Death By Degrees (19 page)

Chapter Twenty

T
he next morning we rose early and spread out from the police detachment toward every major site within range of Eddie’s calculations – and then some. The list was long and included business centres, hotels, cultural sites, even some of the most sacred sites in the world. Police, military and civilian forces were in position an hour before the sun rose and would remain there until midnight local time. It would be a long day for everyone involved but we didn’t have enough people for shifts.

We had the Special Police Unit on call and set up in key locations within the target area as well as bomb squads in the event Crawford had something of an explosive nature in mind. We’d already seen that he was capable of crafting an elaborate ambush attack; I didn’t put it past him trying to use explosives to cause massive amounts of death and destruction. In fact, that was the most likely possibility in my mind.

We had units checking the areas with highly trained dogs capable of sniffing out explosives. There were a dozen dogs brought in from police, military, airport security and anywhere else we could get them from, but it was a long and tedious job to check every location. We started at the hotel and worked outward from there. It seemed most logical to start close to the center of the circle Eddie had identified. Even an ‘all clear’ from the officer wasn’t enough for us to pull our plain-clothes members from each site, we still didn’t know what Crawford had up his sleeve.

Kara, Chen, Eddie and I stayed within the hotel along with a few others. We had set up a sort of command centre in one of the conference rooms, and the hotel staff had been kind enough to give us access to the projection equipment and anything else we needed. Eddie’s program was on screen while a very large map of Jerusalem was laid out on the massive table that took up the majority of the room.

The radios were constantly active with new reports, usually in Hebrew, from the dog handlers letting us know which buildings had been cleared for explosives. Every ‘X’ along the way was a step in the right direction, it either brought us closer to Crawford or closer to ensuring the safety of a large number of citizens.

Everyone was told to be on guard but to be casual. We kept just about everyone in plain-clothes so as to not arouse suspicion; only the dog handlers and specialized officers were in uniform. The last thing we wanted was for the public to panic. We needed to move quietly and quickly, make the dogs look almost routine, make ourselves invisible. Not only did we not want the public to know we were there, we didn’t want Crawford knowing until it was too late for him.

We knew he was an expert at going unnoticed though, and he’d used disguises in the past. If we were to find him, it would be both diligent police work and a little bit of luck. But then again, that’s what police work usually was.

It was nearing noon with no reports of anything out of the ordinary. The map in front of us was littered with ‘X’s and more were being added every minute. Zachariah, our resident scholar, was sitting at the table looking over the map at the various holy sites.

“Still thinking three in the afternoon?”

He nodded. “I believe he will try it then. It happens to be that today is a Friday as well. Most believe Jesus died on Good Friday at three o’clock. Some believe it was nine o’clock though, so it would be best to wait if nothing happens at three.”

“I want them all on site until midnight, just in case. Any ideas as to where?”

“There are so many holy places. From what you have said, I think he will want it to happen somewhere sacred. Ritual seems important to him.”

“It is, for sure.”

“I think that the holiest of sites in this area is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre along with the Via Dolorosa.”

“The Via Dolorosa?” I said. He looked at me with a surprised look on his face. “Sorry,” I said. “I’m not a believer.”

He didn’t say a word about that, didn’t cast a disapproving glare or anything. He simply pointed to the map and traced a line. “The Via Dolorosa represents the final walk of Jesus. It’s also referred to as the Stations of the Cross.”

“That I’ve heard of.”

He smiled. “It starts here, at the courthouse near the Lion’s Gate or St. Stephen’s Gate and continues to Calvary Hill where Jesus was crucified.”

“That’s where the church is.”

He nodded.

“What’s that say?
Golgotha
?”

“A Greek transcription of an Aramaic word. It translates roughly to the ‘place of the skull’. ‘Cavalry’ comes from the vulgate Latin translation. Do we have anyone walking the Via Dolorosa?”

“We do. The dogs went up and down it too.”

“Nothing?”

