Adam Palmer - The Boudicca Parchments

“Oh is that all? It’s Sam… Sam Morgan.”

Daniel leapt aside just as Bar Tikva fired off a volley of rounds at him. But he knew it wasn’t over yet, when Bar Tikva crouched down and stuck the rifle through the hole of the floor that he and Ted had dropped though less than a minute before.

“Move!” he shouted at Ted, who was frozen with momentary panic. Ted moved just in time to give Daniel the space he needed to avoid the shots. Because of the angle at which the man had been able to insert the gun, there was no danger of the shots being fired along the entire stretch. Instead the last rounds of the volley embedded themselves in the plastered walls while Daniel and Ted raced along the underground cavern.

When Ted felt he had got far enough from the volley, he stopped. He was mildly out of breath, but his regular health regimen meant that he had the stamina to run a lot more if he had to. Daniel stopped behind him.

“I think he’s out of ammo. But he might have another magazine.”

But Ted was not listening. The danger held less interest for Ted than curiosity. He was looking around, shining his torch at the plastered walls of the subterranean chamber.

“What is this?” asked.

Daniel took a moment to catch his breath.

“If my calculations are correct, Ted, we’re in something called the Lower Aqueduct. It supplied the Old City and the temple from springs outside the city.”

They heard sounds at the entry point of the chamber from whence they had run.

“Is he coming after as?” asked Ted.

“If he does, we’d better run,” Daniel whispered, shining his torch back in the direction that the sound had come from. But there was no sign of Bar Tikva — just more sharp, staccato, clanking sound. Daniel realized what was happening. Bar Tikva was putting the stone slab back, trapping them in the tunnel.

Ted looked at Daniel with a concerned expression in his face.

“Can we get out?”

Daniel nodded in the direction away from their starting point.

“That way. But it won’t be quick.”

“Why how long is it?”

“That depends on how far we need to go in order to get out. But I can tell you this tunnel runs all the way to Solomon’s Pools in Bethlehem.”

“Bethlehem?”

“Yes. And that’s over thirteen miles from here.”

“And because it had to work under gravity, I assume that it’s all uphill.”

There was resignation in Ted’s tone.

“Yes, but the good news is that it’s not such a steep gradient. Solomon’s Pools are at elevation of seven hundred and sixty five metres. The Temple Mount is seven hundred and thirty metres above see level. So that’s a drop of thirty metres in thirteen miles… I think that’s about twenty one and a half kilometres. So it’s a very small drop.”

“I’ll say. And presumably this was built by Herod the Great.”

“Actually no. It’s been dated back to the Hasmonean period — way before Herod.”

“Good God. And I thought only the Romans had that sort of engineering experience.”

“Well Herod brought his Romanized education later. But the ancient Jews had quite a lot of engineering experience.”

“Never mind that now. What about Salim?”

Daniel’s mind was brought back down to reality. Salim had been helping them and now he lay dead — murdered by the same madman who had been pursuing him since he had been arrested in London. The same madman who had tried to kidnap his niece. And probably the same madman who had killed Martin Costa and set fire to the derelict house in Ashwell. It all seemed so long ago and far away now.

But what did he really know about the lunatic? In London he had appeared as a religious Jew with a long beard. The beard was gone now and Daniel couldn’t think of why. Sarit had told him that the people who were after him were from Shomrei Ha’ir . But why had they targeted him? And why Martin Costa? It must have something to do with what Costa had found… but what? The ketuba ? Perhaps. It showed that a Jewish leader had married out of the religion. But then again Bar Giora was himself a convert or a son of a convert.

Why would any of that matter? Shomrei Ha’ir might not approve of marrying out of the faith, but it happened long ago. And Bar Giora was hardly the most famous or most important of Jewish leaders through the ages. In the long line of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Daniel, Ezra, Jeremiah and Elijah, he was nothing. Even among the military leaders, like Joshua, Judah the Macabee and Bar Kochba, he was small fry. So what was the big deal? It was just another interesting footnote in the rich history of the Jewish people. Nothing to get hot under the collar about… hardly a reason to kill people.

And now Martin Costa was dead, the two criminals who had helped Bar Tikva when he attacked the police van were also dead and Salim was dead. Perhaps no one would shed any tears over Martin I Costa — and the two criminals that Chienmer Lefou had supplied him with would certainly not be missed. But Salim was another matter. Salim was a good man who was helping him because his distant relative Walid had called him all the way from Egypt and asked him to.

And now he would have to explain to Walid and to Salim’s family why their relative had died. And although they would hold the gunman responsible and not Daniel himself, it was hard for Daniel not to feel at least partially responsible. He had brought Salim into this, even if he could not have known of the specific danger that they faced.

And when he did explain and they came down to retrieve the body, there would be an almighty incident about the fact that a Jew had killed a Muslim on the site of Haram ash Sharif, as the Muslims called the Temple Mount.

“Daniel?”

“The voice was Ted’s, gently snapping Daniel out of his daydream.”

“Sorry. I was just thinking about Salim.”

“I know,” said Ted, sympathetically. “But we need to get out of here.”

Ted led the way down a tunnel from the chamber but then suddenly stopped as if he had been struck by lightening. For he now found himself standing in a humongous cavern, larger in area than the one where they had just been and with a much higher ceiling.

“What the…”

His voice trailed off into silence as he swung his torch around and the light bounced off the stone walls. The reflected light was feint, indicating the distance between his torch and the yellow-plastered walls, as well as the divergence of the beam. Daniel joined him and used his torch to view the opposite side to the one where Ted was aiming his.

“It’s the Great Sea,” said Daniel.

“The what?”

“The Great Sea. This is one of the biggest reservoirs under the Temple Mount, if not the biggest. It was discovered by two explorers in the nineteenth century: Conrad Schick and Charles Warren. Warren was the man who discovered an ancient gate to the temple mount that now bears his name. Anyway Warren and Schick discovered that there were many ancient underground reservoirs or cisterns under the Temple Mount. The biggest one that they discovered was this one, which they called the Great Sea. They even brought an artist with them, called William Simpson, a Scotsman who had documented the Crimean War with water colours.”

“But there’s no light down here? Did they have oil lanterns?”

“They did. But he painted it by the light of a burning magnesium wire. Anyway, we need to go that way.”

He pointed to a tunnel and set off in the direction he had pointed, leaving Ted to follow.”

“I presume we’re still under the Temple Mount.”

“Yes, but we won’t be for much longer.”