Killing for the Company

A flight of stone steps led down to the Western Wall plaza — a large, flagstoned square about seventy-five metres square, populated this morning by about a hundred people, twenty or thirty of whom were close to the wall, facing it and praying. The young man ignored all these people, as he always did, and headed straight for the far corner of the plaza, which adjoined the left-hand side of the wall. There he passed through a small archway to find himself in a room that gave access to Jerusalem’s ancient tunnels. There were more men in here, praying against the covered section of the Western Wall, which continued along to his right. Beyond them, a passageway led straight on. They paid him no attention as he continued in this direction.

The Western Wall tunnel, he knew, extended about 400 metres — well into the Muslim Quarter of the city. He wouldn’t go that far. He shuffled along, with the ancient stones of the wall to his right atmospherically lit by yellow lamps embedded in the floor, past the occasional visitor looking up at the wall and at the information plaques that explained its history. But he wasn’t interested in history. His mind was firmly on the future.

After about a hundred metres, he arrived at his destination. In the wall to the left there was a metal grille, about a metre square, its bars creating gaps roughly ten centimetres by fifteen. Beyond the grille it was dark, and the air around it was slightly colder. It was impossible to see how far back or down the space extended, but he knew it was enough for his purposes. The young man looked around to check nobody was watching. The immediate vicinity was deserted.

From the inside pocket of his jacket he pulled a resealable transparent plastic freezer bag with a thirty-centimetre length of fishing line attached to it. He removed the coins from his pocket and placed them in the bag, which he sealed and — checking once more that nobody was watching — pushed through one of the lowest row of holes in the grille. He kept hold of the fishing line as the bag dropped below floor level, before tying the other end securely round one of the vertical bars.

He knew that anyone looking very closely would see that there were eleven other bits of fishing line attached to the bottom of the grille. Further investigation would reveal that each line suspended a similar bag of coins. But as he stood up, he felt quite sure that nobody would notice this little cache. The coins were safe. They could wait there until they were needed.

Which wouldn’t be long, he thought to himself, as he shuffled out of the tunnel, back into the plaza and away from the Western Wall. Five minutes later he was walking around the Old Town, back towards East Jerusalem, his job complete.

For now.

The Regiment ops room back at the Israeli military base had been emptied, the entire squadron confined to quarters.

The Puma had touched down three and a half hours ago, but that meant nothing to Luke. He was suffering from a kind of numbness. As he’d been escorted off the Puma by the flight crew, he’d been only half aware of the Foreign Office reps who had crowded round Alistair Stratton. Luke had barely registered the looks of incredulity that the Ruperts had given him when the flight crew explained how he’d laid into Stratton on the chopper, breaking his nose; and he’d been entirely submissive as he was escorted to a holding area on the edge of the Regiment’s operations base.

It was a small room with nothing but a wooden chair in it. Luke hadn’t bothered opening the door to check whether it was guarded. Of course it was fucking guarded. He’d collapsed into a corner and closed his eyes. He could just hear Stratton’s voice; just imagine what bullshit he was saying about what had occurred on the ground.

Time slowed down. Luke felt like he’d relived a thousand times the moment the RPG hit the Land Cruiser. But, sickening though the memory was, it was not nearly so sickening as the thought of Stratton’s rantings. In his head he replayed the desperate conversation on the Gazan rooftop. He remembered someone telling him once that psychopaths were often to be found in the corridors of power, but it was more than that. He’d been quoting the fucking Bible at Luke, at least that was what it had sounded like — the sort of shit you’d expect from some nutter with a sandwich board walking down Oxford Street predicting the end of the world.

To the end there shall be war.

The memory of Stratton’s words chilled him, but he couldn’t get the bastard out of his head.

The Book of Daniel. It tells us it is here that the End Times will start.

Was he really saying that? Was he really saying that the end of the world was coming and that he had something to do with it? Had he really tipped over the edge into genuine insanity?