P. Deutermann - The Last Man

David stood up, keeping his mask in place, and took her by the hand. They walked up to the high end of the cave where he showed her the ragged skeleton and the oversized dagger. She bent down and studied the remains for a minute, touching the dagger with a finger of her gloved hand. Then he showed her where to stand to see up on the altarlike structure. She kept one hand on his shoulder while she took a look, and he felt her hand tighten on him when she saw the artifacts.

She stood there for a few minutes, just looking, shining her headlamp this way and that, before stepping back down. He put his mask close to hers and gave the thumbs-up sign. She nodded her head vigorously, her eyes ablaze with excitement. Then he took her to the right-hand cave wall and used the extra, handheld light he’d brought along to illuminate the wall. She studied the characters, tracing them out without touching them. Then she took the light from him and went searching along the wall. He figured she was trying to find the beginning of the text. He made a more detailed examination of the cave, looking to see if he’d missed anything the first time, but there was only sand and more of the small oil lamps.

He wondered how the man had gotten into the cave. He’d seen no stairs or handholds outside on the cistern wall, so the entrance had to be something that came down from the fortress, which should be just above their heads. He sat down on the sand, leaned back, and looked up. The cave walls came together like a medieval cathedral, some twenty-five feet or so above his head, but there was no visible entrance structure. He checked his watch. They should have a good fifty minutes to an hour of air remaining, more if they came off the tanks and used the air here in the cave.

Judith was playing the lights over the entire right-hand wall while she studied the script. As he got up to go over to where she was standing, he felt a distant thump. He turned reflexively to the air-water interface and noticed that the water moved slightly, as if disturbed by something. Judith was looking at him; she’d heard or felt it, too. They stood there for a moment, waiting to see if anything else happened. Definite thump, as if something very heavy had been dropped — oh, shit ! The slab?

He waved Judith over, took a deep breath, and then took out his mouthpiece. “That sounded like the slab,” he said in a rush. “I think we better go see.” Then he put his mouthpiece back in. Her eyes were wide at the thought of that heavy stone slab being back in place. There was no way they could lift that. He saw the fear in her expression and moved quickly to the interface point.

When they cleared the cave’s entrance, he looked up for the reference light. There was no light. He tracked his bubbles and then scanned the whole ceiling area of the cistern.

There was no light.

She touched his shoulder and pointed down. Far below them, there was a glimmer. Son of a bitch, he thought. Son of a bitch !

He consulted his compass, oriented his body, and swam directly out into the cistern, rising as he did so. He felt her following along close behind. When he rose to the ceiling, he executed an expanding square search and immediately collided with something. He drew back and saw that it was a scuba air tank. He saw a second tank, bobbing with quiet clinks against the rock of the ceiling. Then he realized there were other objects, some of his supply bags, a positively buoyant flashlight, his and her street clothes. With a feeling of rising dread, he went back up to the ceiling, mask right up against the rock now, and searched along the surface until he found that rectangular seam.

The slab was back in place. They were trapped.

Yosef Ellerstein sat at his desk working on a draft of the paper he was going to present next week. It was late, and his thoughts were not really on the paper. He was still trying to work out what was going on with Yehudit Ressner and this American.

Two things were bothering him: The first was Gulder’s nonreaction to his call. He’d purportedly been assigned to watch Ressner because Skuratov was watching her, and Skuratov was a possible suspect in a plot to divert nuclear weapons material. Now the American was “missing,” Ressner was being evasive, and Gulder didn’t care? The second problem was the way Skuratov’s office, the so-called International Planning, had reacted to his message. Ho-hum, Professor. Thank you for your interest in national security. First, the grim old Russian had been all excited about the mysterious American, the nuclear power engineer. So much so that the American’s little unauthorized excursion on the mountain warranted putting him under surveillance when he came back to Tel Aviv after his visit to Masada. Yet now? Human voice mail at Skuratov’s office. First they care, now they don’t.

Ellerstein got up and fixed himself a small cognac, even though he knew he’d had enough booze for one night. He wanted to light up his pipe but had rationed himself to three pipes a day now and the ration book was empty. He grumbled to himself and put the unlit pipe in his mouth anyway. He sucked noisily on it while he thought about the situation. Then something occurred to him.

What was the common denominator to all this? Herod’s fortress down on the Dead Sea. He sat back down at his desk to think about that. Could it be? He picked up the phone and called the Skuratov contact number. This time no one answered. He looked at his watch. It was nearly 10:00 P.M. He let the phone ring, but there was still no answer, not even voice mail. He hung up, surprised. He did not know where Skuratov’s operations center was located, Dimona, probably, with a local telephone link near or in Tel Aviv. Wouldn’t it always be fully manned? A Shin Bet control room? Now no one was answering. Then he called Yehudit Ressner at home. Again, no answer, and when her voice mail came on, he hung up. He sucked harder on the pipe, the desire for just one more cognac rising again. Something was very wrong here.

Suppose, he mused, just suppose Skuratov already knows that the American has done a runner. He’s taken his watchers off Judith, so he calls her, and she’s not there. For that paranoid old Russian, the two of them together conjures up Masada again, and there’s something about Masada that that old man has been reacting to like an exposed nerve. He looked out his study window into a cool, clear night. The lights of his neighborhood were subdued by the density of the buildings and the many trees. The rains would come soon.

He poured himself a small splash of cognac, thinking that soon he would be a true alcoholic. Skuratov was supposedly a high-ranking Shin Bet officer, whose responsibility was the security of the Israeli atomic weapons program laboratories. For some unknown reason, he’s sensitive about Masada, which is, admittedly, only forty kilometers or so from the Dimona atomic energy center. He is also thought to be involved with what Gulder called the new Kanna’im. And where had all the old Zealots ended their days? Masada. Great God: Was there a connection? It all kept coming back to Masada.

He heaved a sigh of resignation as he put down the cognac, untouched. He got up and went to find his old army coat and his car keys. Something was telling him to go see for himself. Now. Tonight. Go down to Masada.

It’s crazy. It’s Shabbat. Still something kept telling him:

Go. Now — and take a gun.

David wasted no time once he realized that the slab was down. He signaled for Judith to follow him back to the cave. At the entrance, he pantomimed that she was to wait right there while he made an emergency dive to the bottom of the cistern. She protested, but he insisted. He gestured for her to remain at the cave entrance so he could find it again quickly, homing in on her headlamp. She finally understood and parked herself in the entrance. He swam back away from her, oriented himself with the compass again, and headed down to the bottom of the cistern.