He accelerated rapidly and rounded the corner. ‘Just have to hope they’ve forgotten I was here,’ he said. ‘If they see me again, they may be smart enough to figure out what’s happened.’ As Ari approached the hotel he slowed to a sedate pace. ‘Don’t need to be drawing any unnecessary attention to myself. There they are!’ he exclaimed.
‘Think they see you?’ Ben asked.
‘I’m sure they will. Question is whether or not they think anything of it.’ Ari assumed the guise of an Israeli soldier just out for a casual drive around town, his sleeves rolled up and elbow resting on the jeep’s open window. ‘Well, they’re certainly having a good look at me,’ he said under his breath as they drove past the grey sedan. ‘Not much I can do about that. But the question is whether they’ll decide I deserve a bit more attention.’
He picked up speed, peering in the rear-view mirror. ‘Doesn’t look like they’re moving. Wait!’ He paused. ‘They’re getting out of the car . . . crossing over to the hotel. Hold on . . . I’m going to head into the back streets. No good taking the main roads out of the city. If they find out you’re gone, they’ll be quick on our trail.’
‘I think I greased the concierge’s palm enough to buy me some discretion,’ Ben said.
Ari laughed. ‘You think so? Well, problem is, you’re gone now. And that’s the thing with anyone whose loyalty can be bought. There’ll always be a higher bidder. Let’s just hope we’re long gone before the Russians find your friend’s price.’
28
Mediterranean Ocean
Beneath Essie’s feet, the metal deck of HMS Theseus bucked and rolled in the swell as the deafening roar of rotors turning assailed her senses. On the edge of the deck, the helicopter readied to take flight and the atmosphere seemed to pulsate as the machine’s massive metal blades chopped through the air. Essie struggled to hear Captain Matthew Knight as he spoke. The officer handed her a pistol in a belt holster, his grim expression confirming his disapproval.
‘Now, Mrs Peters, I’ve made my feelings clear.’ Knight pursed his lips. ‘I’m uncomfortable with you as a civilian – and a woman – having a weapon. There’s a place for a lady, and the battlefield isn’t it. But the powers that be –’ he gestured over his shoulder to where Josef Garvé stood, stiff-backed and unmoving, ‘– insisted. Though heaven knows when we started taking orders from the Frogs,’ he mumbled beneath his breath.
‘Monsieur Garvé’s just concerned for my wellbeing.’
‘And the road to hell is paved with good intentions . . . Try to defend yourself with that, and you’ll just as soon shoot yourself in the foot as anything else. So don’t say I didn’t warn you if anything goes wrong.’
‘I can assure you, I know how to handle it,’ Essie said.
‘Anyway,’ he said dubiously, ‘it’s a Colt M1911 . . . small enough to slip into your purse.’
‘I’m not carrying a purse.’ She unbuckled her belt and slipped the holster onto the webbing strap.
‘Well, it won’t weigh you down.’ He considered her, sceptically. Whatever qualified as Captain Knight’s ideal British woman, Mrs Essie Peters, in her military-issue khaki pants, shirt and heavy brown leather boots, her blonde hair scraped back and tucked beneath a cap, wasn’t it. And she couldn’t have cared less.
He glanced at his watch. ‘Well, come on, then. Time to get out of here.’
Essie had been on board more aeroplanes than she could count. But the sensation of lifting vertically into the air from the deck of the Theseus in the Whirlwind helicopter was unlike anything she’d ever experienced. Her stomach dropped sickeningly as they pulled away from the aircraft carrier, its hull a metal precipice plunging into churning waters below. As the chopper banked out over the ocean, a rush of adrenalin made her heart pound and with bloodless fingers she gripped the edge of the metal bench seat.
Through the small window set in the chopper’s fuselage she could see the Mediterranean’s aquamarine and white-capped peaky waves rising and falling. In the far distance, they approached a thin, dull-brown line hazy beneath a fog of dust and heat. The Sinai Peninsula.
Knight’s voice crackled through her headphones. ‘We’ll be over land soon. Need to keep our wits about us. The main helicopter assault isn’t scheduled for a bit, so we’re on our own. And that’ll make us a target for the Egyptian Army. I’ll likely have to make some defensive manoeuvres. So make sure you’re buckled up.’
