by Chris Ryan
‘Take it easy, buddy,’ he said. His fingers had already located the lead which was plugged into the base of the phone and ran up the man’s sleeve. He pulled it from the socket and felt for the telltale consistency of soft plastic explosive. Sure enough, it was taped to the inside of the man’s arms.
Positive ID.
The bomber was shaking, just as his mate had done. So far nobody around them had clocked exactly what was happening. Luke didn’t know how long that would last. A commotion would alert the remaining two bombers, though, and that was the one thing he couldn’t risk. He hooked his knife hand around the man’s waist and, with a sharp, brutal tug he rammed it into the soft flesh of the bomber’s belly. The bomber exhaled like a punctured balloon and, as Luke slid the blade across his abdomen, he felt the guy go heavy. He removed the phone from his grip and pulled the knife from his body just as the man sank to his knees, head against the stone. For the moment he looked like he was praying.
Luke left him there, disappeared into the crowd and continued along the wall.
10.58 hrs.
All Alistair Stratton’s attention was on the laptop by his side. He could see his damaged face reflected in it, but his own injuries barely registered in his mind as he stared in the darkness of his room at the flickering image of the Western Wall.
There was a knock on his office door and his PA stepped inside. ‘Get out,’ Stratton whispered without looking up. The kid was sensible enough to disappear.
Stratton’s hands were trembling and a bead of sweat dripped down the side of his dirty face. His lips moved silently.
Something caught his eye. Movement at the wall. Not the regular ebb and flow of the visitors, but something else. A number of Hassidim were drawing away from a certain point on the wall, like ripples of water from a stone.
Stratton’s muttering stopped. He squinted at the screen. The resolution was poor but he thought he could just make out what they were retreating from: a figure, kneeling at the stones.
Only now he wasn’t kneeling. He had tumbled to one side and was lying limp and still.
The Hassidim continued to step back and Stratton thrust his face at the screen.
‘Now,’ he whispered, as if he could somehow be heard in that square so far away. And then he shouted, his voice hoarse. Desperate.
‘DO IT NOW!’
Luke could sense commotion behind him. A shout. The dead bomber kneeling at the wall must have been discovered. How long till the remaining two realised what was happening? Minutes?
Seconds?
Still he scanned the crowds, aware that the mood of celebration was changing to one of panic. He put that from his mind. He had to concentrate . . . To focus . . .
The third bomber’s mistake was to turn around. It was obvious he’d been alerted to the disruption further along the wall. Luke was just two metres from him when the man looked back to see what was happening. It was obvious, too, that he realised Luke was on his case. Alarm creased his face and as Luke plunged the two metres to get him, he raised his right hand in defence, revealing the mobile phone he was holding. Luke clocked the lead trailing up his sleeve. He saw the man fumbling with the device with his left hand.
It was the last thing the bomber ever did.
Luke couldn’t be covert. There wasn’t time. He raised his knife, its white blade still bloody from its previous work, and slashed it across the bomber’s right wrist. It sliced the wire just as effectively as the flesh and for a split second the bomber looked in horror as the blood seeped from the wound. A split second, though, was all he had. Luke thumped him against the wall, jarred his chin violently upwards and whipped the blade across his throat.
He didn’t wait to watch the bomber slide down the wall into a heap on the ground, nor even to gather up the phone. He’d already turned by then, to see the crowd backing away from him in horror. He also registered another disturbance about ten metres away. A quick glance told him that at least two Israeli soldiers were pushing through the crowd in his direction. One of them barked an instruction, but Luke was already on the move. Now that his bloodied knife was in full view he didn’t have to barge through the bodies – they retreated aghast from him.
In his mind he had a picture: the image he’d seen from the rooftop of the four bombers emerging from the white van. Three men, one woman. He could see the barrier separating the male and female sections of the wall five metres ahead. He hurried towards it and, seconds later, vaulted over.
