The man was running at him again, unstoppable. Ben rammed the book edge-on into his face. Blood sprayed from burst lips. He followed the blow up with an elbow strike, felt the solid impact. The man screamed, his face covered in blood now. He went down. Ben was straight on him. He grabbed a fistful of hair and dashed his head against the floor. And again. And again.

Suddenly Ben could feel his phone buzzing in his pocket. The distraction made him hesitate for quarter of a second too long. The man twisted up and fought back like an animal, scratching and pummelling wildly. They rolled across the floor, locked together. Then the man’s scrabbling hand was on the fallen gun. The muzzle swayed up, its small black eye staring right into Ben’s. He desperately grappled for it, fingers clawing at the cool steel. The muzzle twisted away. It was a contest of pure strength now, whoever could gain control of the weapon.

Then the gunshot blasted through the wrecked room.

Chapter Sixty-One

Alex was scouring the cellar for a way out, anything. The door was solid. The torch she found on a cobwebbed shelf cast a yellow, fading pool of light into the recesses of the dark space. She was hoping for a trapdoor, a coal chute.

Nothing. They were trapped. She sat on the hard stone steps, her head in her hands. She could think of only one thing.

Ben. It was a trap. She wanted to reach out to him, warn him, do something. But it was probably too late. They wouldn’t have taken any chances with him. They’d have killed him. She felt her eyes well up.

‘Alex?’ Zoë whispered from the shadows. ‘They must have gone by now. Let’s get out of here.’

‘Don’t be funny.’

‘I’m not. Let’s get out of here.’

‘Zoë, we’re trapped. We can’t get out of here.’

But as Alex was staring at the shadows, she saw the little screen light up and her heart jumped. She shone the torch. ‘Where in hell did you get a phone from?’

‘I took it from the Neanderthal sitting next to me in the car. He never noticed.’

Alex laughed in amazement. ‘Smart move.’

‘I was a useful little pickpocket when I was fifteen,’ Zoë said. ‘Some things you never forget. And guess what – I’ve just recorded everything those bastards said. Thought it might come in handy.’

‘Let’s make a call,’ Alex said.

Zoë jumped up to her feet, moving about the cellar. ‘Reception is really weak. Wait. I’m getting one bar. What’s the number for police here, 911?’

‘Don’t call the cops. Give it to me.’ Alex ran over and grabbed the phone from her. The reception was dicey. The single bar flickered off, then on again. She tried desperately to remember the number Ben had given her. It came back to her in a rush. She prodded the keys as fast as she could.

Dial tone. She listened tensely. It kept ringing and ringing.

‘Oh God. I think they got him.’

Halfway across the world, Ben staggered to his feet and looked down at the corpse of his attacker. Half the man’s face was blown away, blood and flesh and bits of skull and jawbone strewn across the floor from the point-blank gunshot.

Ben was breathing hard, shaking with adrenalin. The blood on his face was a mixture of his own and that of the three men lying dead in the smashed-up apartment.

The phone was still buzzing in his pocket. Should he answer it?

He fished it out with bloody fingers and stared at it for a moment. Then he pressed the reply key and held it to his ear.

‘Ben? Is that you?’

‘Alex?’ He was startled by the sound of her voice. From her tone he knew instantly that something was wrong.

‘You’re all right. Thank God.’

‘He didn’t help much.’

‘Callaghan is one of them,’ she said.

‘I just found that out myself, the hard way. Where are you?’

‘I’m with Zoë. We’re shut in Callaghan’s basement.’ She quickly told him everything – how she’d followed Callaghan’s car, how Slater had caught her. What he’d told her about the Christian US Senator. ‘But Richmond doesn’t know what’s going on,’ she said, her words spilling out in a rush. ‘They’re just using him as some kind of figurehead.’

‘All right, listen,’ Ben said, thinking fast. ‘Here’s what we’re going to do. Don’t call the police. Can your vet friend Frank be trusted?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Then call him. Retrace your steps with him, so he can find you.’

‘I think I know more or less where we are.’

‘Good. There’s got to be some way he can get you out of there. Make up whatever story you want, but he has to keep his mouth shut about this. Then you and Zoë need to lie low and stay safe. I’ll contact you.’

‘There’s more,’ she said. ‘I know what they’re going to do. There’s an important Islamic prayer sermon taking place at a mosque in Jerusalem. The president and four members of the Supreme Muslim Council will be there. They’re going to blow it up.’

Ben’s heart leapt into his mouth. ‘Which mosque?’

‘It’s at the Temple Mount,’ Alex said.

‘When is this happening?’

‘Seven o’ clock, Israeli time.’

He looked at his watch. ‘But that’s only twenty minutes from now.’

‘Go, Ben. You have to stop it.’ Then Alex ended the call and he was staring at a dead phone.

It was as though the air had been sucked out of the room. A thousand thoughts rushed through his mind at once.

The enormity of it almost knocked the breath out of him. How stupid he’d been, how completely blind, not to have seen this coming. In its own terrible, horrible way it was a strategic decision of the most perfect kind.

The Temple Mount in the heart of the Old City was one of the most bitterly disputed sites in religious and political history. For Christians it was the spot where God had created the earth, and the seat of his Final Judgement; Islamic lore named it the Noble Sanctuary, where the Prophet Mohammed had ascended to Heaven. It had once been the home of the greatest and holiest Jewish temple of all times, until the Romans had destroyed it in AD 70.

Built on the ruins of the great temple was the most sacred site of the Islamic world after Mecca and Medina. The Qubbat al-Sakhra. The Dome of the Rock, a huge and magnificent octagonal mosque crowned with a golden dome that could be seen far and wide across the city. It was the epicentre of two millennia of Jerusalem’s bloody religious past, fought over by dozens of nations in its time and now, since the Israeli Government had reluctantly handed over stewardship of the temple to the Muslims in 1967, the ultimate symbol of the struggle between Judaism and Islam.

And to destroy the Dome of the Rock, to desecrate such a holy shrine as this, and place blame on the Jews for the atrocity, would be to light a quick-burning fuse that would see the apocalyptic prophecy of the Bible fulfilled. Israel and the Muslim world would be at war. The USA would inevitably get involved, standing with Israel. The call to arms would sound across the entire Islamic word. The great Jihad that fundamentalist Muslims had been waiting for would finally have dawned. Global conflict.

In a world tearing itself apart in blood and chaos, tens of millions of evangelical Christians would flock to the only leaders they felt they could trust. Meanwhile, events like 9/11 would become a daily occurrence. And worse, much worse. Ben remembered Clayton Cleaver’s prediction of nuclear war, and an icy tingle ran down his back.

It was a Doomsday scenario, and the clock was ticking faster than he could think.

Now it had to be stopped – and it was completely down to him.