P. Deutermann - The Last Man

“There were scrolls in those holders?”

“Oh, yes, and the holders were sealed with a resin mixture. They are in perfect condition. Of course, the scholars are already arguing.”

David laughed. That fit.

“There was more: Did you notice anything about the bottom of the cistern when you went searching for your equipment?”

“Lots of silt. Oh, yes, it looked like there were bricks lining the bottom.”

“Bricks, indeed. We hoped they’d be solid gold, Mr. Hall.”

“They weren’t?”

“They were not, unfortunately, especially given today’s price of gold. The archaeologists said they were actually worth more than gold. They were testamentary tablets, not bricks.”

“Which are?”

“Each of the tablets had a name. There were nine hundred and eighty names. They think that, once the decision was made, each man was given a tablet, and then the trusted ones took the tablets to the cave. Against the day.”

“Oh, my,” David said. “No longer the Metsadá myth, is it. What about those cylinders?”

Gulder reached into his shirt pocket and extracted a package of cigarettes and a lighter. He offered the pack to David, who shook his head. Gulder lit up, shocking the pristine monastery air. He smiled. It was a sad little smile, and David suddenly realized they had finally come to the heart of the matter.

“Skuratov was telling the truth about the cylinders, as far as he went,” Gulder began. “Our original investigation was triggered by suspicions that someone was diverting small amounts of weapons-grade material. It was actually much worse than that.”

“Worse in what way?”

Gulder described how the government suspected they had diverted enough material for a single weapon. “They had plans for making five weapons, Mr. Hall. Five, not just one.”

“You said earlier they were diverting bomb materials. Were they actually selling plutonium or HEU?”

“No, Mr. Hall,” Gulder said patiently. “They got their money by selling some of the heavy water to Iran through a series of middlemen. The deuterium oxide production system at Metsadá has been there a long time. They simply restarted it. They also needed heavy water to conceal the materials they were accumulating at Dimona. They couldn’t steal both heavy water and fissile materials. They acquired some from other sources, but that cost money, so they then went back to the Metsadá plant.”

“And when it produced much more than they needed, they saw the opportunity to sell it, make money for the other components they’d need.”

“Precisely, Mr. Hall.”

“So they weren’t just facilitating Iran’s bomb — they were working on making some of their own.”

“I think Colonel Skuratov was concerned that the government of Israel might have a failure of nerve when the time came,” Gulder said. “I think these weapons were going to be their insurance.”

David nodded. “I have to tell you, this would be very, very hard to pull off in our uranium fuel production facilities. In a weapons facility, ten times harder.”

“I am told that our own controls would have eventually caught them, except for the fact that they could conceal their ‘stash,’ as it were, using the heavy water as a shield. Hiding that diversion is not that difficult if the right people are involved. Hiding the growing mass of weapons grade material is the problem.”

“So it all came back to the heavy water.”

“Correct, Mr. Hall. So now you know.”

“What happened to the remaining conspirators?”

“Skuratov, of course, is dead, as is Colonel Shapiro.”

“Meant to ask you about that,” David said.

“Shapiro was Skuratov’s number two at Dimona. Impossible that he did not know what was going on. He tried his best to deflect Professor Ellerstein that night. Yossi noticed, told me. He was too dangerous a loose end, so I simply took the opportunity to let him try out the full Zealot experience, too.”

“How about the rest of Skuratov’s cell? You going to shoot them, Mr. Gulder?”

“No, Mr. Hall. We reserve the death penalty for monsters like Adolf Eichmann. No, these people will serve life imprisonment in a special facility down in the Negev Desert. Their nights, anyway. Their days will be spent at Dimona, cleaning up the mess they made. They may become a little ‘hot,’ as they say, but—” He shrugged.

“So why are you telling me all this?”

“Because it doesn’t matter that you know, Mr. Hall.”

David just stared at him until he realized what Gulder was telling him. “Are you going to execute me?”

“No, Mr. Hall, we are not.”

Imprisonment, then, he thought. For life. They were going to just leave him up here, locked up in this monastery, forever. “You can’t get away with this,” he said, clearing his throat, knowing even as he said it that, yes, they probably could. The image of this ice-cold bureaucrat pushing Colonel Shapiro off the wall was still vivid in his mind.

Gulder snubbed out the cigarette. “You violated our hospitality at Metsadá, Mr. Hall. Everyone at the IAA heard about that. You became, how shall we say it, persona non grata, yes? You then went on scuba excursions from your hotel at Tel Aviv, where you and Dr. Ressner became involved in an underwater murder.”

“Involved?” David protested. “I damned near got killed.”

“That’s not what you told the police, though, was it?”

David started to answer and then just swallowed. Gulder smiled again.

“Did you know Colonel Shapiro was an expert scuba diver? Ah, well, it doesn’t matter now, does it. You then took some extra dive tanks from the dive shop. You did not return them. Your rented Land Rover was found mysteriously abandoned, not at Metsadá but on the coast. Your personal effects were left in the hotel room. The assumption is clear: You went diving on your own. An accident. One should never dive alone, isn’t that the rule?”

“People back home aren’t going to buy that, Mr. Gulder.”

“What people, Mr. Hall? Your missing girlfriend? You have no girlfriend. You never did, actually.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” David demanded. One of the guards began to stand up when he heard David’s tone of voice, but Gulder motioned for him to sit back down.

“Adrian Draper. How did she feel about your whistle-blowing plans, Mr. Hall? Was she enthusiastic?”

“Quite the opposite,” David said. “She was adamantly opposed. Said it would wreck my career in nuclear power. We had some big fights.”

“That whistle that you were going to blow, that involved heavy water, correct?”

“Correct.”

“Heavy water that was being diverted within your own company. Who else, besides yourself, would have noticed such a thing within your company?”

“Nobody. That was my job. That’s one of the reasons I’d been sent to school, for special training.”

“Where you met Adrian Draper.”

“Yes.”

“Was it a loving relationship, Mr. Hall?” Gulder asked softly. “Were you two planning for babies and a suburban future? Or more like an exciting relationship between two intellectual equals, great sex and fiery battles? Head games and then bed games?”

David, stunned, could only blink. How could this man, this foreigner, know the first thing about Adrian Draper and their all too brief time together? Gulder leaned in, looking David right in the eye.

“Did you ever find out where the heavy water was going, Mr. Hall?”

“No, I didn’t. The company quashed the investigation immediately. Once I got some of our government people into it, like my uncle, I was kept out of the loop.”

Gulder nodded, reached for another cigarette, then apparently decided against it.