He stopped to recce. The female section was just as crowded as the male, and though the panic hadn’t fully reached here, its ripples were just beginning. Facing the wall itself, and touching its stones, was a crowd of little girls. They seemed oblivious to the disturbance but their teacher, a tall, thin woman with dark, curly hair, was looking around in alarm. Her eyes widened as she saw Luke and the spatter of blood on his face, and she opened her mouth as if to scream. No sound came, but she gathered a few of the girls towards her, hugging them helplessly.
Luke paid no attention to her. The movement of the girls had caused a space to open out in front, occupied by just five terrified kids. He could see six or seven metres along the wall and there, in the middle of the crowd of children, one hand pressed against the stones of the wall and with her head turned in alarm towards Luke, was a pregnant woman dressed in a headscarf and a black robe.
Shouting. Behind him. The soldiers had reached the segregation wall between the male and female sections. They were screaming at him, first in Hebrew, then in English: ‘Drop the knife! Drop it or we fire!’
But Luke had one more job to do.
And all of a sudden he had a much bigger problem on his hands than the Israeli soldiers.
He was just launching his way towards the pregnant woman when he saw Maya Bloom coming towards her from the other side. She was ripping her way through the crowds, pushing the worshippers aside, her head slightly lowered but her eyes burning. She was five metres away now.
Suddenly the kids between Luke and the pregnant woman started screaming. He pushed them to one side, not caring if he scared or hurt them, as he lunged along the wall towards the pregnant woman. Her eyes were wide, her face horrified by the sight of Luke bearing down on her.
Bloom was still a couple of metres away when he hurled himself at the pregnant woman with the full force of his body. They collided with a vicious thump. The pregnant woman fell to the ground beneath him; three little girls were knocked over too, and they were screaming now at the tops of their voices as they saw Luke with his dripping knife at the ready, held above the pregnant woman’s throat, ready to strike.
But he didn’t.
The woman, who was whimpering and shaking, had raised her arms up above her head and Luke immediately saw that something was wrong. Her headscarf had slipped and her hair was dyed white blonde. There was nothing in her hands. No detonator.
His blood ran cold.
Luke grabbed the front of the woman’s robe. When he finally brought his knife down, it was not to cut into her body, but into the material of her clothes. He sliced open her robe with a single swipe, then ripped it apart with both hands. He saw her heavy breasts, encased in a flesh-coloured maternity bra. He saw the naked skin of her swollen belly. But he saw no explosives.
She was the wrong person.
The screaming was deafening now. It included not only the girls and their teacher, but also the pregnant woman, lying uncovered and petrified on the floor.
Luke looked up.
The first person he saw was Maya Bloom. She was standing above him, and from inside her jacket she removed the shard of glass – as sharp as the knife Luke was carrying and just as red from the blood that was oozing from her wrists. He prepared to push himself back up to his feet, but in that instant the soldiers were there. Two of them had their rifles pointing directly at him. The third – bigger than the others – bent down quickly, pulled Luke up to his feet and slammed him hard against the wall.
The knife slipped from hi
s hands.
His head cracked against the stone.
Like a photographic snapshot he saw the crowds teeming with panic; he saw the barrels of the soldiers’ rifles; and he saw Maya Bloom, who was standing just two metres from his location, turn quickly away. In the same instant, a helicopter appeared above the Western Wall plaza: a Black Hawk, dark olive green, no doors fitted and no markings; a side gunner was manning a Minigun and panning across the crowd, and a fast-rope arm protruded a metre from the chopper. It had all the features of an SF aircraft. Half the crowd hit the ground and all of them, or it so it seemed, were now screaming.
‘There’s a suicide bomber,’ Luke roared at the three soldiers, but he could barely be heard above the noise of the chopper and the screaming. ‘A pregnant woman! THERE’S A FUCKING SUICIDE BOMBER! CLEAR THE AREA!’
