P. Deutermann - The Last Man

He had left a message on Judith’s voice mail saying that he was feeling out of sorts after what had happened in the harbor and that he’d be in touch in a couple of days. He’d deliberately called early so that he wouldn’t have to speak directly to her. It seemed the least harmful lie he could tell her, especially considering the larger lie of what he was attempting down here. If they caught him this time, the best that could happen would be immediate expulsion from the country.

After watching for a half hour, he began unloading equipment from the Land Rover. He had brought two large cotton laundry bags, into which went all his gear. The four filled air tanks were belted into dual-tank harnesses on luggage wheels. There were two additional bags with camp food, water, and other necessaries.

He took one more look around. No way around it, he thought and began humping the gear up the siege ramp. Thank God he’d asked for lightweight tanks.

It took him four hours to get everything up to the top and then over to the bat cave. Knowing that moonrise was going to be at just after three in the morning, he had first taken everything up the ramp to the casemate wall and then worked to move it across to the cave. That way, if there was a patrol out there on the wadi, he would not still be exposed in full view out on the ramp. The Land Rover was a potential liability. It was hidden, sort of, between two of the Conex boxes. If they did find the Land Rover, they’d know something was going on, but by then he’d be hidden in the cave. Even then, it could still all go wrong. They could trace the Land Rover to his rental information; the moment that news penetrated the archaeological network, there’d be an angry crowd on the mountain looking for him. Dogs could find him quickly.

After getting everything into the cave, he had taken a look down at the visitors center lot. There were four vehicles parked in the lot and, surprisingly, one darkened tour bus. By this juncture, he had modified his own plan slightly. He would take a quick nap through the remaining hours of darkness and then go down to get the Land Rover just before dawn, when any patrols should be on their way to breakfast. He would drive the Land Rover back to the main road and go north instead of south, until he got to Qumran. Then he would turn around and come back to the Masada visitors center, arriving as if he were an early tourist. With a floppy hat and some wraparound sunglasses, he should be unrecognizable, especially if he waited for the first tours to arrive. He would get something to eat and additional water, then take the first cable car to the top, or perhaps the second, which would be more crowded. After that, he would play tourist until late morning and then get in line for the downhill cable car. At the last moment he would pretend to have lost something, drop out of the line, and make his way into the casemate and from there to the bat cave.

He planned to do the first dive right away, so that if he did make a discovery, he would still have time to get down the mountain and call Judith before everything shut down for the Sabbath. That would also allow him to resolve any head-count discrepancies at the end of the day down at the visitors center. He didn’t need the security force getting all spun up over the possibility that a tourist was missing on the mountain, and he especially didn’t want soldiers searching the Serpent Path.

He looked at his watch. It was just after 4:00 A.M. on Friday. He shone his flashlight around the musty cave, making sure he kept the light away from the small entrance hole. The ammonia stink was still there, although there was no fresh bat sign. The water remained at the same level as before, right up even with the bottom of the slab ledge. He shone his flashlight down into it but saw nothing except the refracted beams. He would rest for an hour and a half and then go back down the ramp.

Judith got to her office at a little after nine Friday morning. She went through her e-mail and voice messages, hoping that there might be word from the American. Despite their intimacy, that was how she still thought of him in her mind — the American. Mr. Hall. David. She couldn’t quite bring herself to call him by his first name. His message about not feeling well had really disappointed her, more than she had expected. He had kissed her, a gentle, opening gambit kind of kiss. So very nice. She paused, staring at her e-mail screen without seeing it. She hadn’t slept for two hours thinking about her day with him and that kiss, but of course, anyone would still be upset after witnessing what he’d seen.

There were no other messages. Nothing. She thought about calling him at the hotel, just to cheer him up a little. The phone rang. The departmental weekly meeting. She groaned and gathered up her portable and coffee cup.

She did not get back to her office until after lunch. There was still no word from the American. She decided to call his hotel in Tel Aviv after all. The desk rang her through to his room and then to voice mail. She left a brief hope-you’re-feeling-better message and hung up. Then she wondered. Had the police come back? Was he waiting in some interrogation room at headquarters? Or maybe he’d eaten something last night that had made him ill — it happened to visiting Americans all the time. What if he’d been hospitalized? She called back, asked for the concierge, and explained the situation. The concierge put her on hold and came back a few minutes later. No report of Mr. Hall being ill or being taken anywhere; shall we check the room? Yes, please. Fifteen minutes later the concierge called her back. The room appears to be in order; his things are still there. No signs of trouble — is it possible that there’s a different interpretation? As in, he’s decided not to call you, Mrs. Ressner? Instantly embarrassed, Judith thanked him for his trouble and hung up.

What the hell, she wondered. Had she totally misread the American? That he’d failed to “score” that night in her apartment and had decided to just move on? She frowned. Not at all, she thought. That good-night kiss. There’d been a gentle promise there. She thought about it. Then she remembered he had originally been planning some more diving expeditions, although that was unlikely after what had happened at Caesarea. She fished in her purse for the receipts from the dive shop and made one more call.

David was suited up and ready to go into the cistern just before noon. Everything with the Land Rover and the morning ascent to the fortress had gone as planned. As long as he got back down before the entire place shut down for Shabbat, he could make sure the security people got a correct head count. Stupid tourist just wandered off somewhere.

He checked his gear for the umpteenth time, switched on his headlamp, activated his dive console, and then lowered himself into the black rectangle of water at the bottom of the slab opening. He had pulled two of the steel staging pipes across the opening so he would have something to grab when he came back up. He’d also attached a hundred-foot-long rope to one of the pipes and then tied a spare handheld battery lamp to the end of it and added a few rocks in a catch bag. He switched the lamp on and then lowered eighty feet of the rig into the water, paying out line until it hung straight down. This would give him a reference point within the cistern to lead him back up to the hole. From the surface, he could not make out the light down below in the black water.

He’d measured the water temperature and found it to be warmer than he had expected, sixty-two degrees. Although this was far from warm, he calculated that this would give him an extra two minutes at maximum depth. He’d split the difference in his calculations and set the bottom time for fifteen minutes, with bottom time defined as the time from beginning of his descent until beginning of his ascent. If he came up to a lesser depth sooner than that, he’d gain an extra few minutes at the lesser depth, but not much. He was using the rules for recreational diving and trying to be conservative.