The Last Man Page 32

  He was wasting time and, more importantly, air. There were two air tanks bobbing against the ceiling out there in the main cistern, but they were only partially full. Add to that what was left in their tanks here. They had three lights, all with used batteries. There was a waterproof flashlight floating up there with the tanks, but no food and no potable water, unless they went back down and looked for their water bottles. Going back down to the bottom was out of the question, and the silt on the bottom would make it impossible, anyway. He had one staging pipe and absolutely no idea of what to do next. He went back over to Judith, sat down, patted her arm, and then turned off his headlamp. She gripped his hand in the sudden darkness.

  “Need to conserve the batteries,” he said. “While we think this out. The big question is, how did that guy by the altar over there get into this cave? I didn’t see any ledge or indications he came in the way we came, and there was a big boulder blocking the cave entrance when I first found it.”

  She thought about it, still clutching his hand. The darkness was absolute.

  “If the cistern was empty at the time of the siege, there may have been ladders up to this cave.”

  “The bottom is a hundred and some feet down from the slab entrance. By my depth gauge, the entrance to this cave is at about forty feet. That’s a damn tall ladder. Plus, the entrance to the cave was sealed when I found it. No, I think there’s another way in. Up above us somewhere. And—” He stopped.

  “And what?”

  “Well, if there is an entrance, it must be sealed, too. Otherwise, this cave would be filled with water. Look.”

  He switched on his headlamp and pointed it down at his depth gauge. It read thirty-three feet. He switched the light off. “Once I dislodged that boulder out of the entrance, the water in the cistern pressurized the air in this side cave to an equilibrium state. There’s a problem, though: If we do find a way out from this cave, when we open it, the water from the main cistern will fill this cave until the two levels are equal.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the pressures would have to equalize. We’re sitting in a bubble of compressed air. If we release this pressure, there’ll be a small tidal wave in here.”

  “My God, all this would be lost. The writing is done in lampblack. The water out there would dissolve it all, especially what’s in those scroll holders.”

  “Yeah, it might,” he said, “but what are our options? I don’t want to die here.”

  She was quiet. He was aware that every breath they took was consuming precious oxygen and beginning to fill the cave with carbon dioxide. They had to do something.

  “Is there no other way to lift the slab at the top of the main cistern?” she asked.

  “Not from below. Even from up top, it was very, very heavy. I had to use staging pipes to lever it. That’s why I wanted those pipes—if there’s another opening, above the cave here, two of us might be able to lever it open.”

  She didn’t answer. He became aware of her breathing in the silence, along with his own. He had never experienced such absolute darkness before. For a vertiginous moment he felt as if they were floating out in deep space.

  “If that is—was—Dov down there,” he asked, “what do you think he was doing here? Did he ever express an interest in Metsadá?”

  “Not that I recall. He’d visited, of course. Everyone comes at least once. But—”

  “But?”

  “The weekend before he was supposedly killed in the accident, he had gone off for a diving day with two of his college friends. They were active with LaBaG.”

  “That’s the group you mentioned earlier. What is LaBaG all about?”

  “LaBaG stands for Lochamim b’Sakanah Garinit—Fighters Against Nuclear Danger. They are anti nuclear everything—weapons, energy, everything. These are the people with whom he got into trouble with that protest I told you about. Oh, God, David, what is going on in this place? If that’s Dov down there—”

  He nodded in the darkness. Dov had gotten across the breakers with the people who ran Israel’s nuclear program. If that was his body down there in the main cave, it meant two things: Someone had killed him and then dumped him here, or caught him here, killed him, and left him here. The same way someone had replaced the slab on them? Which brought him to the second thing, and this thought really chilled him. Did this cistern have something to do with Israel’s nuclear program?

  “I hate to do it, but I’m going to climb that altar structure,” he said. “See what I can see. Can you read the writing on the wall?”

  “Yes, I can. It’s Aramaic.”

  “Then maybe you ought to read it, because if I succeed, it may not be there for very long.”

  “Two thousand years it has been here,” she said. “We can’t endanger this.”

  “Judith, we don’t have much air left. I can go get those other two Scuba tanks, assuming I can still find them, but they’re partials. After that, we start breathing CO2, and that’s the end of us.”

  28

  Ellerstein could barely see. The dust cloud being laid down by the army truck was overwhelming his own headlights. He kept glancing up at the mountain to his left, but there was only its silent black mass, against which the dust looked like a billowing curtain. He swore as his sedan banged and bumped over rocks and ruts that had probably felt the tramp of Roman sandals. Nothing changed out here.

  When they pulled out onto the plateau on the west side of the fortress, he slowed to see why the truck was stopping. Once the dust blew aside, he saw the reason: There were two vehicles parked next to some old army Conex boxes. Four troopers piled out of the back of the truck and went toward the vehicles, their weapons at the ready. It looked to Ellerstein as if the vehicles were empty. Their windows were fogged over with night dew, and there was no movement showing through their windows in the glare of the truck’s high beams.

