“Very well,” Isaiah intoned, “then Brother Ezekiel will go to Israel and be our eyes-and-ears there.” The other men kept glancing at Ezekiel; no doubt there would be six New Yorkers watching for any high-profile disappearances over the next few months. But they would never find out who he was. And none of them would ever have suspected that he was little more than a servant; a knight and protector to one of the smallest and most exclusive sovereignties in the world, but a servant nonetheless. “We need to decide how he will deliver his reports.”
Ezekiel paid little heed as Isaiah and the others began to discuss messages and codes. He would be returning to Israel again. He felt his fingers stray to the golden ring in his pocket. Outside of these meetings he never took it off. It was the Ouroboros, the snake eating its own tail, one of the oldest symbols for eternity in the world. He had purchased it in Jerusalem, from a street vendor who had no idea how old it was or what it was worth.
Jerusalem. In that ancient city Ezekiel was always so close to the answers he had sought all his life. Without all four Shards he might as well have been on the moon. Things had changed since his last visit, however. Now there was only one Shard left to find, and Ezekiel knew exactly where to start looking. The old professor would not turn him down this time. The man who called himself Ezekiel would make sure of that. If he could make a cardinal disappear, and take a Shard from the heart of the Vatican itself, then dealing with an ageing Palestinian scholar would be no problem at all.
Chapter One
Jerusalem, Israel
For once Sean O’Rourke didn’t even glance at the doors to the hotel bar as he trudged across the lobby to the lifts. He jabbed the button and one of the gilded doors slid open. Stepping into the mirror-lined space, he pressed for the fifth floor. He was stiff and tired. Too tired even to drink. He needed a cool shower. One thing he never got used to about this place was the heat; he could feel his shirt sticking to him, and he knew he probably stank. He hadn’t had time for a shower after he’d touched down, and he’d missed most of the Prime Minister’s press conference. He was irritated. Not about missing the start of the press conference – he couldn’t care less about that; planes got delayed, fact of life – no, that he was out here at all was reason enough to be disgruntled. He wasn’t sure whether it was the endless tragedy of Israel or his being here again that irked him more. Not for the first time, he considered taking a long break and disappearing to some remote corner of the world for a year or two. Maybe take up orchard-picking or something. He wasn’t sure how much more of this job he could take.
He was standing at the door to his room, key-card in hand, when he realised he was being watched.
Glancing up, he saw a man standing at the end of the hall. He was about twenty years old, with thinning blonde hair. When Sean spotted him, the guy turned and hurried quickly away.
Sean pushed open the door to his room, noting with a little dismay and self-recrimination that if the young man had been an Arab he might have been inclined to feel suspicious.
Once inside his room, a quick glance in the mirror told Sean why he’d been the subject of attention. He looked like he had been sleeping in a dumpster for a week. His hair stuck out in all directions, he had two days’ growth on his cheeks and his eyes were red and bleary. And Francesca had seen him like this, he realised miserably. No wonder she’d been avoiding him at the press conference.
Of course, she had other reasons to avoid him.
The sun was sitting low on the horizon as he pulled the curtains across the balcony doors and plunged the hotel room into a warm bronze gloom. He never made it to the shower. As soon as he’d struggled out of his boots and lay back across the bed covers, he was snoring.
* * *
Sean managed just four hours sleep before he woke into darkness. A window was open and the sounds of traffic drifted in from the street below. What time was it? Hell, what day was it? He groaned and sat up. He was disorientated, and he couldn’t read his watch in the darkness. Gingerly feeling his way to the nearest wall, he started patting around for a light switch. He muttered a curse when he stumbled over his suitcase. He flicked the first switch he came across and the bathroom lit up, the low hum of the extractor fan smothering the faint sounds from outside.
He stuck his head under the tap and slurped at the water. Straightening, he stared at his weary, unshaven face in the speckled mirror over the sink. He looked like he’d spent the last week sleeping in the street, in the company of several bottles of very hard liquor. And older than his thirty five years, he reckoned. He needed to get cleaned up.
He stood under the shower for a full twenty minutes. The hot water went some way towards melting the stiffness in his back and shoulders. Feeling refreshed, he stepped out onto the cool tiles and patted himself dry.
Back in the bedroom, he turned on the television and flicked until he found CNN. He pulled open his suitcase and rummaged for some fresh clothes.
“ … three further kidnappings in the West Bank bring the total to twelve hostages taken in as many days. The Israeli Prime Minister has today issued a warning to Hamas, insisting that military retaliation will result if the soldiers are not released …”
Sean zoned out as the reporter continued her newscast. What a mess. This whole region was a bloody mess. He thought it was ironic that the most God-forsaken place in the world was called the Holy Land. Blood and hatred and war and death … why had he said yes this time? For the same reason he hadn’t taken up orchard-picking, he decided. Writing was all he had. It was all he was good at. He’d fucked up every other part of his life, and this was the only thing he had left. War and death and bloody hatred, and his wonderful ability to describe it to the rest of the world.
