CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT.

JERUSALEM, FRIDAY, 4.21AM.

She got out of the hotel more easily than she expected. Uri's instructions were accurate and the kitchen was empty. She found the large refrigeration area, led not by the chill but the electric hum. There, at the back, as promised, was a wide door, which was bolted and required a mammoth shove to push open.

She felt the blast of cold night air immediately. Her jacket was still in the room upstairs. She stood there, on a raised concrete platform, looking down into the square gulch built for reversing delivery trucks. As she stamped up and down, hugging her sides to keep warm, she took a blast of the smell. It was rank. She realized she was standing by three enormous steel cylinders, each of them spilling over with sackfuls of hotel trash.

Two minutes later, she saw the beam of headlights coming into the area, then swerving around and reversing towards the loading bay. A sleek silver Mercedes was nudging backwards, in her direction. She waited as it filled up the loading bay, the fumes of its exhaust rising and wreathing the whole platform. Its rear lights meant she could now see a set of steps off to the side. She thought about heading down them, then hesitated. What if it wasn't Uri?

She stayed in the shadows, waiting until eventually she heard the slow glide of an electric window, followed by a whispered 'psst'. Uri. She leapt down the stairs and bundled herself into the pa.s.senger seat.

'Nice wheels. How did you pull this off?'

'By strolling over to the concierge desk, finding the valet parking box and taking the first key I saw.'

'Hence the uniform.'

'Hence the uniform.'

Maggie nodded, detecting something new in this man whom she had never met a week ago and with whom she now seemed fated to spend every waking hourand even some sleeping ones. For the first time she saw something like pride: he was pleased with himself.

'So now you've got the limousine, where do you want to go, Miss Costello?'

'Anywhere with a computer. We didn't get through to the island. They melted me before I could break through. They're going to get there before we do.'

'Who's they?'

'The rabbit-heads, whoever they were.'

'You don't think they'll be bounced back from the island just like you were?'

'Uri, these are people who can listen to our conversations, hack into our computers, kill Kishon and Aweida the second we mention their names. Somehow I don't think they're going to struggle with a bit of encryption your father put on that island.'

After all, thought Maggie, the men behind the rabbit-heads clearly had the power to turn her avatar into pixellated goo. Uri had been right: they didn't need her any more. She had led them to the island; they could do the rest.

'Look, that's probably true,' said Uri finally. 'But even if they hack into it, they might not understand what they see. Remember, the message on the DVD from my father? That required knowledge that only I have.' He paused. 'Christ, though, why did he have to make everything so f.u.c.king complicated?'

'Actually, I kind of admire it. There are a lot of serious people who want the discovery he made and none of them have got their hands on it.'

'Not yet.'

'All right. But it's pretty impressive if you ask me.'

Uri drove on in silence, the wipers on the car sleekly sweeping across the windscreen at intervals. They barely made a sound.

'So where are you taking me, Mr Chauffeur?'

'One of the few places in Jerusalem that stays open all night. And certainly the only one with a computer.'

He parked the car at the bottom of a pedestrianized area, full of closed cafes and shuttered kiosks. 'This is Ben-Yehuda Street,' Uri said. 'Normally it's teeming. But Jerusalem's not like Tel Aviv. It likes to get its beauty sleep.'

He led them off the main thoroughfare, past a human bundle of rags sleeping in a doorway, down a side alley, still made of the same, ragged stone as the rest of the city. Here, too, there were signs of earlier life: restaurants and cafes, closed for the night. She heard the throbbing of a bar. 'Mike's Place,' he said, hearing it too. 'The one they didn't bomb.'

He kept winding through these narrow, catacomb streets, where each arch or vaulted entrance led to a shop or office; modern life carved out of ancient stone.

'Here we are. Someone To Run With.'

'That's its name?'

'Yeah. It's become a Jerusalem inst.i.tution. All the runaways and dropouts come here. Named it after a novel.'

'Someone to run with, eh? Like you and me.'

