Sam Bourne - The Last Testament

But there was no hard shoulder, just the crumbling grey rocks at the side of the road before a sheer Alpine drop. He slowed down all the same but the BMW did not seem to get the message.

Kishon honked the horn, a long, sustained blast. The BMW now revved up and rammed into the back of his car, sending Kishon’s neck whiplashing forward. He briefly lost his grip on the steering wheel, so that he could hear his tyres crunching over the loose gravel at the road’s margin. As he pulled back onto the road, he was rammed again. Then, in a sudden movement, the BMW pulled out to Kishon’s side.

He looked to his left, but the windows were solidly tinted. And now he was being rammed from the side, sending his car juddering towards the edge of the road. He could see from his window the clean, vertical drop. Just ahead, the road bent into a hairpin. Kishon knew he would need room to negotiate the turn, but the BMW would neither drop back nor speed forward. He tried to come to a stop, but each time he did, the BMW banged him from the side.

His only hope was to accelerate and break free. As the turn came he tried it, slamming his foot on the gas just as the road bent. But as he was swerving round, much too fast, the BMW shouldered him harder than ever before. It was enough to send Kishon’s right wheels over the edge. Desperately he tried steering himself back onto the road, but he could feel the difference: his car was gripping nothing, the wheels turning freely in midair.

He felt the lightness of it, as his car plunged almost gracefully off the mountainside for five, six, maybe seven seconds before hitting the first outcrop of rocks. The impact shattered his spine, and almost severed his head from his neck. When the Swiss highway patrol eventually found the wreck of his car two hours later, they had to search the rest of the night, under floodlights, until they were satisfied they had found every last trace of the flesh and bones of Baruch Kishon.

JERUSALEM , THURSDAY , 1.49PM

Maggie did her best to conceal what had happened. She strode past the security guards on the hotel door, two young men who asked every guest whether they were carrying a weapon, checking those they suspected, with all the straight-backed purpose she could muster. She had come to know that of all the competing elements of body language, the gait was often the most eloquent. The second-rate negotiators always set great store by the usual macho indicators: iron handshake, unwavering eye contact. But they forgot the first battle had already been won the moment the two sides entered the room. You had to stride in like victors, confident in your case, controlling the space. If you shuffled in, reluctant to be there, you would spend the rest of the time on the defensive, reacting.

All this knowledge Maggie tried to impart to her aching bones and muscles as she came through the automatic door of the hotel to see Uri, pacing, head down, in the lobby. She wanted him to have no idea what had happened to her in the market. Growing up, she had never understood the girls at her school who had not breathed a word about Father Riordan, despite everything he had done to them. But she understood now.

Fortunately, Uri didn’t ask how she was, only what she had found out. She told him about the real Afif Aweida, the trader in looted antiquities who had lived while his fruit-selling cousin had been murdered. As she explained, Uri was smiling a bitter, rueful smile.

‘What is it?’

‘It’s just that this happened before. Not to me. But some colleagues of mine.’

‘What happened?’

‘A very bad case of mistaken identity. It happened during the second Lebanon war, just a few years ago. Israeli special forces snatched the man they thought was the leader of Hizbullah. It was a big coup for Israeli intelligence. Only problem, he was just a Beirut shopkeeper. Same name. Wrong man.’

‘You think it was Israeli intelligence who killed Afif Aweida?’

‘I’m not saying that. Just that dumb mistakes like that happen. Anyone could have made it.’

They were walking along Shlomzion Ha’Malka Street towards his car. She had wanted to go upstairs to her room, to freshen up, but Uri had been adamant: there was no time. As she got into the passenger seat, she explained what she believed had happened: that Shimon Guttman had visited Aweida’s shop, translated several clay tablets and come across one of profound political significance. Some text that would have a huge impact on the peace process. He had called Baruch Kishon, his long-time political partner, to discuss how they could best publicize his find. And then he had set about getting this information to the Prime Minister.

‘For my dad to get so excited, it must have been something that showed the Jews have been here forever. Some fragment in Hebrew going back a million years.’

‘Like the Bet Alpha synagogue?’

‘Maybe.’

Maggie bit her lip and looked outside, at the passing streets. Men in black coats and the trademark wide-brimmed hats, some of them edged in fur, even in this Middle Eastern heat. Women in long, shapeless dresses darting in and out of shops, plastic bags swinging. Uri caught Maggie’s gaze.

‘The religious. Taking over this place. Anyway, we’ll know what it was my father saw soon, I reckon. His lawyer was out of the country until today. He got back this morning and saw this letter waiting for him.’

‘Did he say how long it had been there?’

‘Apparently my dad dropped it off last Saturday. By hand.’

Uri and Maggie looked at each other.

‘I know,’ said Uri. ‘I thought the same thing. Like he knew something was going to happen to him.’

They drove on in silence, Maggie replaying the events of that morning, and of the previous night. If only there was a way to try to make sense of it all. Maybe she should tell Uri what had happened in the market: maybe together they could work out who her attackers were. But she had already revealed so much about herself last night. She was about to say something when Uri reached for the car radio, turning on the noon headlines. Once again he translated each story as it came.

‘They’re saying that there are fears across the world for the Middle East peace process after both sides admitted they had effectively broken off negotiations. Satellite pictures show Syrian army units mobilizing on the border. The Egyptian military have cancelled all leave. And apparently the President of Iran has said that if Israel refuses this last chance to be accepted in the region, then the region will have to remove Israel once and for all. Cast this cancer out, he said. Washington has said any first use of nuclear weapons against Israel will be punished, er, how do you say that? “In kind”?’

Jesus . Miller and the others were not kidding. The world really was watching; failure in Jerusalem would trigger some geopolitical catastrophe. Then she heard in the stream of Hebrew babble two familiar and unexpected words. ‘Uri?’ she said. ‘What’s happened?’

He held up his hand to silence her. Then he paled, the colour visibly leaving his face. Finally he spoke, his voice barely audible.

‘They said tributes are coming in for veteran journalist Baruch Kishon, killed in a car accident in Switzerland. Just outside Geneva.’

‘Uri. Pull the car over. Now.’

But Uri was stuck in traffic; he couldn’t move across. Maggie’s mind was racing. Somebody was one step ahead of every move they were making. She and Uri had deciphered the name of Afif Aweida at Kishon’s apartment; within hours a man called Afif Aweida was lying in a pool of his own blood in the Jerusalem market. They had been the only people to get into Kishon’s home and to have discovered that Kishon had received Guttman’s last phone call. And now he too had been hunted down.