by James Becker
'You first – quick,' Bronson said. He glanced back down the hotel corridor. At the far end he saw the man he'd knocked down walking quickly towards him, holding his stomach with his left hand, the pistol in his right.
Then he fired another shot, and Bronson knew he couldn't wait any longer.
He shifted his bag to his left hand and jumped down the four steps to the first platform, grabbed the safety rail and swung himself round to go down the next set of steps.
Below him, Angela was already nearing the bottom. 'Run!' Bronson shouted. 'Get round the side of the building.' Seconds later, he saw her sprint away from the fire escape, her bag in hand.
He reached the bottom steps and looked up. His attacker had stepped on to the concrete platform and was leaning over the rail, taking aim with his pistol. Bronson knew the platforms and steps made hitting him virtually impossible; once he moved away he would become an easier target.
But he had to move. The obvious route was to follow Angela – the corner of the building was a mere twenty feet away – but Bronson guessed that the man with the gun would expect him to run in that direction. Instead, he vaulted over the safety rail and ran for the other corner of the hotel, zig-zagging from side to side.
He could hear movement as the gunman crossed to the other side of the platform, then two shots in quick succession smashed into the paving slabs close behind him. Then he reached the corner and dodged around it. He was safe – at least for the moment.
Sprinting to the front of the hotel, he found Angela standing by the wall, looking nervously back the way she'd come.
'Here,' he called, taking her by the arm. 'Quick. Follow me.'
They ran away from the hotel, down the street and along to the spot where Bronson had parked the car. He unlocked it, tossed their bags on to the back seat, started the engine and drove away, watching his mirrors the whole time.
Angela was trembling slightly, from exertion or fear, or more likely both. 'Don't say it,' she muttered.
'I'm not going to. You know that I think what we're doing is dangerous, but I'm in it with you to the bitter end.
Armageddon – here we come!' 'I think that bastard broke my nose,' Dexter muttered as the two men walked quickly away from the hotel. 'I can feel it.'
'That's about the fifth time you've told me,' Hoxton snapped, his breath still wheezing slightly. 'Just shut up about it and walk.'
'Where are we going?'
'We're going back to the hotel to see if Baverstock's got any further with the inscription.'
'What about Bronson and Lewis?'
'We've lost them for the moment, but sooner or later my contacts will get a lead on them – they'll check into another hotel or something – and we'll get hold of the information they've got. We've come too far to stop now.'
'And Bronson?' Dexter asked.
'He's a dead man walking,' Hoxton said.
69
'We've been looking in the wrong place,' Baverstock announced excitedly as he pulled open the door of his hotel room to let Hoxton inside. 'What happened to you?' he asked, when he saw Dexter standing in the corridor, his shirt red with blood.
'He had a nosebleed,' Hoxton said dismissively. 'Are you saying that the scroll's not under the Temple Mount?'
'Yes. It suddenly dawned on me exactly where the "place of the end of days" had to be, and it's not anywhere near Jerusalem.'
Hoxton sat down. 'So where is it?'
'Har Megiddo, or Armageddon. It's the place mentioned in the Book of Revelation as being where the final battle will be fought, the ultimate fight between good and evil, which will mark the end of the world as we know it.'
'Don't get messianic with me, Baverstock. Just tell me where the hell it is.'
'Here.' Baverstock unfolded a detailed map of Israel and jabbed a stubby finger at a spot just to the south-east of Haifa. 'That's where the Sicarii hid the Silver Scroll, I'm sure of it.'
'You were also pretty sure they'd hidden it in Hezekiah's Tunnel,' Hoxton observed. 'So how certain are you this time?'
'Ninety per cent,' Baverstock said, 'because of the reference to the cistern or well. I should have realized earlier. Jerusalem and the area around the city is full of water storage facilities. I thought the Sicarii had picked Hezekiah's Tunnel because it was the principal fresh water supply for the city, but when I looked at the inscription again I realized I was wrong. Hezekiah's Tunnel isn't really a cistern at all – it's an aqueduct that leads into the city from the Gihon Spring. A cistern is a water storage facility, often underground. If the Sicarii had hidden the relic there, I'd have expected them to use a different expression.'
