O Jerusalem - Laurie R. King [23]
That gentleman gave me a long, expressionless look before reaching for the brass coffee beaker, but Ali could not control himself.
“Is this a secret language?” he burst out. “The hand signs are invisible.”
“Merely the communication of true minds,” said Holmes. Turning his gaze on Mahmoud, he continued, “What Miss Russell has noticed is that one of the letters we so laboriously stole from the mullah’s safe is a fake.”
“A fake!” exclaimed Ali dramatically without looking at Mahmoud. “What do you—”
“Planted by you.” Ali made a strangling noise. “Written by you.”
Ali began to protest in an increasingly theatrical manner, but Mahmoud began a very small and quiet smile deep in his eyes, and eventually Ali sputtered to a halt. Holmes’ voice went hard. “The night we landed, you had your fun, trailing us about and pushing us into heaps of rotting fish and mounds of refuse. I protested at the time, yet since we left the town you have continued to lead us a song and dance through the Judean hills. I have said nothing, and if you do not think Russell has been remarkably patient, you do not know her. I understand that you found it necessary to test our mettle; in your position, I might have done the same. However, this has gone quite far enough.” He waggled the letter, then leant forward and dropped it onto the embers. That neither of our companions rushed to snatch it to safety was all the confirmation needed. Mahmoud’s forged letter from a purported German spy in Tiberius smoked for a moment on the coals, puffed into flame, and curled blackly. Holmes looked up from the fire. “Five days of keeping us in the dark is about three days more than I should have thought necessary, particularly considering the way it began. Make your decision: Trust us, or let us go our way.”
It was Mahmoud, still giving his impression of an amused stone, who broke the gaze, flicking a glance at me before he bent forward to dash the dregs from his coffee onto the letter’s crisp, trembling curl of ash, and continued the motion into standing upright. He handed his cup to Ali.
“We will go to Joshua now,” he said, and turned towards the depths of the tent.
“Ah,” said Holmes with a nod of satisfaction. “Joshua.”
Mahmoud paused with his hand on the tent’s central post. “You know Joshua?”
“I know of him.”
Mahmoud studied Holmes for a moment, and then went on into the tent.
“Who is Joshua?” I asked. Holmes looked at Ali with an eyebrow raised, inviting an explanation, but the man merely dusted his robes free of wood shavings and moved off to begin breaking camp. “Holmes?” I persisted.
“You know your Bible, Russell. Surely you don’t need me to explain his nom de guerre.”
“Joshua is a code name? For one of the military officers?”
“This Joshua prefers to remain in a more, shall we say, unrecognised position than at the head of his troops.”
I thought about it, then suggested, “The Book of Joshua; ‘He sent out two men to spy out the land?”
“Precisely so,” Holmes agreed, and, knocking his pipe out on the stones of the cook fire, went to empty his possessions from our tent.
* * *
FOUR
ث
Weapons are unnecessary on the main routes… but advisable on the others, as fire-arms, conspicuously carried, add a great deal to the importance with which the “Frank” is regarded by the natives.
—BAEDEKER’S Palestine and Syria,
1912 EDITION
« ^ »
Now” being a relative thing when burdened by tents, water-skins, cooking pots, and mules, we did not get away until the middle of the morning. I packed up our meagre possessions and helped fold away the bell tent Holmes and I had shared since leaving Jaffa.
Once on the road, we headed slightly north of due east, in the direction of Jerusalem, although Ali admitted that we were only going as far as Beersheva. We followed the pattern that had been established our first day on the road: Ali and Mahmoud went in front, holding to a steady pace and never looking back except for