Uri smiled and ushered Maggie inside. She looked around and immediately had a flashback to when she had just turned sixteen. Not that she had ever come to a place like this, but her sixteen-year-old self would have loved it. There were no chairs, only enormous cushions arranged on stone benches and window seats. The air was heavy with the steam of fruit teas and the smoke of tobacco and a.s.sorted varieties of weed. In one corner she could see a boy, earnestly hunched over a guitar, a curtain of lank, dark hair hiding his face. Opposite him, with a guitar of her own, was a girl whose head was entirely shaved, wearing a shapeless white T-shirt and knee-length shorts who, despite these heroic efforts, could not conceal her beauty. Maggie surveyed the room, seeing the torn jeans and the braided hair, and felt not the consciousness of her own age, as she had in the nightclub in Tel Aviv, but a twinge of real envy. These kids still had everything ahead of them.

She was glad she had changed clothes at Orli's. If these kids had seen her in her usual get-up, they would have had her down as drugs squad, or some kind of authority figure, right away. Instead they barely glanced up at her or Uri: too stoned to notice probably.

Uri nodded towards the corner of the room where there was a sole, unused computer. Maggie guessed that it was terminally uncool to use it, especially at this time of night. While Uri stood at the counter, asking the girl with a stud in her nose for coffee, Maggie switched on the machine and called up Second Life.

At the name prompt she typed Lola Hepburn, only for an instant error message to appear: Invalid username and/or pa.s.sword, please try again. The avatar created by Liz had been eradicated from the system. She would have to enter as someone else. But who? She didn't know anyone who had an avatar on Second Life. Maybe she should just wake up Liz in London.

And then she heard it again, the voice of Shimon Guttman, as clear she had heard it twelve hours ago in Rosen's office.

You shall see me in the other life, not this one but the next one.

Of course. She was meant to enter Second Life not as Lola Hepburn, the big-breasted party girl created by her sister, but as Shimon Guttman himself. That was surely how the coding worked: the island in Geneva would open up to no one but him.

She hit the search b.u.t.ton, aiming to trawl through the directory of names. As she typed his first name and then his last name, she hoped that, just this once, the old man had made it easy.

Invalid username and/or pa.s.sword, please try again.

She tried different variations. ShimonG, SGuttman, and half a dozen other permutations. There were a handful of Shimons, but the rest of their names made no sense. And, when she tried the pa.s.swords that had worked on Guttman's home computer, she was blocked every time.

Uri arrived with an oversized cup of steaming coffee. Merely inhaling its aroma made Maggie realize how tired she was. She had been living on adrenaline for days now, and her body was feeling it. Her neck ached where Uri had hit her and her right arm had become tender, around the spot where the masked men in the market had grabbed her.

Uri watched what she was doing. 'Why don't you try the name my father used to email that Arab guy?'

Maggie gave Uri a downturned smile, as if to say, not a bad idea. She searched for Saeb Nastayib and beamed when the computer came back with just one result: a single avatar of that name. She repeated the pa.s.sword as before, Vladimir67, and, before her eyes, a lean male figure, materialized on the screen, naked at first, like a mannequin or a statue made in cool, grey stone, then gradually clothed.

She hit Map Map, typed Geneva Geneva, hit Teleport Teleport and, after the few seconds it took the machine to load, she was back, hovering over the bright blue water and green banks of the lake. She searched for Guttman's uniquely-contoured island. and, after the few seconds it took the machine to load, she was back, hovering over the bright blue water and green banks of the lake. She searched for Guttman's uniquely-contoured island.

Her first inspection made her anxious: no sign of it. That would make a grim kind of sense. If her pursuers had had no use for Liz's avatar once she had led them to the island, then surely the island itself was just as dispensable, once it had yielded its secrets. What better way to ensure no one else discovered the last resting place of the Abraham tablet than to destroy the only clue to its location?

So she had to fly low, hovering over the blue water, her bearings skewed by the undulating, computer-generated landscape which, on this slower connection, was only forming partially on the screen. But finally a green stain appeared on the blueness of the lake which, as the Guttman avatar drew near, revealed itself as the replica Greater Israel Uri's father had created in the heart of virtual Switzerland.

Maggie approached, bracing herself for the no entry tape and error message. But this time there was no such obstacle: the electronic cordon didn't even appear. Clearly, it was designed to pop up only at the approach of outsiders. The Guttman avatar was allowed to stroll onto the island as easily as Maggie had visited the red-light district all those hours ago. There wasn't even a pa.s.sword.

'We're in,' she said, relieved that the old man had not planted another tripwire in their path.