The kidnappings were the reason he was out here. The kidnappings, and the skirmishing that would inevitably follow, or so his editor predicted.
A flittering sound near the ceiling made him look up. A moth was hovering around the light bulb, the light drawing it nearer before the intense heat drove it away again.
Sean snatched up his packet of Marlboro. He always smoked more heavily when he was out here; he thought it had something to do with the heat. He pulled back the curtain and unlocked the sliding door. A balmy breeze lifted his unbuttoned shirt slightly as he stepped out onto the tiled balcony. It felt good. He lit his cigarette and took a long pull as he scanned the sea of twinkling lights across West Jerusalem.
“The shit must really be hitting the fan,” an English accent proclaimed from the next balcony over. A tanned, shirtless man in his late thirties was leaning on the wall of his own balcony nearby. “Things are always getting worse when you part-timers start showing up. How’re you doing, Sean?”
“Rick,” Sean said with a smile, “it’s good to see you. How’ve you been?”
“Surviving.” The cricket enthusiast from Finchley was even darker than he’d been last time Sean saw him, just over a year ago. “You goin’ for a drink?”
“You betcha,” Sean replied.
Ten minutes later both men were sitting in the plush hotel bar, five floors below. The bartender set two cold beers down in front of them.
“Cheers, mate,” the Englishman said, lifting his glass.
The beer was delicious. Crisp, and perfectly chilled.
“You make the conference earlier?” Rick asked as he set his drink down and pulled out his cigarettes. The BBC reporter was a chain-smoking sports fanatic. Sean always wondered if he’d be more comfortable reporting from the sidelines of a cricket test or a soccer match than being stuck in the middle of sun-blasted war-zones, but Rick had been here for years. And he was right about one thing – when Sean was sent to Israel, things were getting bad. It was just like Northern Ireland. Cover the chaos, piss off when there’s peace. When the threat of all-out war with Syria had subsided and the riots in the Gaza strip had been quelled, Sean had been called back to Dublin. He was like a vulture, he thought miserably – a sign that death was coming. “Didn’t see you there,” Rick added.
“Last to arrive, first to leave,” Sean declared; he was referring to the press conference but he thought this observation could probably be applied to him generally.
“Francesca was there,” Rick remarked casually, but betrayed himself with a curious glance.
Sean tried to remain impassive. “I saw her.”
“You talk to her?”
He shook his head. “Didn’t get a chance.”
“She’s been asking about you,” Rick went on. “You might want to talk to her.”
“I will.”
But only if he couldn’t avoid it.
Rick gave him a look that said he was crazy. No doubt Rick saw Francesca Ivors as some kind of trophy lay. ‘The Beauty Queen’ he called her, but Sean suspected a hint of jealousy in his tone whenever he said it. Francesca Ivors was definitely one of the most stunning women on television – ‘stop flicking through the channels good-looking’ he’d once heard her described as – but she was also one of the most authoritative reporters on the Middle East in the world. She worked for one of the big satellite news channels and, like Rick, she’d been here for years. Unlike Rick, she was a well-known name in news circles as far away as Australia. Francesca knew everyone, on both sides of the wall, and she got more exclusive interviews with the Israeli Prime Minister and the Palestinian President than any other two western correspondents combined.
Yet when it came to Francesca’s personal life, Rick didn’t know the whole story. No one did, apart from Sean.
And in spite of everything that had happened, he couldn’t completely smother his feelings for her. He couldn’t watch her on the television anymore, unless he was drunk – then he would come home and turn on her channel for an hour or so in case they were running one of her reports. They weren’t always, and he had woken up on his couch with that particular news network babbling at him on more than just a few occasions.
“So what about these kidnappings?” he asked, eager to change the subject. “Know anything about them?”
Rick shrugged. “Shit, mate. No more than you, probably.”
“You think it’s Hamas?”
Rick frowned at his beer. He stubbed out his cigarette and pulled a fresh one. He stayed quiet for a long moment, and then shook his head again. “Fuck, I don’t know. Normally I’d say if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck … but to be honest, Sean, I’m really not sure this time. The Hamas leadership’s acting weird about it, Hezbollah are denying anything to do with it – and for once I believe them … It’s a fuckin’ mystery to me, mate.”
“But Hamas hasn’t denied it?”
Rick sparked up and blew a cloud of smoke towards the ceiling fan. “They seem genuinely confused, you know? On top of all this, the Israelis aren’t putting on the kind of pressure you’d expect them to. Sure, they’re making noises … but I’ll be damned if they don’t know something we don’t.” He paused. “Or maybe it’s something they don’t know. I’ve been out here a long time, Sean – longer than the Beauty Queen, you know – and I’ve never been stumped like this. Normally, you’ll find someone to tell you what the fuck’s happening, but I don’t think the Israeli government have the full picture yet, and I’m startin’ to think the Palestinians know even less!” He shook his head. “There’s something very fucking weird going on.”
“Think Iran might be directly involved? Or Syria?”
“If they are, then no one knows about it. And someone always knows something.”
