Daniel Silva - The Fallen Angel

“Yes, Prime Minister.”

“Do you know what’s going to happen if the Palestinians find out that Gabriel and Eli are in there?”

“Someone’s liable to get hurt,” Navot said. “And then the Arab Spring comes to Jerusalem.”

The prime minister stared at the video screens for a moment before nodding his head once. Navot quickly passed the order along to Gabriel. A few seconds later, he heard the sound of four sharp blows.

Alef, Bet, Gimel, Dalet . . .

Then it was done.

From the storage room, Gabriel and Lavon had taken a sledgehammer, a pickax, two coils of nylon rope, two hard hats with halogen lamps, and whatever small hand tools they could find to disarm the bomb. Before putting on his hard hat, Lavon had first covered his head with a kippah . Gabriel had removed his suit jacket, necktie, and shoulder holster. The SIG Sauer 9mm that Alois Metzler had given him was now tucked into the waistband of his trousers at the small of his back. He left the microphone of the miniature radio open so Navot could hear his every breath and footfall.

After breaking through the cement seal, they entered an arched passageway that bore them through the base of the western retaining wall and into the Mount itself. The paving stones of the ancient street were as smooth as glass. Three times a year—on Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot—Jews from the ancient kingdoms of Israel had walked over these stones on their way to the Temple. Even Gabriel, who had more on his mind than history, could almost feel the presence of his ancestors, but Eli Lavon was plunging headlong through the gloom, breathless with excitement.

“Look at the dressings on these stones,” he said, running his hand along the cold wall of the passage. “There’s no way these are anything but Herodian.”

“We don’t have time to look at stones,” Gabriel said, prodding Lavon along the passage with the handle of the pickax.

“There’s a very good chance that you and I are going to be the last Jews to ever set foot here.”

“If that bomb goes off, we definitely will be.”

Lavon quickened his pace.

“Where are we exactly?” asked Gabriel.

“If we were on the surface, we’d be passing through the Gate of Darkness heading directly toward the eastern façade of the Dome of the Rock.” Lavon paused and then turned his headlamp toward a pair of columns in the stonework. “Those are Doric,” he said. “They’re Herodian, no question about it.”

“Keep walking, Eli,” Gabriel said with another nudge of the pickax.

Lavon obeyed. “At the end of this passage,” he said, “there’s a cistern that was discovered by Charles Wilson, the other great British explorer of ancient Jerusalem.”

“As in Wilson’s Arch.”

Lavon’s headlamp bobbed in the affirmative. “According to Wilson, the cistern is ninety-three and a half feet long, eighteen feet wide, and thirty-five feet deep. After that, we should see a series of steps.”

“And if the steps are there?”

“They’ll take us up closer to the surface. From there, we should be able to find our way into the network of cisterns and aqueducts. We know it’s all connected because of the Warren’s Gate incident in 1981. We just have to find the right connections.”

“Before the bomb explodes,” Gabriel added darkly.

They walked a few more paces. Then Lavon froze.

“What’s wrong?”

Lavon stepped aside to reveal a coarse gray wall blocking the end of the passageway.

“Something tells me that isn’t Herodian.”

“No,” said Lavon. “In my expert opinion, it’s Palestinian, circa two thousand and ten.”

“How thick is it?” the prime minister asked.

“They won’t know until they start hammering,” Navot said. “And if they start hammering . . .”

“The Palestinians will be able to hear them on the Mount.”

Navot nodded.

It took the prime minister only a few seconds to arrive at his decision. “Tell them to break down that seal. But if they don’t find that bomb by two-thirty, I’m going to order the arrest of Imam Hassan Darwish and go in heavy from the top.”

“Israeli troops and police on the Temple Mount?”

The prime minister nodded resolutely.

“If you do that,” Navot said, “you’ll start the third intifada while the eyes of the world are on us because of the pope.”

“I realize that, Uzi, but it’s better than the alternative.”

Navot ordered Gabriel to start hammering.

Alef, Bet, Gimel, Dalet . . .

And they’d barely made a dent.

At that same moment, Imam Hassan Darwish was standing atop the western retaining wall of the Temple Mount, staring down at the empty plaza below. Security alerts were common in Jerusalem, but the Israelis blocked access to the holiest site in Judaism only when they believed an attack was imminent. It was possible the closure was the result of an unrelated threat, but Darwish suspected otherwise. Somewhere, somehow, the plot had been compromised.

Turning, Darwish headed across the esplanade toward the Dome of the Rock. As usual, only females and old men had been allowed into the Haram for Friday prayers; Darwish bade good afternoon to a few of them with the customary greeting of peace before descending into the Well of Souls. There he passed through a locked door and followed an ancient flight of steps downward into the heart of the Holy Mountain. A moment later, he was standing in one of the largest cisterns on the Temple Mount, listening to the sound of distant tapping.

It could mean only one thing.

The Jews were coming.

For five minutes, they beat against the wall without a break, Lavon with the sledgehammer, Gabriel with the pickax. Gabriel broke through first, opening an aperture in the brickwork about the size of a fist. He removed the lamp from his hard hat and shone the beam into the void.

“What do you see?” asked Lavon.

“A cistern.”

“How big?”

“Hard to say, but it looks to be about ninety-three and a half feet long and about eighteen feet wide.”

“Anything else?”

“Steps, Eli. I can see the steps.”

The head of security for the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf was a forty-five-year-old veteran of both Fatah and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade named Abdullah Ramadan. Imam Darwish called him on his mobile and told him to come to the cistern beneath the Dome of the Rock. He didn’t have to explain the meaning of the tapping sound.

“Warren’s Gate?”

“It could be,” Darwish answered. “Or it could be one of the new ones they’ve found during their illegal excavations.”

“What do you want me to do about it?”

“Take three of your best men down there and find out if they’re trying to gain access to the Haram.”

“And if they are?”

“Punish them,” said the imam.

The prime minister stared at the clock on the wall of the cabinet room. It was ten minutes past two. He looked at Navot and asked, “How big is that damn hole?”

Navot posed the question to Gabriel and then relayed his answer to the prime minister and the rest of the room.

“Not big enough.”

“How much longer is it going to take?”

Again Navot relayed the question.

“They’re not sure.”

“Tell them they have to work faster.”

“They’re working as fast as they can, Prime Minister.”

“Tell them, Uzi.”

Navot passed along the prime ministerial order to pick up the pace. Then, after hearing Gabriel’s response, he smiled.

“What did he say?” the prime minister asked.

“He said he’s working as fast as he can, Prime Minister.”

“Are you telling me the truth, Uzi?”

“No, Prime Minister.”

The prime minister smiled in spite of himself and looked at the clock.