Mina sat across from Jack in his favourite cafe. She took a sip of tea and started talking almost immediately. ‘I’m researching the travels of Benjamin of Tudela, a Jewish merchant who lived in Spain in the 12th century. He left his country in 1166 for a long series of travels that lasted almost a decade.’
‘That’s some holiday.’
She pretended not to have heard his joke and continued.
‘Well, although he wrote a lot, and his Book of Travels is a very learned account of the socio-political world of his time, he was nevertheless a merchant and as such, spent a long time in Baghdad, which was a thriving and opulent Jewish centre.’
‘OK. So the man was a clever merchant.’
‘Are you going to interrupt me all the time?’ asked Mina.
‘No no, just get to the point.’
‘Fine. His writings were already disseminated in his lifetime but proper publications and most translations date from the 16th century onwards. The original and oldest manuscripts date back to the 12th century and are in the British Library, and the libraries of Rome, Vienna and Oxford. The British Library’s manuscript is the finest of them all, and the purest.
‘The purest?’ asked Jack, desperately trying to keep up with Mina’s account.
‘Yes, the other manuscripts contain pieces inserted by other writers. The British Library manuscript is bound with very few other works. Anyway, when I accessed it at the British Library for research, I noticed in the catalogue that there was another manuscript with the same number, 27.089.’
‘You actually remember accession numbers of manuscripts?’
Of course I do. I only worked on a few manuscripts by Tudela. I asked the librarian about this, he checked and said I had misread the number, which was actually 27.089bis. It was a sort of adjunct manuscript, a bundle of pages with Arabic poems. To cut a long story short, among them I discovered unpublished travel notes written by Benjamin of Tudela himself.’
‘Can we call him Benny? I’m not an academic.’
‘No we can’t. Don’t you respect anything?’ she replied, irritated.
‘Yes. You.’
She smiled and pulled her pocket computer out of her bag.
‘Here’s my rough translation of his travel notes: Free at last. This morning I took my first deep breath since that fated day in Nineveh. Who would have thought that keeping this secret would burden me more than my travel bags? Maybe I should not have read what I read; maybe I should have tried to turn my gaze away. Who knows? I have sent a letter to my dear friend Mordechai in Safed explaining my findings in the old synagogue in Nineveh. Maybe he will choose to pursue this quest. He is young, vigorous and learned. I am too tired to pursue anything but my young nephews who like to play hide-and-seek among the orange trees in our orchard. I will leave it to Mordechai and others to find out whether it is true or not. If it is, and the object is indeed found, it will be of the greatest importance not only for Jews, but for all mankind.’
‘Wow. What a story!’ Jack exclaimed. ‘Couldn’t you have begun with this? Which synagogue was it? I mean, where in Mosul?’
‘He describes a number of synagogues. Let me check the notes I’ve got on here.’
She searched for the right document on her pocket computer, ‘Here’s the passage, Travels 118–120:
It is a very large and ancient city, situated on the river Tigris, and is connected with Nineveh by means of a bridge. Nineveh is in ruins, but amid the ruins there are villages and hamlets, and the extent of the city may be determined by the walls, which extend forty parasangs to the city of Irbil. The city of Nineveh is on the river Tigris. In the city of Mosul is the synagogue of Obadiah, built by Jonah; and also the synagogue of Nahum the Elkoshite.’
‘So, which one is it?’ asked Jack impatiently.
‘I think it’s Jonah’s synagogue as it would have been the older of the two, but who knows? What’s really important is that we just stepped on the ruins of an old place of Jewish worship that corresponds to Tudela’s description of ancient synagogues and that this is where my weird tablet comes from.’
‘I’m sorry, why would Jonah’s synagogue have been the older one?’ asked Jack.
‘He was an important figure in Mosul.’
‘Wait, you mean the Jonah? The one who refused to do God’s work and ended up in a whale?’
‘The very same,’ she answered. ‘Jonah is still revered by Muslims in Mosul. Anyway, his “synagogue” was bombed by our fellow Americans’.
It was early evening when Jack drove Mina back to her flat. She invited him upstairs to freshen up before going out to dinner. As they climbed the stairs, Jack dropped his shoulder bag, spilling most of the contents and sending all manner of things tumbling down the stairs. Mina bent down to help him. ‘No, don’t worry about this,’ he said, collecting up the bits and pieces, ‘You head on up, I’ll be there in a minute or two.’
Mina was actually grateful, as it would give her just enough time to tidy up a few things in her flat. Jack had never been to her place and she did not want him to think she was a messy academic.
Mina stepped into her living room. It was completely dark. She always closed the shutters against the fierce Iraqi sun, but she didn’t recall closing them this tightly. The air was stuffy and she couldn’t see a thing. She flipped the light switch but nothing happened. She was about to try again when she heard a slight shuffling sound to her right.
‘Hal honaka ahad? Is anybody there?’ she asked hesitantly. A second or two passed but no answer came back. Suddenly someone yanked her arms backwards and bound her wrists behind her with cable ties. She heard the zipping sound of the ties tightening around her wrists, before another person pulled a large plastic freezer bag over her head and held it tightly round the base of her neck.
Panicking, Mina gulped a breath which emptied the bag of the little oxygen it held and left her gasping for air. She started choking, sucking the plastic deep into her mouth. She fell to her knees.
As she felt her mind fogging she heard the creaking sound of the shutters being opened slightly. In a blur she could make out three men in dark clothing, towering over her. One of the men bent down and yanked the bag from her head. She gasped for air, breathing so deeply she thought her lungs would explode. She burst into tears and shook violently, the body’s natural response when given another shot at life.