“Someone always knows something,” Sean agreed as he lifted his beer and drained it. He lifted his fingers to order two more. “How’s that Lebanese girl – Shereen or Sherry or …?”
“Chirine,” Rick proclaimed as two fresh beers arrived. He grinned that devilish grin of his. “Well, let me tell you about a very eventful trip to Beirut …”
Rick was a born storyteller. Perhaps it was this innate ability to turn any little incident into a dramatic event that made him a great reporter. Sleazy visits to Beirut and Haifa became thrilling adventures to hear Rick tell them. An endless hunt for adventure was what had led him out here. Contrary to what Sean thought, Rick would have died of boredom back in England. No amount of press passes to big matches would have sated him.
It rarely took more than a couple of beers for Rick’s eye to start roving. A compulsive womaniser, he seemed completely incapable of controlling his libido. He was a good-looking guy, Sean would have to admit; tanned and well-built, he had shocks of silver in his mop of brown hair, and the mischievous eyes of a teenager. Not a man inclined towards lasting relationships, was Rick. Sean wasn’t surprised to hear that his latest exploits in Beirut had brought an end to yet another one of his fitful affairs, while yielding close to half a dozen new opportunities.
True to form, after they’d finished their second round, Rick suggested they go into town.
“There’s this new place we should check out,” he declared as they picked up their cigarettes and headed for the doors. “Hottest women in Jerusalem, mate ...”
They walked the few blocks to one of the city’s newest night spots, but it was a weeknight and the club was almost empty. That didn’t stop Rick hitting on a few of the thin-limbed twenty-somethings at the bar. But his charm wasn’t working tonight, and Sean was too tired to be of much assistance. It wasn’t long before the club began to lose its appeal and they ended up in a small bar around the corner. Rick tried once more to explain the rules of cricket to his Irish friend. And, as usual, his efforts were wasted.
They drank well into the early hours, and when they finally dragged themselves back to the hotel it was coming up to three o’clock. Sean kicked off his boots and collapsed onto his bed. He fell asleep atop the covers, fully-dressed, for the second time in as many days.
* * *
He woke several hours later to the sound of his mobile phone’s ring tone. The room was spinning before he even tried to sit up. His mobile rang out. Bright sunlight was bleeding through the gap in the curtain and the heat outside was already starting to seep into the room.
He yawned and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Why did he never think of bottles of water for the morning after? He cursed when he realised he hadn’t brought any painkillers with him either. He was half-considering getting under the sheets and going back to sleep when his mobile started to ring again, and he began searching the rumpled bed covers.
He followed the noise to the floor, where it must have fallen as he slept.
“’Lo?” he croaked. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Hello?” That didn’t sound much better.
“Sean, mate, are you still asleep?” It was Rick.
“Not anymore,” he replied. He looked at his watch. It was almost half ten.
“Are you still at the hotel?”
Sean looked around. “I think so.”
“Well, you might want to get down to the Knesset. Turn on the telly.” And the line went dead.
Potential hangover momentarily forgotten, Sean snatched the remote from the bedside locker and hit the power button.
CNN’s colourful newsroom lit up the dim hotel room. They were running a sports report, but the breaking news was already sliding across the bottom of the screen: Two kidnapped IDF soldiers rescued following military operation in southern Israel. The soldiers are said to be in good health. No arrests made at the scene but army commanders describing the operation as a success.
Sean had the hotel phone to his ear. “Hi, I’ll need a taxi in ten minutes. The Knesset, please. Thank you.” He hung up.
He emerged from the bathroom with a toothbrush in his mouth as the main news story hit the TV screen.
“And the main news again this morning. Two of the Israeli soldiers kidnapped in recent weeks have been rescued by Israeli troops in the south of the country. Israeli Defence Forces stormed a house in a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Arad in the early hours of this morning. The man and woman, who are both in their twenties, are said to be unharmed and in good health. There are no details yet as to who might have been responsible for the kidnappings. Greg Hallison has this report.”
Greg Hallison was a handsome, square-jawed young American with a mane of blonde hair and sharp blue eyes. Sean instantly disliked him. Hallison looked like one of those reporters who flitted from story to story without ever really learning anything about what was going on. Just enough to avoid sounding like an idiot would suffice for this guy. Bright teeth and good looks and no interest in anything other than getting the anchor spot some day. Whatever happened to the vocation?
The report showed pictures of emergency vehicles, their lights flashing in the predawn gloom. Greg Hallison hadn’t managed to get any interviews apart from the testimony of a few bewildered neighbours who’d been standing on the street in their dressing gowns. As he stood in front of the camera, wrapping up his report in the early morning sunshine, Sean could see why he’d played up the location of the rescue mission so much. He was standing in a very upmarket Israeli suburb. Not the kind of place you’d expect to find a terrorist stronghold.
As the news moved on, Sean dug into his bag and pulled out a map. He unfolded it hastily and traced his finger across one of the pages until he found the little city of Arad. It was miles from the West Bank. He circled the town with a red marker and chucked the map onto the bed. He glanced at his watch again. He had five minutes.
