P. Deutermann - The Last Man

He sipped his cognac. Wheels within wheels here, he thought. Or maybe more like a bunch of scorpions in a bottle. Then he wondered how he was supposed to sleep tonight, and, more importantly, how he was going to protect Yehudit Ressner.

As the big Mercedes pulled out of Ellerstein’s neighborhood, Skuratov placed a secure call. The ringing stopped, encryption tones synchronized, and then a voice answered.

“Shapiro.”

“Ellerstein was evasive. We need to do something.”

“Your orders?”

“Scare the American. Scare him hard. Make him want to go home.”

“Got it.”

The connection was terminated, and Skuratov sat back in his seat. He needed to think.

“Drive around,” he told his driver. “Anywhere there’s no traffic.”

After the second dive on Tuesday morning, David completed his logistical arrangements, including getting his hands on the two extra air tanks. Now, having invited Judith to go with him to Caesarea, he couldn’t disappear on Wednesday as originally planned. It would have to be a Thursday getaway unless there was some convenient way of getting her out of the picture right after the dive tomorrow morning. He would have to postpone the run down to Masada until the following afternoon. The good news was that if there was still security on his tail, it gave him another day. His hooking up with Judith ought to make a pretty good argument for calling off the dogs. He was still trying to figure out why a security officer connected to Israel’s atomic power facility would be interested in his visits to Masada, though. The scandal in Washington? That was a reach.

He had booked the rental Land Rover for Wednesday. He told the agency he would pay for it even if he didn’t pick it up until Thursday. The camping gear had been a simpler matter, and now he had everything he would need on the mountain stashed in his hotel room closet, including four filled air tanks. The agency didn’t seem to care one way or another, as long as they had that Amex card.

After making the morning dive, he had spent some time wandering over the landward remains of Caesarea Maritima, marveling at the twin aqueducts that rose out of the dunes and marched across the beaches to the crumbling Crusader walls. He had walked around the now eerily silent, sun-drenched arena of Herod’s great hippodrome, trying to imagine the bloody spectacles played out on the now simmering sand. As he strolled through the ruins, he wondered about the wisdom of seeing Judith again. She had called to confirm the dive on Wednesday, agreeing to meet him at the hotel by eight that morning. Since he had a private dive guide set up, it didn’t really matter if they took some time to make sure Judith still knew which end of the regulator to breathe from before going out to explore the now submerged Roman seaport. He planned to have lunch with her after the dive and then get her back to town. That might still give him time to slip away and begin the expedition to Masada.

As he thought about it, though, he realized that wasn’t likely. It didn’t really matter if the project slipped a day. Moreover, if he waited until Thursday to make his move back to the fortress, it would mean he would be diving into the cistern on Friday afternoon. Given that the Sabbath began Friday evening, the fortress would be empty of tourists and the site security guards for at least the next twenty-four if not thirty-six hours, which would significantly reduce the chances of his being caught.

What was more important, he realized, was that he was not so willing to let this woman out of his sights just now. As he sat in his hotel room, what he really wanted to do was call her and invite her back to Tel Aviv for dinner again. Take another walk on the beach. This time go have that drink.

Instead he went down to have dinner by himself in the hotel and then went back upstairs to recheck his dive calculations for the cistern. As he got ever closer to his objective, he couldn’t figure out why he felt like some kind of shit. Yes, you can, he admitted to himself.

David couldn’t remember a nicer diving day: The weather was perfect, the seas calm, the underwater light clear and bright, and the drowned ruins of a Roman-era seaport spectacular. Judith had had no problems with her dive gear or her quick refresher course, and David’s biggest problem now was keeping his eyes on the underwater scenery and not on the two heavenly bodies swimming ahead of him. Judith was in a peach-colored, clingy maillot, and the tour leader, a twenty-something beauty, could just as well have left her suit behind.

With Herod’s colossal breakwater now in ruins on the seabed, there was a current running, strong enough to swirl the sand. Their little threesome was not the only group out there. There were single individuals and even larger groups, including a gaggle of snorkelers that created a moving shadow across the underwater area. Having already done the tour dive once, David had told the guide he might wander off the prescribed route of the underwater museum. She had been okay with that but told him not to get out of sight.

As the two of them kicked down to look at the Roman shipwreck, David threaded his way between two tilting ashlars. The giant blocks of stone had been spilled onto the seafloor sometime in the first century A.D. by an earthquake, which had ended Caesarea’s usefulness as a protected seaport. David ran his hands over the surface of the stones, where one could still feel the marks of the chisels, even after nearly two thousand years underwater. How had they moved them onto the breakwater, he wondered. He’d learned earlier that the Romans had used a special hydraulic cement, made from volcanic ash from the fields beneath Vesuvius, to tie the blocks of stone together.

He felt a slight pressure wave above him and looked up. Another diver was about fifteen feet overhead, swimming just over the tops of the ashlars. He was in a full wet suit, all black, and he appeared to be carrying something. David couldn’t see his face, but the man waved at him when David looked up. David waved back and went on with his exploration of what he was calling the ashlar canyon as he threaded his way between the cubes of stone littering the bottom. In some cases he had to make ninety-degree turns to make his way through the maze. As he was coming around one of these tight turns he felt something touch his neck. He stopped and tried to look to his left, but the stone face of the ashlar was too close.

There was definitely something above him, something big enough to block out the ambient light.

When he finally managed to turn his face he was startled to see a stainless steel cylinder, the size of a shotgun shell, pushing toward his neck. Just beyond the cylinder he found himself looking into a face mask, and the dark eyes behind the mask looked like the eyes of Death himself.

Before he could register his shock, another diver came through the tight channel between the huge stones going the other way and literally collided with David’s face mask. The diver was a largish woman who put up her hands defensively when she banged into David. At that instant, she looked up and behind David, giving him a full view of the expression on her face, which was suddenly one of total surprise, then fear. A large bubble escaped her mouthpiece as a black-suited arm reached over David’s head and pushed the cylinder on the end of the stick against the side of the woman’s face. There was a nasty thump and then the side of the woman’s head dissolved in a cloud of bone, blood, and a pink galaxy of bubbles.

David recoiled down into the sand at the base of the stones, trying instinctively to turn upside down so he could defend himself. When he finally succeeded, he was face-to-face with the swimmer in the black wet suit. Then the other man reached down and clawed David’s face mask right off his head.