The men didn’t give her any time to think. They pulled her to her feet and roughly flung her on a chair. One man stepped up to her, bending low to stare into her tear-filled eyes and said in a cold voice, ‘Miss Osman?’
Mina didn’t reply.
‘Miss Osman, you don’t know us, but we know everything about you. Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
‘Good,’ he replied slowly, ‘so where is it?’
‘Where is what?’
‘Wrong answer,’ he said and turned to one of the other men, ‘You, the bag!’
‘Please,’ Mina begged him frantically, ‘don’t torture me! What do you want? I don’t know anything…’ She stopped talking abruptly when she saw her interrogator bringing a sharp knife towards her throat. It glinted in a single beam of sunlight peeking through the shutters.
He held the sharp edge of the knife under her ear and said, ‘The tablet, Miss Osman, where is it?’
That’s what they were after, Hassan’s tablet? It couldn’t be. This was insane.
‘So?’ He asked, slowly pushing the blade against her skin below her ear until she felt it cut through. Pain flashed through her and she felt warm blood trickling down her neck. Instinctively she tried to bring a hand up to stem the bleeding but shet was still tied up. She was utterly helpless and screamed, ‘Please don’t hurt me! The tablet is in my rucksack.’
He pulled the knife away and turned to the other man, ‘Pass me the bag.’
Taking the bag, he turned back to Mina and with a sinister smile across his face said, ‘We wouldn’t want to leave any traces, would we?’
Mina felt the clammy plastic bag being pulled over her head once more. She felt her mind darkening. ‘This is madness,’ she thought, as she began to lose consciousness.
The three men stood over Mina did not notice Jack creep into the room behind them. Edging up to the nearest one holding the knife, Jack suddenly sliced his left hand through the air with lethal speed and hit him with a knifehand strike to the throat.
They all heard the disgusting popping sound as he fell to the ground. One of the men pulled out a gun and aimed it at Jack, but Jack anticipating this move, flung himself to one side and narrowly avoided the bullet. With a grunt of effort he spun around and put all his force into a kick that smashed the gunman’s right knee. The man dropped the gun and crumpled to the floor, groaning in agony. The third man looked at his colleagues scattered around him on the floor, paused for a second, and then ran out of the door as quickly as he could.
Breathing hard, Jack rushed over to Mina and yanked the bag from her head to let her breathe again. He swung around, quickly picking up the gun and aimed it at its previous owner’s head. ‘Who the fuck are you? What are you doing here?’
The man looked up at him and a twisted smile flickered across his face. In the hushed room they all heard the muffled crunch of breaking glass coming from the man’s mouth. The gunman twitched slightly and his eyes rolled back into his head. Two seconds later, he was dead.
‘Cyanide — shit,’ Jack said, furious.
He turned to Mina to check how she was coping. She was in shock. She looked at him, eyes wide with bewilderment. He took two quick strides towards her and reached out to touch her arm, she shrunk away from him and started sobbing hysterically.
‘Mina! Try to breathe slowly. Are you ok?’ he asked, as calmly as he could manage.
‘Who are you Jack?’ she stuttered.
‘We don’t have time for this. We need to get out of here Mina.’
He peered cautiously out of the window. ‘It’s clear. We can move out,’ he ordered.
‘But… the police.’
‘You can call the police once we’re out of danger. Mind you, I’m not quite sure what you’re going to tell them. These men are professionals, and they came after you for a reason.’
He took her gently by the arm and led her down the stairs. Her face was growing paler by the second. As soon as she made it into the passenger seat of his car, she passed out. Jack fastened her seatbelt and drove off. He couldn’t quite believe what had just happened. After a while, he pulled the jeep up at the main gate of the US military barracks, showed his credentials, and drove onto the base.
The third man was sitting in his car, still panting. He dialled a number on his mobile. ‘Miss Mastrani?’
‘Yes? Do you have the tablet?’
‘No.’
‘What happened?’
‘We turned the place upside-down, there was nothing in the flat. We waited for her to get back but then while we were interrogating her, some guy barged in. He killed Guslin with one stroke to the throat, smashed Anderson’s knee with a kick and disarmed him. I ran for my life.’
‘You… ran?’ she asked, softly.
‘Sorry. I only had a split second to decide what to do,’ he answered, already realising from her tone that he’d made the wrong decision.
‘Where is Anderson?’
‘I think he’s dead too.’
‘You… did well,’ she said. ‘I’ll deal with you later,’ she thought to herself. ‘Where are Mina Osman and that man now?’ she asked, neutrally.
‘No idea Miss Mastrani.’
‘That won’t do.’ He shuddered at her glacial tone.
‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked her desperately.
‘Return to the flat. Clean up the mess. Did anyone hear the gun shots?’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ he answered, finally being able to offer some good news. ‘It’s a war zone. People are kidnapped and murdered on a daily basis.’
‘Right. When you’re done, wait for further instructions at the agreed location.’
‘Yes Ma’am.’
‘I hope this Hassan is still alive. I need to…’ she paused, searching for the right word, ‘…speak to him when I arrive tomorrow’.
‘You’re coming in person to Mosul?’ he asked hesitantly.
‘Yes,’ she said, and hung up the phone.
The man thought about his options. He would clean up the mess at the flat, but that was it. He would be long gone before Mastrani arrived. He had worked with her long enough to know exactly what was in store for him, having failed his mission.