Chapter Two
Sean drank deeply from the two-litre bottle of water he’d picked up en route to the Israeli parliament building. The world still spun queasily if he didn’t keep his eyes fixed on a certain point. He’d brushed his teeth twice, but he should have bought gum, and the smell of alcohol had probably already overwhelmed the half-can of deodorant he’d used. He was standing at the back of the throng of reporters and journalists in the press room of the Knesset, waiting for a sign that somebody would come and talk to them soon.
Rick hadn’t arrived yet. He was still out at the scene of the rescue. Once again the BBC reporter had been saved by his dedicated cameraman, a guy called Alex from Edinburgh. The Scotsman had even managed to get footage of the military vehicles pulling out of the Arad suburb at dawn.
Sean took another gulp of water. He felt trapped and dizzy.
He was considering whether or not to step outside for a cigarette when he spotted Francesca picking her way through the forest of camera tripods towards him.
She looked stunning, as always. Her glossy raven-black hair hung to her shoulders, framing a heart-shaped face that belied her age by five years or more. Once she’d navigated the obstacle course of media equipment, she fixed her dangerous, emerald-green eyes on him. With a sinking feeling, Sean realised that he looked and smelled like shit once again.
“It’s good to see you back, Sean,” she said, with a coy smile. Her accent was a vague and unidentifiable thing, something she had acquired from years of television training.
“Really? Some people seem to think my appearance is a sign that things are turning to shite,” he muttered wryly, as he took another swig of water. He suddenly hoped his breath didn’t smell as bad as his mouth tasted.
Francesca laughed. A low, throaty chortle.
“So are you the harbinger of doom? Or big stories?” she teased. There was no remorse in her – not a glimmer of regret.
If Sean was a person dedicated to career, Francesca was something else entirely. Her career was her life, as he had come to realise eventually. Everything was determined by how it would affect her climb up the ladder to success. He quelled a sudden surge of ire. He would not make a scene here. This was neither the time nor the place for an argument.
“Yep, well, seems I’m only here half a day and I know as much as everyone else does,” he exclaimed. He pushed the past from his mind. Two could play at this game. “You got some theories I can borrow?”
“None I’d care to mention.”
He grunted in response.
Francesca hesitated, and when she spoke again she was suddenly quiet and sombre. “We have to talk,” she murmured.
He didn’t say anything, and he couldn’t meet her eyes. He’d realised long ago that Francesca was a stronger person than he was, and far more determined.
“Sean, don’t do this,” she pressed. “Let me just … explain everything. That’s all I ask.”
He shrugged. “I’m all ears.”
She sighed. “Not here. Let me take you to dinner, okay?”
A cameraman who was setting up nearby overheard; he glanced at Francesca, and then took a long look at Sean as though revaluating the drunken slob at the back.
Sean studied Francesca’s face. There was no apology there, and no sense of regret in her voice or expression, but he nodded. The woman was like a drug.
“I’ll call you at your hotel later,” she declared as she turned away.
“How do you know where I’m staying?” he asked.
Francesca turned and winked at him as she moved away, smiling that enigmatic smile of hers. His eyes drifted down her body as she walked off, but he glanced up when she called over her shoulder, “Wonderful new fragrance by the way. Is it Irish?”
He did go out for a cigarette then, conscious of the stink of alcohol he was exuding. He was half-thinking about giving up on the conference altogether and heading back to the hotel when Rick appeared. The Englishman came trotting up the broad, stepped boulevard that led to the squat parliament building. Alex was right behind him. The Scot was carrying half a ton of camera equipment with apparent ease, as usual, and Rick wasn’t helping, which was also usual.
Alex grinned when he saw Sean. Rick’s cameraman was in his late twenties, but his thick ruddy beard and curious favour for retro Hawaiian shirts added ten years. Shoulder-length strawberry-blonde hair hid most of the thin white scar that ran across his neck, just below his ear; a souvenir from Somalia, or so Sean had been told, and by all accounts he’d been lucky to leave the African war zone with his head still stuck to his shoulders. Sean didn’t know Alex as well as he knew Rick, but from what he had learned the man was fearless.
“Lookin’ good, Sean,” the Scotsman chirped as he passed by on his way towards the main doors of the Knesset. “Too old for the late-night boozin’ now, boys.”
“Oh yeah?” Rick called after him, as he fished in his pockets for cigarettes. “At least we’re not falling around the place on two alcopops!” But Alex had already gone inside. “Cheeky bastard.”
Contrary to Alex’s assertions, Rick looked positively healthy. Once again, Sean marvelled at his imperviousness to alcohol and sleep deprivation.
“Thanks for the call this morning,” Sean said as Rick lit a cigarette.
“No problem. Who’d drink with me if you got dragged back to Ireland? That fucker? Not a chance! He’s on the floor after three beers!”
“So what’s the story?” Sean asked.
“The house they found them in?” Rick said, taking a long drag on his cigarette. “Mixed Christian and Jewish neighbourhood. No Arabs, no Hamas, and miles from the West Bank.”
