The Last Secret Of The Temple (46 page)

Har-Zion was beside the phone when it started ringing, gazing out of his apartment window while he massaged balm into his bare arms and torso. He bent and lifted the receiver, wincing slightly as he did so – even with the cream his skin seemed to have been getting ever tighter these last few months – answering with a brief
'Ken'
and then listening in silence to the voice at the other end. Gradually the pained expression that had twisted his mouth when he first bent down rearranged itself, first into a pucker of concentration, then a smile.

'Get the Cessna ready,' he said eventually. 'And speak to whoever we've got at the airport – we'll need to plant a tracker, just to be certain. Meet me downstairs in twenty. Oh yes, Avi, I'm coming. I'm definitely coming.'

He replaced the phone and, squeezing more balm into his hand, slowly circled it over his stomach, staring out at the Old City beneath, with its domes and towers and, just visible, the long patchwork rectangle of the Western Wall. For a moment, just a brief moment, he allowed himself to daydream: an army, a great army, all God's children, Israel united as one, marching past the Wall with the Menorah at their head before passing up onto the Temple Mount and tearing down the Arab shrines. Then, screwing the cap back on the ointment bottle, he went through into the bedroom to start getting ready.

'Well, ask him to call me, will you? Khalifa. Khalifa! Kal-ee-far. Yes, of course he knows . . . What? Yes, it is urgent! Very urgent. Sorry? OK, OK, thank you, thank you!'

Khalifa slammed down the phone. For a moment he sat where he was, rubbing his temples; then he got to his feet and stormed out of the office and down the corridor into another room where he snatched an atlas from a bookshelf on the wall. Back at his desk he flipped rapidly through the index, then yanked open the relevant page and began tracing the lines of latitude and longitude with his fingers until he had located the place-name he wanted: Salzburg. He lit a cigarette and stared down at it.

It was an hour since he'd last spoken to Ben-Roi. As agreed, he'd waited for the Israeli to call him back; then, having heard nothing from him and impatient to know what, if anything, they'd found out from Schlegel's brother, he'd rung his mobile. Engaged. He'd given it another five minutes, then called again. Still engaged. He'd called a third time, ten minutes after that, but now the mobile was switched off. For no reason he could explain he had started to get an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach, a vague premonition of trouble that grew stronger as the minutes ticked by and still the mobile stayed dead, until eventually, convinced there must be something wrong, he'd contacted the David police station.

As with his first encounter with Israeli police bureaucracy he'd had to put up with a deal of stonewalling and obstructiveness before finally getting through to a secretary who, in faltering English, had informed him that Detective Inspector Ben-Roi and a colleague were currently on their way to Austria. To Salzburg. Why, and when they were due back, she had no idea, nor would she be at liberty to reveal that information even if she did. He'd wanted to push her, demand to speak to someone higher up, but that would have meant explaining why it was he was so anxious to get in touch with the detective; and since this whole damned Menorah thing was supposed to be confidential, he'd had no choice but to back off, asking her to get Ben-Roi to call him if he happened to make contact and leaving it at that.

'What the hell's he doing?' he muttered to himself, staring down at the open atlas. 'What the bloody . . . ?'

The office door flew open and Mohammed Sariya put his head into the room.

'Not now, Mohammed.'

'I've got—'

'I said not now! I'm busy!'

His tone was sharper than he'd intended, but the news about Ben-Roi had rattled him and he wasn't in the mood for trading jokey banter. Sariya looked faintly put out by his abrupt manner, but said nothing, just shrugged, held up his hands as if to say sorry and withdrew again, pulling the door shut behind him. Khalifa thought of going after him – he was never short with his deputy, never – but he was just too wound up and instead sucked away what was left of his cigarette, threw the butt out of the window and buried his head in his hands.

They'd found something, that much at least seemed clear. Something important. Something that necessitated going all the way to Austria to follow up. For a brief moment he wondered if he was simply over-reacting, if there was some perfectly innocent explanation for Ben-Roi's silence, like he'd just forgotten to call in the excitement of unearthing this new lead, or else couldn't get a signal on his mobile and was in such a rush for his plane that he didn't have time to stop and use a payphone.

