The Last Man Page 19

  He retrieved his pack, went through the gate, and carefully made his way across the top of the Serpent Path to the cistern entrance. He could not resist sticking his face around the corner of the shoulder of rock that protruded just enough to hide him from the observation post. Far below was the tourist center, its empty parking lots looking like ponds, but there was no sign of the campfire in the picnic grove. Good. Party’s over; the entire place should be asleep by now.

  He scrunched his way through the loose sand to the cistern entrance hole, passed the pack and the sign in, and then climbed through himself. The faint stink of ammonia lingered in the air. He flicked on the Maglite and scanned the ceiling and the upper walls of the cistern for bats, but there were still no other visible creatures in the cave. He hoped there were no desert adders lurking just under the sand.

  The small depression he had dug was still there, with his tracks all around it. He set the light flat on his pack and, using the sign, began to shovel away the sand from the low point of the cistern. At first it was easy, but then the sand became progressively wetter and more difficult to move. After fifteen minutes he had cleared an area four feet square, down to a depth of nearly two feet. The reek of ammonia was very strong now, and even with a handkerchief tied across his nose and mouth, he had to step away every few minutes to get some fresh air near the entrance hole. After another fifteen minutes he had dug past the layer of bat guano, and the atmosphere cleared considerably. The sand was really wet, almost saturated. He stopped when his improvised shovel hit something hard.

  Reaching into the hole, he pushed the wet sand aside and uncovered what looked like a flat rock or paving stone. He ran his fingertips over it and was thrilled to see that it was artificially smooth, not like the wind- and sand-blasted rock walls of the fortress above. Man-made, he thought. Smooth—and wet. Vestiges of the last rainfall here, he thought. Probably back last winter. The almost constant temperature in the cave would slow evaporation, especially once the water level subsided into the sand. He cleared away more of the stone, looking for an edge. He found something better than that. Two feet to the right side of the hole he encountered a depression in the stone, into which had been fixed an iron ring about three inches in diameter. The ring was rusty and did not lift under his prying fingers, but there would be only one purpose to such a ring: to lift the stone.

  By God, he’d found it! He experienced a strong yearning to have Adrian with him.

  He rocked back on his heels, letting the Maglite shine into his face. He remembered the fateful words that had triggered Adrian’s theory and his own search: The cisterns have never been explored. Now he had some real work to do, and not much time to do it in. He set to shoveling sand again.

  Thirty minutes later he had uncovered the entire slab, which was actually a crude rectangle, four feet by about two and a half, with the ring embedded on the centerline about a foot from one end. There was a quarter-inch seam all around the slab, with the bedrock of the cistern forming the outer edge of the seam. The stone of the slab was a different color from the bedrock. He studied it, running his knife blade along the seam, loosening bits of sand. Depending on how thick it was, this probably was not something he could just lift out of its hole, unless there was some kind of counterweight mechanism, which he doubted. Besides, this stone looked like it had been here for a very long time.

  His knife was a bosun’s knife, and it had a four-inch stainless steel fid, or spike, on one end. He pried the spike under the ring and began to work it, but the ring’s hinge joint seemed to be welded in place. There were no hinges visible on the slab. He put the knife down, climbed up the sand ramp to the entrance hole, and slipped outside. He had to wait a few minutes to get his night vision back but then found a good-sized rock, which he took back into the cistern with him.

  Using the rock as a hammer, he banged on the ring until he thought he saw it move as his hammering broke through the crust of rusty metal. This time he was able to lift the ring into a not quite vertical position. He sat back again, not even trying to lift the slab. If it was even two or three inches thick, it would weigh a couple hundred pounds, if not more. He needed some leverage. A pole. Maybe one of those steel scaffolding pipes up above—that would do nicely.

  He climbed back up into the fortress and removed one of the steel pipes, which was two inches in diameter and about twelve feet long. He took this back down into the cistern, realized he needed a fulcrum point, and returned once more to the fortress to look around. He finally decided to hump loose building blocks down to the cistern until he had a solid fulcrum point on which to set the pipe. Then it became obvious that if the blocks were resting on sand, they would just settle when he tried to lift, so he had to dig some more sand away and then go get some more building blocks.

  It took him an hour to get the thing set up, with two poles now and a second stack of rocks instead of just one, after he realized he would need something to wedge the slab open once he got it lifted. If he could get it lifted. He looked at his watch. Almost two. Moonrise in ten minutes. He would need two hours to get back to the hostel, assuming he didn’t have to hide from a patrol along the way. Sunrise was at around seven thirty. Twilight an hour before that. So he could stay here no more than two more hours. This had better work right away if he was going to have time to explore the cave underneath.

  He went around to the lever end of the steel pipe, which was sticking up about six feet above the sand, its other end wedged through the ring. He draped his arms over the pipe and then pulled down. Nothing happened. The pipe flexed slightly over its fulcrum of stacked stones, but the big slab didn’t budge. He took a deep breath and hung his entire body weight on the end of the pipe. At first it simply flexed again, threatening to crimp, but then there was a noise of crunching sand and the edge of the slab came up out of its hole, rising about ten inches above the edge of the hole before becoming wedged against the end of the pipe.