“And no one’s been arrested?”
Rick shook his head. “Must’ve been tipped off about the raid. Or maybe they aborted and called it in themselves.”
“Who’d the house belong to?”
“Some big property development company. Said it’s been on the market for a few months now.”
“And none of the neighbours noticed anything?
“A few people said there was a dark van parked in the street a couple of mornings, but that’s it.” He dropped his half-smoked cigarette and crushed it underfoot. “And if we wanna hear what the Israelis are making of it, I suggest we head inside.”
Sean threw away his cigarette and followed.
* * *
They had to wait another twenty minutes for the press conference to start. The Israeli Prime Minister emerged, together with his Minister for Public Security and an army commander. The two rescued soldiers were there, looking fit and relaxed. They were introduced as Private Yakir Nahari and Private Refaela Feldman. The Prime Minister stood at the podium, while the two freed hostages sat at a table with the Minister and the general.
The Prime Minister gave a predictable speech, lauding the good job of the Defence Forces and the police, as well as saying a few words for the families of those soldiers still missing; this was a sign of hope, he insisted, and the government was working hard to get everyone back safely. He then announced that the two hostages were tired – although they did not look tired – and that they would limit questions to ten minutes. The usual clamour followed, until the first journalist – an Israeli reporter – was chosen. He asked something in Hebrew. The army general answered. The second reporter, whose accent Sean could not place, spoke in English.
“A question for either of the soldiers, please,” she called. “What was the nature of your capture? Were they professional, and do you think they were Palestinian?”
Private Nahari glanced at Private Feldman, and with a muttered agreement he fielded the question. Sean noticed the hard stare the general was giving Nahari. Nahari had noticed it too.
Private Nahari’s English was broken, but understandable. “We were patrolling, um, a northern suburb of Meitar. It was late … no one on the streets. They were very professional, yes. They came at us from all sides, dressed in black with masks. When they had us on the ground they, um … blindfolded us. I think they took us away in a van, but I could not see for sure. They kept us blindfolded all the time.”
“Were your captors Palestinian?” the journalist pressed.
Private Nahari didn’t reply straight away. He looked at Private Feldman and then at the general, whose meaningful glare must have been obvious to everyone in the room. Feldman, however, pointedly ignored her superior. She answered for her colleague, in a distinctively American accent. “They spoke with American accents,” she announced. “I think they were Americans.”
The whole place went quiet. A long, incredulous silence filled the room, something Sean had never witnessed at a press conference before. The Prime Minister shared an irritated look with his Minister. The general was stony-faced.
And then the room erupted. Almost half a minute later a question finally made it through the clamour. A British journalist.
“Prime Minister, what is the American response to these revelations?”
“As you know,” the Prime Minister said in his heavy accent, “we have a close relationship with our allies in the United States. I spoke to the President only a few hours ago in fact. I can assure you that the US military are not suspects here. The President has pledged his support and we will continue to work with the United States and Great Britain and our allies, on an intelligence basis as well as a military one. And I won’t discuss any other intelligence details here.” He swiftly pointed across the room as the clamour rose again. “Miss Ivors.”
“Thank you, Prime Minister.” Francesca’s soft voice killed the noise instantly. “Does this rule out Hamas’s involvement in the kidnappings? And indeed Hezbollah’s?”
Focus swung once more to the Prime Minister. Sean’s head was spinning, and it wasn’t from the hangover.
“We are not ruling out Hamas’s involvement, no, or any other terrorist organisation for that matter,” the Prime Minister declared. “Hostage taking, the taking of Israeli soldiers, is always a tactic of Hamas. We are at war with those who seek Israel’s destruction, and as we have demonstrated in the past we will defend Israel with force whenever and wherever it is necessary to do so. Ten of our bravest young men and women are still missing, and we will do what we have to to get them back.”
Another journalist, an American, was picked out.
“A question for Private Feldman, if I may. It seems that the hostage takers knew of the rescue operation before it happened. Have you any idea how long they left you alone before the police and army arrived?”
“I would say about an hour,” Feldman replied, “maybe a bit more.”
The American squeezed another question in: “Was there any indication that they were Islamic radicals? Al-Qaeda, perhaps?”
Feldman shook her head. “No. Nothing specific.”
Sean glanced across the room at Francesca. She was whispering something to her cameraman, who quickly unhooked his camera and followed her to the exit.
Sean frowned. It hadn’t yet been five minutes, and when the Prime Minister had said ten surely that meant they’d manage to squeeze fifteen. But Francesca said nothing as she slipped out of the conference room. She was followed closely by her cameraman, who left his tripod behind.
Sean was mulling over this strange behaviour when he saw Rick and two others stand up to leave. Another question had been put to the rescued soldiers, about their conditions, but Rick spoke into Alex’s ear and – just as Francesca’s cameraman had done – the Scotsman took down his camera and followed Rick toward the doors.
Sean sidled to the exit and caught Rick by the sleeve as he was leaving.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Something’s happening in the Old City,” Rick whispered.