But no. The more he thought about it, went through everything that had happened over the last few days, everything he'd seen and heard of Ben-Roi, the more certain he became that this wasn't simply a case of an innocent oversight on the Israeli's part, but a deliberate move to cut him, Khalifa, out of the picture at the crucial moment. Why? A personal thing? Because Ben-Roi didn't like him? Wanted to claim all the credit for the Menorah's discovery himself? Or was there some bigger, more insidious game being played out here, some wider agenda? He had no idea. All he did know was that the Israeli was absolutely not to be trusted.

He lit another cigarette, drummed his fingers on the desk, then, coming to a decision, picked up the phone and dialled the private mobile number Gulami had given him the other night, in case of emergencies. Five rings, then a voicemail message. He rang off and dialled again. Same result. He called Gulami's office. The minister was in a meeting with President Mubarak, wouldn't be free till the end of the day, not to be disturbed, under any circumstances. Dammit.

He stood, crossed to the window, rapped his knuckles impatiently on the frame, then went back to his desk and called a contact of his on
al-Ahram,
asked how he could get in touch with Sa'eb Marsoudi. The contact gave him a contact in Ramallah, who gave him a contact in Jerusalem, who gave him a contact back in Ramallah who gave him the number of an office down in Gaza, which told him they had no idea where Marsoudi was. Bloody dammit!

He phoned around a while longer, then, having got nowhere, he went down the corridor to splash some water on his face, try and clear his head. As he passed the last office before the washroom he noticed Mohammed Sariya sitting alone at a desk inside, eating his lunch. Feeling a pang of guilt for his earlier behaviour he slowed and put his head through the door.

'Mohammed?'

Sariya looked up.

'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to snap at you like that. I've been a bit. . .'

His deputy waved a spring onion at him, dismissing the apology. 'Forgotten.'

'Nothing important, was it?'

Sariya bit into the onion.

'It was just about that doorway.'

Khalifa shook his head, not understanding.

'You know, the picture you gave me, the slide. The one you found in Jansen's villa.'

With so many other things on his mind Khalifa had completely forgotten about it.

'Listen, can we do this another time, Mohammed? Right at the moment tombs aren't high on my list of priorities.'

'Sure,' said Sariya. 'Although that's kind of why I thought you might be interested.'

Again Khalifa shook his head. 'How do you mean?'

'Well, it wasn't a tomb.'

'Not a . . . so what was it?'

'A mine,' said Sariya. 'In Germany. Salt mine to be precise.'

For a moment Khalifa hovered by the door; then, intrigued despite himself, he came into the room.

'Go on.'

His deputy crammed the remainder of the onion into his mouth and, bending down, retrieved a large cardboard folder from beneath the desk, removing first a sheet of A4 paper with notes scribbled all over it, then three large photographs, then the slide Khalifa had found in Hoth's villa.

'I got a regular six-by-four print done,' he began, indicating the slide, 'but it didn't show anything you couldn't already see. It was only when I got the guys down in photographic to do a proper blow-up that I found something interesting.'

He held up the first of the large pictures. It was the same doorway Khalifa remembered: dark, forbidding, opening up at the base of a high wall of flat grey rock. Now, however, just above the doorway's lintel, he could make out crude lettering scratched into the bare stone, so faint as to have been invisible on the original slide. He bent forward, squinting at the words.

'Glück Auf,'
he read, struggling with the pronunciation.

'Means good luck,' explained Sariya. 'German. I spoke to their embassy.'

'And they could identify the tomb just from that?'

'Mine,' corrected Sariya. 'And no, they couldn't. It's a traditional miner's greeting, apparently. Used all over Germany.'

'So how?'

'Well, just for the hell of it I got the photographic guys to zoom in on the upper part of the door and blow the picture up again, really enlarge it, and . . .' He held up the next print. 'Notice anything?'

Khalifa ran his eyes over the picture. It seemed exactly the same as the last image, save for what looked like a tiny white blob at the top right-hand corner of the doorway, just below the 'f' of GLÜCK AUF.

'What's that?'

'Very good!' said Sariya with a grin. 'We'll make a detective of you yet.'

He held up the third and final photograph, very grainy, just a small segment of lintel, the word AUF and, beneath it, blurred but legible, painted onto the rock in an area no bigger than the size of a coin, the legend SW16.

'At first I thought it was graffiti,' he said. 'I sent it over to the embassy anyway, just on the off-chance it might ring a bell. They got in touch with some mining expert back in Germany, and he finally came back to me this morning. It turns out it's actually—'

'Part of a numbering system?'

