The Jerusalem Puzzle. Laurence O’Bryan

meet him there?’ Her tone was soft, friendly.

      ‘I picked him up a couple of times, no more than that. He was, without doubt, the most arrogant archaeologist I’ve ever met.’

      ‘How were you helping him?’ asked Isabel.

      ‘He used my name to get himself admitted to a dig. I got a call from someone checking up on him, to see if he was who he said he was. They didn’t say where the dig was though. But they’d heard of me.’

      ‘Do you even know what section of Jabotinsky he was staying on?’ said Isabel.

      ‘Somewhere near the middle. Honestly, I can’t tell you any more. I was never in his apartment. I picked him up on the street, twice. Once at a bus stop near the middle. Another time at a coffee shop at the end. Maybe if you go door to door someone will remember him.’ He gave Isabel a sympathetic look.

      ‘It’s a very long street,’ said Talli, looking at me. ‘There are lots of apartment buildings. If you go door to door you’ll be days at it.’

      ‘I can’t help you any more,’ said Simon. He looked at his watch. ‘My meeting is starting soon and …’ He didn’t finish his sentence. It was clear he wanted us to get going. There was tightness around his eyes, as if he was about to miss the last train home for Yom Kippur.

      ‘We’re out of here,’ I said. ‘Thanks for showing me what you’re working on. It was interesting.’ I gripped his arm.

      Seconds later we were standing by the lifts. There were two dark-suited men in the corridor outside the room we’d just come out of. One of them had cropped hair. The other had longer hair and was younger. Their eyes were watchful. They looked as if they’d be suspicious of their own wives.

      ‘Is that the local CIA?’ I said, half jokingly, as the elevator went down.

      ‘Shush,’ said Talli. She glanced up at the small black dome of a security camera in a corner of the elevator.

      When we got down below she turned to me. ‘That was the Security Service. I’d bet my pension on it.’

      ‘Simon is an important guy?’ asked Isabel.

      Talli shrugged.

      That was when I spotted the knot of people, maybe six or seven, waiting by a table near the revolving glass doors leading from the outside. Two blue-shirted female police officers were waving two-foot-long wands over people, before letting them pass in or out. We joined the queue.

      I’d never seen people being checked leaving a place as well as entering it.

      Talli threw her gaze to the ceiling as she waited. She whispered, ‘You never know what the Security Service is going to do next here.’

      I was dealt with first. The older looking of the two officers held her hand out. ‘ID?’ She said. I gave her my passport.

      She couldn’t have been much older than me, maybe a year of two, no more than forty for sure, and she was attractive. She had thick brown hair, big soft eyes, glowing skin, and an authoritative manner. She stood with her legs wide apart and her head back, as if she might bellow a command at me at any point.

      ‘What were you doing in this hotel?’ Her accent was soft.

      ‘We were visiting with a friend.’

      ‘Someone staying here?’ She was holding my passport, leafing through it slowly. She stopped on a page, brought it close to her face to examine it.

      ‘No, someone having a meeting here.’

      ‘Who?’

      ‘Simon Marcus, he’s upstairs.’

      She snapped my passport shut and put it in the top pocket of her shirt.

      ‘I need that,’ I said.

      ‘How do you know Simon Marcus?’ The other policewoman was waving someone else through. Isabel was behind me.

      ‘He’s a professor. He knows a friend of mine. We were introduced a few hours ago.’

      ‘You are here to help him with his work?’ She was looking at me as if I was a conspirator, hiding something.

      ‘No. I’m not here to help him.’

      ‘Will you be staying in Jerusalem for much longer?’ It crossed my mind that she was actually saying I should leave Israel.

      ‘A few more days. We’ll be here less than a week. Why do you ask?’

      She stepped back, looked me up and down. It appeared as if she was debating whether to arrest me or answer my question.

      ‘We have a lot of security troubles here in Jerusalem, Dr Ryan. We wouldn’t want anything to happen to one of our distinguished guests.’

      She pointed at some high-backed chairs nearby.

      ‘Wait here. Do not go away.’ She turned, strode out through the glass doors, heading towards a police jeep that was pulled up outside. I moved towards the chairs, but I didn’t sit down. I stared after her. The jeep had darkened windows.

      What the hell was she doing? I looked around. Two more men who looked like security guards were standing by the lifts. They were staring in my direction.

      13

      It was 5 p.m. in London. Henry was preparing to leave the office. He was back on normal hours, as his wife called them. He would be joining the crowds surging through Westminster Underground station in a few minutes.

      Then a ping sounded from his workstation computer. It was a warning that a priority email had come in. He clicked through to the contents.

      REQUEST: 3487686/TRTT

      STATUS: CLOSED/EXCEPT: LEVEL 7

      CASE: 87687658765-65436

      No further information can be provided on the manuscript you requested.

      He read the email twice. It gave nothing away. He knew from experience that no further response would be provided to any additional requests he made on the matter. Information on an item that was only available to Level 7 personnel would not be accessible to him. He was lucky he’d received even this response.

      What intrigued him about it all was why an ancient manuscript, the one Sean Ryan and Isabel Sharp had discovered in Istanbul, would now be subject to such a restriction.

      As he made his way out to the Underground platform heading north he thought about what could be in the document that was so important.

      14

      The policewoman had opened the back door of the police vehicle and climbed inside. I imagined her examining my passport in detail, photographing it maybe, or putting it through a computer check, but she could have been doing anything beyond those darkened windows.

      ‘What did she say to you?’ Isabel was beside me.

      The other policewoman was checking people and keeping an eye on me. She needn’t have bothered. I wasn’t going to go anywhere without my passport.

      ‘She wanted to know if I was helping Simon. I got the impression she knew all about him.’

      Isabel stood with me.

      And then the policewoman reappeared. She’d only been gone a few minutes. She handed me back my passport.

      ‘Be careful in Israel, Dr Ryan,’ she said. ‘The situation here is difficult these days. We have to double-check everything. I am sorry for delaying you.’

      I passed her by quickly. What she meant was clear. I’d been warned.

      I watched as Isabel gave over her passport. The policewoman examined it carefully, asked a few questions then gave it back.

      I