The Last Man Read online

  He looked at his timer: forty-six minutes. He had to get out of here and back to the surface. He would leave everything right there in the bat cave, changing into his street clothes and then slipping back into the fortress for a cable-car ride. If asked, he’d make something up about trying the Serpent Path descent and then walking around under the fortress walls. The guards would be anxious to close the site down for Shabbat and just tell him to get on the damn cable car. He’d be fine—but he had to get going. Now.

  He couldn’t wait to call Judith and tell her of his incredible discovery. She would be furious, of course, but he was willing to bet she would come like a bat out of hell when he told her what was buried in the mountain. He tried to control his surging heartbeat. As he exited the cave mouth he anchored a chemical light-stick to a rock and then cracked it on.

  * * *

  Judith got home to her apartment at five o’clock. She was still depressed about not hearing anything from David Hall, and the silent, uncaring answering machine did nothing to lift her spirits. She shucked her coat, kicked off her shoes, and went to get a glass of wine. Yossi Ellerstein had also found out nothing, apparently. Or, more likely, was afraid to call her and tell her the truth: Mr. Hall is out on a date with Bar Refaeli.

  Yet something was playing at the back of her mind. That business with the extra air tanks—something odd there. Hall was an experienced diver; he wouldn’t be planning solo dives anywhere, which meant he had to have set up some other diving tours. That in itself was a bit strange, given what had happened. That night together he’d been a bit of a wreck. Now he was diving again? Why hadn’t he called her, dammit! Because you were no longer included in the equation, my dear, she thought. The phone rang and she jumped.

  “It’s me,” he said when she answered.

  “Indeed,” she said, sitting down. “Well, Mr. Me, it is nice to hear from you. At last.”

  It sounded like he was on a pay phone; she could hear machinery noise in the background, and the sounds of foreign tourists. She’d heard that noise before. Wait—Metsadá? The cable-car machinery room? Oh, no!

  “I’m at the hostel. At Metsadá. As you can probably tell.”

  She felt a flare of anger. “What on earth are you doing there?”

  He was silent for a moment while a tour guide got on her bullhorn in Japanese to round up her tour group to get them to their bus.

  “I’ve been bad again,” he said. She could barely hear him. Her heart sank when she realized what he was saying.

  “Bad? Bad?! Oh, no—for God’s sake, Mr. Hall—David—tell me you haven’t been digging!”

  “Not exactly, but I need you to come down here. Immediately.”

  She pressed the telephone to her head, her thoughts whirling. What had this lunatic been doing? “Me? Why? Why me?”

  “Because you’re an archaeologist. I’ve made a significant discovery, but now I need a professional.”

  “A discovery? What kind of discovery?” She was almost afraid to ask. Masada! The authorities would kill him. She was ready to kill him.

  “How about some major relics from the Second Temple? That strike your fancy?”

  She was momentarily stunned into silence. “My God, Mr. Hall,” she whispered. “Where? How? What exactly?”

  “Too hard to explain this way. I have to leave now—they’re closing the place down for the Sabbath. Come down here. Tonight. Please. Meet me at that geothermal building on the seashore.”

  “What? That’s impossible. I would have to notify—”

  “No!” he shouted and then lowered his voice. “I mean, you can’t—you don’t know what I’ve found, but if you come, you will be the discoverer of record.”

  “Mr. Hall—”

  “Because you’re the archaeologist. I’m just an amateur. I haven’t touched anything. You will be the one, the archaeologist who makes the greatest discovery in modern Jewish history. Think of it.”

  She did think of it, and then recoiled at the enormity of what he had done. Gone excavating at Masada. After being warned off the site. The IAA would expel him from the country. Any Israeli citizen helping him, especially an Israeli archaeologist … well, it was just unimaginable.

