‘Allah protect me, Allah watch over me, Allah be my light.’
Other tunnels and passages opened off to either side. He tried to count them, but there were so many he soon abandoned the attempt. Some sloped up, some down, some were almost as large as the main gallery, others barely wide enough to accommodate a single person. According to Pinsker’s notebook they branched and divided into other tunnels and passages, which then branched and divided in their turn as the Labyrinth fingered its way outward through the rock, growing and spreading and multiplying like some monstrous self-replicating organism. The thought of it made him shudder. It was bad enough here in the gallery, which at least held a straight line. The idea of venturing off that line, losing his bearings in the impossibly tangled web of passages all around . . . he forced the scenario out of his head. Pinsker might have been fool enough to go exploring, but he, Khalifa, would not be deviating a single centimetre from his current path. Down, up, out again. The faster the better.
‘Allah protect me, Allah watch over me, Allah be my light.’
Several times the tracks cut through cavernous chambers like the one at the entrance to the mine – vast subterranean rooms with pillars chiselled out of the bare rock and ceilings that still bore the smoke stains of ancient torches. Once, passing a deep side-gallery, he glimpsed a hole in the ground like a pool of black ink (Pinsker had noted just such a hole – he had lowered a rope and weight down it, but after two hundred feet still hadn’t managed to locate the bottom).
On more than one occasion he thought he was going to have to go back, such was the sense of dread he felt building inside him. There was something bad down there, he could feel it. Something wicked. Something he absolutely shouldn’t be walking towards. Twice he actually turned on his heel and started back towards the surface, only to force himself round and continue his descent.
And always the dark enveloped him, and the rock pressed in, and the tracks went down, deeper and deeper into the bowels of the earth.
‘Allah protect me, Allah watch over me, Allah be my light.’
The gallery began to slope more steeply. The air became hotter, odd drips and trickles of water appeared on the walls. A vague odour of rusting metal insinuated itself alongside the acrid ammonia of bat droppings.
And, also, another odour, one that he couldn’t immediately place. Only as it grew stronger did he realize what it was – garlic. It intensified the further he descended, filling his nostrils, overpowering everything else. As a child, growing up in the shadow of the Pyramids, his mother used to hang garlic over their front door to ward off the djinns that lurked around the ancient monuments. And now he could smell it down here. In a mine. Where there was absolutely no reason for it to be. Its presence spooked him even more than the blackness and the bewildering maze of passages and tunnels.
Disoriented him too. Made him wonder if perhaps his mind was starting to turn. If there was no such smell and it was simply a phantom odour conjured up by the suggestive power of terror.
And the moment he started to doubt himself on this point, other doubts began to creep in. Was that a faint tap-tapping he could hear down in the depths, or just the echo of his footsteps? Whispers in the dark, or simply the rush of his own breath? He thought he caught the sound of machinery again; several times he was absolutely certain he saw figures moving in the side-tunnels. Shadowy, indeterminate shapes flitting on the margins of sight. The moment he tried to catch them in his torch beam they were gone. The same when he tried to focus on the sounds. Only the smell of garlic withstood scrutiny. It was definitely there. He wasn’t imagining it. And getting stronger. As was the pounding in his temples. And the thudding of his heart. And the conviction that something dreadful was waiting for him down there in the dark.
Still he kept going, fighting himself every inch of the way, his desire to know what was going on only just outweighing the raging terror he felt. Down and down into the pit until eventually, after what felt like hours but was, according to his watch, less than thirty minutes, his torch suddenly picked out something ahead.
The gallery was now sloping so steeply that runs of steps had been cut into the rock to aid descent. He stopped and squatted. Holding out the torch, he swayed the beam, trying to make out what was down there. Whatever it was, it was right at the very limit of the torch’s reach and he couldn’t see it clearly.
‘Hello!’
His voice sounded dull, heavy. As if something was blocking the passage, preventing any echo.
‘Hello!’
Nothing.
He shuffled down another two steps. The garlic smell had become so intense he was finding it hard to breathe. It would have been more comfortable with the handkerchief over his mouth and nose, but he couldn’t hold the handkerchief while at the same time keeping his gun pointed, and he wasn’t going to leave himself defenceless, so he put up with the stench.