“Mind if I tag along?” Sean asked. The BBC provided actual vehicles for their reporters, more than his editor would ever manage for him.
“Be my guest,” Rick replied.
Sean followed him out of the conference room. Alex caught up with them in the corridor and the three men broke into a trot.
Francesca was already gone.
Chapter Three
Plumes of black smoke had been clearly visible along the eastern horizon as they drove towards Jerusalem’s Old City. They were on foot now, hurrying through the deserted streets of the Christian Quarter. All the shops were closed, all the windows around them shuttered. Sean glanced up. A strip of sky divided the ancient buildings that loomed to either side, smothered now by a pall of smoke that hung in the air; the sun was no more than a pale disc behind that dark, drifting haze.
He glanced across at Alex. The cameraman was carrying around four kilos of camera on his shoulder, and he had battery belts strapped around his torso like ammunition. The Scotsman hadn’t even broken a sweat. All Rick carried was his microphone.
They kept to the shelter of the shop fronts, darting up the ancient streets like unarmed commandos. Now and then Sean was aware of faces in the windows overhead, watching them. Those silent spectators would disappear whenever he looked up. The tension, and the fear, were palpable.
They were in the Muslim Quarter now.
As they turned a corner, they abruptly found themselves on a street full of people. Palestinians, elderly men and women for the most part, stood in doorways or congregated in the shadow of the tenements. Young children leaned out of windows, staring in the direction of the Temple Mount. The echoes of the distant rioting sounded odd in such a placid scene.
Everyone fell silent, and all eyes followed, as the three western journalists bounded past.
As they moved further east, and then south, the people on the ground grew noticeably fewer and soon the streets were deserted again.
They arrived at a crossroads. Although there was nobody to be seen in any direction, the sounds of rioting and the cries of the mob were no longer far away. Maybe two blocks at most.
Four shots rang out. Sean ducked into the shelter of a doorway. Across the street, Rick and Alex did the same.
The initial shots were followed by a barrage of return fire. The roar of the crowd swelled and there were screams. Sean stayed still. There was no way to tell where the sounds had come from. Sounds bounced madly in this warren of ancient ginnels.
After a moment he glanced across at his two colleagues. Rick was leaning forward to peer down the street, wearing an expression of implacable resolve. To look at him, Sean would never have known that the man’s heart was thumping just as hard as his own. The BBC men betrayed neither trepidation nor excitement.
Sean wasn’t keen on guns; he’d been caught in a crossfire once and it was an experience he wasn’t eager to relive. Passports and press badges were pretty useless when people were shooting at one another and you were stuck in the middle.
Without a word, Rick made the first move. He stepped out and darted down the street, staying close to the walls, Alex right behind him. Sean took a deep breath. He glanced over his shoulder, back the way they had come. Not a soul to be seen. He turned back in time to see Rick and Alex reach the end of the street and slip around the corner, out of sight.
Taking one more look behind him, Sean followed.
When he caught up with Rick and Alex on the next street, he realised they had found the riot. Or one of the riots, at any rate.
A crowd of Palestinians – teenage boys for the most part – were shouting and hurling stones at the line of Israeli riot police blocking the opposite end of the road. Most streets in the Old City were narrow, and the police blockade was deeper than it was wide. Sirens in the distance were growing louder. The police simply held their ground, raising shields to counter the missiles being hurled at them. They were not advancing. Not yet.
Rick and Alex were already halfway down the street – closer than Sean wished to get – filming a group of young men burning an Israeli flag and chanting slogans in Arabic. There were no other news crews that Sean could see. That made him uneasy.
A sudden siren blast from behind made him jump. A second line of police had emerged onto the street from the north end. They were sweeping forward as a unit.
“I think we should move.” Sean had to shout to be heard over the din as he caught up with Rick and Alex. He pointed towards the advancing police. Their colleagues to the south were still holding their ground. “Now!” Sean added, as though this wasn’t self-evident.
“Let’s get behind the police lines,” Rick told Alex.
“I’m going to the Wall,” Sean declared as he jogged up the street after them. He wasn’t sure if Rick heard him, but Alex glanced back. “I’ll see you guys back at the hotel.” Alex nodded and Sean split off, taking a deserted alleyway east towards the Kotel plaza. That was where the violence was said to have started. Rick needed footage and reports to feed the BBC for the evening news, but Sean had to get the whole story for tomorrow’s edition. He needed to know what had happened.
He negotiated the warren of streets carefully, avoiding the Arab crowds and the heavily armed Israeli police alike. Now and again a handful of teenage boys sprinted past him, taking full advantage of the confusion to cause mischief, or worse. His heart was pounding in his ears, but he felt alive.
He was forced to double-back when he came to a road blocked by emergency services. Fire fighters, surrounded by twice their own number in police and military protection, struggled to put out a blaze that threatened to engulf an entire apartment building. Fires still raged across several city blocks where the Jewish and Muslim Quarters met.
There was more gunfire, although it sounded a long way off, and Sean passed two more mobs of angry protestors before he eventually found his way out onto the paved plaza in front of the Western Wall.
