The Fallen Angel

order them out?”
    “I’m afraid it’s too late.”
    They had just entered the first aqueduct. It was 2:23.
     
     
    It was no wider than a phone booth and scarcely tall enough for them to walk fully upright. Here and there, rivulets of water wept from tiny seams in the walls, but otherwise the bedrock was as dry as the bones of Rivka. Lavon navigated by compass. Softly, he counted their steps.
    The channel wound its way through the limestone in a serpentine pattern, which meant they had only a vague idea of what lay ahead. Despite the fact they were now only a few feet beneath the surface of the Mount, they could hear no sound other than their own footfalls and Lavon’s steady counting. At two hundred paces exactly, they reached the next cistern. Lavon paused and looked around in wonder. Then he raised a forefinger to his lips to tell Gabriel to keep his voice down.
    “Do you recognize it?” Gabriel whispered.
    Lavon nodded his head vigorously. “The T shape is consistent with a cistern that Warren found here,” he answered, his voice a hoarse whisper. “It was probably dug during the time of Herod. The stone quarried from this spot might very well have been used for the Temple itself.”
    “Where are we on the Mount?”
    “Just outside the entrance to al-Aqsa.” He pointed down the length of the horizontal portion of the T. “There should be another small T-shaped cistern right over there. And then—”
    “The Great Sea?”
    Lavon nodded his head and then led Gabriel across the upper portion of the ancient cistern. At the opposite side was the mouth of another aqueduct, narrower than the last. As he expected, it bore them into the next cistern. This time, they made their way to the foot of the T and entered the next aqueduct. After a few paces, the vast cathedral-like chasm of the Great Sea opened before them.
    And it was entirely empty.
     
     
    “Well?” asked the prime minister.
    Navot shook his head.
    “What are they going to do now?”
    “They’re working on it.”
     
     
    At the roof of the chamber was an opening, like the oculus at the top of the Pantheon in Rome. Through it streamed a shaft of brilliant sunlight and the sound of the amplified sermon blasting from the minaret of the al-Aqsa Mosque.
    “How far below the surface are we?” asked Gabriel in a whisper.
    “Forty-three feet.”
    “Or thirteen meters,” Gabriel pointed out.
    “Thirteen point ten meters,” Lavon corrected him.
    “If Dina is right,” Gabriel said, “the bomb would be in a chamber more than a hundred feet beneath us.”
    “Which would make sense,” Lavon said.
    “Why?”
    “Because if I were going to take down the Temple Mount plateau, I’d want to place the charge lower than this.”
    “Is there a way down from here?”
    “No one’s ever been below this—at least no one we know about.” He turned and studied the distant wall of the cavern. There were three more aqueducts, each leading in a slightly different direction. “Pick one,” he said.
    “I’m an art restorer, Eli. You pick.”
    Lavon closed his eyes for a few seconds and then pointed to the aqueduct on the right.
     
     
    At that same moment, Imam Hassan Darwish was less than one hundred feet away, in the cistern beneath the Well of Souls. In his hand was the Makarov pistol that Abdullah Ramadan had given to him before heading into the depths of the Noble Sanctuary to confront the invading Jews. The sound of the brief but intense battle had carried through the aqueducts, directly to Darwish’s ears. He had heard everything, including the sound of his own name being shouted in agony. Now he could hear the soft, muffled footfalls of at least two men approaching the chamber that Darwish had secretly carved from the Holy Mountain. It was there he had hidden the bomb that would destroy it and thus destroy the State of Israel. But there was something else inside the chamber other than explosives—a secret that no one, especially the Jews, could be allowed to see.
    He looked at his watch: 2:27. At Darwish’s instructions, the man known as Mr. Farouk had set the timing device on the weapon to go off at three o’clock. He had chosen the time, the supposed hour of Christ’s death on the cross, as a calculated insult to the whole of Christianity, but it was not the only reason. By three o’clock, the Friday prayer services in al-Aqsa would be over, and the crowds of Muslim faithful would be departing the Noble Sanctuary. But for the