'Exactly. Used around a town called' – he consulted the note-covered sheet of A4 – 'Berchtesgaden. To identify old salt mines. This particular one's a mine called' – again he consulted his sheet – 'the Berg-Ulmewerk. Abandoned since the end of the nineteenth century. They even faxed me a map and some stuff about its history. Bloody efficient, the Germans.'

He delved into the cardboard folder again and pulled out a sheaf of fax-paper which he handed to Khalifa, who sat down on the edge of the desk. There were a couple of pages of writing in German – useless, since he couldn't speak the language – a map, and also a picture of a mountain. He couldn't be sure, but with its flat, craggy summit it looked distinctly like the oil painting hanging in Hoth's front room. He felt a slight tightening of his chest, a tickle of adrenalin.

'This town, Berder-whatever-it's-called. Where is it exactly?'

'Berchtesgaden,' corrected his deputy. 'Southern Germany. Near the border with Austria.'

There was a fractional pause, then Khalifa was on his feet sprinting back to his own office. The atlas was still open on his desk and, grabbing it, he began running his eyes back and forth over the page. It took him precisely five seconds to find what he wanted. Berchtesgaden. Fewer than twenty kilometres from Salzburg, which was the nearest airport. He snatched up the phone and punched a number into the keypad. Three rings, then Chief Hassani's voice echoed down the line.

'Sir? Khalifa. I need to request some travel expenses.'

A tinny, jabbering sound.

'A bit further than that, I'm afraid, sir.' He bit his lip. 'Austria.'

The jabbering suddenly became much louder.

By the time they'd picked up their passports, driven the sixty kilometres to the airport and made their way into the terminal building, their flight to Vienna was already boarding. Ben-Roi flashed his police ID to get them through the initial round of security checks in the departures hall – the first and only time Layla had managed to negotiate the latter without being subjected to minute and interminable questioning – and straight to the check-in desk. The second security control, at the entrance to the departures lounge, proved more difficult, one of the duty guards insisting on taking Layla aside into a private cubicle to search her, despite Ben-Roi's insistence that she was in his custody and posed no threat. By the time she'd been given the all-clear their flight was being called for the last time.

'Ghabee!'
Layla hissed impatiently as her knapsack was handed back to her, its contents thoroughly rifled. 'Idiot!'

She hefted the bag over her shoulder and turned to go after Ben-Roi, who was already moving towards their departure gate. As she did so, back beyond the passport control booths, half-hidden behind a pillar, she caught sight of a tall, muscular figure who seemed to be staring directly at her. Their eyes met for the briefest of instants, then he stepped backwards and disappeared from view.

Outside, Avi Steiner crossed the car park and slipped into the back of a Volvo.

'They're boarding.'

Har-Zion nodded and, leaning forward, patted the driver on the shoulder. The car started up and they moved off, passing through a security gate at the far end of the terminal and out across the tarmac, driving past a row of cargo bays before pulling up beside a hangar in whose open doorway sat a black Cessna Citation Jet. Four other men – tall, honed, expressionless – were waiting for them beside the boarding stairs, each wearing a black
yarmulke,
each clutching a canvas holdall. Har-Zion and Steiner got out and, with a silent acknowledgement of each other's presence, the six of them disappeared into the jet, its door thunking closed behind them, its engines starting to whine and purr.

Khalifa had already missed the one daily direct flight from Egypt to Austria, so had to scramble round trying to put together an alternative itinerary to Salzburg via some other European capital. After almost an hour of phoning the best he'd managed to come up with was a tortuous route via Rome and Innsbruck which wouldn't get him to his destination till past midnight. By that point Ben-Roi would almost certainly have reached the mine, done whatever he was going to do there and left again, and he was just starting to think he was wasting his time, that there was no way he was going to catch the Israeli, when, with his very last call, he finally found what he needed: a tourist charter from Luxor direct to Munich, departing at 1.15 p.m. Munich was only 130 kilometres by road from Berchtesgaden, and although it wasn't the ideal solution it was the best he could do in the circumstances.

He just had time to call Zenab, tell her he was going on a short business trip – 'Nothing to worry about, I'll be back by this time tomorrow' – before charging off to the airport. So rushed was the whole thing that it was only when he was actually on board the plane and roaring down the runway that it occurred to him this would be the first time in his entire life he had ever been out of his native Egypt.