'And is there a cistern at this Megiddo place?'
Baverstock nodded. 'Actually, it's another spring, but the important thing is the description of Har Megiddo itself. I'm quite sure that's what the author of the scroll was talking about.'
Hoxton turned to Dexter. 'Go and get yourself cleaned up,' he said. 'I don't want you dripping blood all over the car seats. And be quick about it. Then we'll get the hell out of here.' He looked back at Baverstock. 'Bronson and Lewis gave us the slip today, but I'd lay money they've already worked out that the Silver Scroll's hidden somewhere at Har Megiddo. We need to get up there as soon as we can.'
* * *
Bronson and Angela's route had taken them north-west out of Jerusalem, skirting the West Bank and Tel Aviv, through Tiqwa and Ra'annana before joining the coast road at Netanya. The road paralleled the Mediterranean coast, along the edge of the Plain of Sharon, all the way up to Haifa.
But before driving on to Megiddo, there were a few things Bronson wanted to buy, so he turned the Renault west, towards the centre of Haifa itself.
'Shopping time?' Angela asked.
'Exactly. I don't think I'll bother buying flippers because I doubt if I'll be swimming very far, but I'll certainly need a face-mask, and probably a rope.'
Twenty minutes later they walked back to the car, Bronson carrying a small plastic bag and an empty rucksack, which he shoved into the boot. Then they headed south-east out of Haifa towards Afula. The route they'd followed wasn't the most direct track to Har Megiddo, but it had saved them having to climb up and over the Mount Carmel ridge, which separated the two areas of level ground that dominated the area – the plains of Sharon and Esdraelon – so it had been a much easier, and probably faster, drive.
'It's only mid afternoon,' Bronson said. 'Why don't we go straight there and at least check it out? If you're right and what we're looking for is in an underground tunnel, it won't matter whether we go there in daylight or at night.'
'That's true,' Angela agreed, 'but we'll have to be careful up on Har Megiddo at night, waving torches around.
Any lights up there after closing time will attract attention.'
'What do you mean – "closing time"?' Bronson asked.
'Well, the site is a major tourist attraction, you know. At this time of year it closes at five. And we'll have to pay to get inside.'
70
Levi Barak looked with some satisfaction at the notes he'd scribbled during his exchanges on the radio with his various teams of watchers. Both groups of suspects seemed to be heading for exactly the same place in northern Israel. Bronson and Lewis were in the lead, having just reached the outskirts of Haifa after a brief stop in the city.
'Bronson's just turned south-east,' one of the surveillance officers said, his voice crackling over the loudspeaker. 'He's taken the road towards Afula, or maybe he's heading for Nazareth.'
'Keep watching,' Barak ordered, 'and make sure they don't see you. I don't want them spooked now. I'll join you shortly.'
'You're coming up here?' The man sounded surprised.
'Yes. Let me know the moment they stop again, even if it's just for a meal or a drink.'
'Understood.'
Barak leant back from the radio microphone and picked up the internal telephone. 'This is Barak,' he said. 'I want you to get me the number of the direct line for the c
ommanding officer of the Sayeret Matkal. And when you've done that, I want a military helicopter on standby here within thirty minutes, fully fuelled, with two pilots. If possible, get me one that's equipped with a Forward- Looking Infra-Red scanner and a night-vision camera.' He glanced at his watch, then looked out through the window, calculating times and distances. 'And make sure it's here on time. The end-game is near.'
71
The Plain of Esdraelon stretched out before them, a patchwork of green and fertile fields punctuated by small woods and clumps of trees. The road snaked away from Har Megiddo towards the lower slopes of a range of hills that rose in waves towards the distant horizon, gradually vanishing in the heat haze.