‘Hello!’
Still he couldn’t get a clear sense of what was down there, although there seemed to be shapes of some sort, curved edges looming in the murk. It looked like they filled the entire gallery, from floor to ceiling. And the tracks ran right into them. A rock fall? He descended one more step, really having to force himself, the blackness seeming to push him back. The beam picked out something round, like a wheel, and the outline of some sort of crumpled rim or hoop. Unmistakably man-made.
‘What the . . .?’
He reached his foot on to the next step. Tentatively, as if dipping a toe into icy water. At the same time he arched his body back, fearful that something was going to come flying up at him. It didn’t. Reassured, he started to lean forward only to tense suddenly. Spinning, he dropped to one knee and aimed his gun into the dark.
Somewhere above, way in the distance, he could hear machinery. Or a motor. Something mechanical.
He’d clocked strange sounds down here before, but they’d evaporated the moment he tried to home in on them. This time, having started, the sound continued – an eerie puttering growl that seemed to float on the air as if the Labyrinth itself was groaning. He listened, ears straining, the torch beam juddering from the trembling of his hand. It was impossible to pinpoint the sound’s origin. Above, that was all he could say for certain. Back the way he had come. He gave it a minute, his breath a succession of heaving, arrhythmic gasps. Then, no longer caring what was causing the blockage down below, no longer caring about anything other than getting out of the mine, he stood and started back up the gallery.
He covered twenty metres and stopped. The growl was still there, no louder, no softer. He went on, stopped again. Still he could hear it, although now it was accompanied by another sound. A sort of muted, rumbling clatter, as of distant wheels on rails. He jabbed his torch beam at the darkness, freaked, trying to figure out what was going on, cursing himself for ever having come down here. The clatter seemed to grow louder. Not dramatically so, but definitely louder. For a moment he stood rooted to the spot, his nerves so stretched he felt like his entire body was going to snap. Then, stepping to the right, he put his foot on the track. A faint vibration echoed up his leg. He did the same on the other track. Here too the metal seemed to buzz beneath his shoe. Something was coming towards him. Something big, to judge by the steadily increasing volume of its approach. He backed up, aimed his gun, put his foot on the track again. In five seconds the vibration had grown appreciably stronger. Whatever it was was coming down fast.
‘
Allah-u-akhbar
,’ he hissed.
He wheeled the torch. To his left, a wall of rock. To his right, a side-passage, one of the narrow ones, little more than a metre wide and not much taller than he himself was. He wondered if he should duck into it, but it looked so cramped, so claustrophobic, so malevolent, that he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Couldn’t bring himself to do anything other than stand there between the rails with the gun and the torch held out in front of him, frozen like a rabbit in a set of car headlights. Beside him the tracks started to tremble.
‘Stop!’ he shouted. And then, louder: ‘Stop! Police!’
It was a ludicrous command, comic in its impotence. The clattering was now so loud he could barely hear his own voice. If there were people riding whatever it was that was descending – some sort of mine wagon was his best guess – they wouldn’t have had a hope in hell of hearing him. And even if they did, what were they going to do? Stop and hold their hands up? Say sorry and let him arrest them? Crazy. But then terror makes you do crazy things. He shouted again, and again, waving the torch in the hope that the beam would be spotted, that they would clock there was someone down here.
‘The tunnel’s blocked!’ he bellowed. ‘Stop now! Police! It’s blocked!’
Nothing. The clattering grew louder, and then louder still. Deafeningly loud, like an entire freight train was barrelling down the slope towards him. The tracks heaved, straining at the bolts securing them to the gallery floor. It was close now. Very close. He shouted yet again, really screaming. Then, in desperation, he closed his finger around the Helwan’s trigger and shot into the darkness, aiming low. Still the thing kept coming. He loosed off another shot. No effect. The entire gallery shook. The darkness in front of him seemed to bulge like a rising wave. Two more shots and suddenly there was movement at the limit of his torch beam. Hurtling movement. He had a split second to register what looked like a large cylinder or roller careering down the tracks towards him before he leapt sideways into the narrow tunnel.
