The Last Man Page 8

  David nodded, recalling the dark circles under her eyes and her habit of avoiding eye contact. “An accident? That word has a very defined meaning in the world of nuclear engineering.”

  Ellerstein shrugged. “A physicist. Who can say?”

  A radiation accident, David thought immediately, but decided to let it pass. Dimona was a tightly closed book within the international nuclear community. “She’s still grieving.”

  “That is correct, Mr. Hall. You saw her: She is very attractive, but suffering, I think, from severe depression. Frankly, we are all worried about her. She was a very businesslike young lady before this thing happened, but since then, it is like the human being is no longer there, just the academic. She has actually produced some fine work, especially on the Metsadá materials and the possible links with the Qumran scrolls.”

  “You seem to know her pretty well, Professor.”

  “Yes, well, I met her husband, and through him, Yehudit. That was some time ago. I had actually worked for the same government laboratory where Dov, her husband, ended up working. When he died, she became in a small sense a protégé of mine, but now she lives alone in every sense of the word. She is younger than she looks, and some of the younger men have tried to engage her socially, but, well—”

  “I see,” David said, remembering the Shot-downs. “So she’s probably just delighted to be assigned this little babysitting mission.”

  “Babysitting!” Ellerstein smiled as if he knew a secret. “I like that, Mr. Hall. You are maintaining a realistic view of your situation here. Actually, and you must never mention this, the chairman probably had an ulterior motive. As I said, they are worried about her. Your little expedition will give her something entirely new to deal with, if only for a few days. Time to reflect, perhaps.”

  “Wonderful.”

  Ellerstein laughed again. “It is a small price for you to pay, but if you can get her to talk to you, she has some interesting insights on what happened up there on that bloody mountain.”

  The waiter came by and took their orders for a refill. “A melancholy focus for a melancholy lady,” David mused.

  “What, Metsadá? What those people did is considered a glorious act of defiance in this country. If, of course, it happened; there was never any physical evidence of a mass suicide found.”

  “Nine hundred sixty men, women, and children taking their own lives is not my idea of glory, Professor. Dramatic, yes, but horrendous is more like it. Josephus says that the Romans were so shocked by what they found that they were speechless.”

  Ellerstein stirred his drink with his right index finger for a moment before replying.

  “Your Adrian’s theory is—interesting, Mr. Hall, but you must keep in mind that Josephus was not there. Plus, Metsadá wasn’t the only case of this.”

  “Yes, there was Gamla, wasn’t there.”

  “Very good, Mr. Hall. Also Machaerus. With much larger numbers, we think. Basically, you must keep in mind what was in store for them if they were captured alive. All of the uninjured men would have been put in chains and sent to Caesarea, either to be worked to death in the galley fleet or to be torn to pieces by wild beasts at the hippodrome. Their wives and daughters would have been raped before their eyes, and the attractive ones taken away as slaves. The plain ones would have been flung off the ramparts, along with the young children and the wounded, all in full view of the surviving men. Remember, these people had defied the Roman Empire for almost three years.”

  “Even so, how, how in the world, could a father steel himself to kill his whole family?” David asked. “I mean, supposedly, that’s what they did—each man slaughtered his own wife and children and then himself. Then ten men, who had been selected by lots, were assigned to kill any of the men who didn’t kill themselves after what they’d done. It is almost unbelievable, and yet Josephus says that’s exactly what happened.”

  “To an American it may be unbelievable,” Ellerstein said with a rueful smile. “Americans, if you’ll forgive my antecedents, have led a sheltered and very brief existence as a nation. Especially compared to the sweep of events in this part of the world since the beginning of human history, which, in itself, probably began here in the Middle East. Surely you acknowledge that.”

  “That’s what Adrian maintained, too,” David sighed. “I guess that’s why I really need to see this place. That’s what I meant by that ‘communing with the spirits’ remark. I must say, if this Ressner woman is suffering from clinical depression, Metsadá might not be such a good venue for reflection on her life.”

