He switched on the torch again, and left it on, using the sudden flare of brightness to cover the remaining ground as quickly as he could.
Three more shots sounded, but they too hit somewhere on the left-hand wall, and Bronson knew that unless he was unlucky enough to be taken down by a ricochet, he should be safe enough. At least for the moment.
In fact, if the other man continued following him all the way down, at some point Bronson would have all the advantages, because when his opponent reached the bend in the staircase, Bronson could simply switch on his torch and place it well away from him, and then shoot down the other man the moment he stepped into view.
But that didn’t sit well with him. It was too much like shooting fish in a barrel. He would far rather just walk away, now that he had — he hoped — the last piece of information that they needed.
Bronson kept the torch switched on as he covered the last few dozen feet to the end of the passageway. There, he found himself in an underground chamber at the bottom of which he could clearly hear the sound of running water. Somewhat incongruously, a modern steel ladder had been bolted to the stone side wall of the ancient chamber.
Bronson checked that the other man wasn’t in sight up the staircase, then slid the Browning into his pocket and shimmied up the ladder through a circular opening in a concrete slab. Above was another small square chamber, clearly of fairly recent construction, formed from stone walls and a flat roof, the only opening to the outside world a slightly rusty steel door.
He gave the door a firm push, expecting it to be locked, and he wasn’t disappointed. But the pressure he applied showed him where the external lock was positioned, and that was what he really needed to know.
There’s a certain amount of science involved in forcing open a locked door, and Bronson knew that the one way that almost never worked, despite being shown on numerous television shows, was to shoulder-charge it. What was needed was a powerful, focused strike as close as possible to the lock.
Bronson stood back, balanced himself on his left leg and kicked the door with all the force he could muster.
The steel door bent, but didn’t open, so he repeated the treatment twice more. The third kick slammed the door open, all the way back against its hinges.
Moments later, Bronson climbed out of the opening and looked around. He was on the southern side of the castle, close by the almost unmade road that ran around that part of the base of the hill.
Almost the first thing he saw was the Renault hire car, Angela at the wheel, parked more or less in the middle of the road at the bottom of the valley between the castle and the visitor centre. He could also see what looked like one of the guides walking down towards it, perhaps to remonstrate with her.
Bronson didn’t wait, he just ran a few steps along the road towards the car, waving his arms.
Angela spotted him, put the car into gear, turned the wheel hard to the right and accelerated along the road towards him.
Within seconds, they’d changed positions, Bronson in the driving seat and Angela checking the map, and the Renault was travelling quickly along the poor-quality road that led away from the castle.
‘What happened in there?’ Angela asked. ‘Did you get it?’
Bronson looked across at her and smiled.
‘After all that,’ he said, ‘I bloody well hope so.’
57
Farooq was far from happy. That was the second time he’d encountered the Englishman in an unlit underground tunnel and, once again, Bronson had somehow managed to get away. At least Farooq hadn’t been hit by any of the bullets the other man had fired, which was perhaps a surprising bonus in the circumstances, and he assumed that Bronson had also walked out unscathed.
Khaled had immediately issued orders to the men in the second car and to the motorcyclist waiting down in the village below the castle to follow the rental vehicle. But his plan had been thrown by the fact that the car had left the area on an entirely different road. By the time the second car had driven down towards the castle, the Renault had vanished from sight. The only thing they knew for certain was that it had not continued on the main road through the village of Al Muthallith and on towards Aqaba, because if it had, their man on the motorcycle would definitely have seen it.
But at that moment locating and killing Bronson and the woman was less important than identifying whatever clue the Englishman had found in the tunnel.
‘He definitely took photographs?’ Khaled asked Farooq for the second time.
‘Yes, at least half a dozen.’
‘You don’t think he was just triggering the flashgun on his camera to try to blind you?’
‘No, because he’d already destroyed most of my night vision by shining his torch straight at me,’ Farooq replied. ‘And he would have known that.’
‘So he must have found the clue he was looking for at virtually the same moment that you called out to him.’
Five minutes later, Khaled and Farooq retraced Bronson’s steps, climbing into the building above the well and walking up the long and narrow staircase towards the castle above, both men now carrying torches.
‘How far up was he when you challenged him?’ Khaled asked, panting slightly from the steepness of the climb.
‘Much closer to the castle. He was probably about a third of the way down the tunnel.’
The beams from their torches played over the solid stone walls as they looked for anything that could possibly have been the clue Bronson had been seeking. They climbed higher and higher until eventually Farooq abruptly stopped, the light from his torch illuminating the stone treads beneath their feet.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘There are two brass cartridge cases on this step. They would have been ejected from the pistol when he fired the weapon for the first time. They may have bounced down a few steps after that, but this must be more or less where he was.’
They resumed their scrutiny of the walls as they continued their slow ascent, but saw nothing at all. No carvings, no inscriptions. Then Farooq had a sudden thought.
‘I’ve just remembered,’ he said. ‘When he took those photographs, he was pointing the camera more or less straight at me, straight up the staircase. We’re looking in the wrong place. Whatever he found must been carved into the stairs themselves.’
They changed their tactics, walked back down the passageway until they reached the spot where Farooq had seen the discarded cartridge cases, then focused their torches on the steps above them and resumed their slow climb.
Two minutes later they were looking at the carving on the stone riser, and Khaled was busy taking a sequence of photographs of it.
‘It’s just a name,’ Farooq said, sounding disappointed. ‘Have you any idea what it means?’
‘Yes,’ Khaled replied, taking another two pictures. ‘I know exactly what it means, and where it is. Now we need to move really quickly, because it’s essential that we get there before they do.’
58
The largely unmade road that Bronson and Angela had followed from the castle took them back to the village of Al Muthallith, but well to the east of the road that led up to the castle.
Knowing that the opposition had clearly been following them, despite Bronson’s inability to detect any surveillance, they had decided to take an entirely different route to their new destination, just in case someone was waiting near that road junction. Bronson drove as quickly as he could, trying to put some distance between themselves and any possible pursuit. Once he was sure that no car or motorcycle was following them, he reached into his jacket pocket and handed the camera to Angela.