Sam Bourne - The Last Testament

His work done, he turned to the other three who were now standing outside the door of the museum office. A silent, interrogatory look to each of them- Ready? Ready? -then Ziad took his cigarette lighter, sparked it up and threw it to the ground, where it made instant contact with the petrol-soaked body of the security guard.

The flames erupted immediately, leaping so high that Ziad and the team could see them for most of their twenty-minute, wordless return hike through the fields of the kibbutz. The first fire engine arrived at about the same time the quartet found the car they had left in the cotton fields. As they drove back to Afula, they counted at least two more fire trucks and several police cars, heading in the opposite direction. Ziad reached for his cellphone to send a text message to the Director: ‘The hiding place is no more.’

BEN -GURION AIRPORT ,FIVE WEEKS EARLIER

Henry Blyth-Pullen hated flying at the best of times. Even before the war on bloody terror, and the fear that some maniac with a pair of scissors was going to ram the plane into Big Ben, he had been terrified of the damn things. Take-off was the worst. While everyone else was flicking through the Daily Telegraph or Hello! magazine, he would be gripping the buckle of his seat belt until his knuckles turned white. The grinding engines, the straining to lift off the ground, all of it sounded dangerous to Henry. And not just dangerous. Unnatural . As if this huge hunk of metal was meant to float in the air, defying gravity if not the will of the Almighty. No wonder there were so many accidents: it was God’s way of telling us to know our place, to keep our feet on the ground. Remember Icarus…

Henry gave himself this lecture every time he strapped himself into one of the bloody contraptions. It had acquired the status of a ritual. Though he would never admit to superstition, Henry had come to believe his little mental apology to the Creator-expressing regret for mankind’s hubris in taking to the skies-had protected him. If he ever failed to think it, if he took flying for granted, why, then the plane was sure to tumble through the clouds like a stone.

This time, though, Henry’s anxiety had had days to build, long before he got anywhere near the runway. Inside his luggage was a consignment of clay tablets which he had decided to offload three thousand miles away from London. They would not make his fortune-the items that could do that were safely stashed away in a safe, waiting for a change in the political climate-but they would at least make his monthly bank balance look a little bonnier. Besides, he needed to tell Jaafar al-Naasri he had at least sold something. The fact that he was taking the goods back to Jaafar’s very own patch, or near as dammit, was a detail he would not share. Not with anyone, as it happened. It smacked so much of selling sand to the Sahara, that he was embarrassed by it.

How to get them there, that was the issue. You couldn’t just pitch up with a bag-load of bloody precious antiquities. Jaafar had gone to great lengths to get them out; Henry couldn’t just waltz them back in.

As it happens, it was lovable old Lucinda who hit on the answer. Not consciously of course, she wasn’t that bright. No, she just stumbled on it. She was burbling on about some ex-pat friends of hers who’d set up home in Barbados or somewhere, how they didn’t miss the English weather-no fear!-they didn’t miss the telly, but the one thing they did miss was the chocolate. Or choccy, as Lucinda, flush with her third G &T, put it. ‘Apparently the choccy there doesn’t taste of anything,’ she had said, halfway towards slurring. ‘Not even real chocolate. Made with vegetable extract or something.’ Henry was barely listening. ‘Anyway, now every time a friend comes over from Blighty, they’re under strict orders to bring a caseload of Fruit & Nut, Dairy Milk and as much Green & Black as they can afford. Sophie says they’ve both put on at least a stone…’

That was it, Henry had realized before Lucinda had even finished speaking. On his way home that night he had stopped at a garage, and picked up more chocolate than he had bought in his life, one of almost every bar on the market. The next day he had sat in the back office at the showroom, experimenting with a clay tablet in one hand and an Aero or Twix in the other, trying to find a perfect match for length, width, thickness and, crucially, weight. Finally, he struck gold with a mid-size bar of Whole Nut.

Methodically, he removed the paper sleeve, taking care not to tear it. Then he unfolded the inner foil, as if handling the most precious gold leaf. He removed the chocolate bar, putting the clay tablet in its place. Then, to both the head and foot of the bar, he glued two rows of Whole Nut, each row three squares wide. Then he refolded the foil and sheathed the whole hybrid chocolate-and-clay bar back in its paper wrapper. He got through close to a hundred bars that way, ripping the foil, tearing the paper, until finally he had twenty perfect specimens ready to transport to his fictitious, but chocolate-hungry ex-pat relatives.

He had laid them neatly in his small carry-on suitcase. He had wondered about packing them into a strongbox for safekeeping, but he knew that would look suspicious: Cadbury’s was good, but it wasn’t that good. So he just had to chance it, leaving them in his bag as casually as if they really were nothing more than a high-fat treat for a nephew or niece missing home.

The security check at Heathrow was his first worry. Talk of liquid explosives on planes had not only given nervous fliers like Henry more to panic about, it also led airport staff to be much more vigilant about previously ignored food items. But, Henry told himself, if he was stopped he would keep calm and stick to his story.

He placed the bag on the conveyer belt and walked through the metal detector, as nonchalantly as he could manage.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ one of the airport staff had said, stretching his arms out wide, inviting Henry to do the same. Some forgotten change in Henry’s trouser pocket had set off the beeper. They waved him forward.

He reached for the bag, just off the belt, exhaling his relief.

A hand stopped his. ‘One moment please, sir. Can you open the bag for me?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Henry smiled and unzipped the case.

‘A computer?’

‘Yes.’

‘The sign says, computers must go in separately, sir. Please will you do it again?’

Henry could feel his hands go clammy. What were the chances that the twenty chocolate bars could evade discovery twice ?

And yet, as the bag went through a second time, he saw the man charged with examining the x-ray monitor turn away to share a joke with his colleague. He stayed away from the screen for three or four seconds, just as the clay tablets, now bereft of the computer which had shielded them the first time around, lay exposed and in full view. Henry went on his way.

While Henry’s fellow passengers watched the in-flight film, Henry replayed that scene in his head over and over, thanking God, Jesus and anyone else who came to mind for his luck. But as the plane began its descent for Tel Aviv, relief at the first stage of his journey gave way to anxiety about the next.

He had no luggage to collect, so he headed straight for immigration control.

‘And why you are in Israel?’ the girl, who could have been no more than eighteen, asked him.

‘I’m visiting my nephew who’ s studying here.’

‘And where is he studying?’

‘At the Hebrew University. In Jerusalem.’ Henry had a couple of Jewish friends whom he’d called up last week: as casually as he could, he had asked after their sons, both of whom were currently on gap years, and promptly taken down and memorized all the details.