Bronson followed the road signs, written in Hebrew and English, and turned north from the Megiddo junction on to road number 66. After a couple of minutes, he made a left turn, and almost immediately swung left again. He slotted the Renault into a vacant space in the car park at the foot of the hill and switched off the engine.
For a few moments he and Angela just sat there in silence, staring up at the craggy slope that rose above them.
'It's big,' Bronson said.
'I told you the area of the city extended to about fifteen acres.'
'I know. Fifteen acres doesn't sound that huge when you just say it,' Bronson replied, 'but when you see something like this in the flesh it's a bit daunting. Are you sure you know where we should start looking?'
'Yes. There's only one source of water here, and the entrance to the tunnel that leads to it is now one of the biggest structures on the site. All the garrisons stationed here through the millennia had the same problem, just as they did at Jerusalem – the only reliable source of water lay outside the walls of the fortress. And in both cases, they did exactly the same thing: they dug an underground tunnel direct to the water source.'
'Right,' Bronson said. 'We're not getting anywhere sitting down here in the car talking about it. Let's go and take a look.'
Off to one side of the car park was a low building that housed the museum and visitors' centre.
'Let's have a look around there first,' Bronson suggested, glancing at his watch. 'We've got plenty of time before the place closes.'
The museum was quite informative, with numerous displays showing different sections of the site and an impressive model of how Megiddo would probably have looked in ancient times. By the time they walked out of the building, they both had a much better idea of the layout of the ruins, and Bronson had bought a guide-book in English that contained a detailed map of the entire site.
They followed the footpath that led to the entrance located on the northern side of the hill, and then started to climb, almost immediately surrounded by ancient masonry.
'According to this book,' Bronson said, pointing to an ancient structure lying to the right of the path, 'those are the ruins of a fifteenth-century-BC gate, and just around this corner we should see the main entrance to the fortress, what's called Solomon's Gate.'
The gateway was in fairly good condition, built with massive stones and obviously designed to withstand not just attack by enemy forces, but also the ravages of time. There were three chambers located to the side of the gate, again in quite a good state of preservation.
'Each of these chambers,' Bronson pointed out, again referring to the guide-book, 'was designed to hold an armoured chariot and two horses, presumably so that they could quickly sweep down on to the plain and sort out any trouble. A bit like a modern police squad car, I suppose.'
They turned left, following a well-trodden path, and walked past Ahab's stables – though to Bronson the remains didn't look much like any kind of stables he'd ever seen, just a tumbledown collection of low walls and fallen masonry – and on to a viewpoint that offered a spectacular vista looking north over the Jezreel Plain towards the town of Nazareth, which nestled in the hills of Galilee.
They stopped near a large, almost circular, structure, approached by a flight of about half a dozen steps on one side. Angela took the guide-book from Bronson and pointed. 'This is the circular altar that was renovated – not built, but renovated – over four thousand years ago,' she said. 'It was probably used for animal sacrifices. That temple' – she gestured towards another pile of tumbled masonry – 'was built at about the same time. It's called the Eastern Temple, and when it was constructed it would have consisted of a vestibule, a main chamber and the Holy of Holies at the rear, which was the closest part of the building to the circular altar.'
She paused. 'It's phenomenal, isn't it? I can't quite believe it's all so ancient.' She looked at him, her eyes shining, her face lit with excitement, and Bronson's heart gave a lurch. 'It's different for you, I realize that. Your life and work are absolutely contemporary, but I live and breathe for this kind of thing, and I can't just walk past something as interesting as this.'
She took his hand, and they walked together towards the southern section of the old city.
'Now that is really impressive,' Bronson said, walking over to a circular metal railing that enclosed a vast pit, and peering down into the shadowy depths. It looked as if it was some forty or fifty feet in diameter and about the same in depth, a huge hole dug into the hard ground and lined with stones. It must have been a massive undertaking. 'Is this the cistern?' he asked.
'No. This is Jeroboam's Silo. It dates from the eighth century BC and was used to store grain. Apparently it held about thirteen thousand bushels.'