  Two vehicles, he thought. The Land Rover he guessed was the American’s, but the other he recognized—it was Yehudit Ressner’s Subaru. He swore again. Whatever was going on up here, they were now both involved. His beautiful minder had gone over to the wrong side of this equation. The officer was walking back toward his car. Ellerstein rolled down the window.

  “Professor?” he asked. “Know anything about these vehicles?”

  “I recognize the one,” Ellerstein said. “It confirms my suspicions. There’s something going on. Up there.”

  As they both looked up the ghostly slope of the Roman ramp, the radio operator called to the officer to tell him that the Dimona security force was five minutes out.

  “I used to work at Dimona, years ago,” Ellerstein said. “So why in the world would the Dimona security people be interested in something happening up here?”

  “Beats the shit out of me,” the young officer responded with an elaborate shrug, “but once they get here, they can take over. I don’t like this place. Gives me the creeps.”

  “This is where the Romans’ Tenth Legion camped,” Ellerstein said. “I suspect there’s a ghost or three down in that wadi on either side of the siege ramp. Do you know how they built that thing?”

  The lieutenant did not. Ellerstein told him. “Don’t tell my troops that,” the lieutenant said, looking over the top of Ellerstein’s car. “These Metsadá patrols are spooky enough. Ah, here come the Dimona specials.” There was relief in his voice.

  Ellerstein looked over his shoulder and saw a convoy of at least a dozen trucks grinding up the military track, their headlamps reduced to yellow slit beams. As he watched, trucks peeled off the line at the back and stopped to disgorge troops around the base of the mountain. Just like Roman times, he thought. Circumvallation. Except, of course, for the trucks. Who knows how far Rome would have gone if they’d had trucks. Or tanks. Lord.

  He watched as the remainder of the procession came up the slope and spread out into the Roman encampment. He saw one of those American Humvees leading the column. It stopped next to Ellerstein’s car, and three officers cli
mbed out. They were dressed in desert fatigues, and two were carrying submachine guns. They wore different hats from those of the desert patrol. The oldest-looking officer received the lieutenant’s salute and announced that he was now in charge here. Then he came over to speak to Ellerstein, but they had to wait until the rest of the trucks spread out over the encampment grounds. Once all the engine noises subsided, he asked Ellerstein for some identification, glanced at it perfunctorily, and handed it back.

  “Now, Professor,” he asked, “would you mind if I join you?”

  Shapiro, in his forties, was well built and looked as if he took things seriously. Ellerstein waved him in. They rolled up the windows to shut out the noise and the dust. The colonel immediately produced a cigarette and lit up. He rolled down his own window a few inches. “I’m Lieutenant Colonel David Shapiro. I’m in charge of the military security detachment at the Dimona laboratories. My information is that you think Colonel Skuratov is up on the mountain and that there’s a problem, yes?”

  Ellerstein nodded, wondered for a second how much he should tell this sharp-eyed colonel, and then decided to give him the full background. When he was finished, Shapiro nodded thoughtfully as he exhaled a plume of bluish smoke out the window.

  “Those two civilian vehicles over there—one’s the American’s, and the other belongs to this Dr. Ressner?”

  “I know Ressner’s car; I’m assuming that the other is a rental and the American leased it. Shouldn’t be hard to find out.”

  “No, it should not,” Shapiro said. He fished a particle of tobacco from between his teeth for a moment while he considered the story Ellerstein had told him.

  “Begging your pardon, Colonel,” Ellerstein said, “but why does the mention of Colonel Skuratov bring out the Dimona military security force?”

  The colonel just looked at him, his expression noncommittal. “You say that you know Skuratov?”

  “Not exactly; he came to see me about the American’s expedition down here with Yehudit Ressner. I know he’s connected with Dimona.” That’s all I’m going to say, he thought. He dared not mention his own connection with Shabak, or the Zealot conspiracy. “I used to work there, years ago, and I remember him.”

  “You worked at Dimona?”

  “Yes, but, as I said, it was many years ago. I’m a theoretical mathematician. I believe, however, that things at Dimona have probably passed the theoretical stage.”

  The colonel laughed out loud, two sharp barks. “You’ve got that right, Professor,” he said. “Please wait here. As to your question, the answer is I’m damned if I know. A report was forwarded to our ops center that there was a problem up here at Metsadá and that it involved Skuratov. That report went to the laboratory director, who ordered us out to secure the site and to see what, if anything, was going on. So that, Professor, is what we’re going to do.”

  Shapiro stubbed his cigarette out in the car’s ashtray, got out, and walked around the back toward his command vehicle. Ellerstein rolled his window down and called to him. Ellerstein said, “I need to make a phone call. Does anyone have a cell phone?”

  “Probably, but there are no towers out here, Professor. It will have to wait.” He walked away and began shouting orders to his officers to deploy the force.

  Ellerstein watched as the elite troops fanned out along the rim of the Roman camp. Some trotted down into the wadi on either side of the siege ramp, while others formed up and marched back down the military track toward the Dead Sea side of the fortress. One of the trucks was apparently a mobile communications station, and men began setting it up as a temporary field headquarters.