  Now what, genius? Cursing, David let the pipe back down again and went over to reset the pole and the second stack of stones. It did him no good to just open the slab while he was twelve feet away suspended on the lever arm. He had to wedge it open so he could go see what was down there. He obviously needed to be able to reach that second pipe once he had the slab raised.

  He succeeded after two more tries and another trip to the rock pile up above. This time he was able to tip the big slab sideways a few inches onto a pile of building stones, leaving about a foot of daylight between the slab and the rim of the hole. He grabbed the Maglite and crawled over to the hole, being careful to keep his head and hands out from under the precariously perched slab. Holding his breath, he pointed the white beam down into the hole under the slab. There was another large, rusty iron ring attached to the bottom of the slab. That wasn’t what got his attention, though. To his astonishment, the light beam shone back at him from what looked like a bottomless pool of black, motionless water.

  14

  Judith awoke again at two in the morning. This time it was not a nightmare but rather a suffocating sensation, the feeling of a huge deadweight on her chest and lungs, accompanied by a lingering sense of some unspecified dread. The room was hot and stuffy, and she realized that she had again not opened her window before going to bed. Still, the aftereffects of that dreadful feeling clung to the edges of her consciousness like some night horror that was crouching behind her, remaining just out of her peripheral vision. Her face felt greasy with perspiration, and her mouth was dry. She swallowed a couple of times and then got up to find a bottle of water. She opened the window, and immediately a cool draft stirred the air by her legs.

  She was getting a little tired of this. What was it about this place that gave her bad dreams and night sweats? She felt almost as if she had a hangover. Reluctantly wide-awake now, she threw on a robe and sandals and went down the hall to use the bathroom. She thought about going outside again but decided against it. Against the rules and a dumb idea besides. But the thought reminded her of the
embarrassing scene that morning, when she had taken the hostel manager to the fire door to show him the piece of paper jammed in the bolt hole, only to discover it was gone. The manager, a fat man in his fifties, had given her one of those patronizing looks men reserve for semihysterical women while she insisted that the door had been blocked open the night before.

  Now, as she headed for the stairs, she decided on the spur of the moment to check the door again. She stopped in front of it, ignored the operating handle, and gave the door a tentative push. To her amazement, it flopped open. Squashed into the bolt hole was another piece of wet paper. This time she pried the wad of paper out of the hole and reset the door lock. She unfolded the paper and found that it appeared to be a fragment torn from the hostel rules and regulation pamphlet.

  Who the hell was doing this? Was someone leaving this door unlocked so that someone else could get in during the night? Two college kids, out for a lark at night? Thieves, perhaps, or, worse, hooded Palestinians bent on blood work? Then what had happened to the piece of paper that morning?

  She went back to her room and tried to think it through. The answer finally hit her like a bucket of cold water: The most likely explanation was that someone was leaving the hostel at night, secretly using the fire door, and coming back before morning. She knew in an instant who that someone had to be: the goddamned American.

  Easy way to find out. Go and knock on his door. What if he was a sound sleeper? Knock louder. Beat the door down, if you have to. As she remembered, most of the German students were all up on the second floor with her, but not all, she realized. If he comes to the door? Tell him the truth; explain about the fire door.

  She hesitated. What would the man think of this story, of her coming to his bedroom door at two thirty in the morning with some wild tale about a piece of paper in the lock? She felt in her bathrobe pocket to make sure she still had the fragment. She almost couldn’t bring herself to do it, until she remembered that man, that Colonel Skuratov, who had called her earlier. Checking up on the American. To whom she had lied. Why did he care? What the hell was going on here?

  At that moment, she heard the noise of a vehicle laboring up the coast road. A truck or a van. The army. She remembered that the army conducted random night patrols all along the coast of the Dead Sea historical sites. Some of the soldiers had been complaining about the night treks when she chatted them up in the restaurant. She waited until she heard the engine slowing down as it came closer to the tourist center. Breathing a sigh of relief, she quickly got dressed and headed for the lobby to talk to the patrol leader.

  * * *

  Water? David rocked back on his heels. Water. The damn thing was full of water. Well, Einstein, you thought it might be a cistern, didn’t you? So congratulations: You were right. But how in the hell … He wondered how long that water had been there. Since the Roman times? It was possible—the Romans would have found the smaller cistern on top, and its source of water would have been perfectly clear. There would have been no reason for them to suspect the much larger cistern underneath. He suddenly had this terrible feeling that Herod’s builders had probably created the little cistern out of a grotto in the first place, never suspecting the presence of the bigger one underneath.

  No, wait. Wrong. There was the slab.

