Paul Christopher - The Sword of the Templars

“You ask him,” said Holliday. “I want answers now.”

“You’re sure he’s a cop?”

“I’m not sure of anything. He could be just a mugger, but I don’t think so.”

“A mugger in Jerusalem?”

“They have suicide bombers, why not muggers?”

“It’s creepy, like pickpockets in Bethlehem. It’s just not right.”

They reached the end of the street and turned south again, this time onto a slightly wider street called Christian Quarter Road, once more filled with strolling tourists and lined with shops and restaurants. A lot of the folding wooden shutters were closed, and half of the sky was blotted out by wooden, shelf-like awnings that jutted out over the paving stones. Every few yards the dark, shadowy entrance to a narrow laneway loomed.

As they reached the corner of Christian Quarter Road and David Street Holliday saw another figure smoking a cigarette and leaning against a wall. This one was wearing an old Rolling Stones Tattoo You tour T-shirt from 1981. The T-shirt was so old the lolling tongue had faded to light pink.

Holliday stopped in front of some kind of pottery store and watched an enormously fat woman in a straw hat and sweatpants with JUICY in big letters across her straining buttocks bargain for a pot in booming New Jersey-accented English. Maybe the Muslims were right, thought Holliday, trying not to stare: some women’s improperly covered bodies were an offense to God.

Out of the corner of his eye he watched Tattoo You in conversation with the man in the dark blue hoodie. Blue Hoodie nodded and then walked away, heading back down Christian Quarter Road.

“We’ve been handed off,” said Holliday.

“What do you mean?”

“Blue Hoodie just passed us on like a relay runner. The guy on our tail now is wearing a Rolling Stones T-shirt.”

“Is that important?”

“It means they’re organized,” answered Holliday. It also meant they had enough resources to scatter men around the Old City and that they had some way to communicate, probably earpiece radios. Cops or better; he doubted that Kellerman’s people could put together something that sophisticated that quickly, especially in Israel.

They moved away from the pottery store and turned left. Ahead of them, in the distance and glowing splendidly in a bath of brilliant light, was the Dome of the Rock, the mosque occupying the historic site of King Solomon’s Temple, the near-mythic source of the Templar Knights’ original wealth.

The actual dome was covered in a hundred and seventy-six tons of gold donated by King Hussein of Jordan shortly before he died. They crossed El-Lahamin Street and walked to Bab-Alsilsileh, the Dome of the Rock like a fabulous beacon ahead of them rising from the rabbit warren of limestone buildings surrounding it. There were even more tourists here, heading for the Dome of the Rock or to the Wailing Wall, built by Herod to enclose and support the original Temple Mount.

Even from blocks away Holliday could see the blaze of strobing flashes from people taking pictures of the famous holy place, one more treasured trophy shot so that JUICY from New Jersey could prove to her Bergen County buddies that she’d been there and they hadn’t.

Among the tourists Holliday could spot at least half a dozen Catholic priests, a black-robed Greek Orthodox priest, a flock of Mother Teresa nuns in their distinctive tea-towel blue and white striped habits, and several big-hatted, long-bearded rabbis.

Instead of following them, Holliday and Peggy ducked down a narrow winding alley that led them south again. Behind them, Tattoo You followed at a discreet distance. The T-shirt was at least one size too big, and the man tailing them wore it loose, not tucked in, probably to hide a weapon on his belt. The man was no more than thirty, with muscular biceps and an athletic look; even without a gun he’d be more than a match for Holliday. No confrontations here, that was for sure.

The alley was leading them to the west, into the Armenian Quarter. Like all the street signs in Old Jerusalem there were three languages: Hebrew, Arabic, and English. The signs were bolted or inset into the walls at every street corner. The directions in the ancient city were easier to follow than the superhighways.

Holliday still wasn’t quite sure what he wanted to do, but he knew he didn’t want to just scurry back to the hotel and play possum. It wasn’t in his nature to run from a fight, but by the same token he knew better than to take on insurmountable odds. The question still remained, however: what would interest Israeli cops, local or otherwise, in their activities?

They turned down yet another narrow street, this one called Tiferet Yisrael. Once again it took them farther west, with the Dome of the Rock at their backs now. The streets were empty of tourists, and the only footsteps other than their own were the ones of the man behind them.

“Let’s get him off our tail,” said Holliday, finally exasperated and just a little tired of the prolonged game of cat and mouse. They slipped off Tiferet Yisrael down a stony little crack between two rows of anonymous buildings. The pathway was too narrow even to have a name.

They reached the end of the shortcut and turned back the way they’d come, following a street broken into long, wide steps leading north. The sign on the wall said they were on Hakraim Gilaad. The street eventually took them back to Tiferet Yisrael, where they paused. There was no sign of Tattoo You.

“Did we lose him?” Peggy asked.

“Looks like it,” said Holliday, looking around. The little street was empty, all the shutters drawn against the evening chill.

“So what was that all about anyway?” Peggy asked. “If you saw them like that they couldn’t have been very good at their jobs.”

“Intimidation, I think,” said Holliday. “Just letting us know we were being watched.”

“Do you think there’s any connection to whoever was down in those tunnels today?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we should ask your friend Raffi tomorrow, like you said.”

“Let’s not start that again,” said Peggy.

They turned and headed back along the length of Tiferet Yisrael, heading to El-Lahamin Street and the way back to the Damascus Gate. A man dressed entirely in black came out of a doorway and turned toward them, walking casually. Holliday noticed a flash of white at his collar. A Catholic priest. Red-haired, red-cheeked, and wearing half-glasses. A man in his fifties. He wore a baggy black suit jacket over a regulation bibbed black shirt.

The priest nodded to Holliday and Peggy as they passed. Holliday nodded back. In the one brief glance Holliday noticed something in the priest’s eyes. Something hard. He shook off a vague feeling of unease and walked on. From behind them he heard a short, metallic sound and turned. The noise had been familiar: the slide of an automatic pistol snapping into place.

The priest stood less than ten feet away, his baggy jacket swept back, revealing a sling holster. In his hand he held a folding stock Czech Skorpion machine pistol, the short barrel fitted with a fat, black sausage suppressor. There was no time to react; the man lifted the gun to chest level, his finger already squeezing the trigger. There was no way out; they were dead where they stood.

There was a sound like a huge hand slapping a door. For a split second Holliday thought he saw the priest’s jacket riffle, suddenly fanned by a rush of air. Then the red-haired man crumpled to the ground, falling forward on his face, the machine pistol dropping out of his extended hand and clattering onto the cobbled street.

From the dark entrance to the alley they’d just come out of, Tattoo You appeared, a black polymer Jericho automatic pistol in his hands, the one they called a “Baby Eagle” back in the United States. He looked at Holliday and Peggy briefly, then holstered his weapon underneath his shirt again.