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. ‘
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.
‘
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: ‘
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 his 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.