Essie hooked the webbing harness over her shoulders and clamped it round her waist. On the opposite side of the cabin, Garvé impassively checked his own belt. Not for the first time in their long association, Essie marvelled at the Frenchman’s composure. One thing she couldn’t understand was why he felt it necessary to accompany her on what was a dangerous mission when he could just as easily have stationed himself on the deck of his luxurious yacht anchored off Akrotiri, nursing a G&T and awaiting her return with the prize in hand. Most of all, she was mystified by the fact that he was travelling alone rather than with the bodyguards who seemed to accompany him everywhere. When she’d broached the subject with him, Garvé had cut her off abruptly, claiming that they could ill afford to include anyone else in the small circle of people who knew what they were doing and that without him, she’d be as good as on her own because he didn’t trust Penney to be much help if things didn’t go as planned.
Glancing at the third member of their party seated opposite Garvé, Essie shared the Frenchman’s concern about Penney’s likely lack of grace under fire. The Englishman sat rigidly on the metal bench with his eyes clamped shut, back pressed against the helicopter’s fuselage while he clutched the nylon webbing lining the aircraft’s interior. She now knew him to be a treacherous coward whose bluster evaporated like morning mist the instant he found himself anywhere other than a realm in which he could exercise the power and privilege he was born to but had done little to earn himself. Never in her life had she met anyone more likely to crumple under pressure.
‘Right . . .’ Knight’s voice crackled to life again. ‘Coastline approaching. Lean forward . . . away from the sides.’
Penney’s eyes shot open. ‘The sides? Why?’
‘I’ll be doing what I can to avoid shooters. But if they get a bead on us . . . the metal fuselage’ll only help us so much.’
Penney stiffened, his face as white as a sheet. ‘Great. Just great.’
‘Still glad you signed on to continue your master’s work, Adam?’ Essie couldn’t help herself. Adam said nothing but flashed her a look that somehow managed to combine abject terror and scorn. It was quite an achievement.
‘Christ!’ Knight exclaimed through the headphones. ‘Anti- aircraft batteries . . . we’re going to have to go in low . . . hold on!’
Essie braced herself as she heard the dull whumpf of the artillery on the ground firing at them. She felt the helicopter bank sharply and plummet down, its overtaxed engines screaming.
‘Bloody hell! Shooters on the roof!’ Knight cursed. He dragged the aircraft to the right and Essie felt the webbing of her harness constrict painfully across her chest as she was thrown forward. A sound like hail on a tin roof filled the cabin and a starburst of holes opened up in the floor as the helicopter was peppered with bullets.
‘Shit!’ Adam pulled his knees up to his chest. The pop of gunfire was suddenly interspersed with the sporadic metallic clangs of something hitting the fuselage. ‘What the fuck’s that?’ he exclaimed.
‘Grenades . . . hostiles on the roof of their houses – they’re throwing grenades.’
‘Grenades!?’ yelled Penney.
‘Don’t worry, Adam,’ said Garvé calmly. ‘They don’t stick. You’ve nothing to worry about with grenades unless those throwing them have impeccable timing, which few people do.’
‘But the bullets?’ Essie was feeling cruel. ‘Well – if one of those hits the fuel tank, that’ll be the end of us.’
Penney looked ill.
‘Apologies, all,’ said Knight. ‘Out of choices –
any higher and I’ll put us in range of the anti-aircraft guns. But we’ll be clear of Port Said in a minute.’
As quickly as it started, the clamour from outside dissipated and then stopped altogether. The helicopter levelled out and resumed a steady pace.
‘Are we clear?’ Essie asked.
‘Should be,’ Knight said. ‘They know we’re here now, but with what they’ve got descending on them soon, I doubt they’ll worry too much about pursuing a single aircraft into the desert. And the Israelis have knocked out their communications. So even if there’s a unit or two out here – and I’m certain there is – Egyptian command in Suez won’t have any way of letting them know we’re on the way. Should be fine from here on.’
