P. Deutermann - The Last Man

“And—?“

“And then when nightfall came, the wind changed again, this time driving the fire back into the walls, consuming the beams. That’s when the defenders knew.”

“Yes. Without the casemate walls, the Tenth Legion would swarm over the rim at dawn and overwhelm them by sheer numbers. There were nine hundred and sixty defenders, according to Josephus, but probably more than half of that number were women and children. We estimate the Romans had between three and five thousand. Look there, and you can see the main Roman camp.”

David could see clearly the outlines of the Roman headquarters camp, a precise military square drawn on the plateau across the western ravine, almost within a long arrow shot of where he stood. He knew there were other camps surrounding the mountain, and that the Romans had connected all the camps with a circumvallation to seal their objective area. Oblivious to the small knots of tourists climbing through the rocks and ruins, they both stood in silence on the ruined casemate wall, looking down into the deep ravine, thinking their own thoughts about that final night and what these amazing people had done. Finally Judith glanced at her watch.

“It’s going on two o’clock,” she said. “We should go down to the tourist center now and have a meal before it closes. I need to talk to the security people before they go home, about tomorrow.”

“Great idea.” David realized suddenly he was very hungry. He had been sufficiently absorbed by the fortress and its sanguinary history to have been paying no attention to the time. “Join me in a stroll back down the Serpent Path?” he quipped.

“No way, Mr. Hall,” she said, but there was a much friendlier note in the “mister” term.

The ride down in the cable car gave them another stunning view of the eastern wall of the mountain, where David could see the dusty, tortuous footpath he had climbed that morning. It was now partly in shadow as the sun dipped toward the Mediterranean beyond the Judaean hills. The ramp, he thought. The ramp will have to be my route. Tomorrow I have to get her to let me hike back down to the center from behind the fortress. Go down the siege ramp and walk back around the southwestern corner of the mountain to the visitors center. I have to know how long that takes.

The cable car groaned and clanked as it settled into its lattice structure above the visitors center. The parking lot was about half full of tour buses and cars, and there were people still waiting to go up.

They went back to the hostel briefly to clean up and made it into the restaurant by two thirty. The food was a mixture of Arabic and Israeli fare. David had what Judith had, willing to eat a whole goat by that point, and then finding out that he was doing so. Judith reminded him to stock up on some fruit, bread, and more water when the waiter announced that the place was closing for cleanup. By that time the tourists had thinned considerably, and the security guards in the center were getting a head count over the radio from their counterparts up on the mountain.

“How do they make sure everyone’s off the mountain?” David asked.

“There is a guard in the cable car. He tells the tourists that the last cable car leaves at five; anyone not down by then has to walk down the Serpent Path with the guards.”

“That ought to do it. So the guards actually walk down after the last cable car?’

“Yes, they do. It’s a fitness requirement, and there might be someone stranded on the path who is too tired to continue. As you can see, the path is in shadow by late afternoon, so the observation point can’t see it. Down is actually harder than going up, I’m told.”

David nodded absently and then looked around to find that observation point. After a few minutes, he realized that it must be on top of the cable-car landing. Casually, he looked. There was a tiny room up there, more like a pillbox, with slotted windows that had a panoramic view of the mountain. He wanted to ask if it was manned at night, but that would have been pushing it. He thought he saw a spotting scope sticking out of one of the slots. He still could not figure out where the security people were based. There must be an army camp nearby. Perhaps up the road at Ein Gedi; he had seen army vehicles there, but in Israel there were army vehicles everywhere. He made a show of looking at his watch.

“I think I’m going to call it a day,” he said, stretching. “My legs are informing me that there’s a wheelchair in my future if I don’t lie down pretty soon, and I have some notes I want to get down on paper. Eight o’clock tomorrow okay with you?”

“That will be fine. There is usually someone here by then so you can get a coffee.”

“Great. Well. Good evening, then. Thanks for the tour.”

“Yes, Mr. Hall. Good evening.”

He walked back through the tourist center lobby to the hallway leading to the hostel rooms before remembering to get some water and snack food. When he had acquired his supplies, he saw that she was still sitting in the restaurant, pensively now, looking out the big picture windows.

It was full dark when David’s wristwatch alarm went off. He groaned and turned over in the uncomfortably small bed and pushed the dial light: 10:00 P.M. He sat up and swung his aching legs over the side, shivering in the sudden cold. As his eyes adjusted, he could see starlight coming in from the single window, but no moon. He shook the mental cobwebs out of his head and recalled the moonrise data: This was Tuesday, so there would be a quarter moon, waxing, at around three thirty. Tonight it wouldn’t matter that much. For the next two nights it might. He yawned, got up, and slipped into dark corduroy pants, a dark red flannel shirt, thick socks and hiking boots, and his black windbreaker. He let himself quietly out the door and went down to the bathrooms. The hostel was silent; to his knowledge, no one else was staying here except Judith, and she was berthed upstairs, sound asleep. He hoped.

He’d had no trouble going to sleep. The combination of some residual jet lag disturbance, a carbo-load meal, and the climb up the mountain had sent him into a deep sleep as soon as he hit the rack. The only problem was that he was too long for the bed. His feet had hung over the end of the mattress, a detail that bothered him for about ten seconds.

Leaving the bathroom, he walked quietly down the hall to the fire door on the south side of the building, away from the hallway that led into the tourist center lobby. He checked for alarms, but there didn’t seem to be any, just a standard bar handle that allowed someone to exit from the building but not to enter. He wedged a small wad of wet toilet paper into the strike-plate hole to keep the door from locking behind him and stepped out into the desert night. There was a stunning canopy of stars overhead, glittering with that unusual brilliance found only in the desert or on high mountains. He shivered again; it was colder than he had expected.

Okay, he thought. First order of business: See if that security observation checkpoint is still manned at night. He walked around to the back of the two-story hostel building, his boots crunching quietly in the sand. Even in the cold night air the stink from the bromine flats a half mile away was strong enough to annoy him. He thought he could see steam clouds rising down on the salt flats from some geothermal pool. He walked across the back of the hostel, past darkened windows, including his own, and paused at the corner. From that point, he was almost under one of the legs of the cable-car suspension towers and in deep shadow. He could see the back and bottom of the observation box but not the window slits. Have to get higher.

He turned around and walked diagonally away from the corner and up across the slope of rocks and sand behind the hostel building. As he climbed up the hill he suddenly realized that one window on the second floor had a light on. He crouched down on the hillside, about fifty feet away from the back of the building. Could she see him from in there? Probably not. With her light on, she should be night-blind looking into the darkness of the hillside. He was about to continue up the hill when she passed in front of the window, studying some papers in her hand. She was wearing a shirt and what looked like white bikini underwear. Even at this distance there was absolutely nothing wrong with those legs, he mused. Too bad she had taken herself out of play; he could understand the anguish of the Shot-downs.