Sam Bourne - The Last Testament

They walked on, until they were under another vaulted ceiling. The smell of damp was getting stronger. They were, the guide explained, walking through a series of cisterns whose arches supported the houses built above. ‘See the holes in the ceiling,’ he said, as everyone looked up. ‘They would drop a bucket from those, then pull it up, full of water.’

Maggie was barely listening, studying instead the two illuminated signs that had been placed down here: incongruously, they listed the foreign donors, the Schottensteins and Zuckermans, who had made these excavations possible. She scanned the names, looking for a Guttman or an Ehud Ramon or a Vladimir or a Jabotinsky, anything which might give her some clue. This place was so big, a maze of tunnels: how on earth was she meant to find anything here? She fully understood Uri’s exasperation with his father: why couldn’t he have been clearer?

The guide was calling them forward, to see what he introduced as Wilson’s Arch. He pointed to a small opening, through which they could glimpse again the solid oblong stones of the Western Wall, no different from those they had seen outside. Most of their view was blocked, though, by a ‘women’s prayer area’ that, even at this hour, was busy.

Enough of this, she decided. Tagging along in a tour party was never going to lead her to the tablet. She needed to search properly. And that meant alone. She walked, as quietly and unobtrusively as she could, away from the group and towards the first available opening.

It was a flight of newly-constructed metal stairs she had spotted when they came in. She went down, pressing her heel into each step to prevent her boots making the clacking noise that would give her away. At the bottom, she saw a deep rectangle that seemed to have been neatly carved out of the earth, with steps on each side. Some kind of bathing pool.

Go west, young man, and make your way to the model city, close to the Mishkan. You’ll find what I left for you there, in the path of ancient warrens.

There was nothing here that connected this place to Guttman’s clue. She moved forward, into a wider space, where a group of men in yellow hard hats were working: Arabs, Maggie couldn’t help noticing. She remembered the note in the briefing material, noting the irony that the Jewish settlements on the West Bank, like Israel’s security barrier or wall, which were so hated by the Arabs, were almost always built by Arab hands.

Facing her was the newly-exposed section of the Western Wall. She skim-read the sign: five tons each, finely cut, bevelled edges and neat borders, one longer than a bus, weighs in at five hundred and seventy tons, heavier than a 747 loaded with passengers and all their luggage. Shit . When was she going to see something that made sense?

She searched for an opening. There was only one and she took it, finding herself on a narrow path, faced on one side by an enormous arch that seemed to have been bricked up, filled in with a coarse, craggy rubble. Next to it was a sign: Warren’s Gate.

Thank God for that. Guttman was not messing them around after all. Had not his clue spoken of the ‘path of ancient warrens’? Both she and Uri had taken that to mean this warren of ancient tunnels, but Guttman had been far cleverer than that. He meant this place: not warrens at all, but Warren’s. And here she was.

She looked up, down and around, confident that the hiding place was about to reveal itself. Yet all she could see was this wall of stone and brick, each piece apparently solid and unyielding. She began tapping and pulling, hoping to find a loose brick that might come away easily. None yielded.

Her confidence waning, she fell to her knees. She would work methodically, starting with the bottom line of stones. She began grabbing and tugging, the skin of her fingers scratching and tearing on the coarse brick. The wall was rock solid. Her hands moved frantically across the next line of stones, then the next. Nothing.

She stood up to look at the wall opposite. Perhaps the hiding place was here. She gazed high above and then below. Where in God’s name had Guttman hidden it?

And then she saw him.

The same man she had made eye contact with during the tour, except now he was standing, alone, at the other end of this narrow pathway. Maggie registered no embarrassment, only recognition.

She had seen his face before. But where? Her mind was so addled with exhaustion, it was like wading through deep water to find the memory. It was recent, she knew that. Just the last few days. Was it at the hotel? At the consulate? No, she suddenly realized. Oh no. It was not there at all.

It had been at the nightclub in Tel Aviv where she and Uri had tracked down Baruch Kishon’s son. Maggie had noticed him at the entrance, shortly after they had arrived. She had almost given him a sympathy smile: another thirtysomething, out of place in a club heaving with lithe and gorgeous kids. He had followed her then-and he had followed her now.

His purpose was beyond doubt. Whatever she was about to discover, he would want for himself, to pass on to God knows who. To the men who had killed Uri’s mother, Kishon, Aweida and maybe even Uri. The men who would doubtless do the same to her, right here, right now, in this catacomb of age-old secrets.

JERUSALEM , FRIDAY , 8.21AM

Her legs made the decision before she did. She stood up and ran, rushing through a narrowing of the passageway, in which perhaps a dozen women were standing, each of them holding a prayer book. Their heads were covered with hats or crocheted snoods and their faces were pictures of intensity. As Maggie pushed past them, she could see they were all but touching a wall that was trickling with water, their lips nearly brushing it. Two other women, tourists probably, were standing apart from the rest. Maggie overheard them: ‘The Foundation Stone is just through there, on the other side of the wall. Did you hear what they said? That those drops are God’s tears.’

Maggie shoved them out of the way. She looked over her shoulder to see the stalker had now been joined by another man, a videocamera around his neck. They were getting closer. She picked up speed.

Now the pathway became a long, low, narrow tunnel. She ran on, hunched over. When she glanced back she saw them gaining on her, even as they ran in their own awkward crouch. In panic, she whirled around and dashed forward, only to smash her forehead on a metal rafter lodged in the ceiling. She gasped, then jumped as the wall on her left suddenly disappeared: an alcove, inside which was a wizened woman, dressed entirely in black, clutching a prayer book. Maggie felt dizzy.

Now the ground beneath her feet changed: a glass square looking down onto what might have been a cistern or a room below. The men were only about ten yards behind her.

Suddenly the tunnel passageway ended, opening out into another cistern. At last she could raise her head. She was desperate to find a way off the official path, so that she might give these men the slip. But there only seemed to be one opening each time. She would just have to stay ahead of them until she could break back out into the daylight. But how much longer would that be?

She was panting now, as she found herself in what looked like a corner of a long-buried Roman market. She faced two pillars, topped by a portico. Alongside it were two square slabs of stone, dumped on top of each other, as if the construction workers of two millennia past had simply downed tools and abandoned their task. She could hear heavy footsteps behind her. She looked for an exit but could see only one.

The path narrowed again, turning ninety degrees away from the Western Wall which had remained, until then, reliably on her right. Now, instead of the neat, regimented stones, she seemed to have entered some kind of underground gorge, a canyon of steep walls, as high as a cathedral, hugging her on both sides. They were wet and made up of solid, striated layers of colour, like the inside of a cake.