The Jerusalem Puzzle Read Free Page A

investigated, but it was not enough to get you arrested.
    ‘We have new threats, Henry. We checked him out. You know there’s been a flood of suspects coming in from Pakistan and Egypt. We have to put Lord Bidoner on the back burner,’ was what Seageant Finch had said to him a week before.
    But Henry wasn’t convinced.
    He’d mentioned it again at their Monday morning meeting. The head of the unit had brought up Bidoner’s file on the large screen and had reeled off the details of the vetting he’d been subject to over the past six months.
    ‘He’s passed every check. His father was well respected, a pillar of the house. I know his mother was Austrian, but we don’t hold that against people anymore, Henry.’ There had been titters around the room. Henry hadn’t replied.
    It wasn’t having an Austrian mother that made Henry suspicious. It was Bidoner’s use of encrypted telephone and email systems, his endless profits on the stock market from defence industry shares he picked with an uncanny prescience, and his political speeches at fringe meetings about population changes in Europe and the rise of Islam. Taken one by one they were all legitimate, but together they made Henry’s nose twitch.
    He stared at his screen. He had other work to do. His hand hovered over the Bidoner report. He should delete it. And he should request that the Electronic Surveillance Unit discontinue the project.
    He clicked another part of the screen. He would ask for the surveillance reports to be cancelled later. He had to review an incident in Amsterdam.
    The victims of a bizarre double burning had been identified. They were a brother and a cousin of the men who had been arrested in London as part of the virus plot the previous August. The men arrested had known nothing about what they were doing that day. They had been dupes. But they were still in prison on remand.
    It looked very much like whoever was behind that plot had just disposed of some people who could betray them.
    There was another fact about this incident that concerned Henry. All these dupes were exiled Palestinians, from a village south of Jerusalem. A village where some sickening incidents had taken place.

6
    In front of us in the queue there was a bald-headed giant of a man and his stony-faced partner. He must have been six foot eight. I was six one and he towered over me. I overheard a few words in Russian between them.
    ‘They look like they’re auditioning for the Organizatsiya,’ whispered Isabel.
    I shook my head.
    ‘The Russian Jewish mob,’ she said.
    ‘That’s a bit harsh,’ I said. ‘What does that make us?’
    ‘Generation Z dropouts.’
    ‘Speak for yourself. I haven’t retired at thirty-six like some people I know.’
    She gave me one of her smiles, then glanced away, as if she was looking for someone. I turned. There were too many people behind to work out who she’d been staring at.
    ‘Expecting a friend?’
    ‘No, it’s not that.’ She leaned toward me. ‘I thought I saw someone I know.’ She shook her head. ‘But it wasn’t him.’
    On the plane I spent most of the time reading a guidebook about Israel. About halfway through the flight a small group of skull-capped men went to the front of the cabin and swayed back and forth, their heads down. They were praying.
    Later, I looked out of the window when I heard someone say they could see the island of Mykonos. It was barely visible through a blue haze near the horizon. There wouldn’t be many people on the beaches there now.
    As we began the descent and the seatbelt sign turned on again, I saw a plume of smoke spreading across the sky.
    ‘It’s a forest fire on Mount Carmel,’ said Isabel.
    ‘How the hell do you know that?’
    ‘There was an article about it on the
Jerusalem Post
website this morning.’
    When we landed at the airport near Tel Aviv I felt the buzz of excitement around me. We reached immigration by passing along a wide elevated sunlit passage. There was a big