The Last Man Read online

  “In a way, I am, but not with you. It was a precaution, that’s all. Now, well…”

  “All right, then, I suppose that’s it,” Ellerstein said.

  Gulder gave a grim laugh. “What, Yossi, you’re not going to wish me to have a nice day?”

  Ellerstein smiled. They both hated that trite American expression with a passion.

  “Shalom, “ he said dutifully, hung up, and finished his Scotch, still wondering what the hell was going on. Had been going on. There was absolutely nothing going on now, it seemed.

  He scratched his head. Still, he thought.

  * * *

  It took her just over two hours to drive down to the Dead Sea rendezvous with the American. With the start of the Sabbath, there was hardly any traffic, but always the checkpoints. She passed the tourist site at Masada, rounded the headland, and slowed to look for the turn-in to the geothermal plant. She saw the building, with its halo of amber security lights, but could not see the turn-in road. Following his instructions, she drove past the complex for a mile, doused her lights, and then made a U-turn to come back to it. This time she saw the entrance, no more than a sandy lane, and turned in. She drove nervously into the lighted zone and right past his Land Rover. He flicked on his parking lights when she was abeam of him. She stopped and backed in alongside him.

  All the way down she had been arguing with herself. Her official responsibility was clear: Notify the authorities at the institute and let them take it from there. The damned American was loose again, and this time, he needed to be picked up. I can tell you right where to find him. He’s been digging for treasure at Masada—that would do it. The ministry police would have been all over him. Then what, though? Would he tell them what he had found? Or would he simply say, sorry, don’t know what you’re talking about, and leave the country? If he didn’t tell them, she would have to. There was the rub: She wasn’t sure she would tell them. She would much rather come back on her own, or with a proper expedition, and make the great discovery herself. Which presented a further rub: Who would believe such a story, that she found something like this on her own? Did she really want to tell it and then get shoved aside by the luminaries of Israeli archaeology in their rush to the site?

  At the end of the day, she told herself, it’s better to rationalize. First, check it out. If the story was true, then she would tell the official world. Right. This isn’t rationalization at all, she thought, as she got out of her car. This is madness, and you’re going to pay for it. As he came around the back and she saw the big grin on his face, she fought back the urge to slap him.

  “What have you done?” she hissed. “Tell me why I should not call the authorities.”

  “You can and should,” he answered, his tall frame silhouetted in the glare of the security lights, “but not until you’ve seen it. After that, we do it any way you want.”

  She turned her back on him, staring angrily into the darkness. “I can’t believe you went in there, alone like that. I can’t believe you even came back down here, after all the trouble you caused the last time. Do you have any—”

  “If I had told you my theory about an undiscovered cistern, would you have even listened?” he interrupted. He came around to stand in front of her, shielding his eyes now against the lights. “Would anyone in the Israeli archaeology establishment have given me the time of day? You know they wouldn’t.”

  “You lied to me, to everyone, about what you were doing here,” she said. “You pretended to know a cursory history of Metsadá, and yet you name the scroll holders in Greek. Everything you’ve done here has been a lie.”

  “Not everything, Judith,” he said. He didn’t come any closer, but his tone of voice had changed, softened. She tossed her head in exasperation.

  “Look,” he said, “we’re wasting time. Get your stuff and come with me in my Land Rover. If we get stopped by a patrol, we are lovers who lost track of time. Leave your car right here—I checked the locks on the gate to this place. No one’s been here in weeks.”

  “How in the world did you get up there with diving equipment?” she asked.

  “The hard way. By way of the Roman ramp. There’s an old military road that leads up to Silva’s main camp. There’s a place to hide the Land Rover up there. The entrance to the cistern is in a cave above the Serpent Path, about a hundred feet down from the east gate. I already have air tanks up there. We go in, make the dive, you see what’s there, and then we back out. After that, it’s your show.”

  “My show, indeed. They’ll kill you, and then me, probably.”