  “Mr. Hall, this is impossible. I am a professional archaeologist, just as you say. I have responsibilities. A duty to protect ancient sites and relics. I am horrified at what you’ve done. I couldn’t begin to—”

  “A gold-plated menorah, two meters high,” he whispered. “A dozen or more gold-capped theca, still sealed. A skeleton with a dagger. A cave whose walls are covered in writing.”

  She was speechless. Two meters? Just like on the Roman coins. Judaea Capta. My God, could it be?

  “Meet me in three hours,” he said. “By that geothermal building. South of the mountain. Drive past it, turn off your lights, and turn around and come back to it. And Judith? Bring your diving gear. It’s in a fully flooded cistern. Huge—a hundred feet across, easy. Three hours.”

  He hung up and she just sat there, the phone pressed against her ear so hard it hurt, still in shock. Slowly she put the phone down and sat back on the couch. Almost unconsciously, she drank the entire glass of wine, while she tried to figure out what to do. Helping him was out of the question, of course. She had to call the chairman immediately. Report what this madman was saying. That he had been digging, illegally, on Herod’s mountain. That he was claiming to have made an enormous discovery.

  Second Temple artifacts!

  Then she got angry again. He had lied at every step. He had come to Israel with this crazy mission in mind all along. All the rest of it had been cover and deception. Getting them to help him gain access to the site. The bumbling amateur act. She should have known when they caught him out on the mountain at night. Communing with the spirits. Scouting was more like it.

  And their evening together? More of the same. Now he wanted an archaeologist to somehow legitimize his discoveries? Right.

  By now she was furious. The police, that’s who he was going to get, she decided. The police, who were already familiar with this man, would treat him to a little scouting expedition to an Israeli jail. She’d call the Interior Ministry, get one of their security teams to meet him in his precious three hours and haul his impudent ass off to jail. Let him spend the night in a cellblock with some bored Palestinian teenagers.

  She swore out loud, reached for the phone, and jumped when it rang again. She grabbed it up, ready to yell at him.

  24

  David left the hostel and went out into the parking lot. It was coming on twilight, and most of the buses had already left. The lights up in the hostel were flicking off. He walked over to his Land Rover, got in, looked around to see if anyone cared what he was doing, and then drove out of the lot. He turned right and headed south toward the bottom of the Dead Sea. A spectacular sunset was shaping up over the escarpments to the west. He drove slowly, enjoying the view but dreading what Judith might do.

  Would she come? Or would she call the cops? There hadn’t been a crucifixion in Palestine for a good many years, but he could imagine that they might work one up if she called the right people in. Maybe a mistake to have called her. Maybe he should drive back to Jerusalem and hold a little press conference.

  The lonely road bore straight south into a landscape of glazed white evaporation ponds dotted with motionless yellow bulldozers. The gaunt shrubbery that littered the seashore up by the mountain was all gone now, the land so saturated with salt that nothing would ever grow there. He checked his rearview mirror; no lights. All the traffic from the site would be northbound, back up to Jerusalem. Then he realized that if he kept going, he was bound to run into an army patrol, and that might be awkward. He slowed and made a U-turn, lowering his own lights to parking lights. He loitered on the way back, going no more than ten miles an hour, killing time to full darkness. He planned to stay down on the seashore to wait for Judith. He’d grabbed one of the last sandwiches out of the cold case and three bottles of water befo
re they shut the place down, so he had the makings of dinner. He was almost too excited to eat.

  Would she come? What would he do if she did not?

