Sam Bourne - The Last Testament

She inched closer, staying in the shadows. Eventually she saw who was there: the nose-stud girl. Maggie exhaled her relief, marched towards the machine and, just as the woman was beginning to say how cool Second Life was, she hit the computer’s off button.

‘Hey-’

But Maggie was already gone, out the back entrance, up the stone stairs and into the alleyway. She stood, alone, looking left and right before she felt a hand grab her arm and tug her along first right, then left, then down a cobbled slope and eventually to a main street where a silver Mercedes was parked and ready. They got in.

‘I swear if they don’t kill you, I will.’

‘Uri, I’m sorry. But I couldn’t just leave it there, for anyone to-’

‘Were they there?’

‘Not that I could see.’

Uri shook his head, in furious disbelief at the maniac he had somehow landed up with.

‘I’m sorry, I really am.’

‘No, you’re not.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘I don’t know. Away from them, away from Jerusalem. We’ll go back when it’s clear.’

Maggie looked out of the window, watching the first glimmers of a blue, hazy light over the horizon. Jerusalem was barely waking up: all she had seen so far was the odd beggar. ‘What about this message of your father’s?’

‘I don’t know any more.’

‘Come on. He said, “Go west, young man and make your way to the model city, close to the Mishkan”, whatever that is. “You’ll find what I left for you there, in the path of ancient warrens.” So what do you think?’

Uri took his eyes off the road, to fix Maggie with a glare. ‘Do you have any idea how much I hate my father right now? All these chickenshit games he’s putting me through? As if it wasn’t enough that all this madness has already killed my mother.’

‘I know, Uri-’

‘You know nothing, Maggie. Nothing! He had my mother killed, I’m running for my life and for what? What? For some fucking biblical relic that will prove that he and all his right-wing nutcase friends were right all along! He could never make me join him when he was alive, but somehow he has me working for him, like some fucking disciple, now that he’s dead.’

‘Is that where he’s hidden it? In some right-wing nutcase place? On the West Bank?’

‘No. It’s in a much more obvious place.’

‘You’ve worked it out already?’

‘What’s this whole thing about? It could only be in one place.’

‘You mean it’s on the Temple Mount.’ Maggie smiled at the ingenuity of it. Of course he would bury the tablet there. Where else did title deeds for a house belong, except in the house itself?

‘That’s the Mishkan: the Temple, the palace. It refers to that whole area. Except whatever he’s left is not on the Temple Mount. Jews hardly ever go there: too holy. He’s hidden it underneath.’

‘Underneath?’

‘A few years ago, they excavated the tunnels that run alongside the Western Wall. My father and a few other archaeologists. Not the famous part of the Wall, where everyone prays and sticks those cutesy notes to God in the crevices. But a whole stretch of wall that was buried under the rest of the city. Under the Muslim Quarter, to be precise. Everyone went nuts.’

‘You mean the Palestinians?’

‘Of course. What did my father expect? The Arabs said the Jews were trying to undermine the foundations of the Dome of the Rock, you know the big building with the gold dome?’

‘I know, thank you, Uri.’

‘It’s where they think Mohammed ascended to heaven. And here are the Jews tunnelling underneath. And then my dad and his friends make matters worse. They decide it’s not enough that tourists can go into the tunnels. No, the tourists need an exit at the other end, rather than having to walk all the way back through the tunnels. So they build one. And it pops out right in the Muslim Quarter.’

‘A provocation.’

‘Exactly.’

‘So that’s what he means by “ancient warrens”: the tunnels. “Go west”, the Western Wall. Clever. And of course Jerusalem is the model city; it’s the holiest place on earth. But what-’

‘Oh fuck.’

Maggie could see Uri suddenly transfixed by his rear-view mirror. She looked over her shoulder and could see a car behind, its lights set to full beam. They had left the city behind now, descending instead on a mountain road that seemed to be unwinding. On either side were steep rocks, broken up only by the occasional car wreck-ruins of military vehicles, the marine had told her that day, which now felt ten years in the past-relics of the 1948 war that greeted the creation of the state of Israel.

‘They’re getting closer, Uri.’

‘I know.’

‘What the hell are we going to do?’

‘I don’t know. Let me think.’

He was being dazzled by the reflection in the mirror, which seemed to be filling the entire car with a searching yellow light.

Uri accelerated but the car behind caught up effortlessly. Despite Maggie shielding her eyes, the light was too bright to see who was in the car, even what kind of car it was.

‘Can we turn off?’

‘Not unless we want to go tumbling down the mountain.’

‘Shit. Uri, we’ve got to do something.’

‘I know, I know.’

After a few seconds, he spoke again. ‘OK. At the next bend there is a lookout spot. I can pull in there. When I do, you have to open your door immediately and slip out of your side. And keep very low. And you have to do it the instant the car is turning into the spot. Don’t wait for it to come to a complete stop. And then just run over the edge. It’s low ground there for a while, like a ledge. OK?’

‘Yes, but what about-’

‘Don’t worry about me. Once you’re out, I’ll be right behind you. Very low, you got that?’

‘I’ve got it.’

‘OK. Here it comes.’

Uri began to squeeze the brake. Maggie unbuckled her belt, which set off an immediate loud dinging. She waited for her cue.

Uri was looking in his rear-view mirror, then swerved into the space and yelled: ‘Now! And keep low!’

Maggie pulled on the door handle, pushed it and ducked her way out of the car, tripping on the moving road, running in a crouch to the edge of the paved surface. Now, in one of those split-seconds where an enormous decision has to be made, she had to determine whether or not she truly trusted Uri. Instinct, in this half-light of dawn, told her this was a sheer drop and that to run off it was to guarantee death. Yet Uri had promised the view was deceptive, that the slope was gentle. Could she believe him? They had lived and breathed almost every one of the last forty-eight hours together. She had discovered his dead mother. She had told him about Africa. And just a few hours ago they had made love in a way both tender and fierce in its passion.

And yet, who was he? This veteran of Israeli intelligence who had struck her unconscious with a single blow, who had stolen a car and who had done God knows what else in his life. How could she trust such a man?

All this ran through her head during the long second in which she teetered on the edge, before she finally stepped off. The drop came-but it was a tiny one, no more than a couple of feet, like missing the bottom stair in the dark. Stumbling, she ran on until she was out of sight of the road.

As the sound of her breath quieted, she looked around to see that she was quite alone. A second later she heard a gunshot above her, from the road and knew, with an iron certainty that chilled her, that it was Uri who had been hit.

JERUSALEM , FRIDAY , 6.15AM

She held herself very still, wary even of her own breath. Her muscles were quaking, her face trembling. She could feel the tears trickling down her cheeks, but some instinct of self-preservation took over, forcing her feet to make no movement, determined that no one would hear so much as a crunch of a stone under her.