P. Deutermann - The Last Man

“Okay, Professor. Shalom.”

She hung up and then left a message with the chairman’s office relaying the gist of Ghanin’s report. Your Mr. Hall indeed. Well, they had been down there together, so it was not an unnatural assumption. She had to admit that the man was at least interesting. So: You’re going to start a new life here? Then go have a drink with him. It’s not like he’s propositioning you, and you’re all finished with Herod’s dreadful Masada. He leaves Israel in a week, so what can happen? It would also allow you to make a first move back into the social scene without involving a colleague. If he was contrite, she would spend some time with him. If he was an ass, she could always spend a little time with him, smile sweetly, pour a drink in his lap, and then cut him dead right there at the table. She placed a call to his hotel.

The message light on his bedside phone was blinking when David got back to his room. He had gone downstairs to check out the hotel dining room to see if it might be a suitable place for dinner. It was Judith, saying she would meet him in the lobby bar for a drink at six thirty.

He put the phone down and sat back on the bed. Now he really had mixed feelings. Okay, smart-ass, you called her, and now here she comes. So chances are nobody found anything worth shouting about. So who is doing the surveillance, and why? Just someone being very careful? But who?

On a personal level, he did want to see her again. What man wouldn’t? She was smart, single, and eminently streetable. Still, there was no getting around the fact that it was going to be, once again, under false pretenses. Maybe the thing to do was to shut it off with her after a drink in the bar. Except, of course, there was his need for an archaeological lifeline once he came back out of the cistern. So a quick drink and dinner wasn’t an option, unless she was coming here just to fang him again for the first deception.

He groaned out loud. Damned woman had him going in circles again. Wonderful.

He went back down to the hotel front desk and retrieved his passport and then called the rental car agency on a lobby phone to give them his passport number. They told him to be sure to bring it when he picked up the car, along with his American driver’s license. When he was finished he stopped by the dining room and booked a table for two for seven thirty, in case things worked out. If not, he still had to have dinner somewhere. He went back to his room, belatedly remembered that Judith lived in Jerusalem and not Tel Aviv, called her back, obtained her address, and dispatched Ari and the Mercedes to pick her up.

At six fifteen, David was sitting at a table in the lobby bar, facing the door, a glass of white wine in front of him. He had changed into slacks and an open-collared, short-sleeved shirt under a white linen sport jacket.

Judith came in a few minutes later, creating a small stir. She was wearing a blue open-front linen jacket over an ankle-length, gauzelike multilayered white skirt. Underneath the jacket she wore a bronze-colored blouse that looked to David like the top half of a bathing suit. With her hair styled and a hint of makeup, the previously stern and serious college professor had cleaned up extraordinarily well. Judith in war paint was a stunning woman and definitely a female, David thought, remembering only at the last moment to stand up as she approached the table.

“Professor,” he said, holding out a chair. He caught the scent of a tantalizing perfume in the air as she sat down.

“Mr. Hall,” she replied solemnly.

“Oh dear,” he said, sitting down. “So it’s back to Mr. Hall, is it?”

“Are you drinking alone?” she replied, raising her eyebrows at his glass of white wine. He laughed and signaled the waiter. She ordered a white wine by name, and the obviously smitten waiter bustled away.

“I appreciate your sending a car to pick me up. Now tell me: Why did you ask me to come have a drink with you?”

“I wanted to see you again,” he replied evenly. “Why did you accept?”

“I am practicing. Today I agreed to become a normal human being again.”

“Ah, yes, the dreaded Monday meeting. With the committee of ultimatum givers. How did all that go?”

“Quickly. I preempted them. I told them that I would give up the widow’s weeds and rejoin the scintillating fold of academia.”

“And will you?”

“As soon as I figure out precisely how, yes, I probably will. I remembered that handful of pills you mentioned. The thought did not appeal.” The waiter returned with her wine.

“Well, I’m glad to hear that. The new you definitely does appeal. You look absolutely smashing.”

He watched her as she considered the compliment. He could see that she was suddenly at a loss for words. It must indeed have been a long time. “I’ve booked a table in the dining room for seven thirty,” he continued. “Can you join me for dinner?”

She turned her head to one side and gave him a speculative look. “You’re awfully sure of yourself, Mr. Hall.”

He shrugged. “ I have to have dinner somewhere. So do you, and you’re thirty miles from Jerusalem. I promise not to duck out to investigate any ruins during dinner.”

She gave him a reproving look. “That was not an intelligent thing you did down there. On any level.”

He understood at once: We were doing pretty well until you pulled your stupid stunt of going up on the mountain at night. If you liked that, he wanted to say, you’ll positively love the next act.

“I admit that wasn’t too bright,” he said. “On any level. It’s just that I tend to be a focused man. I came here to Israel to see and feel Metsadá. For the final defenders, the climax to that story came at night. I needed to experience that.”

“Focused. Another American euphemism?”

He shrugged. “It’s how I achieve things,” he said, looking directly at her. He paused for a second. “Sometimes I focus to the extent that the consideration due to other people gets pushed into the background. Nuclear engineering is an unforgiving business.”

“Especially when you become a whistle-blower, yes?”

“Especially then. The power companies desperately need for the public to believe they have the dragon firmly in the cave. Anyone intimately acquainted with the dragon knows better.”

“As the Japanese just found out.”

“Yes,” he said. “A monster earthquake overwhelms the design; then a tsunami drowns the backup systems.”

“The Japanese are a very clever people,” she said. “One would have expected a better outcome.”

“At some point in commercial power, your shareholders force you to balance cost versus redundancy. The Japanese got it wrong.”

She gave a wry smile at that. “My life is a matter of balance, I suppose,” she said. “Lately I haven’t done a very good job of that, either. Hence this morning’s meeting.”

He nodded. “Believe it or not, I’m going to have to do something very similar. When Adrian disappeared my personal life was suspended.”

“Except that, in your case, she might come back.”

He nodded. “No closure,” he said.

“Closure is overrated, Mr. Hall.”

“Maybe,” he said, “but in my case, the lawsuit resulted in my never having to work again. The truth is, however, that after this trip I suppose I’m going to have to do what you’re doing: get back into the swim.”

“The industry would let you back in?”

“No chance,” he laughed. “I could possibly go back to working for the government, except for the fact that the bureaucracy just loves a whistle-blower.”

He got a real smile that time. He could still detect a bittersweet aura in her face and lips, but it was a smile worth waiting for. She saw him looking, and looked down at the table, embarrassed, and then smiled again, a more gentle expression this time. Behind her, David saw the bartender grinning widely at him. Go get her, tiger.