The Last Man Read online

  “Still, they must be very sure. Your uncle—Jack Hall, is it?—He has contacted the government. The fact that he is a nuclear agency official complicated matters.”

  David sat back with a sigh. Of course it would, he thought. Heavy water diversion. Shit.

  She took his hand. “Yossi says the government knows it can’t keep you here forever. He says that he and I must come up with a plan that solves the government’s problem for them. Hopefully before the prime minister’s political problems bring on an election, or the Arabs bring on another war.”

  “My being locked up here in the Golan Heights does solve their problem, Judith. Ellerstein may be more concerned about what you might say one day, not me. All I can say these days is amen.”

  The monk reappeared at the garden gate and beckoned Judith.

  “I must go, David. Here: I have a package for you. This might well be your way out.”

  “What is it?” he asked. He heard the helicopter’s engines starting down below the walls.

  “Something very special, David. Get the monks to put it in a closed room, and then you’ll understand.” She leaned over and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. Then she was gone.

  As the helicopter lifted off into the darkening sky he opened the tote bag. Inside was a cardboard box, tied up with common white twine. Inside he found a green felt cloth. The cloth contained the wine bowl from the cavern.

  David felt a chill go up his back. He reached in to extract the bowl but then paused. The writing on the wall had alluded to a connection between Judah’s tragic brother and this wine bowl. They had both jumped to the same conclusion, but of course there was not one shred of proof. Still, he found himself very reluctant to touch it. He rewrapped the bowl in the felt cloth. Then he remembered her suggestion: Put it in a dark room. Like the chapel, perhaps?

  * * *

  “So, how did it go?” Ellerstein asked Judith. “Did he look healthy?”

  “A little gaunt,” she said, shifting her phone to the other hand so she could mute the television. “I think he’s used to more food than they are giving him in that place.”

  “All Americans are used to more food,” Ellerstein said. “What about his state of mind?”

  “He wants out, of course. He knows why he’s being held there, but wonders why they won’t trust him to keep his mouth shut. As he says, there is no benefit to him for revealing what happened.”

  “Americans are funny about things like that,” he said. “He gets out, goes home to the States, then thinks about his fifteen minutes of fame and maybe wants to try that again. Americans seem obsessed with fame.”

  Remembering what David had said, she asked him if he was worried about what she might say one day. Ellerstein stared at her for a moment. “Oh, my,” he said. He began to fiddle with his pipe.

  “What, oh, my?”

  “He saw right through it, didn’t he? Your coming to him, promising him a chance at release. He knows.”

  “Knows what, Yossi?”

  “He knows he’s never coming out of there, that is what.”

  Judith surprised him. “I don’t believe that, Yossi,” she said. “Governments come and go. The past becomes the past, nobody cares. Paperwork gets lost, stories become diluted. Once all that happens, then there will be no point to keeping him.”

  “Well,” he said, “I hope you’re right. It does seem unfair, especially after he led you to such prominence. You are right about governments coming and going, especially with these uprisings in the Arab world.”

  “Intifada, yet again?”

  “No. These Arab uprisings are generational, Yehudit. The young men throwing over the old men. The problem is that nothing in their lives will change except that there will be no wise old hands to restrain them.”

  “I’m glad I did what I did, then,” she said. “Up there on the mountain.”

  “What was that, Yehudit?”

  “If I am right, you will soon see.”

  He chuckled. “Stay in touch, Yehudit. I will do the same.”

  She switched off the phone and put it down on her dining room table.

  Stay in touch, she thought. Just you wait, Yossi.

  * * *

  Late that night one of the monks knocked on David’s door. He had no idea of what time it was, having taken off his watch weeks ago. He kept monastery hours, for the most part, going to bed when they did and getting up for the early morning services in the chapel.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  The door opened, and one of the younger monks, who spoke no English, motioned for him to get up and come with him. He held the candlestick high so David could put on his robe and sandals. Then they went to the chapel, where it looked like all the monks were gathered by the front door, including Father Kamil. The doors to the chapel were partially open, and the monks were murmuring to each other excitedly. Father Kamil gestured for David to join him on the top step.