  “No they won’t. The results are going to overwhelm any archaeological crimes I’ve committed. Think of what it will mean to Israel to recover Temple artifacts.”

  She was silent for a moment. “What do you mean, my show?”

  “You can claim the whole damned thing, if you want to. I don’t care. I’ve seen what I came to see. Adrian was right. They may have committed mass suicide to defeat the Romans one last time, but they also did it to protect what’s in that cave.”

  “You have no idea of the uproar this will cause,” she said softly. “Assuming they’re genuine.”

  “They’re real, all right. You only have to see them. Now we have to move. The patrols will be coming out pretty soon.”

  “You have put me in a terrible position,” she said finally. “I will be ruined professionally for doing this, for helping you.”

  “No,” he said. “You are doing the responsible thing. You are going to verify that I have discovered what I say I have, and then you are going to take charge and safeguard the discovery, before the dumb American goes out and raises a horde of treasure hunters.”

  “How do I know you will do what you say?” she asked, her voice carrying above the noise of the machinery inside. “How do I know you aren’t using me again, yes? Using me to confirm that the artifacts are authentic and then claiming the whole thing for yourself? How do I know this? Tell me, Mr. American—and before you answer this time, the truth for a change would be very nice.”

  He looked away, and she wondered if she’d gone too far. Or guessed what he was really up to.

  “Because,” he said slowly, “I didn’t have to call you. I could always have done the American thing—gone to the media. Brought a crowd of journalists down here and staged a media spectacle of the discovery. Maybe let some private treasure hunters come with me into the cistern to verify what was where and then haul it out of there into the television lights. Hell, the very existence of the cistern, the cave, and the writing on the walls would be good enough for a great show. Israel has satellite TV, right? I could have a production team from CNN down here tonight with one phone call. Is that what you want?”

  “No!”

  “Okay. So instead, I called you.”

  She stood there with her eyes averted again. She had seen the circus that could erupt with a big enough news story. She felt his hand on her forearm.

  “Look, Judith, I know I’ve deceived you. I wanted to tell you. I really wanted to tell you. I didn’t do this for private gain, though. I did it because I believed Adrian was right and the rest of the world was wrong. This stuff is up there. Come see it. You know you want to—and you know you’ll never get another chance like this.”

  “Because I will be in jail,” she muttered, but she knew he’d won. She was going to do it. A sudden and noisy release of stinking steam from the plant startled both of them. The smell made them cover their noses.

  “God, what is this place?” she asked.

  “I’ve walked around it a couple of times. I still think it’s a desalinization operation. They’re making freshwater out of Dead Sea brine, probably for the Masada tourist complex. They use the geothermal heat to boil off the brine and then condense the water vapor. See that big pipe—it heads toward the mountain.”

  She looked through the fence. The pipe he was pointing to was just barely visible in the reflected lights. The gurgling and boiling sounds from the plant confir
med his hypothesis.

  “All right,” she said. “Let’s get this over with. We will take both vehicles, and if we’re stopped, I’m going to tell the guards everything, agreed? I’m not going to play any more games.”

  He sighed. “Your call, Professor,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  26

  An hour and a half later they were in the cave, suited up and ready to go. She had brought down a wet suit, a weight belt, and her breathing rig and mask. They had not been intercepted on their way up to the Roman camp, and her car was small enough that he didn’t think it would be spotted. He’d carried her equipment up the ramp in a bag, and she’d brought some water bottles. They had changed into their diving suits by flashlight while standing back to back. He reviewed the dive plan with her at the edge of the slab hole.

  “The cave depth is at about thirty-five feet,” he said. “So we have plenty of bottom time. The water is not too cold, but there’s air in the cave. I chose to stay on the tank rather than breathe two-thousand-year-old air.”

  “Yes, I understand,” she said, stuffing her hair into her diving hood. “This water stinks; I would have expected freshwater.”

  “Me, too, but it’s not. It is very, very salty. The BCD vest was useless. You’ll need to stuff it with weights.”

