Killing for the Company

If the squadron was here with him, he’d have eyes on every gate in the city and the Western Wall plaza would be surrounded by snipers. But there was no squadron. No backup. Just Luke. And if he let anybody know where he was, there’d be a team on its way to lift him within minutes. All he could do was watch the gate nearest to the Western Wall.

The tourist map of the Old Town was a photograph in his mind. He headed south between the city’s Jewish and Armenian Quarters. When the road forked, he headed south-west and five minutes later he found himself approaching the Zion Gate. It was small — barely the width of a car — and as Luke passed through it he looked back up at the city walls. The area around the stone entrance was pockmarked with bullet holes — a reminder of Jerusalem’s violent past.

Luke kept his head down as he skirted east round the city walls. In just a couple of minutes he arrived at another gate. His mental map told him that this was the Dung Gate, the closest access point to the wall. It formed a lower entrance than the Zion Gate — about three metres — but at five metres was a little wider. To its left was an olive tree; to its right, three palms. There were no bullet marks here. But more people were walking in and out. Cars. Pedestrians. It was late, but still busy.

He stood for a moment and stared at the gate. If he was right, any bomber heading for the Western Wall would be likely to pass through here.

If he was right.

From somewhere nearby, the smell of cooking food reached his nose. A couple of old men passed him, speaking loudly and clearly arguing. A kid went by with a pile of postcards that concertinaed out into a long strip.

Just ordinary life and it made him pause. He remembered the way his Regiment colleagues had looked at him back at the base. Like he’d lost it. Luke closed his eyes for a moment. He couldn’t be imagining all this, could he? He couldn’t be mad? Was he on the wrong track? About Stratton? About the bombers?

But then he remembered Chet and Suze and the troops mobilising around the Middle East. He remembered the ruthlessness of Maya Bloom and the madness in Stratton’s eyes.

A church bell rang somewhere in the distance. He counted the chimes. They were sombre. Stately. Twelve of them.

Midnight.

Hanukkah had arrived. In eleven hours, he would know.

In the meantime, he couldn’t loiter here. With the military presence so high he’d soon be observed. But he needed to set up surveillance on the Dung Gate, and quickly.

And that meant finding a workable OP.

TWENTY-NINE

10 December.

07.00 hrs.

On the eastern outskirts of Tel Aviv, in a well-to-do suburb where the roads were gated and the houses large, the previous evening’s storm was just an unpleasant memory. The sky was clear and crisp, and a white bus was waiting outside the Scheiber Elementary School for Girls, its engine running. The front door of the bus was open and a pretty young woman with dark, curly hair and almond eyes stood just next to it with a clipboard in her hand. On the pavement in front of her was a well-behaved line of little ladies, all aged either seven or eight. They wore home clothes, and little backpacks over their shoulders which contained lunches that would no doubt be eaten before they’d gone a few kilometres.

Today was a holiday, of course. The first day of the Festival of Lights. The teachers were glad to sacrifice one of their precious holiday days to give the girls the chance to travel to Jerusalem, to see the celebrations in that holy place for themselves. A visit to the Western Wall and then back to their families, to light the first of the eight candles of Hanukkah, eat a special meal and sing festive songs. No wonder they’d all looked excited as they said goodbye to their mums before joining their schoolmates in the queue and filing into the bus. There were thirty-five girls in all, with four teachers to look after them. Miss Leibovitz ticked each child’s name on her clipboard as they boarded the bus and then, when she was sure everybody was there, she climbed up into the long vehicle herself.

The driver was a man in his forties with a small paunch and an open-necked shirt. He pressed a button and the door closed.

‘All ready?’ he asked above the children’s babble.

‘All ready,’ the teacher replied with a smile. And as she strapped herself into her seat at the front — her three female colleagues having already installed themselves among the party — the bus moved off.

‘How long till we get there, Miss Leibovitz?’ a voice asked from behind her.

She looked round to see the face of one of her favourites — an earnest little girl called Natasha, who wore red ribbons in her beautifully plaited pigtails.

‘Two hours, Natasha darling. Just two hours. We’ll be there before you know it.’

Natasha smiled, then sat back down in her seat and gazed out of the window just as they passed a green sign with a white arrow and a single word in Hebrew., it read.

Jerusalem.

Jerusalem.