  “Look inside, Mr. Hall,” the abbot said, ushering David to the doorway. “Tell me, what is that thing on the altar?”

  David looked inside the chapel at the wine bowl, which he had put on a back corner of the altar after the last service of the evening. The chapel was suffused with a warm glow, but the wine bowl looked just the same, plainer than even the candleholders and the simple Orthodox cross on the altar.

  “A first-century wine bowl,” David told him. “From the great discoveries at Metsadá.”

  “How did this thing get here, Mr. Hall?”

  “Dr. Ressner brought it to me. The authorities weren’t interested in it. Why is everyone so excited?”

  “Look again, Mr. Hall. At the chapel, not the bowl.”

  “Okay, I’m looking. I don’t see any changes.” White stone floor and walls, with no ornamentation to speak of. The Stations of the Cross represented by simple wooden crucifixes. No windows. A white stone altar with simple vestments. Two large brass candlesticks on the altar.

  With no candles.

  “Where is the light coming from, Mr. Hall?” the abbot whispered. “Can you tell us that, please?”

  Feeling the hair rise on the back of his neck, David looked again. No candles. There was no electricity in the tiny monastery. No batteries that he knew of. If they needed light at night, they’d get a candle. Yet there was no mistaking it: There definitely was a faint, almost golden glow to the chapel’s interior.

  He looked again at the bowl, but it was not glowing. It was just a plain bronze bowl, not quite perfectly symmetrical, looking a little wobbly around the rim. Dull, plain metal. It looked no different than the moment at which he’d first seen it.

  “Father Kamil,” he said finally, “we need to talk privately.”

  The abbot closed the chapel doors and instructed the monks not to go in there until he returned. Then he took David across the courtyard to his cell, which was no different from the one David occupied except for a desk and a second chair at one end. He pulled up the chair and indicated for David to take the other one.

  “Proceed,” he said.

  For the first time, David told him the whole story of how he had come to Israel, what he’d discovered, and how he had entangled Judith Ressner into his deceptions and ultimate success. He then described the words on the wall that Judith had translated, which were probably now gone, regarding the bowl and the writer of the words.

  The abbot sat there the entire time, fixing his eyes on David’s face with the intensity of an eagle about to launch. When David had finished, he sighed.

  “God give me strength,” he said quietly.

  “We were both making rather large assumptions, Father Kamil,” David said. “She was translating from Aramaic, and even she said there were always many different interpretations for any word in Aramaic, especially of that age.”

  “Yet there is light in the chapel. Like no light I have ever seen.”

  David had no answer for that, but he was suddenly, perhaps irrationally, glad he had not touched that bowl.

&
nbsp; “What will you do now?” he asked the abbot.

  “We shall pray,” the abbot replied promptly.

  “In the chapel?”

  “Oh, no,” the abbot said. “At the door. Until we understand the light. So: This is why you are confined here? The government knows about that bowl?”

  “No, the government probably doesn’t know about it,” David said. “They were so overwhelmed by the other things, they disregarded the bowl. I think Judith just took it and then told them it would go into a museum somewhere.”

  “Very well, Mr. Hall. As I said, we shall pray together to seek guidance and wisdom.”

  “Mind if I join you, Father Kamil?”

  “Not at all, my son, not at all. Tell me one more thing, please. After your lady friend told you what was written on the wall, did you touch the bowl?”

  David said yes, when they first found it, but after that, he had been afraid to.

  “Why?”

  “You know exactly why, Father Kamil. Do you want to touch it?”

  “Never, Mr. Hall. Let us go back to the chapel. Ah, wait. First I must send a message. Come with me.”