  She reached out a fingertip and then tasted the water. “This is like Dead Sea water,” she said. “How can that be, way up here?”

  “I have no damned idea, unless it’s some geologic phenomenon that’s forcing Dead Sea water up into this cavern. The bottom is around a hundred ten feet, say thirty-three meters. I’ve already been down to the bottom; nothing there but clouds of silt and what looks like brickwork, but I didn’t have much bottom time at that depth, either.”

  “So, we find the cave, go in, take a look, confirm the artifacts, and then come back out, yes?”

  “Right, although you might want to translate some of the writing. I think it’s Aramaic.”

  She cocked her head at him. “You can recognize Aramaic?”

  “Recognize it, yes. I think, anyway. Adrian said she could actually read it.”

  She just shook her head. Amateurs indeed.

  “If we get separated, climb to the roof of the cavern and look for this light, which I’m hanging down into the slab hole. Surface here and I’ll come back for you. There’s a glow-stick at the cave mouth. Problem signal is three taps on your air tank with your knife. You have to go inverted to make it through the final neck of the cave into the air chamber. You okay with that?”

  She took a deep breath. “I suppose we will find that out.”

  “Okay. If you get jammed in the cave entrance, rotate until you can move forward. If I could make it, you can make it, no sweat.”

  He reviewed the route to the cave entrance, noting that there was a second cave near the one they wanted, checked her diving rig, and asked her to check his. When they were both ready, they switched on their headlamps and masks, slipped into the water, and submerged. She signaled that she was breathing okay, and then he led her to the cave entrance, going across the cavern ceiling on a compass bearing until he thought he had the right spot and then swimming down to thirty-five feet.

  Once again he found the wrong cave, but now the green glow-stick was just visible. He signaled for her to follow him, and her light kept up with him as he crabbed across the face of the west wall until he found the cave. He started in, but this time rolled inverted while there was still plenty of room. On his back now, he could see her headlamp behind him, and he gave her the sign to roll over onto her back. She was struggling with something, but then she came on. The extreme salinity of the water would probably plaster her to the roof of the cave, but that was okay because she could then hand-over-hand along the cave until they hit the air-water interface.

  He pressed forward, going slower when the cave necked down. Then suddenly his face was out of the water and he was in. He dragged himself across the sand and then turned to help her come through the final, narrow opening. She instinctively reached for her mask, but he shook his hand in front of her face: Leave it on, remember? She nodded, sat up, and took a look around.

  David stood up, keeping his mask in place, and took her by the hand. They walked up to the high end of the cave where he showed her the ragged skeleton and the oversized dagger. She bent down and studied the remains for a minute, touching the dagger with a finger of her gloved hand. Then he showed her where to stand to see up on the altarlike structure. She kept one hand on his shoulder while she took a look, and he felt her hand tighten on him when she saw the artifacts.

  She stood there for a few minutes, just looking, shining her headlamp this way and that, before stepping back down. He put his mask close to hers and gave the thumbs-up sign. She nodded her head vigorously, her eyes ablaze with excitement. Then he took her to the right-hand cave wall and used the extra, handheld light he’d brought along to illuminate the wall. She studied the characters, tracing them out without touching them. Then she took the light from him and went searching along the wall. He figured she was trying to find the beginning of the text. He made a more detailed examination of the cave, looking to see if he’d missed anything the first time, but there was only sand and more of the small oil lamps.

  He wondered how the man had gotten into the cave. He’d seen no stairs or handholds outside on the cistern wall, so the entrance had to be something that came down from the fortress, which should be just above their heads. He sat down on the sand, leaned back, and looked up. The cave walls came together like a medieval cathedral, some twenty-five feet or so above his head, but there was no visible entrance structure. He checked his watch. They should have a good fifty minutes to an hour of air remaining, more if they came off the tanks and used the air here in the cave.

