The entrance was about three feet wide and five high, but the cave itself only extended a matter of perhaps fifteen feet into the rock, and was completely empty.
'No,' Angela agreed, 'but there are some here that are a whole lot bigger than this. Let's take a look in one more, then we'll go.'
'Fine by me,' Bronson said, leading the way out again.
Once they were outside, he looked around, then pointed further up the slope. 'That looks like it could be bigger,' he said, indicating a much wider oval opening in the rock face perhaps eighty yards away. 'Do you want to try that one?'
Angela looked up the hillside, and nodded. They were both finding it hard to talk in the oppressive heat.
As they set off, picking their path slowly and carefully across the hillside, Bronson glanced behind him. A man was making his way up the slope towards them, apparently heading for one of the caves. There were actually numerous people visible at Qumran and on the surrounding hillsides, and nothing in particular to distinguish this lone tourist from any of the others swarming over the site, but the figure still concerned him.
When they'd emerged from the first small cave, the man had been heading directly towards them, or towards the cave itself, but now he had changed direction and was walking towards the larger cave Bronson and Angela were aiming for. Either that, or he was on an intercept course with them. Whichever it was, Bronson decided to watch him.
Angela reached the cave entrance first and stepped inside, Bronson following a few seconds behind, after taking a last glance down the slope. The man was over fifty yards away, still ambling, apparently quite innocently, towards them.
Motioning Angela to keep quiet, Bronson stepped back to the entrance and peered out, being careful to keep himself in the shadows. The approaching figure paused about thirty yards away and, as Bronson watched, he slipped a mobile phone into his jacket pocket.
'Oh, shit,' Bronson muttered, as the man pulled a semiautomatic pistol out of his belt, extracted the magazine from the butt to check it, then replaced it and cocked the weapon. 'There's a man heading this way with a pistol.'
'A policeman?' Angela asked hopefully.
'Not in a million years,' Bronson said. 'Not carrying a weapon like that.'
He looked around the cave. There were two short side passages, one on either side of the entrance, each one partially blocked by fallen rocks. Either of them could be a death-trap, but only if the approaching man knew somebody was hiding in them.
'Quickly,' Bronson said, pointing to his right. 'Go into that passage and hide behind the rock-pile.'
'Where will you be?'
'Down there, deeper in the cave. I'll make some noise and try to attract his attention. As soon as he's passed you, get out and go back to the car.'
'No, Chris.' Bronson could hear the fear in her voice.
'I'm not leaving you here.'
'Please, Angela, just do it. I'll feel happier knowing you're safely out of the way. And I'll follow you down as quickly as I can.'
Bronson turned and strode deeper into the musty darkness.
He didn't have a gun, but he did have a torch, something he'd remembered to buy in case they did go into any of the caves. Now he switched it on, thankful that he had it with him. Behind him, he heard Angela's quick footsteps and glanced back to see her vanishing into the side tunnel.
And then the brilliant oval of light that marked the cave entrance was partially obscured as a figure stepped inside.
54
Bronson moved further back into the darkness.
The cave seemed to extend some distance into the hillside, maybe thirty or forty yards, the gap between the walls narrowing sharply as he retreated further from the entrance. The floor was a carpet of rutted and uneven rocks, loose stones and patches of sand; the walls cracked and fractured slabs of tortured stone, and with frequent blind-ended passages just a few feet long. And it was hot. Really hot, the air still and almost heavy with the heat.
He looked back towards the entrance. The figure seemed to be motionless, just inside the cave, possibly waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. But as Bronson looked, the man turned and took a couple of steps towards the passage where Angela had taken refuge. Quickly, Bronson kicked out, sending a few stones tumbling across the rocky floor, and switched on his torch again.
'That's interesting,' he said, deliberately raising his voice as he shone the beam of the torch deeper into the cave.
'Let's just check that out.'
At the sound of his voice, the figure paused and swung round, his attention clearly drawn by the torchlight and Bronson's voice, and took a few silent steps further inside the cave.
Bronson saw the figure drawing his pistol, the unmistakable black shape a sinister extension of his right arm. The good news was that the man had moved away from Angela's hiding place, but the bad news was equally obvious – he was heading straight towards him. Knowing that his options and freedom of movement were becoming more restricted, Bronson took another step deeper into the cave and the narrowing darkness ahead.
He shone the beam of his torch around the end of the cave, looking for inspiration and either somewhere to hide or some kind of a distraction. But there were few hiding places and none that he liked the look of.
'That could be it, you know,' he said loudly, keeping up the pretence that Angela was with him. 'Stand here and hold the torch steady.'
Bronson placed the torch on a rock, illuminating a small group of rocks on one side of the cave that almost looked as if they'd been piled up like a cairn.
Then he walked across in front of the torch beam, closing his eyes as he did so to preserve his night-vision. His action cast a huge shadow across the rock walls at the end of the cave and would, he hoped, ensure that their unwelcome visitor believed he was on the far side of the torch, looking for something in the gloom beyond.
But that wasn't where he was going to be. The moment he was clear of the beam he ducked down and turned back towards the cave entrance. Pressing himself close to the rock wall, he watched the approaching figure, now perhaps only fifteen or twenty feet away from him.
The man's attention seemed fixed on the torch beam, still shining on the pile of rocks. He was moving slowly and carefully towards the light, keeping to the centre of the cave, and obviously taking great care not to make any noise.
Bronson needed to keep his attention there, looking towards the far end of the cavern. He picked up a couple of small pebbles and gently lobbed them behind him – an old trick but effective. They bounced across the floor of the cave somewhere near the stationary torch.
The figure kept walking, approaching slowly, and Bronson could clearly see the pistol held ready in the man's right hand.
Then there was a sudden scraping and clattering sound from the cavern entrance as Angela came scrambling out of her hiding place, heading towards the mouth of the cave.
The man spun round, raised his pistol and pulled the trigger.
The sound of the shot was thunderously loud in the confined space, and Bronson had no time to check if Angela had been hit: he was already moving, fast.
Even as the unidentified figure fired his weapon, Bronson started running. He pushed himself off the wall of the cave and barrelled straight across the rocky floor, smashing into the man's stomach with his shoulder. The man gasped in surprise and pain and crashed down to the ground, the pistol spinning from his hand and landing with a clatter somewhere beyond him.
Bronson gave him no chance to recover. As they struggled together on the rock-strewn floor of the cave, he pulled his right arm free and smashed his fist into the man's solar plexus, driving the remaining air from his lungs.