'And a bushel is what?'
'It's a unit of dry volume – it's more or less equivalent to eight gallons. You see the double staircase?'
Bronson looked again, then saw what Angela was pointing at. Forming a part of the stone wall itself were two rough staircases, each apparently little more than a couple of feet wide, that spiralled from the top of the silo all the way down to the base, starting on opposite sides of the structure.
'I suppose they built two staircases so that workers carrying or collecting grain could walk down one and then up the other, all at the same time?' Bronson suggested.
Angela nodded, looking down into the silo.
'I wouldn't fancy walking down there myself. They're both pretty narrow, and it's quite a long drop to the bottom,' Bronson added.
'Hence the steel fence.' Angela stepped back.
The silo was the most complete section of the ruins they'd seen so far, and was surrounded by the shapes of ancient buildings, now reduced to dwarf walls little more than a foot or so high. Palm trees – date palms, Bronson guessed – grew from what would have originally been the floors of rooms or perhaps passageways. And everywhere, the tumble of light grey, almost white, masonry conveyed the unmistakable impression of age, of almost too many years to comprehend. He was aware of Angela shivering slightly, despite the heat. He put his arm lightly round her shoulders, and they moved on.
'Over here are what used to be thought of as Solomon's Stables,' Angela said. 'But the dating's been revised and it's now believed they were probably built at the time of Ahab, possibly on the site of the palace of Solomon. Ahab was the King of Israel in the ninth century BC, and it's been estimated that the stables could have held nearly five hundred horses, and accommodated the war chariots as well. At that time, Megiddo was known as the "Chariot City", and chariots would have been the decisive weapon in any skirmish or battle on the plains below. They were the armoured shock troops of the day.'
She looked around her. 'OK, we follow this path down to the south-west. That should take us to the start of the tunnel that leads to the cistern.'
'When does the tunnel date from?' Bronson asked, as they started walking.
'Originally it was thought it might have been built as long ago as the thirteenth century BC, but more recent research has dated it fairly conclusively to the ninth century BC which makes it –' she paused while she did the maths, '– almost three thousand years old.' She looked up and smiled at Bronson.
'So the water supply was outside the city walls?'
'Ye
s. The water source was a spring in a cave over there,' Angela said, pointing ahead of them. 'When Solomon ruled here, he ordered his men to cut a shaft through the walls of the cave to give easier access to the spring, but that wouldn't have helped if Megiddo was under siege. Ahab was a lot more ambitious. He had a wide shaft constructed, which meant digging down through all the underlying levels here at the top of the hill, and then further down into the bedrock itself. The shaft finished up at around two hundred feet deep, and then the real work started. His men dug a horizontal tunnel through the rock to the cave, a distance of almost four hundred feet, which provided them with hidden and impregnable access to the spring. As a finishing touch, Ahab had the original mouth of the cave blocked by a massive stone wall, and then had the wall covered with earth, so that a potential enemy wouldn't even know there was a cave there.'
While Angela had been talking, they'd reached the edge of the entrance shaft, a huge hole in the ground with sloping sides, so massive that it made the grain silo appear totally insignificant by comparison. Unlike the silo, this structure appeared never to have been completely stonelined, simply because there was no need to do so, but the remains of various supporting walls and terraces were visible all the way down to the flat bottom. The crumbling remains of an old stone staircase descended the side of the pit where the slope was gentlest, though to Bronson it still looked as if it would have been an exhausting climb up for the defenders of the city, especially if they were burdened with pitchers of water.
There was a steel safety barrier fitted on the top of a low stone wall that ran around most of the perimeter. In one section there was a break allowing access to a new staircase, made of concrete and fitted with safety rails and a succession of level platforms to break up the descent, which allowed tourists to get safely down to the bottom.
'It's still quite a climb,' Angela said, 'nearly two hundred steps, but at least we only have to go down. They've created an exit at the other end, through the wall that Ahab built three millennia ago.'
