‘I… I don’t understand.’
‘He would never give his cell phone away unless he was killed or captured!’
‘You mean…’
‘He means that you betrayed us, you bitch!’ shouted Professor Tomlinson.
For a second or two, Audrey was afraid. But then she overcame her fear.
‘Whatever you think about the Jews, or the Israelis or the Zionists or whatever you call them, you have no right to play God.’
‘I didn’t play God. I am a servant of God.’
‘And Goliath? Is he a servant of God too? Killing Professor Carmichael who had done us no wrong?’
‘Goliath is God’s avenging angel.’
‘An avenging angel who knows no bounds! Just like you know no bounds. Do you really think you have the right to commit genocide?’
‘It isn’t genocide, it’s pest control,’ said Morris. ‘You could call it de-lousing.’
‘You’re sick,’ said Audrey.
‘At least he isn’t a traitor!’ shouted the professor, almost rising out of his seat towards Audrey.
Morris stayed the older man with a gesture of his palm, a feeble sign of his ailing authority. Audrey wasn’t afraid of the professor’s anger, but she wanted to know more. She wanted to understand what Morris was telling her.
‘What did they offer you?’ asked the senator. ‘Thirty pieces of silver?’
‘Oh, I didn’t do it for money. I did it because I didn’t like what you were doing – didn’t like what my husband was doing.’
‘I never trusted you!’
‘And you were right. I was against you the whole time. Only it took me a while to realize how right I was.’
‘You prefer to sit back while those pasty-faced mongrels take over the world.’
‘Oh, not that old chestnut again.’
‘You think it’s just a myth? The World Trade Center, the Kennedy assassination-’
Audrey burst out laughing. ‘My God! You really believe your own bullshit! I thought you just sold it to the rednecks. I didn’t think you actually bought it yourself.’
‘And what about all the things you can’t deny? Bernie Madoff, Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken-’
‘Albert Einstein, Ernst Boris Chain, Yehudi Menuhin, Kirk Douglas-’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’ shouted Tomlinson angrily.
‘You think you’re the only one who can memorize a string of names and spit them out on demand? Save the demagoguery for the men in white sheets!’
‘Well, what does your list prove? It’s easy enough to achieve success when you run the world!’
‘Oh yeah! And what does your list prove? That a few Jews have broken the rules? I could just as easily throw other names at you… like Charles Manson, Sirhan Sirhan, Timothy McVeigh. But what does it prove? That you can use a handful of facts to sell a conspiracy theory? I’m in the newspaper business, buddy! I could write the book on that!’
‘ You’re one of them! ’ said the professor.
‘One of whom, for God’s sake? There is no them. It’s just a paranoid myth that power-hungry demagogues feed the people when they’re outside of government.’
‘Next you’re gonna say there’s no us? But that’s the myth that the people on the inside like to spread when they’ve got their snouts in the public trough.’
‘So what’s the story, Paul? You wanna fight corruption? Then go fight corruption! But don’t use it as an excuse for hate-mongering.’
Paul Tomlinson was looking at her as if seeing her for the first time. He had always doubted the strength of her commitment to the cause. He knew that she could never be quite as committed as her husband. He’d put that down to her being a woman. He thought that she was merely a bit wishy-washy. But now he realized that it was not a case of her being too soft. She was simply an enemy of their cause. She had never been one of them.
And she had just admitted that it had been she who told the Israelis about Goliath. She had betrayed them and got Goliath killed, and now she was sitting here taunting them with her treachery… mocking them for their credulity… gloating over her betrayal of their righteous cause. It was all too much for Professor Tomlinson to take. He stood up and moved towards her menacingly, with hatred in his eyes.
Chapter 99
‘What do you mean “an emergency”? Daniel asked, although he already had some idea.
Sarit was looking at them intently, like she had a lot to say and very little time in which to say it. The sinking sun made her shadow look ridiculously long.
‘The man who locked you in the tomb – the man who forced you to go to the cave in Petra. He was working for an organization that hates Israel and the Jewish people.’
‘Look, there’s no point beating about the bush,’ said Daniel. ‘We know about the spores.’
‘Then you know what Goliath is planning to do.’
‘Goliath?’ Gabrielle echoed, unable to suppress the smile.
‘That was his code name. The people he’s working for wanted to use the spores for a terrorist attack on Israel. You may not know this, but they sent Goliath to get a sample of that boy, Joel’s clothes from the hospital. He failed. And he also wanted to get a sample of your clothes when he stole the jeep after locking you in the tomb. I put a stop to that, but I understand that he’s got the shroud now.’
‘How do you know?’ Gabrielle challenged.
‘Sheikh Ibrahim told me.’
‘He’s still alive?’
‘Not any more. But he told me that Goliath took the linen shroud that the tablets were wrapped in and that means he intends to use it. We need to warn the Israeli authorities. The battery on my mobile phone died. I found the one Goliath dropped in the cave, but the battery’s run out on that one too.’
Daniel took out his mobile and was frantically trying to get it to work.
‘Damn,’ he said. ‘Mine’s out of juice as well.’
They looked over at Gabrielle. She shook her head.
‘If we drive fast we might be able to make it to the King Hussein Bridge just after him,’ said Daniel. ‘Then we can warn the authorities.’
Sarit was shaking her head.
‘It’s Friday. The bridge closes at lunchtime.’
‘Then he must be stuck on this side too,’ Daniel replied with relief.
‘Not necessarily,’ Sarit contradicted. ‘There are two other crossings that are open until eight: the Yitzhak Rabin Crossing in the south and the Nahar Yarden Crossing in the north.’
‘He left us in Petra,’ said Gabrielle. ‘So he probably took the one in the south.’
‘Damn!’ shouted Sarit. ‘That means he’s probably in Israel already. We have to get to a phone! We have to warn them!’
Then Daniel remembered something.
‘I don’t know if this helps, but there was something he said when he took the shroud.’
‘What?’ asked Sarit.
‘He said: “I’m going to make the evil usurpers drink the water of death”.’
Sarit thought about this for about half a minute. Then it suddenly hit her.
‘Of course!’
‘What?’ asked Daniel and Gabrielle in unison.
‘You know what the main reservoir for the State of Israel is?’
‘No,’ said Daniel.
