Nick backed up and held his light on the vines while Drake tried to pull them away, but they were too thick to manage. They pushed through instead, with Nick in the lead, flashlight off, trying not to wonder what kinds of insects made their homes in the dark hollows of the tangled greenery sliding across his neck and poking into his ears.
A few feet in, the stones beneath Nick’s feet dropped. Another set of stairs. There were just a few, and soon he emerged from the hanging foliage into open darkness. He raised his weapon to his shoulder and flipped on the light, turning in a slow circle. They had discovered a small chamber inside the Temple Mount wall. After Drake came through, the vegetation fell back into place behind him, closing up the portal like a natural seal. More vines and rock plants spread out from the stairway, covering the walls and ceiling of the chamber with matted green.
“Where is he, Drake?”
Other than the foliage, the chamber was empty.
CHAPTER 73
Typical Hashashin trick,” said Drake, lowering his pistol. “Vanishing into thin air.”
Nick pursed his lips, slowly scanning the walls with the flashlight on his rifle. “With a nuclear weapon? Check the drones.”
Drake did as commanded, and then shook his head. “The radiation signature is here, right on top of us. He should be here.”
Nick could see enough of the stone walls through the vegetation to see that there was no other passage besides the one they came through. The rear wall was different, though, set with a tile mosaic. Crescents and stars in blue and white peeked out from behind the dark green vines. “Help me out,” he said, lowering the weapon and stepping over to the wall.
The two of them started yanking vines away from the tiles. Some fell to the floor. Others stubbornly clung to the ceiling and formed a living curtain behind them. When enough had been cleared away to get a good look, Nick saw that there were several rows of larger round tiles set amid the square mosaic pieces — five rows of twenty, to be exact. Each large white tile, maybe ten inches in diameter, was painted with a word in blue Arabic calligraphy and with blue horizontal crescent moons at the top and bottom.
“Is this that Persian-Turkish mix again?” asked Drake, rubbing dirt off one of the tiles with his thumb.
Nick pulled another vine away and scrutinized the script. “No. These are the ninety-nine traditional names of Allah. They’re always written in Quranic Arabic.”
“Well, they’d better tell you something. Our nuke is on the move again, look.” Drake showed Nick the tablet. The SWARM crosshairs drifted along the roof of the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount directly above them. Then the terrorist emerged from beneath the stone awning at the entrance, as if he had simply taken an elevator up a few floors and continued on his way. He started pressing his way through the thick crowd of eclipse-watchers, all staring east through cheap square glasses of paper and black film.
Nick returned his focus to the tiles. “The answer has to be here.”
“Why ninety-nine names?” asked Drake. “Why not a hundred?”
Nick snapped his fingers and slapped Drake in the arm with the back of his hand. “You’re a genius. There are ninety-nine traditional names, but there are one hundred tiles. One of these serves another purpose.” He started reading the names in English, looking for one that didn’t fit. “The Mighty, The Judge, The Reckoner, The Humiliator—”
“The Humiliator,” Drake repeated with a chuckle. “Nice.”
Nick kept going, reading faster. “The Watchful, The Causer of Death, The—” He paused. He couldn’t read the next tile. He stared at it for a few seconds and then tilted his head to one side.
Drake tilted his head as well, and kept it tilted as he stepped closer, examining the tile with Nick. After another heartbeat, he whispered, “Why are we sideways?”
“This one is upside down.” Nick ran his fingers across the tile. The blue crescent across the bottom had a small bump in the center. “The Key,” he said out loud, reading the inverted words. On a hunch, he pressed the crescent inward. It gave way and then sprang back.
Suddenly the answer hit him. Nick pulled the Hashashin knife from his pocket. The calligraphy on the hilt was not Turkic, like the Hashashin prophecy. It was Arabic, just like this wall. He muttered the phrase as he pressed the knife into the tile. “I am the key.”
The bump activated the springs in the hilt and the blades shot out, a perfect fit inside the crescent-shaped indentation, but still nothing happened. Tentatively, Nick tried turning the tile with the knife in place. It worked. The tile rotated with a soft scraping sound.
Nick kept going until the crescents above and below had switched positions and the word was right side up. There was a heavy thump and the sound of stone sliding across stone. Nick removed the knife. The blades retracted. The chamber was still again.
Drake panned his light around the room. “What just happened?”
The walls had not changed. There were no new passages, no stairwells leading up into the mosque above. At a loss, Nick looked up at his partner, and caught a hint of rose-colored light pouring down through a space between the ceiling vines. He motioned to Drake and shined his light on the area, revealing a vertical passage that had opened above them.
Drake didn’t hesitate. He bent down and threaded his fingers together for Nick. “Going up?”
Before taking the boost from his teammate, Nick pulled the sling of his M4 over his head and laid it on the ground. Guns weren’t permitted on the Temple Mount, even for the IDF, and there was no way he could conceal a rifle that size.
With Drake’s help, Nick was able to get his hands on a stone jutting out from the interior of the octagonal well. Similar stones studded the well on either side, all the way up, forming a ladder. Nick pulled himself up, hand over hand, until he was high enough to get a foot on the lowest stone. Then the climb was easier.
Moments later, Nick emerged in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, into a narrow space between the mosque’s rounded southern wall and a tall partition of solid red-and-white marble. A wide dome spread out above him, painted with elaborate patterns in gold and burgundy and illuminated by a ring of red and purple stained-glass windows. The sunlight shining through was dim, like on an overcast day.
Nick could see little to his left and right. At either end, the marble partition curved closer to the rounded wall, leaving only a narrow gap, but the partition itself was cut all the way through with intricate arabesque patterns, so that he could peer out through the carvings into the mosque’s expansive prayer room. He did not like what he saw.
Nick had hoped that everyone would be outside, watching the celestial event. Instead, he saw scores of men reclining in circled groups on the carpet, many wearing the black-and-white keffiyeh headdress of Palestinian nationalists, either on their heads or around their necks. Several of these would be Al-Aqsa Brigade terrorists, here to protect their territory during the tourist hysteria of the eclipse.
“This is it,” said Drake, shouldering up beside Nick. With his greater height, he had made it up through the well on his own.
“This is what?” asked Nick.
“This is the death Kattan had planned for me all along.”
CHAPTER 74
Kurt Baron sat alone on a weathered bench amid a grove of olives on the northwest corner of the Temple Mount. If not for the timeless etchings in the other stone benches, he would not have recognized this spot. The trees here were tall and full, adolescents nearing their prime, but he remembered them as saplings. Had it been so long?