down to wait in a side road where he could watch the entrance.
Jerusalem
David called in to see Bishop O’Hara and then headed off to meet Allegra at Numero Venti, reflecting on Allegra’s stunning results. The carbon dating had been easy – 20 to 40 AD – but even with David helping out, it had taken Allegra nearly two months to complete the initial task of analysing two thousand fragments into parcels of DNA. At least the Essenes had only used three goatskins, David thought. Allegra’s analysis had enabled fragments of the Gospel of Thomas, the Great Isaiah Scroll and the Omega Scroll to be separated into three large plastic bags but the extraordinarily difficult task of piecing together the fragments of the Omega Scroll still lay ahead of them.
‘Congratulations, David!’ Allegra raised her champagne glass in a toast to the country’s newest member of the Knesset just as Elie appeared with the menus.
‘Congratulations on your election, Dr Kaufmann,’ Elie said, adding his own best wishes to those of Allegra. ‘At last there seems to be an opportunity for peace.’
‘I hope so, Elie, I really hope so, and thank you.’
A short distance away in the Muslim quarter of the Old City, Yusef Sartawi made the final adjustments to the thin explosives belt that he had packed with ammonium nitrate. To maximise the casualties, more than three hundred nails and steel bearings had been packed in with the explosive. Wasfiheh raised the top of her elegant jacket and he strapped the belt firmly around her slender waist.
‘Keep the detonator in your pocket until you have to use it,’ Yusef instructed, making sure Wasfiheh’s top covered the wire running from the belt. ‘And here is 100 shekels. Make sure you catch a taxi, clients of Numero Venti don’t travel by bus.’
Mike McKinnon weighed up his options. The freeway was unlikely to provide an interception opportunity, he mused – too much traffic and too many Israeli patrols. It would be better to follow the Arab driver back to Tel-Aviv. Any further consideration was cut short by the re-appearance of the van at the university entrance. Mike McKinnon started his car and eased out of the side street.
Just before they reached Nablus Road they encountered the first of what would be a number of random checkpoints and Mike waited uneasily while the van driver handed over his papers. If his suspicions were correct, and the Omega Scroll was in the safe and the Israeli soldiers found it, it would spell disaster. The Hamas paperwork must have been very professional, Mike thought as he watched the Uzi-wielding Israeli soldiers let the van pass.
By the time they reached the freeway to Tel-Aviv, Mike realised that his earlier assessment had been correct. Interception on the freeway was out of the question. The traffic, apart from two more checkpoints, was free flowing and the van’s tyres could have been shot out easily enough but the Israeli patrols were everywhere and he forced himself to remain calm as he followed. When the traffic slowed on the outskirts of Tel-Aviv and darkness descended, Mike closed on the van, not wanting to lose his quarry in the traffic snarls of Tel-Aviv. Thirty minutes later Mike watched the van turn off into the lane and he parked as close as he dared. Normally Mike didn’t wear driving gloves but this time they served another purpose and leaving them on he retrieved his Heckler-Koch from the glove box. Glancing up and down he was relieved to find that the road was empty and he was grateful for the sparseness of street lighting in this part of Tel-Aviv. Moving quickly, he melted into the shadows, keeping the parked cars between him and his target as he moved silently down the lane.
The van had pulled up in front of the garage and his quarry was once again having trouble forcing the heavy doors apart. Using the van as cover, Mike moved silently along the side until he was only two steps away from the Arab who was now cursing loudly. Judging that he would not have a better chance, Mike reversed his grip on his Heckler-Koch to bring the butt down hard on the Arab’s head, but as he did so the Arab lost his footing in the dirt and slipped forwards. Mike’s pistol butt cracked against the Arab’s back instead of his head. The Hamas man had been trained to deal with a surprise attack from behind and dropped to his knees. With a powerful backward thrust he flung Mike into the air. Instinctively Mike hit the dirt entrance of the garage and rolled, weapon in hand, in time to see the Arab draw his own weapon.