The troops remained in position, their clothes flapping in the wind from the downdraught of the heli – which was no more than fifteen metres above the crowd – staring dumbly at him. Luke shook his head. This was it. The screaming was growing louder, and across the roofs of Jerusalem a church bell sounded.
Eleven o’clock. Eleven o’fucking clock . . . He’d failed. He wouldn’t even survive to see the consequences.
From his pocket came a ringing sound as someone, somewhere, tried to remote-detonate one of the bombers he’d neutralised; five seconds later the second phone he had confiscated joined in.
And it was from this position, unable to move, unable to do anything more, that he witnessed it all happening.
Maya Bloom scanned the wall, blocking out the sound of screaming, ignoring the air currents of the chopper and the chaos and alarm it was causing; ignoring the shouts of the idiot British soldier. It didn’t take more than a couple of seconds to locate her. She was approximately six metres further towards the south end of the wall, also dressed in a black robe, with a headscarf and a shawl, her face slightly fattened by pregnancy; and she was the only woman in the vicinity, with the exception of Maya herself, who was not crazed with panic.
Far from it. She appeared calm and resolute.
Not as resolute, however, as Maya Bloom.
She knocked two children out of the way and now there was open ground between her and this second pregnant woman. It took less than a second to cross it. And in that brief window of time, a scene flashed before her eyes. She was a child, standing on the streets of Tel Aviv. Her brother stood beside her and together they looked upon a sight of indescribable carnage. Their mother was there, lying on the ground. The clothes had been burned from her torso; the skin was charred, filling the air with the stink of smoking flesh; both arms had been ripped from her body. The young Maya was screaming and she continued to scream even when Amit put his arms around her and pressed her face against his chest so that she would not have to look upon the aftermath of the Palestinian bomb that had just torn their parents – and their lives – apart.
The pregnant woman had a mobile phone in one hand and as she saw Maya Bloom coming towards her she was gripping it firmly. The Israeli threw herself at the woman. As they tumbled to the ground, she thumped the woman’s right wrist against the stones of the Western Wall. Her grip loosened and Maya Bloom tugged the phone from her. The device became disconnected from the lead to which it was attached.
A fraction of a second later it started to ring.
Maya Bloom threw the detonator to the ground and raised the shard of glass up above her head, gripping it hard even though its sharp edges cut into her palms. A second later she brought it slamming down into the exposed neck of the pregnant woman. The point of the glass sank into the flesh like a knife into dough. Once it was a couple of inches in, she rotated it clockwise through ninety degrees. Then back again. She repeated this twisting motion three times and with each turn the river of blood that gushed from the wound grew stronger. A harsh gargling sound escaped the victim’s lungs and her limbs started to shake. It took her no more than twenty seconds to die, but even when her body was still, Maya Bloom didn’t stop. She raised the shard again and brought it stabbing down on the woman’s face. Piercing, puncturing, as all the hate she felt spilled out.
By the time her frenzy had finished she was almost as bloody as the murdered woman. She was on all fours, an animal in the wild, and it was only the feel of cold steel against the back of her head that brought her back to the here and now. She looked over her shoulder to see the appalled face of a soldier who was pressing his rifle against her, and she became aware once more of the screaming of the children and the other women as they fled the horror.
And then the soldier started to shout as well. His voice was hoarse. He needed to scream to be heard over the noise of the chopper hovering above the heads of the crowd.
‘Lie on the ground with your hands on your head! Lie on the ground! Lie on the fucking ground. NOW!’
THIRTY-TWO
Luke’s head was pounding. He didn’t understand. Maya Bloom was working for Stratton. What, then, had just happened?
The plaza was chaos. Noise. Children and women screaming and running, the chopper blades thundering overhead. Men, too, shouting on the other side of the barrier. IDF soldiers, one of whom had him at gunpoint, looked like they were on the verge of panic, glancing at each other, clearly wondering what the hell to do.