  “We Jews tend to see the glory, Mr. Hall, because we use it to remind ourselves that such things may be necessary again if we are to remain free as a Jewish state. The theory goes like this: They were the last men. If they could do such a thing, then so might we, but this time not without a fight to end all fights. That in turn sends a message to our enemies, who are legion. We Israelis take a certain cold comfort in the history of Metsadá.”

  David shivered. “Cold indeed, Professor, but thanks for the heads-up on Miss Ressner. I’ll be careful with what I say. Right now, I’d better get upstairs and start packing. She’s picking me up at five thirty in the morning.”

  “You will not be using your car and driver?”

  “Nope. I offered, but she didn’t want to be without her own car. She also said that she doubted we’d be there for the full three and a half days.”

  “Ah, so you did talk.”

  “Only for a minute, when I asked about arrangements. Apparently there’s a hostel of some sort near the site. We’ll be staying there. She said it was pretty Spartan.”

  “The fortress of Metsadá is at the end of the Dead Sea, Mr. Hall. It is literally at the bottom of the world. Even the Spartans would have had their reservations about such a place. There is grandeur, but it is stark beyond belief. I will be very interested to talk to you when you get back. Now I must go get my car. Thank you for the drinks. Good luck down there.”

  He stood up, and David did likewise. “Professor Ellerstein, you’ve been most helpful,” he said. “Thank you for everything. I’ll call you when I get back. Ari should be waiting outside. Send him home once he’s dropped you off.”

  * * *

  Up in his room, David began to lay out his gear, trying to suppress his growing excitement. After all the plotting and scheming, he was finally going to the mountain. He thought about going out for dinner, but lunch had been late and he wasn’t really hungry. Besides, this might be his last night in a comfortable bed for a while; maybe he’d do room service later.

  Ostensibly, he didn’t have that much to take along: some changes of working clothes, camera, portable computer, and paper notebooks. He had brought along a collapsible knapsack so that he could hump stuff up to the fortress. Three days and no social amenities meant very little luggage, except for the special equipment.

  He hauled his diving gear suitcase over to the bed, opened it, and pulled out his wet suit, regulators, underwater camera box, diving knife, BCD vest, and personalized mask—all the accoutrements of the scuba tourist. As part of the cover plan, he had booked a tour with a dive shop in Yafo to take him out to the submerged ruins of Caesarea during the second week of his stay here. He didn’t know at this point if he would actually be making those dives, because the real function of the diving gear had been to conceal the seismic source device and the four miniature geophones, which he now went about extracting from their hiding places. He was a fully qualified, PADI-card-carrying open ocean diver, in case the question ever arose. The only diving he’d stayed away from was cave diving. That took special skills and more nerve than he could muster underwater.

  He examined all the gear to see if he could detect signs that it had been searched, but everything seemed to be as he had packed it. The diving gear case was clearly marked as such, so a fluoroscope operator should have seen what he expected to see. Even so, he had prepared everything for a physical inspection. He disassembled the spare regu
lator and removed a shiny metallic disk, about a quarter of an inch thick, with two wire terminals soldered on to the top. It had been encased in shrink-wrap plastic and nestled at the back of the mixing chamber. He reassembled the regulator after removing the device, which he then transferred to a soap dish in his toiletries kit for the trip to the mountain.

  The geophones were smaller but thicker versions of the seismic source, bright, shiny waferlike objects about a quarter of an inch thick. Each of the disks came with a single battery slot embedded in its side, and a tiny, telescoping stub antenna. These he had secreted in the battery compartment of his diving light. He retrieved the special batteries from his laptop computer case, made sure the tape segments were still in place over the positive terminals, and inserted them into the geophone slots. The receiving and data storage unit for the hydrophones was not much bigger than the hydrophones themselves, and this he had packaged into the plastic case that normally contained a spare battery for his laptop. The final part of the system was a sixty-foot-long roll of very thin wire, which he had taped to the zipper path of the portable computer’s black carrying case. Along with a flashlight, the system was complete: source, ignition mechanism, geophones, data retrieval, and the portable computer to collate the data and draw the profile. Ready.