  He finally reached the geothermal complex, which had some security lights blazing on the high chain-link fence surrounding it. He turned off the coast highway and drove down the dirt track toward the salt lake, praying that the place wasn’t manned, and parked between two security floodlight poles. Their amber cones of halogen light created a deep shadow right alongside the fence between them. He shut the Land Rover down, doused the parking lights, and sat back to see what would happen. Behind him, just visible in the side mirrors, the tall steel tank tower rumbled quietly in the darkness, as if something were boiling in there. From this angle he could see a large, six-inch-diameter pipe that came out of the low windowless building and ran a few feet above the ground toward the back right corner of the fenced enclosure. Just before the fence it dipped down into the ground and disappeared to the northwest. He wondered if this was a desalinization plant for the tourist site at Masada. That would account for the boiling noises. The sulfurous stench of concentrated bromine salts infiltrated the Land Rover, even though he had the windows almost fully closed against nighttime mosquitoes. Out on the highway nothing moved. The mountain and the hostelry were hidden behind the shoulder of the high mesa that projected out toward the sea like some ancient headland. He waited.

  * * *

  She picked up the phone again. It was Ellerstein.

  “Judith, shalom. Forgive me for intruding on your Shabbat.”

  “That’s quite all right,” she said, suddenly in a quandary. She’d forgotten it was Shabbat. Should she tell him about David? Yossi probably had connections to the security people. He would know exactly what to do.

  “I wasn’t able to find out anything about Mr. Hall,” he was saying. “His things are all still there in his hotel room, although they haven’t seen him and his bed has not been slept in.”

  “Indeed,” she said. Tell him, her conscience urged. Tell him now.

  “Yes, well, I realize this must be a bit awkward for you. He says he will call, then he does not. The housekeeping people don’t think he has been ill, either. I don’t know what to say.”

  “Did they say his diving equipment was there?”

  “What? Diving equipment? They didn’t mention that. You think he has gone diving somewhere?”

  “I called the dive shop where we went. They said he still had some of their tanks. I think that must be it.” Tell him, the voice in her head was saying. Shouting. “So I must suppose he is on tour somewhere, then, perhaps getting his nerve back after Caesarea,” she continued, aware of the tension in her own voice. “Or he has had a better offer.”

  He laughed. “I can’t imagine a better offer than your company, Yehudit. Still, this David Hall: He has done stupid things before, yes?”

  You have no idea, she thought. Which is when she realized she wasn’t going to tell him. She was going to go down there. Relics from the Second Temple! He had used the correct words to describe scroll holders. Hall knew what he had been looking at. My God! Right under their feet the whole time.

  “He certainly has, Yossi,” she said, “but look, this was just—how shall I say it? An interlude. We did not fall in love or anything. He was nice, we had a nice day together, a nice evening. He made no false moves, and, really, no promises other than to call. It’s not the end of the world.”

  “Nice, nice, nice,” he grumbled. “He got your hopes up and then dropped you without a word. Not so nice, I think.”

  “Well, what can I say?” Her voice caught in her throat and she cleared it.

  “You’re all right, then, Yehudit?” he asked.

  “Yes, fine, Yossi. Enjoy a quiet evening. That’s what I plan to do.”

  “Indeed. Very well. I will probably see you next week. At the Scrolls conference. The ownership debate again. You will attend, yes?”

  “Now that I am back among the earnest academics? Yes, I will attend.”

  “Very good. Until next week, then. Shalom.”

  “Shalom,” she intoned, suddenly anxious to put the phone down. Her heart was beating faster. She was going to do this crazy thing? She began to think of how she would justify it, if they were caught. Nothing plausible came to mind. So call him back, she thought. Call him back and tell him. Then the siren song intruded: Second Temple artifacts. At Masada. The last stand. The Copper Scroll had described several treasure hoards taken down into the Judaean desert when Jerusalem fell. People had been looking for years. Allegro himself had searched and found nothing. Had that been disinformation? To keep anyone from looking at Masada? What more logical place than Masada for Temple artifacts? Hall’s lady friend had been right all along. It would be the discovery of the millennium.

  Diving gear. Bring your diving gear, he’d said. She shivered. Diving alone into an unexplored cistern inside the mountain? What an incredibly stupid, foolhardy thing for him to have done. There would necessarily be no light, no landmarks, and no rescue if anything at all went wrong, and yet he had obviously done just that—and was now asking her to do it.