He felt Maya Bloom’s eyes on him, saw the calculating look in her face as she slid her makeshift weapon back into her jacket and glanced from her gruesome handiwork to the hovering chopper to the soldier who was shouting at her to get down on the ground. When she snapped back at him, it was with authority. The soldier didn’t lower his gun, but Luke could see that he was suddenly less sure of himself. Bloom continued to speak. Fast. Harsh. It sounded like she was issuing instructions and he could make out one word repeated several times: Mossad.
Twenty seconds later Maya Bloom was standing right in front of him. ‘If you try to run,’ she shouted, ‘they’ll shoot you.’
‘What the fuck have you told them?’
‘The truth,’ she replied loudly. ‘That you’re a terrorist.’ She nodded at the guards, who pushed Luke away from the wall towards her. She was close now, less than half a metre. ‘If you don’t do what I tell you,’ she said so that only Luke could hear, ‘neither of us will get out of the plaza alive. I promise they’ll kill you if I give the word.’
Luke believed her.
They moved in convoy – the two soldiers a metre behind Luke, Maya a metre in front, barking instructions at the crowd to let them through. The terrified people parted when they saw that the soldiers had a prisoner. It took less than thirty seconds to cover half the length of the plaza, by which time the chopper had set down ten metres to Luke’s right. He saw troops spilling out from either side: their cutaway Kevlar helmets, M4s and chest rigs confirmed that they were SF. He briefly considered getting their attention, but as soon as the thought entered his mind, Maya Bloom was alongside him. ‘Don’t make a mistake,’ she spat. ‘One step wrong and I’ll tell them to shoot you.’ She looked back over her shoulder and barked at the soldiers, who prodded Luke like he was cattle, urging him to move faster.
Forty metres from the wall and suddenly another six soldiers, wild-eyed and confused, were in front of them. Maya Bloom issued more instructions, and immediately they marched ahead, screaming at the crowds to let them through. Luke barely heard the chopper or the crowds. All his attention, all his focus, was on the woman. What was she doing? What was she orchestrating? Why was she setting things up to allow Luke to escape too?
Perhaps she didn’t want him to start telling the authorities what he knew about her. Even if he were dead, his corpse would be identified and this might set up a trail that would lead to her.
Luke saw the security gates twenty metres ahead. People crowding to get out. The six new IDF men rushed forwards and started clearing the way; as they did so, Maya Bloom looked back at him. It was a deadly look. He decided she intended to get him out of the way, so she could dispose of him.
The convoy triggered the alarm on the security gates as it went through, which did nothing but add to the general sense of panic. On the other side, the area between the plaza entrance and the Dung Gate was a confusion of people – families and friends looking for each other, kids on their own crying, traditionally dressed Hassidim hurrying away from the danger area. There had to be more than a couple of hundred people, Luke reckoned, and he could lose himself among them in seconds, safe in the knowledge that the soldiers wouldn’t open fire on the public.
But he wasn’t going to do that. Lose Maya Bloom now and he’d never find her again. She had too many questions to answer.
She was clever. She’d manoeuvred them out of the plaza – a place they’d never otherwise have escaped from. Now he had to second-guess her next move. If he could escape into the crowd now, so could she. But if she wanted him dead, she had to do it before she disappeared.
If Luke was right, she was about to make an attempt on his life.
She barked at the soldiers to stop when they were fifteen metres from the security gates. She turned to face them and there was a brief moment of stillness that allowed Luke to take in his position.
Maya Bloom didn’t hesitate. She strode up to one of the two soldiers who had Luke at gunpoint and barked at him. He and the other soldier looked at each other nervously. When she shouted again, to Luke’s amazement the first soldier lowered his weapon and handed it to her.
She turned, assault rifle in hand. Passers-by, when they saw what was happening, moved quickly from the area and now there was a clearing a good fifteen metres in diameter around them. Maya Bloom continued to speak to the soldiers. All eight of them had her attention now and it was clear from her voice and their movements that she was instructing them to return to the plaza.