  David went with the abbot to the far side of the garden enclosure. Father Kamil unlocked a wooden door that led to a set of steps going up into the ruined corner tower. David wondered if the abbot was going to make some kind of signal, but when they got to the top of the tower, the abbot opened another door that led into a dovecote. There was an immediate chorus of cooing and purring from the tile nesting pipes wedged along the walls.

  “Homing pigeons?” David asked.

  “Yes, indeed, Mr. Hall. Very reliable.”

  “Where’s the message going?” David asked, as he watched the abbot scratch out some words on a small piece of paper and then insert it into a short metal tube.

  “To our Patriarch, in Jerusalem, of course,” the abbot said. “He will know what to do about this wine bowl that lights a room with no flame. He will think us all mad, of course, but he will come to see for himself. ”

  Wow, David thought as the abbot secured the tiny cylinder to the leg of a fat pigeon with a leather jess. Now he understood why Judith had brought the bowl here.

  You’ll see, she’d said.

  Soon, of course, the whole world would want to see.

  37

  They came for him three hours after sundown, ten days after the message had flown to Jerusalem. David had been asleep when the sound of a helicopter woke him up. He got up, shivered in the cold, and looked through both window embrasures. He could see nothing but the distant snow-capped mountains in the moonlight. There was much more snow up there now, he noticed. Maybe the helo had been just passing by, he thought. He had never heard one at night. Then, fifteen minutes later, he heard the truck cranking over and knew that something was up. He lit a candle, washed his face, and got some clothes on. For some reason, this time he fished out his own street clothes.

  A half hour later one of the monks who often sat with him in the garden unlocked the door, knocked, and came in. He was carrying an oil lantern, and he smiled when he saw how David was dressed. He indicated that David was to come with him. They went to the front gate, where two soldiers were waiting.

  Comes now the big question, he thought. They were either going to let him go or take him to a real prison. Or worse. He took hope from the fact that everyone was acting pretty nonchalant about what was going on. There was nothing in the soldiers’ faces to indicate they were going to execute him. Besides, they didn’t need to send a helicopter to do that.

  They slipped on a set of plastic handcuffs but this time did not blindfold him. They put him on a wooden bench in the back of the canvas-covered truck and hooked his cuffs up to a metal rod. Then the truck bumped and banged its way down the same mountain track he’d come up before. What, he thought—almost two months ago? He could see the trail opening out behind him as they went down. Briefly he considered escape. No. Nothing but wild goats could survive out there in this wilderness, and even they were pretty thin.

  They did blindfold him once they put him in the helicopter and strapped him in. This time he sat back without being told to and relaxed as best he could, trying not to think of all the possibilities here. It was very cold once they got up to altitude and leveled off. He remembered stories of CIA contract people throwing Vietcong prisoners out of helicopters while other prisoners watched, supposedly as an incentive for the others to talk. He shivered again, this time not entirely because of the cold. They landed after about a half-hour flight and then ground-taxied a long way before the turbine spooled down and then went silent, which was when he heard the noise of a propjet, a big propjet from the sound of it, somewhere near the helicopter. The doors opened, and the blindfold was briskly removed.

  They were parked at an airport or possibly a military airfield, he wasn’t sure which. It was nearly midnight, and the field was lighted but not active. He saw some hangars in the distance and a tower with its rotating beacon flashing through the night. Parked sideways right in front of them was an Israeli Hercules C-130 decked out in desert camouflage paint. The hatch was open forward, and two engines were turning on the other side. A group of men stood by the hatch, looking at the helicopter. Two of them appeared to be aircrew in flight suits, but then he recognized Ellerstein and Israel Gulder. For some reason he felt better that Ellerstein was there.

  A soldier reached in, unlocked the cuffs, and then indicated that David was to step out and go to the Hercules. He helped David out of the helicopter and then nodded his head toward the men standing by the hatch ladder. David walked over, stretching his arms and rubbing his wrists. He stopped when he reached the ladder. A warm draft from the turning engines blew under the belly of the aircraft, and he could smell the stink of kerosene fuel.

