Scorpion's Advance (12 page)

Anderson saw that the old man did have a point but said, 'The plasmid is cheap and easy. Anyone could make toxin with it, and it is very powerful.'

'And there you may have it, my friend,' said Strauss. 'Cheapness and ease of production, that, I think tells us something about its potential users.'

'Terrorists,' said Anderson.

'Indeed,' said Strauss, 'and that is why we must destroy it. We must wipe it out before some idiotic bunch of political lunatics see fit to pour it into a reservoir and hope that, with Klein and Cohen dead, there is no other source.' Anderson agreed, shuddering inwardly at the consequences of failure.

'What happened in the antibiotic tests?'

'Two more failures. We'll try another two today.'

The day for Anderson and Myra Freedman was relatively undemanding with only the new antibiotic tests to set up, and they were able to leave the containment suite shortly after lunchtime. 'You look less like a road accident today,' said Myra
as they returned to the lab, referring to the fact that Anderson had been able to discard his head bandage that morning in addition to the hand dressings which had gone the day before.

Anderson left the lab at three and went to the student administration building where he found out the home address of
Shula Ron. She lived in Jerusalem. He copied the address into the back of his diary and started making preliminary plans for the weekend. He now had two reasons to visit Jerusalem, three if he counted the fact that he wanted to see it anyway.

Anderson went directly from the student building to the university swimming pool where he was content to wallow in the cool water for a few minutes before starting to swim up the length of the pool in a slow, lazy backstroke. The brightness of the sun demanded that he keep his eyes almost closed, but he enjoyed floating on his back and opening them just a little so that the reflections from the water made spectral patterns with his eyelashes. The world seemed marginally nicer today and the fact that he was
going to see Mirit again had a whole lot to do with it.

The afternoon passed with appreciated slowness, Anderson alternately swimming in the cool green water and toasting himself on the poolside. He developed an eco
-system where he would bake on both sides then roll, like a lazy seal leaving its rock, into the water to sink slowly to the bottom. One thrust with his feet and he would break the surface with enough velocity to pull himself out of the pool and start all over again.

Next morning, Anderson's spirits were to rise further when he found only one dead guinea pig. The other, which had received the plasmid plus a drug called
Colomycin, had survived - indeed, it seemed perfectly healthy. Strauss was delighted. 'So, Colomycin does not trigger the plasmid. Excellent! But we must be sure.'

‘I’ll
repeat it, of course,' said Anderson.

'Yes, and give the surviving animal another dose of
Colomycin.' Anderson looked questioningly at Strauss. 'In a few days we can challenge the animal with Galomycin. If it survives it means that the Colomycin has cleared all trace of the plasmid from its body.'

Anderson told Strauss of his plans to visit Jerusalem and talk with
Shula Ron.

'It would be nice to know,' agreed Strauss, adding that he was glad Anderson was going to see Jerusalem. 'Stay a few days. Your work here is nearly over.'

Another quiet day meant that Anderson could leave the lab at lunch time. He decided not to spend another afternoon in the chlorinated waters of the pool but opted instead to walk the length of Einstein to the junction with the Haifa Highway where he caught a bus to the resort of Herzliya just to the north of Tel Aviv. There he bought sandwiches and cold Maccabee beer from a beach stall and ate under the shade of a canopy while he watched people at play beneath the apparently uninterested but ever-watchful eyes of two lifeguards who sat on raised platforms.

After an hour or so, Anderson renewed his life-long love affair with the sea, swimming out fifty metres to turn over on to his back and look at the land. There was always something pleasurable about the perspective that this view gave him, a
pleasant feeling of detachment, a momentary escape from reality as if he'd just stepped off the world to take a breather and would catch it again next time around.

