P. Deutermann - The Last Man

As he rose slowly past fifty feet he began to work his way to the west, dousing his headlamp so he could home in on the light that he hoped was still in that crevice by the cave entrance. He wondered where Judith was, and even more, what the hell that pipe was about, not to mention a dead scuba diver and stainless steel cylinders sitting on wooden beams down on the bottom. So much for their being the first humans in this cistern during the past two thousand years. This changed everything.

Holding the pipe across his chest now, he rose to the correct depth for the cave entrance while looking around for the light. When he finally spotted it, he adjusted his BCD to achieve neutral buoyancy and then kicked over toward the west wall. He was relieved to see Judith swim out of the darkness from below him. That was a good sign: she had not gone blasting all the way to the top of the cistern. When she saw David, she swam over to the entrance and retrieved her own headlamp. Together, they wrestled the staging pipe into the narrow cave and through the air-water interface, where they pulled it and themselves up onto the shallow sand. Then they flopped down on the sand themselves, resting on their air tanks and breathing noisily.

His headlamp illuminated her pale and frightened face. There was something major going on here that he didn’t understand. He looked around the cave and made a decision. He popped his mouthpiece out, lifted off his mask, and carefully sampled the cave air. It was musty and smelled faintly sulfurous, but there definitely was oxygen. When he felt that it was probably safe to breathe it, he gestured for her to do the same. She followed suit and then flopped back on her side, tucked her knees up to her chest, and began to sob, her headlamp shining down into the fine sand.

He slipped out of his scuba rig and shut off his air tank before going to her and securing her air. He kept his headlamp on but reached over and turned hers off to conserve the battery. She was shaking silently. He wanted to pick her up and hold her, but it would be awkward — she was still in her diving rig. She was following his instructions but keeping her eyes closed tight. He helped her out of her tank rig and then sat down beside her.

“What?” he asked softly, putting his arm around her shoulders. “Look, you panicked down there. That happens. Don’t—”

“No,” she sobbed. “No. I did not panic. Not in the way you mean.”

The hell you didn’t, he thought, but didn’t say it. “What, then?” he asked, unsure of what was going on.

She rubbed her eyes and then massaged the sides of her face where the mask had been. Her normally composed expression was shattered. She was more than a little white-eyed, and her skin was uncharacteristically pale against the oval frame of her hood.

“That suit down there?” she said. “I recognized that suit. Oh, David, my God! I think that, that… thing down there was my husband. That was Dov!”

Yosef Ellerstein was stopped by an army police truck on the Dead Sea highway just below Qumran. Israeli citizens were not forbidden to be in their cars at night in this area, but since there was technically nowhere for him to be going, the patrol leader naturally stopped the car and asked where Ellerstein was bound. He identified himself and then explained that there was a problem at Masada.

“Metsadá?” the young lieutenant asked. “It’s closed. What kind of a problem?”

“Do you know who Colonel Skuratov is?” Ellerstein asked the young officer.

“No. He is army?”

“Not exactly. He is Shin Bet. I think. He has something to do with security at the Dimona laboratories.”

“Dimona?” the officer echoed. He looked around, his face registering total confusion. “What does Dimona have to do with you, Professor? Or Metsadá, please?”

Ellerstein threw up his hands. He could see the faces of the other patrol troops looking at his car through the canvas windshields on the back of the truck. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I have done some occasional, um, research work for Colonel Skuratov. Listen: I believe that there is an American tourist up on the mountain, doing some unauthorized exploration. I believe Colonel Skuratov might be up there, too.”

He saw the disbelief in the lieutenant’s eyes. “I know,” Ellerstein continued. “It’s complicated. Look, let’s go down there, you and me. I think we need to get up on the mountain.”

“The site is closed and the cable car is shut down, Professor. That place, it’s four hundred meters straight up. How do you propose to get up on that mountain?” The way he said this made it clear that he didn’t think Ellerstein was up to it.

“The same way the Romans did,” Ellerstein replied.

The lieutenant blinked. The ramp. “Okay,” he said, “but first, I think I need to contact my headquarters.”

“Yes, you do that, Lieutenant,” Ellerstein nodded. “Emphasize that name, Skuratov. They won’t know me from spit, but they should recognize that name. In the meantime, I think we need to get down there. Something bad is going on. I’m sure of it.”

The lieutenant gave him a faintly patronizing look, shook his head doubtfully, and asked him to pull off the road and wait. Then he went back to the truck, climbed into the cab, and got on his radio. Ellerstein maneuvered his car to the side, shut the engine down, and waited.

He was sure of it, he’d said. Something bad was going on down there. He still could not make the connection between Dimona and Masada. Or maybe it was a connection between Skuratov and Masada. What in the world could it be? He looked in his mirror but could not see what was going on inside the truck because of the headlamps. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. Then there was movement behind him, a banging of truck doors. The lieutenant came back to his car.

“Battalion says to go down there and to take you with us, Professor. My orders are to sweep the site and to report.”

“Did they recognize the name Skuratov?”

“You know, that’s weird. At first, the duty officer gave me a ‘wait, out.’ Then he said to turn you around and have you return to Jerusalem. But then he said hold on, and this time he comes back and says to get down there. There will be a special security force coming over. An entire company.” The lieutenant looked at him to see if he understood the significance of that. Ellerstein, like just about every other adult Israeli male, had been in the army.

“A full company?” he exclaimed. “That’s a hundred men?”

“Yes. Probably special forces. He wouldn’t say anything more on the unsecure radio net. Just to move out, right now. So, Professor: We go, yes?”

“Absolutely — is that military road back up to the Roman camp still there?”

“Yes. You will please follow us, Professor. Oh, I told them that you thought this Colonel Skuratov may already be up there. Apparently that’s why the Dimona security reaction force is coming over. Does that make any sense to you?”

The army company was the Dimona reaction force? Oh-oh, he thought. “It just might, Lieutenant,” Ellerstein said. He should be calling Gulder, but he had no phone. “It just might. We should hurry now, okay?”

“That was Dov ?” David asked, staring at her. “Are you sure? I mean—”

“It’s the suit,” she said. She swallowed a couple of times to clear her throat. “There was a theory several years back about wet suits for the open ocean. If they bore the striped markings of venomous sea snakes, larger predators would stay away. Dov believed it and had a suit made with those colored stripes. It was unique. Other divers used to kid him about it. I would have to… to—”