  By now the original desert patrol group was sitting next to their truck on some rocks, smoking cigarettes and watching with the detached curiosity of soldiers who were happily on the sidelines. Colonel Shapiro took ten men and headed up the siege ramp. They set an impressive pace. The men carried submachine guns at port arms. Shapiro had a holstered pistol and a small tactical radio.

  Ellerstein got out of his car and fished around for his pipe. The night was startlingly clear and cool, and he reached back in to retrieve a jacket. The gray battlements at the top of the mountain were etched in stark relief against the night sky. Behind him the black silhouettes of the Judaean hills stood guard. He could almost imagine that he could see pale, bearded faces flitting between the arrow slits up there, the ghosts of the Kanna’im keeping an eye on all the commotion in the Roman camp once again. He shivered despite himself. Colonel Shapiro and his team reached the western gate, stepped through the battlements, and disappeared. Ellerstein waited for half an hour and then decided to make his own move. The troops around the comms truck were all settled in, and the rest of the force was deployed out along the old Roman circumvallation perimeter of the site. Puffing gently on his pipe, he walked casually over to the base of the siege ramp, looked back once more, and then started up. No one seemed to notice.

  * * *

  With Judith’s help, David climbed back down from the altar and switched off his headlamp. Judith kept hers on.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “I can’t see anything up there that looks like an entrance. Doesn’t mean there isn’t one there, but if I can’t see it, I can’t work it.”

  She sighed. They walked back over to the ledge on the side of the cave. “So now what?” she asked. Her voice sounded dull, and David realized she was still in shock over finding Dov’s remains.

  “Well, for starters, I’ll get my rig back on and go retrieve those air tanks and the extra light.”

  “That sounds like we’re just postponing the inevitable,” she said.

  “That’s how survival works, Judith. You keep at it, and something might break our way.”

  “Sure.”

  He patted her hand. “Give me your headlamp—I’ll need it to mark the entrance here. You can use the spare, although you should just shut it off until I get back. I want to look around the entrance to this cave to see if we’ve missed something. Then I’ll retrieve the bottles and get them into the cave.”

  “And then?”

  “And then we keep on trying things until something works. Give me a hand with this rig, please?”

  She helped him into his tank harness. He checked his weights, tested the regulator, and pulled on his mask. She was clutching his forearm. “Don’t leave me here,” she whispered.

  “Never,” he said. Then he got down on his hands and knees, flattened out, and crawled into the water like a crocodile. He bumped and banged his way through the flooded narrow passage until he came out into the main cistern. He was just able to turn around in the cave entrance. He checked his gear one more time and then took a compass bearing to get himself to where he remembered the main slab was. That’s where the bottles had been; where they were now, of course, was anyone’s guess, except they should still be bumping along the ceiling of the cistern. He was aware that he might have to search for them, expending more precious air in the process.

  He positioned Judith’s headlamp at the cave entrance and turned it on. It was not as strong as it had been. Then he launched from the lip of the entrance and headed up toward the ceiling, searching for the slab hole and the air tanks. After five minutes he had found neither and felt the first strings of panic. Then he remembered the air bubble trick. He exhaled and watched, but the bubbles now just drifted along the ceiling. Of course, he thought, the damned slab is down. He checked his compass and headed due east. If he had to, he would crisscross the ceiling from east to west until he found either the tanks or the slab hole.

  He finally fetched up against the eastern wall. Nothing. Just the smooth grayish rock of the ceiling and upper walls staring back at him. He reversed course and swam back, offsetting as best he could, heading west now. He ran up against the western wall without finding anything. He reversed again. In his mind he was executing a search pattern along the ceiling, trying to offset his track by three or four feet each time, but he knew full well that, without a visual refe
rence, he might be plowing through the same water over and over again. Have to keep trying, he thought grimly. Not going to just sit in that cave and suffocate.

  The third time he hit the eastern wall something caught his eye, but it wasn’t an air tank. It was another pipe, similar to the one down at the bottom. There was a mesh screen over this one, but otherwise no indication of what it was for. He paused, treading water, while he tried to figure it out. It felt like his air supply was beginning to resist his breathing, a sure sign that he was running out of air. He didn’t want to look at his gauges. Pipe at the bottom with a current coming in. He felt the screen, and his gloved hand adhered to it. Current going out. A recirculating system of some kind? Water pumped in from that plant and then taken back out up here at the top of the cistern? He put both hands up against the mesh screen; after a few seconds the suction effect was more pronounced. It gave him an idea.

  He turned around and swam back over to the western wall. When he hit the rock on that side, he turned off his light and looked down. His reference light was visible as a dim glow almost directly beneath him. Finally did something right, he thought, as he dived down to the side cave entrance. A minute later he broke through the air-water interface in the cave. Judith was standing next to the wall with her headlight still on, studying the symbols. He took off his mask and told her he had good news and bad news. The bad news was that he hadn’t found the tanks. The good news was about the second pipe.

  “I think I know how to get us out of here,” he said, “but it’s going to be complicated.”

  “I’ve been reading the walls,” she said, as if she hadn’t heard him. “Whoever wrote this was the Last Man—the one selected to make sure everyone else had committed suicide. He is telling the story of that night. It is … terrible, terrible beyond words.”