The bus to Jerusalem was packed. Anderson had been trapped in the middle of a great phalanx of people at Tel Aviv bus station and had been carried along in the crush as everyone made to board the bus at the same time. He found himself in a window seat halfway along on the left-hand side, though how he got there owed nothing to choice. An Arab woman displaying a mouth full of gold teeth tumbled into the seat beside him as the harsh, guttural sounds of Hebrew and Arabic made it seem like the opening session of a convention for
bronchitics.

The journey, a distance of about sixty kilometres, seemed long and laboured as the laden bus toiled uphill through the barren scrub of the foothills of the mountains of
Judaea. Anderson, bored with the sight of sand, examined his fellow passengers without, he hoped, making it too obvious. The sunburnt skin, the hawk noses, the age lines - were these, he wondered, the faces that Jesus of Nazareth saw when he looked into the crowd?

Jerusalem appeared as a jewel in the morning sun, impressing Anderson with its cleanness and an aura of brightness created by the light-coloured stonework of its buildings. The bus station was the scene of yet another scrimmage as his fellow passengers all decided to alight at once, but this time Anderson remained aloof, or rather seated, until they had all gone and he could step out into the sunlit Jerusalem morning unaided.

It was hot but different from Tel Aviv in that the air was no longer heavy with moisture, making it seem fresher, drier, and altogether more comfortable as he left the bus station and headed off in the direction of the Old City.

Anderson stood quietly and took in his first sight of ancient Jerusalem with its huge ramparts stretching out to encircle what had been at the heart of so much history. He could see the sweating slaves of Emperor Suleiman as they toiled to build the great stone walls along lines originally decreed by Solomon and Herod, 'modern' sixteenth
century walls to protect a city chosen some three thousand years before by King David to be the capital of the first state of Israel.

Anderson checked his watch. Two hours to go. He entered the Old City at the
Jaffa Gate and stepped back in time to a society that still drove donkeys with sticks through narrow, cobbled alleys. Only the anachronism of soldiers patrolling with machine pistols said that this was no biblical tableau resurrected from childhood memory. That and the smell in the alleys which were crammed with Arab traders selling everything from leather to gold, from spices to china, from fish to linen.

The vendors vied with each other for the attention of passers-by, each so attuned to insincerity that the belief that showing their teeth constituted a smile seemed universal. Anderson moved from stall to stall, looking but ignoring the dentistry, feigning immunity to the crouching and the hand rubbing. He left the dappled shade of the alleys and climbed the steps leading to the precincts of the Dome of the Rock.

He stood stock still at his first sight of the great mosque, its huge golden dome throwing back the sunlight above the spot where Muhammad was said to have ascended to heaven. Well, why not? thought Anderson.

He climbed the steps leading up to the mosque itself and removed his shoes at the door before entering the cool, dark interior and walking round, finding the place surprisi
ngly free of religious trinkets. It seemed to Anderson that all adornment and symbolism had gone into the building itself, leaving the interior with a not unpleasant air of emptiness. In this particular mosque the great expanse of carpeted floor was broken by the rock itself where it rose through the floor in the middle. Anderson saw that there were steps leading down to the base of the rock and descended to find himself in a smaller carpeted area. A man lay spread-eagled on the floor in prayer.

The sight made Anderson feel guilty. He was an interloper. This place obviously meant so much more to the man than himself. It didn't seem right that he was there just watching it all. He came up again quietly and walked out into the sunlight. It was time to keep his appointment.

It was coming up to the hottest part of the day as Anderson looked for a shaded place to wait by the Jaffa Gate. He was relieved to find a stone arch next to one of the great wooden doors where he could cower from the heat, albeit under the interested gaze of one of the patrolling guards who had noticed him lingering there. Anderson smiled; the guard remained impassive. Knowing that the guard was watching him made him feel uncomfortable; it forced him to look at his watch more often than he might otherwise have done in an effort to convince the suspicious man that he was waiting for someone. Mirit arrived and the guard was forgotten.