  She sat there in the comfort of her living room, almost paralyzed, wondering if she’d lost her mind. Then, with a start, she realized she would have to hurry. She shivered again and then got up to get her equipment.

  25

  Ellerstein sat at his desk, looking down at the telephone, replaying Judith’s answers in his mind. The strain in her voice. The rush to put him off. Was he imagining these things? Was it just female embarrassment, or something else? Was somebody there with her, and she couldn’t talk? Hall, perhaps? He swiveled around in his oak desk chair. The lights of Yafo spread before him. Beyond lay the darkened Mediterranean.

  He thought hard. The American had gone with Yehudit to Masada, and had been caught by an army patrol walking around the base of the mountain at night. He had admitted to going up there at night, the stones-and-bones business. Yehudit had been embarrassed professionally by the whole incident. She should have been furious with the American, and yet they had made up and spent a day together. Two evenings as well. Then he drops her and just disappears? Hall was an attractive, wealthy man, and Yehudit was a beautiful woman, on the cusp of coming back out into the world of the living. No man in his right mind would dump her like that. Unless—what?

  Now Hall was missing, in so many words, and Yehudit was being, what—evasive? No, not that, but something. Did they have an affair going, maybe? She was embarrassed to tell him? Hall was there, at her apartment?

  No, he didn’t think so. Something else.

  The incident at Caesarea—a total mystery. The news reports said only that a German tourist had been shot and killed with some kind of spear gun at the undersea museum. No immediate suspects, but terrorism was suspected. A random killing at a burgeoning tourist attraction. Except: David Hall had witnessed it.

  Masada. Hall. A senseless murder at Caesarea. Yehudit under pressure.

  He swung back around and dialed Gulder’s number. He got voice mail. Shit, he thought. Shabbat. He hung up and rose to stare out the window. He needed instructions, and now would be nice. He redialed Gulder’s number and this time waited for the robot voice mail to take his message. “I think the American is up to something. It involves Masada. There’s something going on, and Ressner is involved. Please call at once. There’s something going on.”

  He hung up as suspicions were solidifying in his mind. Now he needed to wait by the phone. What in the world was the damned American up to? Was this why Skuratov was so damned sensitive about Masada? He fixed a whisky and went into his study. The phone rang five minutes later.

  “Tell me,” Gulder’s voice ordered without preamble.

  Ellerstein reviewed the whole matter and concluded with his growing suspicions that Judith Ressner and the American were up to something, something that had to do with Masada.

  Gulder was silent for a long minute. Then he sighed. “Tell it to
me again,” he said. “Slower.”

  Ellerstein went over everything he had again. This time he remembered to mention the dive shop manager’s comment about the tanks. Gulder interrupted him when he mentioned the tanks.

  “Scuba tanks?”

  “Yes, of course. They had been diving together. At Caesarea Maritima. On a scuba tour. Where Hall witnessed a possible terrorist attack on a tourist. Underwater.”

  The line hissed for almost a half minute as Gulder absorbed that. Then he surprised Ellerstein.

  “I appreciate the call, Yossi,” he said finally. “Upon reflection, however, I think it’s nothing. I think you may have been right with your original theory—only I think they’re seeing each other, and Ressner doesn’t want you to know.”

  “Well, that’s possible, of course,” Ellerstein said doubtfully, “but—”

  “No, I think it is nothing,” Gulder insisted.

  “Well, if that’s what you think…”

  “It is. The American was caught once messing about at Metsadá. He knows if he went back there, we would deport him. Or maybe even charge him and jail him right here, no matter who he thinks he is. No.” He sighed, a weary sound. “No: This is romance. This is beneath our attention, Yossi.”

  “You said to keep tabs on Ressner.”

  “So we did, Yossi, but now—well, now I think you can back off.”

  “Very well,” Ellerstein said, somewhat baffled by Gulder’s nonreaction. “You almost sound disappointed.”