P. Deutermann - The Last Man

“Fine, Mrs. Ressner. By all means, let’s not get personal. I’m sorry you’re so insecure about American informality.”

“I am not insecure about anything, Mr. Hall.”

“Given that you got tagged with being my babysitter, that necessarily must not be true,” David snapped and then regretted it.

What the hell am I doing, he thought — the more formal their relationship, the better chance he would have of getting away from her. You wouldn’t have said that if she were a he, he told himself. The “she” did not reply, concentrating instead on her driving.

He gave up. After a little while they passed a sign for Ein Gedi, but she drove right past it. He wondered why they hadn’t stopped there instead of Qumran. Then they rounded a corner and he could finally see the mountain fortress of Masada looming up above the Dead Sea some ten miles distant.

It was as impressive in real life as in any of the many dramatic photographs Adrian had shown him. From their vantage point northeast of the mountain it looked like the looming bow of a stone ship, frozen in passage up the west coast of the Dead Sea, its sheer walls rising straight up over one thousand feet above the dunes and bromine marshes. At this distance he could not yet make out the ruined palaces of King Herod that he knew were perched on descending, stepped terraces facing them. To the right, or west, were the shadowed recesses of the Wadi Masada, a four-hundred-foot-deep ravine dammed up now by the bleached bulk of the siege ramp the Romans used two thousand years ago to conquer the fortress. Farther west and slightly above the ravine was a sloping plateau, which David knew contained the outlines of the main Roman camp’s walls, with other perfectly square outposts scattered on the plateaus overlooking the fortress, or in the ravines beneath it. He remained absorbed with the mountain as she sped down the dusty two-lane road, deciding that he would talk to his minder only when it was necessary.

The Masada visitors center was a single-story glass and metal building, which also served as the boarding station for a cable car that went up to the summit. A two-story barrackslike building was set off to one side. There were expansive parking lots, empty at this hour, except for two army vehicles. The sky was still clear in the glare of the morning sunlight, but David sensed that it would soon develop a blistering haze. A large thermometer mounted next to the front entrance gave the temperature in Centigrade. It was showing 39.

Judith parked the car, and they got out. It was just after eight o’clock, and there were signs of life in the visitors center and even the smell of coffee.

“The cable car will not start running until the first tour bus arrives, and that is another hour or so away,” she announced. “We can go in and see to our rooms.”

“Fine.”

She led the way up the steps from the parking lot and into the visitors center, which was basically a ticket lobby for the cable car, with a small restaurant on the side nearest the mountain. There was no one at the ticket counter, so Judith went into the restaurant and found the hostel clerks having breakfast. David could see through the restaurant’s doors that one table was occupied by six Israeli soldiers, their ubiquitous submachine guns all slung over the backs of their chairs. An annoyed-looking clerk followed Judith back out to the lobby, wiping doughnut sugar off his chin as he opened a booking register.

“Papers, please,” he said to David, who handed over his travel documents.

“Where is the hostel?” David asked.

“Through there, in the annex,” the clerk announced in a bored voice, pointing with his chin. “First floor or second?”

“Ground floor,” David replied immediately.

“Second,” Judith said.

“Individual or group?”

At the moment they were the only visitors, which meant that they had a choice of individual or the cheaper group bunkrooms. They both requested individual rooms. The clerk briefed them on the hours of the restaurant, pointing out that it was not open at night, closing when the last tour buses left in the afternoon. David realized that this meant his main meal would be at midday. He would have to stash some fruit and bread in the room for the evening. The clerk also pointed out that bottled water was for sale, and he recommended laying in some for their rooms.

“The well water tastes like the Dead Sea smells,” he announced. “You must, of course, pay for your drinking water.”

He gave them room keys. They unloaded the car and took their bags across the visitors center lobby, through a connecting passageway to the hostel. David’s room was all the way at the end of the first-floor hall, right next to a set of fire doors. Judith disappeared upstairs, carrying her portable computer along with her bag. Good, maybe she would want to stay in and do her homework. David’s room was small, no more than ten feet square, with a single screened window giving an expansive view of the familiar sand, rocks, and scorpions. There was a single metal bed that looked suspiciously like an army hospital bed, a single chair, and a small wardrobe. He had passed the communal bathroom and showers halfway down the hall in the middle of the hallway. He opened the wardrobe and found a shelf with a single extra blanket and four wire coat hangers. He dumped his gear bags on the bed and went down the hall to wash up. When he returned, he took out his notebook and camera, changed from sneakers to his trail boots, slipped a tube of sunscreen into his pocket, and went out, locking the door behind him. He headed for the restaurant.

He was finishing his second cup of coffee and a breakfast roll when Judith showed up. She was still wearing the same outfit but had taken off the mirrored sunglasses, which she now had hanging from a button on her left shirt pocket. The soldiers gave her a frank group appraisal as she came into the room but politely lost interest when she bought a cup of tea and a sweet roll from the counter and joined David. In addition to the roll, David had breakfasted on some small squares of what tasted like cream cheese, and two hard-boiled eggs.

He gave her a curt nod when she sat down and then resumed his inspection of the mountain. The cable-car wires originating from somewhere above the restaurant dipped lazily across the parking lots before rising in a sweeping arc to the plateau on top of the mountain. David could make out the ruined battlements and casemate walls along the southeastern rim, and what looked like the vague outline of a switchback path leading up from the ravines below the parking lots to the casemates on the east side of the fortress. He was pretty sure that was the so-called Serpent Path.

“Is it necessary that we wait for the cable car?” he asked.

“Are you really fit, Mr. Hall?” she countered. “Do you perhaps ski?”

“Actually, yes to both. I work out on a home exercise machine daily and spend about a third of the year hiking and climbing.”

“I ask because the army patrol gets annoyed when they must rescue tourists whose legs have turned to jelly halfway up the Serpent Path. That is a forty-degree slope.”

“I see,” David said, swallowing. Wow, he thought. Being a skier, he knew full well how steep that was. Forty degrees. It didn’t look it.

“The switchbacks are deceiving,” she observed, as if reading his thoughts, “but it is a very interesting climb, and there is history to the Serpent Path, of course. During the siege, the Romans apparently left it deliberately unguarded, although not unwatched. They wanted to keep it open as an avenue for defections, as a way of diminishing the garrison. They only closed it when they realized that Jews were not deserting but coming in from what was left of the country to join the garrison. The climb will take you an hour or so if you keep moving. You will need to rent a stick and take some water. You have a rucksack, I believe?”