  So someone had found it, as evidenced by that ring. Which meant that Adrian’s theory about something being hidden down there might still hold water. So to speak, he thought with a small grin. Who—the Zealots? King Herod? If it had been the Zealots, the secret would have died with them. He grew even more excited: This had been her premise all along. He looked at his watch. He was out of time. There was no way in hell that he was going to find out tonight.

  Change of plan. Big change of plan: He would have to leave here tomorrow, no, make that today. Go back to Tel Aviv. Right on schedule. Tell his minders that he was going to spend the second week in the country as advertised, on his diving expedition to Caesarea Maritima. All finished with mighty Masada, pardon me, Metsadá, thank you very much. And scuba diving he would go, but not, as advertised, just down to Caesarea Maritima. Oh, yes, he would go through the motions for a couple of days, in case there were still watchers. Then, somehow, he would get back down here, only this time with his diving gear. For the dive of his life.

  Time now to cover his tracks here. Using the poles, he reset the stone slab, slipping it sideways back into its opening. Then he used the sign to move all that sand back, smoothing it as best he could. He looked at his watch: Time to boogie, he thought.

  He mounded a pile of the guano-laced sand right next to the entrance to deter any casual explorers who might come along. He buried the building stones, the harness, and the climbing wire under the sand for future use, then thrust his backpack, the sign, and the two steel pipes out of the entrance hole. He swept his tracks with a broken bush as he backed out of the hole. He rested for a moment in the chilly air outside, bathed now in bright moonlight. There was no looking away from the spectacular panorama almost a thousand feet below, the Dead Sea glittering in the moonlight, and the mysterious hollow hills of Jordan on the other side. From his perch outside the entrance to the cave, he could not see the tourist center, nor did he want to poke his head around that outcropping of rock. Leaving the sign, he gathered up the poles and his pack and headed up the slope to the eastern gate. Once inside the fortress he replaced the poles and then went back for the sign, which he used again to smooth out the line of his footprints that diverged from the Serpent Path toward the cistern. He replaced the sign by the Byzantine ruins, shouldered the backpack, and then headed across the plateau toward the western gate.

  An hour later he had reached the top of the western ravine and stopped to rest. It was now almost four. He thought he could afford about ten minutes here. The sides of the western ravine were brightly lit by the moon, leaving deep shadow along the bottom of the rocky gorge. Up here on the top, however, there was none of the cover he had enjoyed coming up. Every rock, stunted bush, and undulation in the gullies along the main ravine stood out in clear relief in the crystal-clear desert air. He sat on the back side of a sand dune that formed the intersection between the western and the southern ravines.

  Coming up he had stayed in the bottom of the southern ravine in deep shadow. Now it didn’t really matter, because in this moonlight there was no cover. He just had to hope that he wouldn’t run into a patrol halfway down the ravine. He assumed the patrols would not walk down along the bottom. The military guys always favored high ground.

  Like way up here, at the head of both ravines. He stopped breathing when he heard a small sound.

  He turned his head slowly and found himself nearly surrounded by ten motionless figures wearing gray desert camouflage uniforms, their helmeted faces in shadow in the bright moonlight, but the glinting muzzles of their submachine guns astonishingly visible. One of the men lifted his night-vision visor up onto his forehead.

  “American,” he ordered. “You come.”

  “No problem,” David said in a weak voice, his heart sinking even as his hands were going up in the air. La Ressner was going to be seriously pissed.

  * * *

  David breakfasted in splendid isolation that morning while enduring uniformly hostile looks from the hostel staff. Apparently everyone knew, and after the angry confrontation with Judith in the parking lot an hour before dawn he did not expect her to join him for the familiar cup of coffee.

  Once back in the parking lot, the army guys had actually seemed underwhelmed by the enormity of his crime. With Ressner standing mutely to one side, the sergeant appeared to be mostly irritated by the stupidity of some American tourist’s trekking around the Judaean hills in the middle of the night. If we had just collided we might have shot you, he had pointed out. We don’t ask questions out there in the night, you know? It was only luck that Dr. Ressner here had come down and told us you might be sneaking out at night, so in fact we went looking for you. What if you had fallen in one of the r
avines, or been bitten by a snake? Who would have found you then? That’s what the rules are for, to keep you safe, eh? More along that line. Lots more.

  David had been studiously contrite and extremely earnest in his assurances that he wouldn’t do it again. One of the soldiers had said something in Hebrew, and the sergeant asked him what was in the backpack. David had quickly opened the pack and shown them the bottle of water, the flashlight, and the jacket, assuring them again that he had only wanted to go up there at night, to see what it was like.

  The sergeant appeared to be getting progressively bored with it all and kept looking at his watch as if they still had a long trek ahead of them, which would be in hot daylight now, thanks to this idiot. He made a production of lighting up a cigarette and chewed David out some more, but with diminishing enthusiasm, and then they had grouped up and headed back up the ravine, leaving him to the not-so-tender mercies of Judith Ressner.

  They faced off in the empty parking lot. From the look on her face, David had decided very quickly that a proactive defense was probably the best defense.