'Now what?' said Uri, leaning forward, cradling his cup of coffee, enjoying its warmth on his hands.

'Now we look.'

They didn't have far to go. The island had only one structure, a simple gla.s.s-and-steel box. Inside it was nothing but a chair and a desk with a virtual computer. Maggie pushed the Guttman avatar forward and had him sit on the chair. The instant he did a text bubble appeared.

Go west, young man, and make your way to the model city, close to the Mishkan. You'll find what I left for you there, in the path of ancient warrens.

'So, Uri. What do we have here?' She looked to her side, expecting to see Uri peering at the words with her. But he was gone, vanished as rapidly as one of the anatomically impossible creatures that still flickered on the screen.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE.

KHAN Y YUNIS, GAZA, FRIDAY, 2.40AM.

He was not asleep. He was not even lying down. He was, as so often these days, sitting bolt upright, turning over one scenario after another in his head. Moves, counter-moves, his mind never stopped churning, least of all at night. He would have so many plans, he would grow impatient for the morning prayer. He would want dawn to come so that he could emerge again into the daylight and get back to work.

He was awake, so he heard the footsteps himself. Instinctively, he removed the safety catch on his pistol and waited in the dark. He saw a curve of candleglow before he heard a voice.

'Psst. Salim, it's Marwan.'

'Come in, brother.'

Warily, the younger man tiptoed into the room where Salim Nazzal was bedded down for the night. He looked around, counted three teenage boys, all fast asleep on a single mattress, and lowered his voice still further. He had no idea whose house he was in, which family had opened its doors to their leader for tonight.

'Salim. They say they have something. A sighting, in Jerusalem.'

'Of this tablet?'

'Of the Zionist's son. And the American woman.'

Nazzal replaced the safety catch on his gun. He wanted time to think.

'The unit on the ground want to know whether they should strike.'

'They weren't meant for this! this!'

'But your orders: that recovering the tablet was the highest priority.'

One of the boys on the bed stirred. Salim waited until he was sure he had gone back to sleep.

'Tell them,' he said eventually, 'that they are free to act-'

'OK-' He strode away at once.

'Marwan! Come back here. Tell them they are free to act, but but only if by acting they either secure the tablet or discover, for certain, its location. No point killing these two, Guttman and the American, if we don't get the tablet. Do you understand?' only if by acting they either secure the tablet or discover, for certain, its location. No point killing these two, Guttman and the American, if we don't get the tablet. Do you understand?'

'I understand, Salim.'

'I mean it, Marwan.' And he c.o.c.ked his weapon once more, just to leave no doubt.

CHAPTER FIFTY.

JERUSALEM, FRIDAY, 5.23AM.

She wheeled around, searching among the blissed-out faces and strumming guitars for Uri, but he had vanished. She stood up, walking towards the entrance. Then she saw him, his forehead lined with anxiety. He was in the doorway, staring hard into the street.

'Uri, what is it?'

'I don't know, but I heard something. Could be a car. We've got to get out.'

'Yeah, but first you have to work out-'

'Maggie, if they're onto us here, they could kill us.'

'Just tell me what this means!'

'For Christ's sake, Maggie, there's no time.'

'Uri, I'm not leaving here until you work this out.'

Shaking his head he strode over to the machine, bent down to peer at the small bubble of text on the screen and repeated the riddle his father had hidden there. Then he said simply, 'All right, let's go.'

The nose-studded barista had appeared and was now murmuring in Hebrew to Uri, pointing to an exit at the back end of the cafeand also, Maggie couldn't help noticing, widening her gorgeous brown eyes for his benefit. Apparently impervious to her charms, he thanked her, grabbed Maggie's wrist and made a dash into the dark.

They had already pushed open the fire door, to reveal a narrow, five-step bas.e.m.e.nt staircase which would lead them back up to street level, when Maggie realized they had left the computer on, Guttman's avatar and his message still displayed. If they were being followed, their pursuers would simply have to stroll into the cafe, order themselves a latte and pull out a notebook.

She turned on her heel, feeling her wrist twist in Uri's grip. 'Let go of me. I've got to go back.'

'No way.'

'The computer's still on. They'll see everything!'

'Too bad. We're going,' he said, still striding upward, determined to get out onto the street.