Pfunk. Pfunk. Pfunk. The silenced. 45 sounded incredibly loud as Mike squeezed off three quick shots in succession. The Langley training had not been wasted. The Arab clutched his chest, his gun tumbling harmlessly underneath the van. Mike watched his quarry sink in what seemed like slow motion to the garage floor, his lifeblood ebbing away, hatred visible in his eyes, but fading. Calmly, Mike McKinnon dragged the body into the back of the garage and drove the van inside. He picked up the three spent cartridges and pocketed them.
With the aid of the small microphone and earpiece that the boys in the basement had provided, Mike listened to the final tumbler fall into position. After he opened the door of the old Chubb safe he scanned the contents. There was one envelope, and the only outside marking was in thick black pen:?.
Giorgio Felici had followed Mike McKinnon on the opposite side of the lane. The Hamas operative would be more than a match for the American, he thought, but he would get in close, just in case.
For a brief moment Felici lost sight of the other two men behind the van. Then he heard three shots from a silenced. 45 and knew he’d lost his Hamas man. Deciding against taking on the American in a confined space, Felici waited. As the CIA agent drove the van into the garage, Felici crouched low. Moving past the garage he took cover behind a parked car.
Fifteen minutes later the CIA agent emerged carrying a plastic envelope. Felici watched as his target looked around quickly before moving up the lane towards his car. Felici drew his Beretta and silently followed.
Mike McKinnon heard a noise and immediately reached for his gun as he spun around towards the sound. A single bullet hit him between the eyes and he crumpled silently to the footpath.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Jerusalem
‘Y ossi will make a wonderful Prime Minister, David,’ Allegra said as Elie headed off with their order, ‘but I worry for both of you. Some of the ultra-orthodox Jews and the settlers are seething.’
As David and Allegra clinked their glasses in a toast to peace, two young men deep in conversation near the entrance to Numero Venti stopped talking and stepped aside to make way for a beautiful young woman. Wasfiheh Khatib walked confidently into the crowded restaurant and moved towards David and Allegra.
Elie moved out from behind the bar. He had seen her once before and it was not the young woman’s striking looks that prompted him, it was his years of training and a sixth sense that something was not quite right; none of his guests were expecting anyone and all the tables were full.
‘May I help,’ Elie asked with a polite smile, tapping her on the shoulder. As she turned, the brief look of concern in the girl’s dark eyes did not escape the old waiter. She put her hand in her pocket and Elie saw the wire. Instinctively he spun the girl around and wrapped both arms around her, but he was too late. Wasfiheh pressed the button, detonating nearly 2 kilograms of ammonium nitrate. A blast of flying nails, smoke and deadly shards of glass shattered the restaurant and the shock waves thundered off the old stone walls.
‘Allegra!’ David shook his head and staggered to his feet. Blood was streaming from a deep cut on the side of his head. Allegra had been closer to the girl and was now lying motionless in a pool of blood. In the distance the all-too-familiar sound of approaching sirens could be heard, the vision of which would be carried on news bulletin updates around the world.
‘We open this bulletin,’ Geraldine began, ‘with another tragic bombing in Jerusalem, with the first reports indicating that up to five people have been killed and a dozen more injured, some critically.’
Normally it would have been just another set of statistics to which the world had become anaesthetised by their sheer regularity, but this time the bombing had struck at members of Prime Minister Kaufmann’s family, and the footage showed scenes of ambulance workers trollying the wounded against a backdrop of destruction and the eerie hue of red and blue flashing lights. The picture faded to the entrance of the Hadassah Hospital at Ein Karem, with the pale face of a visibly shaken Tom Schweiker in the foreground.
‘Tom, what’s the latest there?’
Despite his personal connections to David and Allegra, Tom’s voice was calm and measured.
‘Another shocking tragedy for the people of Jerusalem with the bombing of one of the city’s most popular
