P. Deutermann - The Last Man

“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 regulator 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.