“No, but we couldn’t search everywhere.” I looked at the map again. “And the church, it’s been cleared as well?”

“Earlier this morning,” he said.

I shook my head. “It seems like the obvious site as well, maybe too obvious. Any other ideas?”

He shrugged and shook his head as well. “Not right now.”

We both looked at the map for a while longer in silence, watching as the officers manning the radios added red ‘X’ after red ‘X’ to the already heavily marked city of Jerusalem.

The next couple of hours passed in much the same way and before we knew it, it was just past two. If whatever Crawford had planned was going to happen, it was going to be soon.

My phone rang a few minutes later. I looked at the call display but it was a mess of numbers; my phone wasn’t liking the international numbers coming in and generally just showed me what may as well have been a random string of digits.

“Detective Munroe,” I said, hoping someone had found something.

There was no response.

“Detective Munroe.”

Maybe they had found him, shot him and left him to die, but not before he’d revealed where he was hiding Kat.

Still nothing. The room was a bit loud between people talking and the radios constantly buzzing and it made it hard to hear. Perhaps just a bad connection.

“Hello?”

I started to walk toward the door, hoping to be able to hear the person on the other end but there was still nothing.

“Hello?” I said it once more as I stepped into the hall. There was a sudden brightness to my right and as I turned to look I found myself nearly blinded by a brilliant light. In the midst of the light, a distance down the hallway, stood a figure. I could see nothing but the silhouette. I blinked a couple of times and the light and figure disappeared.

Then I heard her voice calling out to me.

For all I knew, I was hallucinating again. It seemed the obvious answer considering I had heard Kat’s voice. And it had always happened at high stress times – although I thought I was past the post-traumatic stress disorder and I wasn’t being tortured. Recent events though were more than enough to cause another break from reality.

It didn’t look like her or anyone in particular. I began to walk toward where the figure had been; there was a large window at the end of the hallway. I looked out and saw what had happened; a crane across the parking lot was lifting a mirrored glass panel into place on another building, the light had been reflecting off of it. Just a coincidence, I thought, although my mind tried to convince me that the light I had seen had been too brilliant to have come off of the glass. There had been an ethereal quality to it, something I couldn’t describe.

I shook the thoughts away, forced them back and walked toward the conference room. My phone was still in my hand but I had forgotten all about the call. I checked the screen and saw that the call had ended.

That was too much of a coincidence. Was it Crawford?

I had to know. The conference room door was just in reach when I turned and walked back to where I’d seen the figure. The hallway connected to another one which led to an exit door out into the back parking lot. My hand stayed on my gun as I walked through the hotel, weary of every door I passed along the way. When I reached the exit door I carefully looked out the window. There didn’t seem to be anyone in sight that matched Crawford so I slowly pushed the door open and stepped into the parking lot.

The most dangerous thing about coming out of a building was what could be behind the solid door, waiting for it to close as you walked through. I drew my firearm and rounded the door quickly, pointing my gun ahead of me into the space between the door and the brick wall.

Nothing.

Nobody seemed to have noticed me. I holstered my weapon and went back to looking around the area. As I scanned back and forth at the unfamiliar territory I didn’t see anything, but I felt like I had to keep going. It was all I had to go on. I crossed the street and as I looked down the road I saw the domed roofs of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the distance. It was where Zachariah had thought Crawford would stage his finale, but we had cleared it already. Still, I felt like something had brought me outside and as strange as it was, it was all I had to go on.

I was operating on autopilot. The idea that I shouldn’t be doing this alone never crossed my mind; all I could think about was getting to the church. When I found myself in front of it, I knew I was in the right place. My mind snapped back into place and I realized I was out of my element in a city I didn’t know chasing hunches all alone.

I dialed Chen.

“Link, where the fuck did you go? Everyone is looking for you.”

I barely even had a chance to say ‘hello’ once he picked up before he was yelling at me.

“How long have I been gone?”