Essie unbuckled her harness and moved to look out the window. In the distance, the glittering waters of the Suez Canal were a shimmering thread embroidered across the desert’s golden sands. Beyond that, the emerald-green edge of the Nile River’s delta spread like a satin sheet over the horizon. Towards the north, great plumes of deathly black smoke billowed into the sky.
‘What’s going on over there?’ she asked.
‘Got word of that before we took off. Bloody Nasser’s sunk all the ships in the canal. Blocked the way through. There’ll be a hell of a mess to clean up once this is all over.’
Let’s just hope it’s all worth it, thought Essie.
29
Negev Desert, Israel
Ari’s authority and rank as sgan aluf – lieutenant colonel – in the Israeli Defence Force meant the jeep had gone unchallenged as they passed through the many military checkpoints on the road heading directly west out of Jerusalem and through the little wedge of Israeli land chiselled out of the territory on the bank of the Jordan River that the kingdom of Jordan had named West Bank.
Ben kept his eyes on the road behind them as they cleared the city, but there was no sign of pursuit. At the checkpoints they passed, Ari gave a description of the men and vehicle they’d managed to avoid at the King David Hotel, issuing instructions that they be taken into custody if they appeared, but Ben suspected they’d successfully evaded the Russians.
It may have been symptomatic of the heightened level of political tension, but the number of military vehicles on the road far outnumbered the scant civilian traffic of mule carts and tractors hauling hay and produce, though Ben couldn’t recall it ever being any different when he’d been in Israel, or Palestine as it was known when he’d first come here.
While Ilhan took the front passenger seat, Ben had laid claim to the bench seat behind Ari in the hope he might be able to catch up on some sleep. He’d rolled up his canvas jacket to use as a pillow, but the jarring suspension made it impossible to avoid slipping to the floor, much less find a stable and comfortable position in which he could slumber. The prospect of sleep wasn’t helped by the canvas cover stretched tautly over a flimsy metal framework serving as the jeep’s roof, which flapped incessantly in the wind as Ari tackled the rough roads at breakneck speed.
Ben had surrendered to the inevitable and sat up again. They’d turned south once they’d passed through the rows of tents and prefabricated shacks of the settlement of Beit Shemesh, one of the many new towns the Israelis were building to house the exodus of Jewish settlers arriving in the land they believed God had promised them.
The three men travelled largely in silence past stands of eucalyptus trees and orange groves, Ben marvelling at the ceaseless labour of the kibbutzniks bent double as they cleared rubble-strewn and barren soil. In their wake he saw the fruits of their labour – nodding fields of maize and golden wheat crisscrossed with irrigation channels of reclaimed water, all part of neatly arranged, picturesque settlements that Ben knew to be the socialist collectives housing the Jewish migrants determined to build a nation.
Ilhan had been gazing at the landscape when he turned towards Ari, jaw clenched. ‘What happened to the others who were here?’
The Israeli cocked his head quizzically. ‘The others?’
‘The others who were living here – in Palestine – before you arrived . . . the Arabs.’
‘Ah.’ Ari nodded. ‘I see. You – you’re an Arab?’
‘A Turk.’
‘Brothers, then. Well – this land – this “Palestine” – you know it was named for the Philistines? But after the Romans left it, it became a nameless place that passed between many hands . . . the Abbāsids, the Fātimids . . . the Crusaders. Then your people – the Ottomans. Only when the British arrived was it once again named Palestine. And, always, we were here. Not all of us, but enough to keep the flame burning. Even before the war, we were one-third of the population. We owned a seventh of the land. Those kibbutzniks . . .’ He gestured to the labourers in the field. ‘They’re here because Jews from around the world bought this land from Arab owners who didn’t live here and cared little for this soil until they realised what we were doing. Then, they began to care, but it was too late. This is our home. And we’ll never leave it.’
‘So you force the Arabs to wander as you’ve wandered for thousands of years. You do realise that it wasn’t just the Jews that God said would inherit this land – it was all the children of Abraham. Including Muslims. And Christians.’
‘We didn’t force anyone to leave.’
Ilhan looked away. Ben could see his friend’s fury expressed in the white line of his clenched jaw. ‘What about the attack on Deir Yassin? You think the Arab women raped there – the children torn to pieces and the unarmed old men whose throats were slit – that wasn’t done to send a message to the people who remained here? Little wonder so many of them left.’ He shook his head in disgust.
