P. Deutermann - The Last Man

The climb took closer to two hours than one. It had been technically simple but extremely demanding because of the punishing heat and the nature of the trail itself. David had seen no serpents, remembering halfway up that the Serpent Path was called that because of the way it snaked back and forth across the face of the ancient scree. The trail itself was no more than a footpath, all loose dirt, shale, stone rubble, and sand. It was not so much treacherous as fatiguing, since every step demanded he first find a secure foothold before the other foot could be planted. The view out across the Dead Sea and into distant Jordan was stupendous the higher up he went, and his appreciation for the fortress’s natural defenses improved as he climbed closer to the casemate walls guarding the rim. He could not imagine anyone trying to come up this slope in the face of archers, or even a crowd of women with a good supply of big rocks. Every time he looked up at the walls above he had to plant the stick behind him to overcome the sensation that he would topple over backward and go tumbling down the slope in a cloud of sand and dust, pursued no doubt by a sand-slide of scorpions.

He had not bothered with the rucksack, choosing to stick the plastic bottle of water in a pocket. After twenty minutes on the slope, he had shucked his shirt, tying it around his waist, and built up a pretty good sweat by the time the cable car rumbled overhead with its first load of tourists. He had heard and then watched the initial squadron of tour buses come down the coast road from the cities. He wondered if Judith would take the first run up the mountain or watch from her vantage point in the air-conditioned restaurant until she saw him getting close to the top. He was breathing strenuously because of the heat but felt fine otherwise except for a stinging in his calf muscles.

Judith Ressner, he thought. A strange woman. His first impression of her remained intact: physically very attractive, with that exotic sabra face and those mile-long legs. Smart, but distant. No, more like preoccupied. Or maybe just plain sad. Ellerstein had said that she had not recovered from the loss of her husband, the physicist. As a “nuke” himself, he wondered briefly if her husband had worked directly in the not so secret Israeli nuclear weapons program. Right now, though, he needed to focus on the mission here, and not get involved with The Ressner. She was actually doing him a favor, because he needed that distance. He especially did not need to aggravate the woman. So keep your trap shut, he reminded himself. Maybe she’ll stay down at the tourist center.

As it turned out, however, she was waiting for him as he climbed wearily through the stone gates at the top of the Serpent Path. He was pretty well soaked with sweat and puffing when he climbed up the last one hundred feet, which were much steeper than the rest of the path due to the erosion over twenty centuries. He walked unsteadily up the rounded stone steps that led inside the casemate walls, stopped briefly in the cool shadows of the guards’ chamber to regain his wind, and then emerged into the bright sunlight of the fortress enclosure. Judith was sitting on a low stone wall, facing the guards’ chamber and reading a book. She had her mirrored sunglasses on again but now had changed from jeans to abbreviated khaki shorts, and David took a moment to admire the scenery. She looked up at last.

“Welcome to Metsadá, Mr. Hall. Did you enjoy your climb?”

“I don’t know if I’d say I enjoyed it, but I certainly have a better appreciation of the defensive strength of this place.”

“Well, that’s why it wasn’t the side the Romans attacked, of course. I brought you some water in case you might have run out.”

David’s single bottle of water had run out a third of the way up the mountain, and he reached for the cool plastic bottle gratefully. Their fingertips touched for an instant.

“Thank you very much,” he said, drinking half the bottle in one gulp. “The climb would be a whole lot easier without that sun.”

“The Bedouin call it the Hammer of Allah; now you know why. During the siege, all of the traffic up and down that path was at night.”

A trio of very blond and pretty girls came by, one of them giving his sweaty torso a frankly sexual appraisal. He decided to put his shirt back on. Judith turned and shot them a pointed look, and they strolled away, giggling in what sounded like a Scandinavian language. He sat down a few feet away from her in deference to his aromatic condition and looked around. The top of the mountain looked to be about three football fields long and about one and a half wide, in the rough shape of a large, broad spear point, just as all the books described. The sharp end of the spear pointed north, up the Dead Sea, and, like a spear point, the offset spine of the mountaintop was ridged slightly higher than the surrounding edges. Sitting near the eastern gate, he looked up a gently rising stone slope to a collection of ruined buildings that appeared to be about eighty yards away near the western rim. To his right, the ground also sloped upward toward a much larger collection of ruins situated behind the remains of a smooth fifteen-foot wall.

All around the rim were the remains of casemate walls, which consisted of two parallel fortification walls spaced about eight feet apart and which originally had been covered by a ceiling to allow defenders to get anywhere around the rim without being exposed to enemy fire. The walls were much reduced now, and the ceilings were, for the most part, long gone. The open ground space between the ruined clusters of masonry was hard-packed sandy dirt or bare stone, reminding him of the flinty surface of the Acropolis in Athens. The rubble of buildings and fortifications gleamed bone white in the glare of the late morning sun. The eastern gate he had come through was just north of the middle of the plateau, and the cable-car landing platform was close by. Small knots of tourists were scattered here and there across the plateau. One group had a guide who was giving his tour in French. His voice carried crisply across the stones.

“The main palace-villa complex is on the north end,” Judith said. “I assume you know something about the layout, and that there are several periods of history represented by the various buildings.”

“Yes, I’ve studied it a bit. As I understand it, the mountain was probably first fortified during the Hasmonean period, say 167 to about 37 B.C. Then came the Herodian period, from 37 to 4 B.C., which is when the bulk of all this was built up as a summer palace and potential refuge for the king. Then Judaea became a Roman province, and there was a Roman garrison up here until a band of Zealots took the place away from them around the beginning of the Jewish revolt, in either A.D. 66 or 67. The Romans took it back in 73 or 74, left a garrison here for about fifty years after that, and then later there was a Byzantine monastery up here until the late 400s or so, after which it fell into complete ruin. In brief.”

“In brief, that’s pretty good,” she said. She seemed somewhat friendlier since he had made his climb up the Serpent Path. Perhaps her earlier frostiness was some kind of initiation. Be careful, he told himself — don’t show off. She’ll become suspicious if you can name every building up here, which he could.

“If you would like, and if you’re ready to walk again, I can give you a tour of the major ruins. Unless, of course, you would rather go off on your own.”

“No, I’d appreciate a tour. I know that the complex up there is the storeroom for the northern palace, and that one is the so-called western palace, and that the siege ramp should be right behind those buildings up there, but beyond that—”