P. Deutermann - The Last Man

“What?” the colonel asked.

“I think I know who’s down there, in that cistern,” Ellerstein said. “Have you found out who those vehicles belong to down behind the hostelry?”

“My people are checking on that,” Shapiro said, visibly angry now. “Now please, tell me what the hell you’re doing here.”

“Colonel Shapiro, I suggest you station some people by that hole in there,” Ellerstein said, “and then go find Colonel Skuratov and his people. I’ll bet they’re up in the fortress by now, what with all this commotion.”

“Skuratov? What do you know about him? Goddammit, Professor—”

“Please, Colonel Shapiro. Go find Skuratov. Take him to the terraces, away from this side, away from as many watching eyes as possible. I’ll wait here for whoever’s in the cistern to surface. Then we’ll sort it all out.”

“ We?! Who is ‘we’?”

Ellerstein looked down at his shoes but said nothing.

“Look — I need to report all this,” Shapiro said, pointing at the slab opening and the debris that had come out of the hole.

“Yes, of course,” Ellerstein said, “but not just yet, okay? Let’s see who comes out of that water, and what they were doing down there.”

“But my instructions — to report immediately—”

“They will ask a thousand questions, yes? Why not wait until you have some answers, hunh? Meanwhile, Colonel, I really need a phone circuit, or even a radio, to Jerusalem. I need to call Israel Gulder in the prime minister’s office.”

Shapiro started to object again, but then the bit about the PM’s office penetrated.

“Who the hell are you, Professor?” he asked.

“Nobody famous, Colonel — but you will be if I don’t get that circuit up. Now go find Skuratov. He’s up there. And, Colonel? Keep some soldiers with you.”

Judith had almost finished reading Judah’s last testament when she stopped, her finger poised above the lampblack symbols.

“What?” David asked. The water had receded entirely from the cave, but the air was getting worse. They would have to get out of here soon.

She sat back down on the floor of the cave and frowned up at the writing. “There’s something he’s talking about besides the last night. He makes reference to some event, some disturbance that happened forty years before the siege. In Jerusalem. It concerns his brother.”

“What kind of disturbance?”

She shook her head. “It’s difficult, without time to really study it. There are many possible interpretations of the words. Like the word ‘brother’—it can mean his actual brother or brother in arms, like that.” She studied the writing some more. “It’s as if — oh, my God.”

“What? What?”

She pressed the back of her hand against her lips and glanced over at the pile of rags and bones. “My God,” she whispered again, “I think I know who this is. Listen.”

David was baffled, but she was obviously overwhelmed by what she thought she’d discovered.

“Listen to what he writes at the very end, down here at the bottom. Damn the saltwater — this stuff is disappearing in front of my eyes. He says: I regret, oh Lord, that we lost this war. It was madness to start it, that we all knew, those of us who had been in the hills for those many years. And now, desecration and abomination beyond words, or speaking. Something like that. Then it goes on: So be it. This could not have happened if it was not your will. I was just one of your instruments, as I now remain. Then there’s more, about his brother. It’s, well, an apology. To or about his brother, I think.”

“For what?”

“First he says he’s not apologizing for betraying him to the Romans. As the long-lost, disgraced, and exiled brother, he, Judah, had been the only one his brother could trust to do such a thing, because the priests and even the Romans would absolutely believe it.” She stopped again, working through the translation. “He is apologizing for scorning his brother, who had preached the other course, the way of love and reconciliation, just the opposite of the path the Jews had ultimately chosen, the way of war.”

She stopped again, her lips moving silently, while David watched. She was totally focused. Then she put both hands up to her cheeks while she read aloud. “He puts no faith in all the talk of prophecies, the Messiah stories. He says there were Messiahs every year, before and after his brother. All of them lunatics. But there had been something innately good and — I can’t make this out — innocent? about his brother. He, Judah, should never have scorned him, as a child or afterward. That was his only sin, he says. All of the things told about him later were lies, but for that, for scorning the beloved son, he repents from the bottom of his heart.”

David felt the hairs rising on the back of his head. “Messiah? Beloved son?”

“ Att-haw baree kha-beeba. Revered son, or beloved son. I’m transliterating here, David. It will take a crowd of Aramaic experts to get it precisely right.”

“Even so,” he whispered. She nodded slowly, gazing at the words.

They both stared in wonder at the writing on the wall. Then she looked at him, her face a pale oval beneath the yellow headlamp. “Say the name, David,” she whispered. “Say it out loud.”

“Whose? Judah’s?”

“No, the whole name: Judah Sicarius. Say it out loud, three times.”

David said it, and the third time he understood: Judah Sicarius.

Judas Iscariot.

“Holy shit, ” he whispered. “This was Judas?” Then he looked at the plain bronze bowl. “Oh, my God, Judith — that bowl. Could that be what I think it is?”

She shook her head slowly. “I don’t know. He says that if the Romans find the cave, they’ll leave the bowl, and thereby miss the real treasure here.”

“He must have been an old man — this was forty years after all that.”

“He says he had three score years — that’s roughly sixty years old. He would have been twentysomething at the time of the crucifixion. That makes sense — they were all young men.”

“His brother. Does he name him?”

“No, and it could be brother in the sense of ‘every man is my brother.’”

He looked at the bronze bowl again. It’s just a bowl, he thought. Or was it? “I’m almost afraid to touch it,” he said.

Then they both felt a thump of pressure in the air, as if something had squeezed the entire cistern outside.

“Something’s happened,” David said, almost glad for the distraction. “We’d better get out of here. Go see if we have an airspace up there.”

“What if we don’t?”

“All the water has withdrawn from in here. It had to go somewhere. There were grooves in the side of that big slab, which is probably how this place filled up over the centuries. If the water’s down, there has to be air. C’mon.”

Five minutes later they rose toward the top of the cave, buddy-breathing on the single remaining tank. When they bumped against the ceiling of the cavern, David released an air bubble from his mouth, hoping almost against hope that it would move away from them.

It did. Perversely, it went behind them. They followed it, saw lights, and a moment later popped out into the space where the slab had been. Four large soldiers and Professor Ellerstein were standing there, looking down at them.

“Shalom,” he intoned solemnly, reaching for his pipe.

The soldiers brought them up into the fortress through the Serpent Path gate. They stopped while a sergeant held a brief consultation on his radio. While he did, Ellerstein took them aside. “Mr. Hall,” he said, his expression anything but friendly. “Communing with the spirits again?”