Taking the beret off his head, Ari tossed it into Ilhan’s lap. ‘See that? The badge?’ He pointed at the IDF insignia. ‘A sword and an olive branch. Yes, we will fight if attacked. Most of us, though . . . we only want to live in peace. What the fighters of Irgun and Lehi did at Deir Yassin in the name of Israel was an abomination. But terrible things happen in war.’
Ilhan was silent for a moment. ‘That’s no excuse.’
‘No,’ Ari responded. ‘No, it’s not.’
From the town of Be’er Sheva they travelled south into the Negev along tracks cleared of boulders but littered with coarse rubble that had tumbled down from the looming escarpments of the ancient craters known as makhtesh. These seemed to have been sliced out of the landscape but Ben knew they had been formed when the ocean that once covered the Negev had retreated into what became the Mediterranean. As the jeep roared along narrow gorges eroded into the makhtesh, he saw the spiral forms of enormous ammonite fossils protruding from the cliff walls.
With the map Ethan had given him spread out on his lap and a compass Ari had loaned him, Ben kept them heading in the right direction, towards the tiny village of Mitzpe Ramon, the only settlement in the vast and forbidding landscape perched on the northernmost ridge of the Ramon makhtesh. Just south of the town, the track wound between towering tangerine and rose-coloured cliffs and continued on its meandering way towards the Gulf of Aqaba.
After their tense exchange, Ilhan and Ari seemed to have reached a détente of sorts, Ilhan acting as spotter to help negotiate the perilous and eroded track that skirted intimidating drops to riverbeds that hadn’t seen water in many years. When they found their path blocked by the fly-blown carcass of an ibex, Ilhan helped Ben hoist the dead animal off the road by its massive, arching horns. The gassy and sweet smell of death made the men gag.
‘If I thought we could bear the smell, I’d take those back with me,’ said Ilhan regretfully, patting the horns. ‘Do you have any idea how much I could sell them for in Istanbul?’
‘There’s not enough money in the world to make it worth putting up with that stench,’ Ben responded.
‘I don’t know . . .’ said Ilhan.
‘No!’ shouted Ben and Ari in unison.
Ben had identified the place on the map where they needed to strike west towards Har Karkom. Ahead was a dry riverbed hem
med in by steep walls that, if the chart was to be believed, would lead them to their destination.
He tapped Ari on the shoulder. ‘This is it.’
The Israeli pulled the jeep over to the side of the track and the three men climbed out to stand beneath the blazing sun.
Ben was overwhelmed by doubt. ‘So, to get to Mt Sinai, how far from here?’
Ari looked at him quizzically. ‘Mt Sinai? Jebel Musa, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘From here we’d have to go south to Aqaba, then across the top of the gulf country and south into the Sinai. It’s a long way. And I only came with enough supplies to get us to Har Karkom. Fuel . . . food . . . water – we’d be in trouble. But we could turn back to Mitzpe Ramon and try to find what we need for a longer journey if that’s what you want to do.’
‘And Mt Serbal?’
‘Mt Serbal? Why would you want to go there?’
‘There’s a slim chance it’s the place we’re looking for.’
‘Well, that’s even trickier. It’s further north and closer to the military action we’re anticipating. But I suppose we could try . . .’
Ben took stock. He thought it highly likely Essie and Garvé were in the Sinai already. If that were the case, even if he managed to make it there, whatever was hidden away in the mountains would be long gone.
His theory about an alternative Mt Sinai had seemed so plausible up till now. But standing as he was at a literal and metaphysical crossroads, it had the bleak taint of wishful thinking rather than fact.
‘I thought you were certain we were heading for the right place,’ interjected Ilhan.
‘I was,’ Ben replied. ‘Now, I’m not so sure.’
‘Wait!’ Ari exclaimed, reaching back into the jeep and fumbling around beneath his seat, his eyes fixed on the sky. ‘There’s something up there.’ He grabbed a pair of binoculars and got out of the car, looping the strap about his neck. ‘See there?’ He pointed into the air.
The Emerald Tablet Page 21