He misjudged the distance. The tip of his shoe snagged on the right-hand track. He stumbled, sprawled, fell forward into the tunnel mouth. Instinctively he threw out a hand to break his fall. The torch clattered from his grasp and went out, plunging him into blackness. Frantically he fumbled for it, pawing the ground while a few centimetres behind him whatever the thing was tore past with a thunderous roar.
Except that it didn’t go past. It kept on coming. Or else more of them kept on coming – in the blackness he couldn’t tell whether it was a single entity or a whole succession of objects, one behind the other. For a brief, confused moment he found himself thinking that maybe it was some sort of gigantic earth-moving apparatus that had been sent down to clear the obstruction below. If it was, it wasn’t up to the task because four seconds later there was a booming, ear-splitting percussion of crumpling metal as the thing, or things, slammed head-on into the blockage and, by the sound of it, came to a jarring halt. The whole mine seemed to lurch. Showers of dust and rock fragments rained down on him. The noise continued, increasing in volume and violence as more and more of whatever it was surged past behind him and crashed into the pile-up further down the gallery. Panic-stricken, he flailed for the torch, furiously sweeping his hand back and forth across the floor, pleading with Allah to let him find it. His prayers went unanswered, and with the sounds of collision slowly backing up towards him he had no choice but to leave the light and drag himself deeper into the tunnel out of harm’s way.
A couple of metres in he rolled over and scrambled on to his feet. Blackness enveloped him. He fumbled out a hand and pressed it against the tunnel wall to steady himself, stood there listening as all around him the mine reverberated to the clatter of descent, and the crunch and thud of impacting metal. He had no concept what was going on, was as blind as Iman el-Badri. Something – a lot of things – was coming down from above and crashing, that’s all he could say for sure. And, also, the point of collision was moving in his direction as the gallery rapidly filled with wreckage. Closer and closer it came, louder and louder, stronger and stronger the vibrations of the rock beneath his feet, as though he was standing blindfold beside a highway while in front of him the mother of all car pile-ups unfolded.
And then, suddenly, the sounds became more muffled and moved away to his right, further up the gallery. The vibrations gradually diminished, the noise dwindled, although it was still there.
For almost a minute he stood rooted to the spot, mummified in blackness. Then, trembling, choking at the stench of garlic, which was now so overpowering it made his eyes water, he inched forward a few paces and reached out a hand.
It touched metal.
‘Oh God.’
He felt up, and then down. More of the same. Bulges and edges. And, also, some sort of fine, powdery dust spilling out through cracks in the metal.
Barrels, that’s what it was. Huge barrels. They’d rolled down from above, slammed into each other, crumpled, split, spilled their contents.
More to the point, they’d filled the tunnel mouth. Top to bottom, side to side, with not even a crack to squeeze his fingers through. As solid as a cell door. A locked cell door. In a maximum security prison.
He was alone, and frightened, and incarcerated in the blackness of the Labyrinth.
J
ERUSALEM
By 6.45 Ben-Roi was getting worried.
He called Khalifa, got voicemail, left a message. He called again fifteen minutes later, and again twenty minutes after that. Messages both times. No response.
By the time he pitched up at Sarah’s at 7.45 he was seriously worried.
‘Something smells good,’ he said as she led him into the flat, sneaking a look at his mobile.
‘Lamb
cholent
.’
‘On a Tuesday?’
‘If you’re going to get all
frumm
about it, I’ll call out for pizza.’
He took her arm, turned her towards him, kissed her on the nose. Lamb
cholent
was his favourite. She’d made an effort. And not just with the cooking. She looked fabulous. Hair brushed long, hint of perfume, baby bump curving through the material of her dress – as good as he’d ever seen her. He’d been intending to make an effort himself – she’d bought him a Ted Baker shirt for his last birthday and he’d planned to wear that. Splash on a bit of his best aftershave as well. What with the whole Khalifa thing he hadn’t had time to go home and change. Hadn’t even had time to buy her flowers. He threw another glance down at his phone. Nothing. What the hell was going on?