  Judith was playing the lights over the entire right-hand wall while she studied the script. As he got up to go over to where she was standing, he felt a distant thump. He turned reflexively to the air-water interface and noticed that the water moved slightly, as if disturbed by something. Judith was looking at him; she’d heard or felt it, too. They stood there for a moment, waiting to see if anything else happened. Definite thump, as if something very heavy had been dropped—oh, shit! The slab?

  He waved Judith over, took a deep breath, and then took out his mouthpiece. “That sounded like the slab,” he said in a rush. “I think we better go see.” Then he put his mouthpiece back in. Her eyes were wide at the thought of that heavy stone slab being back in place. There was no way they could lift that. He saw the fear in her expression and moved quickly to the interface point.

  When they cleared the cave’s entrance, he looked up for the reference light. There was no light. He tracked his bubbles and then scanned the whole ceiling area of the cistern.

  There was no light.

  She touched his shoulder and pointed down. Far below them, there was a glimmer. Son of a bitch, he thought. Son of a bitch!

  He consulted his compass, oriented his body, and swam directly out into the cistern, rising as he did so. He felt her following along close behind. When he rose to the ceiling, he executed an expanding square search and immediately collided with something. He drew back and saw that it was a scuba air tank. He saw a second tank, bobbing with quiet clinks against the rock of the ceiling. Then he realized there were other objects, some of his supply bags, a positively buoyant flashlight, his and her street clothes. With a feeling of rising dread, he went back up to the ceiling, mask right up against the rock now, and searched along the surface until he found that rectangular seam.

  The slab was back in place. They were trapped.

  * * *

  Yosef Ellerstein sat at his desk working on a draft of the paper he was going to present next week. It was late, and his thoughts were not really on the paper. He was still trying to work out what was going on with Yehudit Ressner and this American.

  Two things were bothering him: The first was Gulder’s nonreaction to his call. He’d purp
ortedly been assigned to watch Ressner because Skuratov was watching her, and Skuratov was a possible suspect in a plot to divert nuclear weapons material. Now the American was “missing,” Ressner was being evasive, and Gulder didn’t care? The second problem was the way Skuratov’s office, the so-called International Planning, had reacted to his message. Ho-hum, Professor. Thank you for your interest in national security. First, the grim old Russian had been all excited about the mysterious American, the nuclear power engineer. So much so that the American’s little unauthorized excursion on the mountain warranted putting him under surveillance when he came back to Tel Aviv after his visit to Masada. Yet now? Human voice mail at Skuratov’s office. First they care, now they don’t.

  Ellerstein got up and fixed himself a small cognac, even though he knew he’d had enough booze for one night. He wanted to light up his pipe but had rationed himself to three pipes a day now and the ration book was empty. He grumbled to himself and put the unlit pipe in his mouth anyway. He sucked noisily on it while he thought about the situation. Then something occurred to him.

  What was the common denominator to all this? Herod’s fortress down on the Dead Sea. He sat back down at his desk to think about that. Could it be? He picked up the phone and called the Skuratov contact number. This time no one answered. He looked at his watch. It was nearly 10:00 P.M. He let the phone ring, but there was still no answer, not even voice mail. He hung up, surprised. He did not know where Skuratov’s operations center was located, Dimona, probably, with a local telephone link near or in Tel Aviv. Wouldn’t it always be fully manned? A Shin Bet control room? Now no one was answering. Then he called Yehudit Ressner at home. Again, no answer, and when her voice mail came on, he hung up. He sucked harder on the pipe, the desire for just one more cognac rising again. Something was very wrong here.

  Suppose, he mused, just suppose Skuratov already knows that the American has done a runner. He’s taken his watchers off Judith, so he calls her, and she’s not there. For that paranoid old Russian, the two of them together conjures up Masada again, and there’s something about Masada that that old man has been reacting to like an exposed nerve. He looked out his study window into a cool, clear night. The lights of his neighborhood were subdued by the density of the buildings and the many trees. The rains would come soon.