tear away the shattered windscreen. The two figures sat immobile before him, strapped into their seats. Michaela’s hair floating around her face in the murk. He called their names, but all that came out of his mouth was an explosion of air bubbles. He felt the car sinking deeper, deeper, under him. Reached inside to take his friends’ hands and haul them to safety.
Their eyes opened and stared into his.
‘Ben,’ they said, their echoing voices merging into a single plaintive moan that filled his head. ‘Beeeeen …’
Ben woke with a start. For a few moments he glanced about him, disorientated, as the shockingly vivid dream rapidly faded away and the reality of the present came flooding back. He could feel the soft rumble of the aircraft through his seat and the soles of his shoes; the presence of Jude sitting next to him, gazing down into his lap, ignoring the clouds passing by outside the window. People all around. The flight from Paris to Jerusalem was crowded with travellers flocking to Bethlehem for the festive season.
An Air France hostess passed by with a smile and asked Ben if everything was all right. He mumbled a reply, then checked his watch. It was almost three in the afternoon, nine hours since he’d slipped away from Jacques Rabier’s place thinking he was setting off alone.
Jude slowly turned around to face him, and Ben saw that his eyes were rimmed with red. ‘My dad,’ Jude said.
Ben just looked at him. He felt panic stab through his guts. Did Jude know? How could that be? What was he going to say?
‘My dad,’ Jude said again. ‘He was a good man, wasn’t he?’
Ben’s panic subsided. He blinked and tried to shake away the last remnants of his stupor. ‘Yes, he was, Jude.’
‘And I was a shit. To both of them. But especially him.’
‘You shouldn’t think that way.’
‘It’s true, isn’t it? He always supported me. Even when we argued, he was there for me. And I knew how much it meant to him to have me home for Christmas. I wasn’t even going to go. All I wanted was to get pissed with that arsehole Robbie and his stupid friends.’ Jude’s voice thickened as he went on. ‘I didn’t even get to say goodbye. I didn’t care. While they were dying I was having a good time. And now I’ll never see either of them again. What did they do to deserve a son like me?’
‘They loved you very much,’ was all Ben could think to say, and then he said no more.
Some time later the plane dropped out of the clouds and began its descent towards Ben Gurion Airport, some thirty miles to the west of Jerusalem. By the time they’d landed and taxied to a halt, Jude’s dark mood seemed to have lifted somewhat.
After passing through the airport they boarded a crowded service taxi minibus that shuttled them towards Jerusalem, high up into the Judean Hills. On the approach to the city the limestone high-rises of the modern city sparkled in the pale sunlight. Olive groves and fields stretched out to the west. To the east lay the endless desert expanse of the Jordan Valley.
Downtown West Jerusalem was a bustling welter of cafés and restaurants, shopping precincts, tourist attractions and souvenir shops, banks and airline offices, cinemas and nightclubs, and a constant hubbub of traffic.
‘It looks just like any other city,’ Jude observed as they stepped off the taxi and were engulfed in the crowds. Ben was already looking to hail a private cab to take them to their destination in Zion Square.
‘What did you expect, Bedouin camel trains parading through the sand dunes?’
‘You’ve been to Jerusalem before, haven’t you? What were you doing here?’
Ben shrugged. He recalled a wild motorcycle chase through the city with half of Jerusalem’s police after him. Racing to stop a hired killer from detonating a huge bomb at the heart of the Temple Mount and sparking off World War Three. ‘It was just a short holiday,’ he said, and stepped out to flag down one of the city’s ubiquitous battered Mercedes taxicabs.
Hillel’s coffee house was an even bigger and glitzier place than it had looked in the photos on its website. The buzz of chatter and the mixed aromas of roasted coffee and fresh-baked bread hit them as they wandered inside and took a tiny table near a window overlooking the thronging square. The menus offered snack foods of all kinds, homemade hummus, salads, pitta breads and sandwiches, omelettes. Jude declared himself to be starving, and had his eye on a falafel sandwich like the one the man at the next table was eating. Ben ordered a Turkish coffee for himself and asked the pretty dark-haired waitress if Hillel was in. He wasn’t, the waitress said, but he was expected to make an appearance sometime before long.
Ben and Jude spoke little as they waited. Jude devoured his sandwich and asked for another. Ben wasn’t in the mood for eating, but toyed with a plate of tabbouleh and cold meats, which he washed down with another cup of the fortifying coffee, just about strong enough to stand a spoon in.
Then, just after six, a gleaming gold Jaguar Sovereign pulled up outside the Coffee House. The driver’s door swung open and a large man stepped out and strode purposefully towards the Coffee House.
Ben recognised him instantly as the owner, Hillel Zada. The florid open-necked shirt from the website photo had been replaced by a Ralph Lauren overcoat and shoes that looked handmade. Business was obviously better than ever at Hillel’s. He breezed through the door and was immediately all smiles as he greeted regulars, pausing at one table and then another to chat as he made his way towards the bar where a member of staff awaited him.
‘Aren’t you going to talk to him?’ Jude whispered to Ben as Hillel strolled past their table. Ben sipped the last of his coffee and watched Hillel speak to the member of staff, then disappear through a door. ‘You wait here,’ Ben said, getting up.
‘Usual story,’ Jude muttered. ‘I never get to do anything.’
Ben made his way between the tables and headed towards the door that Hillel had gone through. Before he got there, a waiter spotted him and intercepted him, holding up a hand and saying in English, ‘I’m sorry, sir, you can’t go in there.’ Ben smiled politely and brushed past. The waiter chased after him, protesting as he reached the door and opened it.
Behind the door was a storeroom, with shelving stacked from floor to ceiling and heaped with boxes and crates, sacks of chick peas, coffee beans and rice. Four huge refrigerators hummed in one corner. Across the far side of the storeroom stood Hillel, pen in hand, surveying the shelves and checking off entries on a stock inventory. The door batted shut behind Ben. Hillel turned round and stared at him.
‘Hillel Zada?’ Ben said.
The big Israeli frowned at him but didn’t look especially perturbed at the sudden appearance of a complete stranger. He would have been, Ben thought, if he’d known there were people out there ready to kill anyone connected with the sacred sword.
Hillel was about to speak when the waiter burst through the door and began pointing at Ben and rattling off an apologetic stream of Hebrew that was probably along the lines of ‘I tried to stop him. He just shoved past me.’ Hillel listened calmly, then gave Ben a piercing, authoritative stare. ‘This room is for staff only,’ he said in English. ‘Private.’
‘That’s good, Mr Zada,’ Ben said, ‘because I have private business to discuss with you. Alone,’ he added, throwing a sideways glance at the waiter.
