P. Deutermann - The Last Man

“Only if they had a weapon,” Ellerstein pointed out, but then he thought about the time he had spent at Dimona. As a theoretical mathematician, he hadn’t been involved in making weapons, only in design work. Everything was compartmented there at the laboratory, so he had no idea how hard it would be to divert components, especially if they had had some time. Maybe not that hard.

“So this is why you had me watching this American’s little project?”

“Yes.”

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” he murmured. Who shall guard the guards themselves?

“Exactly, which is why we must take care, because Skuratov has people out there, too. Believe it or not, we’re using some Mossad assets. We hope the Shin Bet people won’t know them, as they do Shabak.”

“Good God,” Ellerstein said. “Mossad. Shin Bet. Shabak. We’ll be tripping over one another. Tell me, please: What is the objective here — we want to identify the cell members, roll them up?”

“First we want to know if it’s true. Then we want to know what they’ve diverted, and where they are hiding it.”

Ellerstein thought about that for a moment. “Could Skuratov know that I’m a consultant to Shabak?” he asked.

“Probably not,” Gulder said. “The consultant list is compartmented information, even within the internal security ministry. Even the PM does not see the whole list.”

“PMs come and go, don’t they,” Ellerstein observed.

“Exactly. Look: You just stay close to Ressner as long as the American is still in the country. Once he goes home, your work is over. Your involvement is purely precautionary. A pop-up opportunity. If Skuratov is involved. If there is a cell. If, if, if… you know, counterintelligence work, Yossi.”

“To whom shall I report?”

“To me, of course. Your bosses have been informed you are active on special detail. It’s important that you keep up with your outside life while you observe Ressner. That’s all you have to do. As the Americans say, piece of cake, eh?”

On Sunday morning David had breakfast in the hotel dining room and then went back to his room to contact the diving club with which his travel agent had made arrangements for the Caesarea Maritima expedition. He had spent Saturday afternoon seeing some more of Old Jerusalem in company with a tour group from the hotel. The Old City had been relatively empty, with only tourists making their way through the ancient streets. His group had spent most of the day in the precincts of the Temple Mount, which David, having read Josephus’s account of the final days of Jerusalem, found particularly interesting. It had taken some time for the Romans to subdue the city, and David was convinced more than ever that some of the defenders would have had time to get through the siege lines, make their way down to the Zealot stronghold, and probably take some valuables from Herod’s magnificent Temple with them. Not the vast quantities of Temple treasure rumored to be buried all over the Judaean desert, but possibly sacred artifacts or scrolls. The Temple Mount itself was riddled with tunnels, aqueducts, and caves, so it was all possible.

Despite the immensity of the history that practically oozed from every ancient stone, he had remained distracted during his day of playing tourist. While physically in the Old City, his mind had been increasingly focused on the dive into the big cave beneath the rim cistern. He was anxious to get back in there and had to keep reminding himself that it was critical first to establish his cover. He would never get the chance for a second expedition if the authorities began to suspect there was something afoot. He had to assume they were still suspicious, so he had trudged obediently along behind the tour guide, listening absently to her patter of historical facts and fictions with the rest of the herd.

He got back to the hotel by four o’clock Sunday afternoon, after a successful day of making arrangements and going through the motions of being a tourist. He had gone first to the dive shop in Yafo where he met the tours manager and some of the guides, all of whom were attractive young women. This dive shop owner was no fool; most of his foreign diving clients were men. They spent an hour walking through the dive expedition plan for Caesarea Maritima and establishing the level of his diving expertise. He had shown them his diving log for the past five years and was able to talk equipment with them with a degree of familiarity that established him as a knowledgeable and experienced diver.

“We get all kinds in here, Mr. Hall,” the shop manager said, handing over the site charts for David to study. “We get people who have never dived, people who try to fake it, all the way to experienced divers like yourself.”

“I’m impressed with your shop’s technical currency, Mr. Bergman. I keep forgetting that Israel is very much a modern state.”

“Yes, well, most of our custom is European. It was the French who invented scuba, after all.”

David swallowed the mild reproof and asked for some additional maps of the Mediterranean coast. He also said that he might want to rent out some extra tanks in case the chance arose for some side dives in the Yafo area. That would be no problem. The manager assumed aloud that he would not dive anywhere by himself, and David had just raised his eyebrows as if to suggest that no one would be that dumb. Right, he thought. Wouldn’t think of it. He tried to suppress the image of that cold black rectangle of water at the bottom of the bat cave, looking like a side entrance to the Underworld. Cave diving. He swallowed at the thought.

When he was finished in the dive shop, he dismissed the driver for the day and spent the next three hours on foot, walking down the coastal beaches to the ancient seaport. He wandered aimlessly through the warren of streets like the rest of the tourists, browsing in the shops and having lunch in a tiny seaside café, and very discreetly watching for a tail while staying in character as boy tourist. He couldn’t look too hard; he knew that surveillance pros could always tell if their subject was onto them. Leaving the café, he nearly collided with an overweight woman in her fifties, who teetered dangerously until he caught her elbow. They apologized simultaneously, revealing American English. David then had to endure the where-are-you-from, oh-really-I’m-from, etc., drill until he could extricate himself.

The trip to the dive shop should have established his planned itinerary for the next three days in case anyone came in later asking questions. The only semicovert thing he needed to do was to make sure he got the two extra tanks. If the dive shop asked too many questions, he might have to find a second shop. He figured he needed a total of four fully charged tanks for the cistern dive. He also needed to rent a spare underwater light and some batteries — that water would be blacker than black: the total darkness of a cave dive. It might also be cold, maybe as low as fifty degrees Fahrenheit. For that temperature he would have preferred a dry suit, but that would have been the wrong equipment for the Caesarea dive. His wet suit would have to suffice.

The depth was going to present yet another problem. The computer graph had shown depths ranging from seventy-five to a hundred fifty feet. Stay time even at seventy-five feet was going to be limited, and the temperature, if it was as cold as he expected, compounded the stay-time limitation. He could not know, from just one seismic shot, how wide the cave really was, or what the sides looked like, or whether or not there were stairs, terraces, or even side caves. He did know that the diving rule for multiple dives was always to make the deep dive first. Then he would have to calculate residual nitrogen, establish a surface stay and recovery time, and calculate how long he could stay at the shallower depth on the second dive. For depths of a hundred ten feet, which was the recommended maximum, no-decompression stay time would be only sixteen minutes. Because of the expected temperature, he had to cut that back to probably thirteen minutes. Then at least an hour and a half back on the surface to let his body eliminate cellular nitrogen. After that he could make a fifty-foot or shallower dive to survey the sides of the cistern. Because of residual nitrogen, he would only be able to stay down on the second dive for about forty-five minutes.