She had to pause for a suitable gap in the traffic outside the Old City before she could cross the road to where Anderson waited on the pavement. It gave him time to look at her. She wore a white dress that contrasted beautifully with her dark hair and showed off her smooth olive skin to advantage. She pushed her hair back from her face with the s
ame gesture that Anderson remembered from the beach, and he saw again the same slight haughtiness in profile as she anticipated a hiatus in the rumbling traffic and skipped across lightly after a service bus had obscured her momentarily from view.

'It was good of you to come,' said Anderson, holding out his hand.

Mirit smiled in reply. 'Your first time in Jerusalem?' she asked.

'But not my last, I hope,' said Anderson.

Mirit smiled again. 'It does affect people that way,' she said.

‘I’ll
have to rely on you to suggest where we eat,' said Anderson.

'Of course. Let’s eat in the Old City.
'

They walked for a few minutes through narrow alleys till they came to a low wooden door, painted purple and furnished with a brass plate inscribed in Arabic. 'In here,' said
Mirit.

Anderson had to duck his head to get through the doorway and then had to wait for a few moments till his eyes became accustomed to the gloom. A waiter
wearing a long Arab gown showed them to a table; they appeared to be the only ones in the restaurant.

'Shall I order for us?' asked
Mirit.

'Please,' said Anderson.

As the waiter went off with their order, Mirit turned her dark eyes to Anderson and said, 'Now, Doctor, who is trying to kill you?'

'I don't know who.'

'But you know why?'

'I think so. It has to do with the reason for my being here in Israel.' Anderson told her briefly about the death of Martin Klein and how it had led him to Tel Aviv and Professor Strauss's laboratory. He told her of the incident with the acid.

'But why didn't you tell the police?' asked Mirit.

'Because it could have been an accident. I couldn't prove anything. In fact, I almost believed it was an accident until
the events at Caesarea and even then, there seemed a possibility that it was a terrorist until I saw in your face that you had some doubts.'

Mirit
nodded. 'You're quite right. A terrorist would have been the usual explanation for the attack but there were certain things that didn't seem quite right in your case.'

'And these were?'

‘To begin with, you don't even look like an Israeli. Why would a terrorist attack you? Secondly, you were on your own. Terrorists tend not to attack individuals unless they have some political significance. You have none. It didn't make sense for them to land on a lonely beach and kill a tourist; they had nothing to gain by it.

You didn't see them land so why waste ten, fifteen minutes trying to shoot you? And then there was the weapon.'

    'The weapon?'

'By the time I saw you in hospital in
Hadera we had found the weapon used by your attacker. He got away but he dropped the gun in the chase. It was a high-velocity sniper's rifle, made in West Germany. Not the sort of weapon we've ever found on a terrorist before. They are almost invariably equipped with semi-automatic weapons of Eastern-bloc origin.'

Anderson looked down at the table and nodded in resignation. He said quietly, 'Thank you. You've told me what I wanted to hear, or rather what I didn't. But now I'm sure; someone wants me dead.'

'You have lots of company, Doctor,' said Mirit, getting a puzzled look in return. She explained, 'It's not much comfort to you but every Israeli in the country could truthfully say what you have just said. It might be less personal but it's the same feeling.'

‘I'd never looked at it that way before,' smiled Anderson ruefully. 'Tell me about it. Tell me about your life.'

They paused while the Arab waiter came with the food
and set it before them. 'What do you want to know, Doctor?'

'My name's Neil and I want to know everything.'

'My parents are German Jews. They came to Israel in 1948 after surviving the camps and wandering all over Europe; they were present at the very birth of modern Israel. I was born in Jerusalem itself but the city was divided then; the Jordanians occupied the eastern half. It was like that until I was eight years old, then the six day war broke out. The Arab assault on Jerusalem was repulsed and the city reunited. I remember my father crying that day, for the western wall of the temple had been in Arab hands until then. He went there to pray and came home with tears running down his face. I've never forgotten that. It was the day I really discovered what being an Israeli meant.'