Emergency vehicle lights flashed silently through a fog of thinning smoke. There were Israeli soldiers and police standing in knots all about the square’s perimeter. An ambulance pulled out and drove off towards the old city gate to the south. Paramedics with red crescents on their backs worked alongside colleagues wearing stars of David. There was a horde of injured people being tended to.
The ancient wall itself loomed over the hazy scene, towering fifty feet into the air. Sean had done a feature on it two years ago. One of Judaism’s holiest sites, the Kotel was the last remnant of the ancient Jewish temples. In truth it was only a retaining wall, built when Herod renovated the Second Temple in the years before Christ, but it had come to symbolise the lost temples, and tens of thousands of Jews flocked to it every year to pray. This was how it had come to be dubbed the ‘Wailing Wall’ by some people. Jerusalem’s Second Temple had been built to replace King Solomon’s original, which had stood for almost five hundred years before being destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC.
Now the wall was blocked off by metal barricades and uniformed police. Half the plaza had been cleared. A crowd of onlookers, shocked tourists among them, were being herded back towards the streets that led onto the square, away from the holy site. An Israeli policewoman was calling out instructions over a megaphone, first in Hebrew and then in English, telling everyone to move back. The army had been deployed around the south end of the plaza, where a burned-out flatbed truck lay on its side. Smoke still drifted from the shattered windows of the truck’s cab, and there were bits of glass everywhere.
When Sean spotted the huge block of sandstone, lying not far from the foot of the ancient wall, he had his suspicions about what had sparked the riots. Scorch marks blackened parts of the great slab and the ground around it. Dark, wine-coloured patches marred the pale flagstones nearby. He recognised the stains only too well. Blood had been spilled.
To the west and south, burning tyres were being cleared from the streets leading into the Jewish Quarter. The smoke was thickest there, where some tyres still smouldered. A throng of Orthodox Jews were milling about, penned back by police.
When a uniformed officer approached Sean and ordered him out of the area, Sean fished out his press badge and moved towards the western end – away from the famous Wall – to where a legion of news teams had been corralled. All the cameras were pointed across the plaza, while a cacophony of nattering reporters addressed the row of lenses with a broadly common summary of events.
Francesca was there, but Sean decided to approach the nearby crowd of tourists instead. A young girl in khaki shorts and a white T-shirt was standing on her toes, trying to see over the wall of news teams.
“Don’t know,” the girl replied, when Sean asked her what had happened. She was in her late teens or early twenties, and spoke with a Kiwi accent. “The police were moving everyone back when we got here. There was smoke everywhere. That’s all I could see, really.” She shrugged. She tried to put a bit of levity in her voice, but it still sounded shaky. “Guess we won’t get to see the tunnel today, eh?”
A grey-bearded man who was standing nearby spoke up. “It was those madmen, those Temple fanatics,” he declared loudly. He muttered something in Hebrew and then went on, “They said they were going to rebuild the Temple. The Third Temple, you know? Got themselves arrested is what they did, and started a riot.”
The girl from New Zealand looked bewildered, but the old man’s revelations only served to confirm Sean’s suspicions. The feature he’d done on the Temple Mount two years ago had included a piece about the radical right-wing group who called themselves ‘The Stewards of the Temple’; their stated aim was to fulfil the destiny of the Jews by rebuilding the Temple of Solomon on the Temple Mount. And the Temple Mount – with that famous postcard-picture of the golden Dome of the Rock looming over the skyline of Jerusalem – was one of the most politically and religiously sensitive areas in the world.
According to Jewish prophecy, the unrealised Third Temple – the Third and Final Temple, as it was known – was supposed to be rebuilt in the Messianic Era, when a Jewish Messiah from King David’s line was anointed to rule the Jewish people. It was a well-established Zionist aspiration, having long become part of traditional prayer services.
The Stewards’ convictions were controversial, though, even among Israelis. The first time they’d tried to stage a rally here they had made no secret of their intentions; naturally they had been turned away by Israeli police before even reaching the walls of the Old City. How had they made it through this time? Maybe the Israeli government was changing its policy.
As it stood, the Muslim religious authority, the Waqf, were in charge of the Temple Mount, or the Noble Sanctuary as it was known to Muslims. Home to the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, the Mount was the third holiest site in Islam. The official authority of the Waqf was even acknowledged and facilitated by the government.
“Did you see them arrive?” Sean asked. He had his notebook out and was jotting the details in shorthand.
The elderly man glanced at Sean’s notebook for a moment, but then just nodded and went on in his heavily accented English. “I was sitting right over there, wasn’t I? Fifty of them show up and start proclaiming the foundation of the Third Temple. Then the truck shows up. Don’t know what they thought they were going to get done with two dozen builders and a stone that size. Probably knew they’d just stir up trouble. Probably all they wanted! A publicity stunt! People killed for a damn publicity stunt!”
“Did you recognise any of them? Any political figures?”
The Israeli man shook his head. The New Zealander was listening intently now too.
“So what happened when they showed up?” Sean asked.
