hand free of the wide sleeve and beckoned to him to follow, then turned and glided away into the palm grove.
Peter went after him, and within a hundred yards was stepping out hard to keep the monk in sight. His light city shoes were not made for this heavy going, loose sand with scattered outcrops of shattered rock.
They left the palm grove and directly ahead of them, less than a quarter of a mile away, the cliff fell from the sky like a vast cascade of black stone.
The monk led him along a rough but well-used footpath, and though
Peter tried to narrow the distance between them, he found that he would have to break into a trot to do so for although the monk appeared to be a broad and heavy man beneath the billowing robe, yet he moved lithely and lightly.
They reached the cliff, and the path zigzagged up it, at such a gradient that they had to lean forward into it. The surface was loose with shale and dry earth becoming progressively steeper. Then underfoot the path was paved, the worn steps of solid rock.
On one hand the drop away into the valley was deeper always and the sheer cliff on the other seemed to lean out as though to press him over the edge.
Always the monk was ahead of him, tireless and quick, his feet silent on the worn steps, and there was no sound of labouring breath.
Peter realized that a man of that stamina and bulk must be immensely powerful. He did not move as you might expect a man of God and prayer to move. There was the awareness and balance of a fighting man about him, the unconscious pride and force of the warrior. With Caliph nothing was ever as it seemed, he thought.
The higher they climbed, so the moonlit panorama below them became more magnificent, a soaring vista of desert and mountain with the great shield of the Dead Sea a brilliant beaten silver beneath the stars. All the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, Peter thought.
They had not paused to rest once on the climb. How high was it,
Peter wondered a thousand feet, fifteen hundred perhaps? His own breathing was deep and steady, he was not yet fully extended and the light sweat that de wed his forehead cooled in the night air.
Something nudged his memory, and he sniffed at the faintly perfumed aroma on the air. It was not steady, but he had caught it faintly once or twice during the climb.
Peter was plagued by the nonsmoker’s acute sense of smell;
perfumes and odours always had special significance for him and this smell was important, but he could not quite place it now. It nagged at him, but then it was lost in a host of other more powerful odours the smell of human beings in community.
The smell of cooking smoke, of food and the underlying sickly taint of rotting garbage and primitive sewage disposal.
Somewhere long ago he had seen photographs of the ancient monastery built into the top of these spectacular Cliffs, the caves and subterranean chambers honeycombed the crest of the rock face, and walls of hewn rock had been built above them by men dead these thousand years.
Yet the memory of that faint perfumed aroma lingered with Peter,
as they climbed the last hundred feet of that terrifying drop and came out suddenly against the stone tower and thick fortification, into which was set a heavy timber door twelve feet high and studded. with iron bolts.
At their approach the door swung open. There was a narrow stone passageway ahead of them lit by a single storm lantern in a niche at the corner of the passageway.
As Peter stepped through the gate, two other figures closed on each side of him out of the darkness and he moved instinctively to defend himself, but checked the movement and stood quiescent with his hand half raised as they searched him with painstaking expertise for a weapon.
Both these men were dressed in single-piece combat suits, and they wore canvas paratrooper boots. Their heads were covered by coarse woollen scarves wound over mouth and nose so only their eyes showed.
Each of them carried the ubiquitous Uzi submachine guns, loaded and cocked and slung on shoulder straps.
At last they stood back satisfied, and the monk led Peter on through a maze of narrow passages. Somewhere there was the sound of monks at their devotions, the harsh chanting of the Greek Orthodox service. The sound of it, and the smoky cedar wood aroma of burning incense, became stronger, until the monk led Peter into a cavernous,
dimly lit church nave hewn from the living rock of the cliff.
In the gloom the old Greek monks sat like long embalmed mummies in their tall dark wooden pews. Their time-worn faces masked by the great black bushes of their beards. Only their eyes glittered, alive as the jewels and precious metals that gilded the ancient religious icons on the stone walls.
The reek of incense was overpowering, and the hoarse chant of the office missed not a single beat as Peter and the robed monk passed swiftly amongst them.
In the impenetrable shadows at the rear of the church, the monk seemed abruptly to disappear, but when Peter reached the spot he discovered that one of the carved pews had been swung aside to reveal a dark secret opening in the rock.
Peter went into it cautiously. It was totally dark but his feet found shallow stone steps, and he climbed a twisting stairway through the rock counting the steps to five hundred, each step approximately six inches high.
Abruptly he stepped out into the cool desert night again.
He was in a paved open courtyard, with the brilliant panoply of the stars overhead, the cliff rising straight ahead and a low stone parapet protecting the sheer drop into the valley behind him.
Peter realized that this must be one of the remotest and most easily defensible rendezvous that Caliph could have chosen and there were more guards here.
Again they came forward, two of them, and searched him once again even more thoroughly than at the monastery gate.
While they worked Peter looked around him swiftly. The level courtyard was perched like an eagle’s eyrie on the brink of the precipice, the parapet wall was five feet high.
Across the courtyard were the oblong entrances to caves carved into the cliff face. They would probably be the retreats of the monks seeking solitude.
There were other men in the courtyard, wearing the same uniform with heads hidden by the Arab shawl headgear. Two of them were setting out flashlight beacons in the shape of a pyramid.
Peter realized they were beacons for an aircraft. Not an aircraft. A helicopter was the only vehicle which would be able to get into this precarious perch on the side of the precipice.
All right then, the beacons would serve to direct a helicopter down into the level paved courtyard.
One of the armed guards ended his body search by checking the buckle of Peter’s belt, tugging it experimentally to make certain it was not the handle of a concealed blade.
He stood back and motioned Peter forward. Across the courtyard the big monk waited patiently at the entrance to one of the stone cells that opened onto the Courtyard.
Peter stooped through the low entrance. The cell was dimly lit by a stinking kerosene lamp set in a stone niche above the narrow cot.
There was a crude wooden table against one wall, a plain crucifix above it and no other ornamentation.
Hewn from the rock wall was a ledge which acted as a shelf for a dozen heavy battered leather-bound books and a few basic eating utensils. It was also a primitive seat.
The monk motioned him towards it, but himself remained standing by the entrance to the cell with his hands thrust into the wide sleeves of his cassock, his face turned away and still masked completely by the deep hood.
There was utter silence from the courtyard beyond the doorway, but it was an electric waiting silence.
Suddenly Peter was aware of the perfumed aroma again, here in the crude stone cell, and then with a small tingling shock he recognized it. The smell came from the monk.
He knew instantly who the big man in the monk’s cowl was, and the knowledge confused him utterly, for long stricken moments.
Then like the click of a well-oiled lock slipping home it all came together. He knew oh God he knew at last.
The aroma he had recognized was the faint trace of the perfumed smoke of expensive Dutch cheroots, and