“At least twenty minutes. Your phone rang and you stepped outside. Next thing we knew, you were gone. Where are you?”

“The Church of the Holy Sepulchre. I thought I saw someone in the hall, Chen. They must have left out the back door so I went to look, then I saw the church. It has to be here, Chen.”

“You okay, Link? I think you should come back. We’ve got people looking for you. They’ll bring you back to the hotel.”

“No,” I said. “Look, maybe I am losing it. But I’m here now. That has to mean something. Maybe it was Crawford that called, maybe somehow he led me here. Look, I don’t know, Chen. And I really don’t care. Everything in me is saying this is the place.”

“They already cleared it. It’s marked off here. Link… are you-”

“I’m fine, Chen. This is where it’s going to happen. I just know it.”

Chen knew better than to argue with me. My hunches had always been good, even if they usually were a little strange.

“Wait,” I said. “So it’s almost time?”

“Yeah, ten to.”

“Fuck. Get everyone you can here. Dogs, bomb squad, you name it. We need everyone here ASAP, but come quietly. If he knows the cavalry is coming, he may not wait.”

“Got it, be there as soon as we can be. No sirens.”

I hung up the phone and stood outside of the church. Consecrated in the year 325, it had been renovated and rebuilt a number of times in the past seventeen centuries. It remained largely unchanged since the last major overhaul in the mid-nineteenth century. The church was quite large and recognizable from a distance by the large domed roofs. It looked well-built, but given its age I was concerned that if there were explosives inside we could be looking at severe destruction. I wasn’t sure how well the domes and ancient walls would hold up if the worst were to come to pass.

It didn’t take long after I went inside to spot one of the teams we had stationed within the church – even in civilian clothes they didn’t blend in. Most cops weren’t meant for undercover work. They spent so long learning how to act like a cop that they couldn’t remember how to act normal. They would stand with their back to a wall watching the crowd or adopt the same stance they used in uniform, either with their arms lightly folded or elbows resting on the hips.

And they often drew too much attention to their concealed firearms. Cops have a habit of checking to make sure their gun is still there. You never want to lose your firearm and be caught in a situation without one. This led to a habitual touching of the gun, a casual pat or tap or a brush with the elbow. It was exactly what the one officer was doing when I spotted him.

I walked up and introduced myself. His partner glared at him, pissed off that they had been made. Neither one spoke anything more than broken English and it made understanding them very difficult.

“Have you seen him?”

They both shook their heads.

“And the church has been searched? You checked it?”

They looked at each other before the one nodded.

“Yes, and dogs too.”

“Good,” I said. “When was that?” Nothing. I pointed to my watch. “The dogs?”

“Umm,” the first one said, counting on his fingers. “Nine, ten.”

“Nine or ten? Okay. And you two have been looking around since then?”

That was too much.

“You two, you’ve looked,” I said, gesturing to show them I was asking if they’d been wandering around looking for things.

“Yes,” the second one said. “Not the Edicule.”

“The what?”

He pointed toward another part of the church. “The Edicule. It’s…” he paused for a moment. “Closed.”

“Why?”

He pointed at me. Wait, what?

“You closed it,” he said, then pointed to his radio.

“What do you mean, like on my orders?”

He nodded, probably understanding ‘orders’ more than the rest of it. We had a problem. A major one. We knew Crawford could jam the radios, but it seemed like he had one as well. Somehow he’d told them to close the Edicule and they had obeyed. I went toward the part of the church he had pointed to and came to a large domed room with a square building inside, positioned directly below the oculus – the opening in the roof of the dome.

The building looked out of place, and not only because of the fact that it was a building within a building. The Edicule was the shrine built where the tomb of Jesus was believed to have originally been. It had been rebuilt in the early nineteenth century by the Greek Orthodox church and elements of the exterior reminded me of their churches including the elaborate candelabra outside of the Edicule. The style definitely wasn’t something I would’ve chosen, although I preferred the clean lines of modern architecture.