  He finished packing the rest of his clothes, which included lightweight, long-sleeved cotton shirts for sun protection, khaki shorts, sturdy low-topped climbing boots, leather gloves, a windbreaker, three bottles of the hotel’s bottled water, and a floppy sun hat. There were two empty notebooks, a legal-sized portfolio of grid-lined drawing paper, and, of course, his digital camera and spare memory sticks. Socks, underwear, the toiletries kit, and a small, basic outdoorsman’s survival kit: a package of toilet paper, signaling mirror, GPS unit, some bandages, halogen pills, insect repellent, sunblock, a thermal survival blanket, and matches.

  He then extracted the portable computer, a top-of-the-line Sony, and an international voltage transformer. He plugged the computer in to top off the battery charge. He stacked his gear in a corner of the room and then flopped down on the bed, his heart racing just a little. He stared out the partially cracked curtains at the darkening western sky. Tomorrow he was going to actually do it, assuming he could get away from his minder. He would probably have to go through the motions during the day and somehow get back up to the fortress at night to locate his objective. He would have to play a lot of things by ear, but if it was indeed there, as Adrian had just known it had to be, the hard part would be getting into it, not finding it. He shivered at the thought of a night climb up the thousand-foot-high escarpment. He would probably have to use the historical Serpent Path, a switchback footpath covered with loose sand and shale that ascended from the Dead Sea side up to the battlements at the top. Alternatively, he could take a long hike around the base of the mountain and come up on the Roman camp side, where the siege ramp, still in place after nearly two thousand years, led right up to the walls.

  Time would be key. They would probably take the cable car over on the first morning, so maybe he would talk the minder into a hike back down the siege ramp to the hostel at the tourist center in order to find out how long that took. Maybe he would climb that instead. Keep it flexible. He needed to get up on the mountain, late at night, to do the seismic survey. The geophones would tell the entire tale.

  Well, later for all that. He rolled over and called the concierge to make arrangements about keeping his room while he was gone. He had considered checking out, but the concierge told him that a room might not be available when he came back if he did that. He called the desk clerk to put in a wake-up call and then undressed and prepared to go to bed. What did the marines call it? D minus one. The whole thing might be a bust, he knew, but he really didn’t think so. He thought again about room service but then drifted off. He wished Adrian could be here, and still frowned at the way she’d broken up with him.

  6

  It was almost fully dark when Professor Ellerstein parked his ancient Renault sedan at the curb about a block away from the restaurant and trudged back up the hill. It was a tiny place, with only six booths inside, but the owner-chef was a Christian Arab, and the food was an excellent blend of French and Middle Eastern cookery. Ellerstein, who lived in Rehovot, frequently took his evening meals there. He pushed through the single glass door and saw Gulder sitting in the last booth at the back of the restaurant in what Americans would call the gunfighter’s seat, his back against the wall. Ellerstein walked over and pushed in between the booth partition and the table. The owner was busy speaking on the phone but waved to him anyway.

  “An informative day, Yossi?” Gulder asked as Ellerstein sat down. Israel Gulder was the prime minister’s executive assistant. He was a heavyset, late-middle-aged man who looked totally undistinguished, with a broad plain face, glasses, and the beginnings of a double chin. His sleepy eyes implied a dullard, a feature that had fooled many political enemies into gravely underestimating him, often to their ultimate dismay. There were rumors that he had occasionally undertaken certain duties that went well beyond the usual scope of being the PM’s EA. He had a glass of mineral water and a bowl of pistachios in front of him, both of which looked untouched.

  “Very much so, Gulder. I must say, this American can be pretty smooth when he wants to be.”

  A fat waiter trundled over, and Ellerstein indicated that he would have a glass of Carmel red. When the waiter had gone, Gulder raised his eyebrows in an unspoken question.

