Adam Palmer - The Boudicca Parchments

“What do you mean ‘arranged to see her’?”

Sarit looked confused.

“Pardon?”

“You said ‘Bar Tikva arranged to see her.’ That means it was pre-planned. How did you know?”

Sarit blushed. She wasn’t supposed to reveal more than she had to.

“Well we didn’t get it on an intercept, as we should have done. He used a new phone and we didn’t get its details until after that. His old phone actually went dead and we didn’t initially have the number of the new one. He probably ditched the old one for security reasons.”

“So he knows he’s being watched?”

“Not necessarily. He was probably just being cautious. But he may know now of course.”

“And when you said ‘we didn’t get its details until after that …’.”

Daniel smiled. Sarit smiled back.

“You’ve got it. That’s how we tracked him.”

“Tracked him?”

“After I followed him to the Lefou woman, I waited down the road, keeping the place under surveillance. When he emerged, I followed him to a hotel in Golders Green. Then Dovi called me and told me that they’d got a lock on his new phone number and they were tracking him. So I stood down and checked into another hotel there. I got a call bright and early telling me that he was on the move and got dressed quickly and followed him again. He was picked up at the hotel by three men in a car and I followed them.”

“They didn’t spot you?”

“Obviously not.”

“And where did they…”

“They drove through north London into Hertfordshire to the court where you were appearing. I saw them going into the court building but obviously I couldn’t follow them in, because Bar Tikva would have recognized me from the plane. But I figured they wouldn’t try anything inside the court building.”

“So you knew they were going to try and kill me?”

“I suspected. I mean, after the last attempt, it seemed reasonable that they’d try again. And the fact that Shalom Tikva sent his son here after Sam Morgan botched it, plus the fact that they went to the court building, suggested that they were up to something along those lines.”

“And you couldn’t have got some back up?”

“Not at such short notice. Time was of the essence and we didn’t have enough specific information to go to the police.”

“So my life was in your hands.”

“Don’t worry Daniel. You’re safe in my hands.”

Daniel smiled.

“I suppose they’re registered as lethal weapons.”

“Not quite. But I am trained to do my job.”

She decided not to tell him that she was an assassin and not merely a field officer.

“But I thought you guys always work in small teams — or even large ones.”

She knew what he was talking about: the assassination in Dubai. Maybe she didn’t need to tell him that she as an assassin.

“We work in small teams. We work in large teams and we work alone. We do whatever we have to do. The question is why do they want you?”

He told her about the blurred picture sent to his phone, the text exchanges with Martin Costa and dropping the phone in the house when it went up in flames.

“So you have no idea what was in the picture, other than that it was a Hebrew manuscript that he claimed to have found at the dig site?”

“Yes. I mean either Hebrew or Aramaic. Martin Costa may have thought himself to be a great Theology scholar, but he wouldn’t have known the difference.”

“So it looks like they’re trying to kill for nothing?”

“Well assuming that what they’re doing has something to do with Costa, I guess so. But then again they don’t know that.”

“Well regardless, Dovi regards you as an asset to be protected and if you want to come to Israel, we can keep you safe there.”

“I can’t stay there forever. I have my career. I have my life to lead.”

“Well we’ve got enough evidence to intercede on your behalf on the murder charge and to get them to arrest Bar Tikva. It’s just a pity that we don’t know what it is they’re after.”

Daniel realized that he could trust Sarit, so he decided to come clean.

“I did upload a copy to my cloud account.”

“You did ?”

“Uh huh.”

Daniel was enjoying Sarit’s display of enthusiasm.

“Can I see it? There’s a computer here.”

“With internet?”

“High speed broadband.”

“Then you may.”

She led him upstairs to a room packed with computer equipment: a PC with four screens in one corner and a Mac with another four in the other. This wasn’t a computer room: it was a control centre for World War Three. Sarit threw the switch and the computer sprang to life. Daniel had expected the boot-up to be the bottleneck in this entire process. But the computer was on and ready for action in almost the blink of an eye.

“Solid state hard drives,” said Sarit when Daniel looked at her quizzically.

She eased the keyboard over in Daniel’s direction. He keyed in the URL of his cloud account, typed in one of his eMail addresses and then looked at her again, as if he expected her to look away while he logged on.

“You’re worried about your password?” she asked incredulously. “You think we couldn’t get it if we were interested?”

“Dovi probably already has ,” he said with a shrug, and typed it in.

In another blink of an eye, the screen refreshed with his account summary. A couple of clicks opened up the image that he had uploaded. Sarit looked at it. She was somewhat less equipped to read it than Daniel, although she was able to make out the shapes of some of the Hebrew letters.

“You do know,” she said “that blurring of an image is usually caused by jerking the camera in one or another specific direction while the picture is being taken?”

He looked at her blankly.

“So?”

“Well that means that the blurring has a certain specificity about it. If the picture is, say of black text on a yellowish background. Then the blurring involves a specific amount of black and yellow depending on the speed of the movement and the exposure time or digital equivalent.”

“You’re talking in jargon,” he said.

“What I’m trying to tell you is that we have people who can use image-enhancement technology to clean up this image and get the text.”

Daniel’s puzzlement turned into excitement.

“Let’s go for it.”

Julia Sasson was now back in England along with Nat, Romy and the twins. She had heard about Daniel’s arrest and subsequent escape and had tried to contact him, but it went straight to voice mail. Although he had always been more of a scholar than a man of action, she knew from recent escapade in the middle east that her older brother could handle himself in a crisis. But not being able to contact him was worrying. She wanted the reassurance of hearing his voice. So far it had eluded her. She sensed however, that he would get in touch in his own time.

In the meantime, however, she had her children to look after. That was her immediate priority. As it was still school holiday, she was taking them on an outing to Holders Hill Park. She had brought with her the usual collection of footballs, Frisbees, tennis rackets and tennis balls.

She knew that they’d be hungry — probably sooner rather than later — but the cafe in the park was expensive, like almost all local monopolies. So she brought along a big collection of sandwiches, including egg and onions, smoked salmon and chicken schnitzel. She also brought along several bottles of water as well as grape juice and apple-and-pear juice.

It had taken her time to find a parking space, but she had driven around, keeping her keen eyes open until she spotted a car about to leave and then she pounced. She got them out of the car and marshalled them together before using the key fob to look the car doors. With three children, even a simple task like crossing a narrow side-street was fraught with peril.