  Gulder was handing him something. It was a small leather folder. David looked inside and found his wallet, his passport, and what looked like an airline ticket envelope.

  “Mr. Hall,” Gulder said, his face a complete blank, “this is good-bye, I’m afraid. You are leaving our country. Bon voyage.”

  “Is this going to be an improvement over the monastery, or something a little more final?” David asked.

  Gulder just smiled, said something in Hebrew to Ellerstein, and then walked away to a waiting staff car. Ellerstein tipped his head toward the hatch and followed David into the aircraft. It was cold and dark inside the cargo bay, the only light provided by a row of small red lights in the overhead. An aircrewman wearing a cranial headset came in behind them and stood at the front end of the cargo bay.

  Ellerstein picked a seat and sat down, indicating David should sit next to him. He was wearing a heavy jacket and wool slacks.

  “So, what’s happening here?” David asked.

  “You are being released, Mr. Hall. This aircraft will take you to Greece, to the American military field at Hellenikon. A consular officer will validate that ticket back to the States, and you will leave at oh nine hundred for New York.”

  “That’s it? No conditions?”

  “Just one, Mr. Hall, and it is voluntary, of course.”

  “Oh, yeah, right, of course. Voluntary,” David said, rubbing his wrists again.

  “No, it is, really. We ask that you remain quiet about your role in the discovery of the Temple artifacts. Right now the whole world believes Yehudit Ressner is the sole discoverer. As agreed between you, yes?”

  “Yes. No problem at all.”

  He waited for the next condition, about the weapons business, but Ellerstein was getting up. “It was interesting to meet you, Mr. Hall,” he said, extending his hand. “Most interesting. If you should further, um, correspond with Dr. Ressner, please be gentle, okay?”

  David shook his hand but didn’t know quite what to say. “I will, Professor,” was all he could manage. “Thank you.” Then Ellerstein was walking back up to the hatch, where the crewman helped him down the retractable ladder and then closed it up. The crewman came down and made sure David was
strapped in, gave him a blanket to wrap around his legs, and went forward. Five minutes later they were airborne over the black Mediterranean.

  David undid the waist belt, removed the blanket, and stood up to stretch. The four big turboprop engines had settled into a steady synchronized whine, and it wasn’t too noisy in the cargo bay. He was looking out the single porthole when he became aware that there was someone behind him. He turned around to find Judith standing there, her hands in her pockets. She looked like a football player in pads because of the oversized flight jacket she was wearing. Her eyes looked tired, and the dark pouches were back. He looked into her face for a moment and then embraced her. She relaxed and leaned against him. They stood this way for a long minute, and then David let her go and stepped back. She pressed a hand against his new beard and smiled. He led her to a seat on the long bench.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll bite. What’s going on?”

  She smiled. “You owe this to Yossi Ellerstein. He convinced Gulder to let me come see you.”

  “He didn’t know about that wine bowl, did he?”

  She smiled. “Absolutely not, but he did figure it out pretty quickly once that story got loose in Jerusalem.”

  He nodded. “That could have gone two ways,” he said. “They’d either give up and boot me out of the country or turn me into a good Palestinian.”

  She shrugged. “I’m not sure how he managed it,” she said. “The media is in overload these days: Western nations defaulting, Arab uprisings, the Temple artifacts. His theory was that heavy water would be too hard a story. Too technical. No one would care.”

  “How did the objects look when they brought them out, cleaned them up?”

  “Spectacular beyond belief,” she said. “Even damaged, the menorah simply glistens, and the scrolls were intact inside.”

  “Glows, hunh?” he asked. “Like a certain bowl?”

  She giggled. “What bowl? No one knows anything about a bowl.”

  “But the patriarch from Jerusalem—”

  “Ah, yes, the patriarch. He went to the monastery. He returned. Apparently the room failed to glow.”