“Hardly had it off the truck when the Arabs arrived. Everyone scattered. The Arab mob started throwing petrol bombs, and someone started shooting. Then the police arrived.” The grey-bearded Israeli was interrupted by the sharp blast of a siren as another ambulance rolled out of the plaza. It sped away through the southern gate. “It took them an hour to break the rioters. Big mess. Big mess.”
Sean questioned the man about a few more details and then moved on. Half a dozen other eyewitnesses verified the story, although some of the locals seemed to think nothing at all wrong had happened until the Palestinians had ‘invaded the plaza and started rioting and attacking tourists’. Sean sifted through the various accounts and was quite satisfied that the Jewish Temple-builders had done more than enough to spark a riot, although how they got past security check-points with the truck was still a mystery.
When he rang the main police headquarters in Jerusalem he was told they were dealing with the situation and there would be no statements on the incident yet. Something was up. That truck should never have made it this far into the Old City.
Just as the unhelpful police spokeswoman was hanging up on him, Sean caught sight of someone. The man in the grey baseball cap watching him from across the square. Cap or no cap, it took Sean only a moment to realise it was the same blonde-haired youth he had seen outside his hotel room the day before. As soon as Sean locked eyes with him, the young man turned and vanished.
Sean didn’t waste a moment. He began pushing his way through the crowd of onlookers. He was followed by a string of angry curses, but he pushed on, heedless, until he managed to jostle his way out onto the street beyond. Breaking into a run, he barrelled down a cross-street, skirting the closed-off plaza. Seconds later, he emerged onto the avenue down which his young shadow had disappeared.
There were people everywhere. They stood in doorways, hung from windows, congregated in the middle of the street. Knots of Orthodox Jews prayed aloud in Hebrew. TV and radio reports – being transmitted from only around the corner – blared from some of the apartments above.
Sean turned a full circle in the centre of the street, searching for the man in the baseball cap. No sign. He raced to the next street corner, and peered around in every direction.
But his pursuer had vanished.
Chapter Four
Sean spent the rest of the day looking over his shoulder. He set up a meeting with Sergeant Arnstein at an Irish bar just a few blocks from the police station, to try and find out what the police press office wasn’t ready to tell anyone yet. Even then he couldn’t stop searching the face of every person who stepped inside. It didn’t take Arnstein long to notice.
“You okay, Sean?” he asked, following Sean’s eyes to the door for the tenth time since they’d sat down. “You seem worried about something.”
Bald and slightly overweight, Arnstein was a moderate, apolitical man in his forties with a very large family, two of whom were attending university – the best type of source for a journalist.
“I think I’m being followed,” Sean replied frankly.
“Really?” Arnstein asked, always unsure about Sean’s Irish humour.
Sean nodded. “Caucasian male, blonde, blue eyes, late teens or early twenties. Tell me that’s not the description of some demented serial killer you’re trying to hunt down.”
Arnstein assured him it was not, but offered to check it out for him. As for that morning’s riot, Arnstein claimed the man driving the truck with the culprit block had had some kind of official pass, probably forged, but he didn’t know much more than that. There were six Israelis in custody – well-known Jewish hardliners according to Arnstein – as well as dozens of Palestinian protestors who’d instigated the riots that followed. The official line was that the two men who had been shot dead were Hamas militants, and that they’d opened fire on a crowd of tourists during the rally. There were over a dozen police officers wounded, some of whom had been shot, as well as scores of injured civilians.
Sean thanked the police sergeant and slipped him a thin envelope as he left. Not ground-breaking information by any means, but it did well to stay connected.
Sean dug up his old contact number for the Stewards of the Temple group but, unsurprisingly, there was no answer; they were probably all in police custody by now anyway.
There was no message from Francesca that evening, but he hadn’t expected one. The events of the day were enough to ensure he wouldn’t hear from her for at least another twenty-four hours. Besides, he had an article to write.
It was dark now, and Sean sat in his hotel room, bathed in the harsh white light of his laptop screen. He poured himself another drop of whiskey, then read again the single sentence he had typed and was now agonising over irritably.
It was a day the people of Jerusalem would rather forget.
It wasn’t the right tone for a five-hundred-worder. He stared at the laptop for a moment more, then highlighted the sentence on the screen and pressed ‘delete’. He picked up his whiskey and went to the balcony.
The lights of Jerusalem littered the city slopes like orange stars. The city shone – a grounded nebula in a rolling, light-spotted ocean of black. He glanced across at Rick’s balcony. The room was dark.
He lit a cigarette and leaned against the ledge. He was getting ready to run again, he could feel it. He had spent his whole life running away. Why stop now? He was an emotional nomad, and his career was the perfect getaway vehicle. He’d run away from Francesca once already and she was about to send him heading for the hills again. Because that was his answer to everything.
He chased her from his mind. He finished his cigarette and knocked back the whiskey, ready to face his unwritten article once more.
As he turned his back on the glowing city he saw a shadow moving in the gash of light under the door to the hall. A small envelope was shoved under the door, and then the shadow fled.