  “Well,” Ellerstein began, “he took the assignment of a minder very much in stride when I broke the news to him. In fact, when the chairman, Armin Strauss, you know him I think, broached it at the meeting, Hall not only agreed but said he had been planning to ask for one.”

  “Clever, if true.”

  “Actually, I don’t think he had been planning any such thing, but, yes, it was glib. Just saying it defused things. He was fully amenable to the time offered on-site. Apologetic for being an intrusion. Deferential to the academics, self-deprecating when the discussion came around to his own interests in the site, and, I think, generally candid about why he was really here.”

  “Ah. And that is?”

  Ellerstein related the story Hall had told, including the tantalizing what-if question underlying his research. Gulder nodded slowly at the end.

  “A fascinating question indeed. Except that we know the answer: There would have been no hope of escape. There was a circumvallation. Those thousand Jews would have been stinking carrion bait by the middle of the afternoon. They had kept the Romans at bay down on those delightful salt marshes for what, nearly three years? Even Josephus says that General Silva didn’t even bother going up the ramp on the final morning once the walls had been burned through. Most likely didn’t want to spoil his breakfast.”

  “Well, that’s very probably true, Gulder. Still, my conclusion is that this young man is sincere, if, as he is the first to admit, somewhat uninformed. Anyway, three and a half days, and Yehudit Ressner will bring him back to Tel Aviv, and then we’ll be through with it.”

  “Very well, Yossi. We, of course, appreciate your help in steering this matter.”

  Ellerstein noted the royal “we.” He accepted the glass of wine from the waiter and ordered his usual evening fare, salad and a broiled fish. The waiter glanced over at Gulder, who shook his head. Once the waiter left, Ellerstein decided to take a small chance.

  “I don’t suppose you can tell me why you have taken such an interest in this man?”

  Gulder didn’t look at him for a long moment, and then finally reached for his glass and took a small sip of water. A couple of tourists peered into the windows. Gulder gave them his best terroristic stare. They recoiled and kept moving.

  “Tell me, Yossi,” he said. “How did Dr. Ressner react to her assignment?”

  Ellerstein gave a mental shrug: So much for sharing, he thought. “Well, I went to see her while Mr. Hall was getting his afternoon briefings. She was less t
han overjoyed. She had been in the back of the room when the American was explaining why he was there, and she thought he was, what was her word, silly, yes. She has a low regard for men who are her inferior intellectually, and this poor fellow, nuclear engineer that he is, probably qualifies. He’s in for an unpleasant journey.”

  Ellerstein had earlier decided to omit his more personal discussion with Ressner. He thought he saw the hint of a smile cross Gulder’s face, but what he said next removed it.

  “I may have made an error, though.”

  “What was that?” asked Gulder, his eyes alert now.

  “Well, she didn’t say anything while we were talking, but I told her it was the ministry who wanted the minder.”

  “Yes, so?”

  “She may wonder, once she’s had time to think about it, how I became involved. How I knew about the ministry’s requirement for a minder.”

  “Ah. She made a connection?”

  “Not then, as I said, but she was raising hell with me more than with her department head. She probably hasn’t thought it through yet, but she may wonder: What’s Yossi have to do with the ministry?”

  “She doesn’t know?”

  “No. I dissembled.”

  “You are a competent dissembler, Yossi,” Gulder replied, “and ignorance occasionally has its uses. If she asks, remind her that you’re on the advisory board of the IAA. The IAA works for the ministry. Like so.”

  The waiter brought Ellerstein’s salad, and he dug in, waiting to see if Gulder would amplify this remark. Instead, Gulder had another question.

  “What is your opinion of Ressner’s psychological state since her husband died?” Gulder asked, seemingly out of nowhere.

  Ellerstein paused with his dinner, took a sip of wine, and thought for a moment. Given his own previous secret association with Dov Ressner and LaBaG, the anti-nuclear-weapons splinter group at Dimona, he wondered where Gulder was going with this, and whether or not Gulder knew what Ellerstein’s role in LaBaG had really been. It was always wheels within wheels with Gulder, he thought, not for the first time.