P. Deutermann - The Last Man

They were parked at an airport or possibly a military airfield, he wasn’t sure which. It was nearly midnight, and the field was lighted but not active. He saw some hangars in the distance and a tower with its rotating beacon flashing through the night. Parked sideways right in front of them was an Israeli Hercules C-130 decked out in desert camouflage paint. The hatch was open forward, and two engines were turning on the other side. A group of men stood by the hatch, looking at the helicopter. Two of them appeared to be aircrew in flight suits, but then he recognized Ellerstein and Israel Gulder. For some reason he felt better that Ellerstein was there.

A soldier reached in, unlocked the cuffs, and then indicated that David was to step out and go to the Hercules. He helped David out of the helicopter and then nodded his head toward the men standing by the hatch ladder. David walked over, stretching his arms and rubbing his wrists. He stopped when he reached the ladder. A warm draft from the turning engines blew under the belly of the aircraft, and he could smell the stink of kerosene fuel.

Gulder was handing him something. It was a small leather folder. David looked inside and found his wallet, his passport, and what looked like an airline ticket envelope.

“Mr. Hall,” Gulder said, his face a complete blank, “this is good-bye, I’m afraid. You are leaving our country. Bon voyage.”

“Is this going to be an improvement over the monastery, or something a little more final?” David asked.

Gulder just smiled, said something in Hebrew to Ellerstein, and then walked away to a waiting staff car. Ellerstein tipped his head toward the hatch and followed David into the aircraft. It was cold and dark inside the cargo bay, the only light provided by a row of small red lights in the overhead. An aircrewman wearing a cranial headset came in behind them and stood at the front end of the cargo bay.

Ellerstein picked a seat and sat down, indicating David should sit next to him. He was wearing a heavy jacket and wool slacks.

“So, what’s happening here?” David asked.

“You are being released, Mr. Hall. This aircraft will take you to Greece, to the American military field at Hellenikon. A consular officer will validate that ticket back to the States, and you will leave at oh nine hundred for New York.”

“That’s it? No conditions?”

“Just one, Mr. Hall, and it is voluntary, of course.”

“Oh, yeah, right, of course. Voluntary,” David said, rubbing his wrists again.

“No, it is, really. We ask that you remain quiet about your role in the discovery of the Temple artifacts. Right now the whole world believes Yehudit Ressner is the sole discoverer. As agreed between you, yes?”

“Yes. No problem at all.”

He waited for the next condition, about the weapons business, but Ellerstein was getting up. “It was interesting to meet you, Mr. Hall,” he said, extending his hand. “Most interesting. If you should further, um, correspond with Dr. Ressner, please be gentle, okay?”

David shook his hand but didn’t know quite what to say. “I will, Professor,” was all he could manage. “Thank you.” Then Ellerstein was walking back up to the hatch, where the crewman helped him down the retractable ladder and then closed it up. The crewman came down and made sure David was strapped in, gave him a blanket to wrap around his legs, and went forward. Five minutes later they were airborne over the black Mediterranean.

David undid the waist belt, removed the blanket, and stood up to stretch. The four big turboprop engines had settled into a steady synchronized whine, and it wasn’t too noisy in the cargo bay. He was looking out the single porthole when he became aware that there was someone behind him. He turned around to find Judith standing there, her hands in her pockets. She looked like a football player in pads because of the oversized flight jacket she was wearing. Her eyes looked tired, and the dark pouches were back. He looked into her face for a moment and then embraced her. She relaxed and leaned against him. They stood this way for a long minute, and then David let her go and stepped back. She pressed a hand against his new beard and smiled. He led her to a seat on the long bench.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll bite. What’s going on?”

She smiled. “You owe this to Yossi Ellerstein. He convinced Gulder to let me come see you.”

“He didn’t know about that wine bowl, did he?”

She smiled. “Absolutely not, but he did figure it out pretty quickly once that story got loose in Jerusalem.”

He nodded. “That could have gone two ways,” he said. “They’d either give up and boot me out of the country or turn me into a good Palestinian.”

She shrugged. “I’m not sure how he managed it,” she said. “The media is in overload these days: Western nations defaulting, Arab uprisings, the Temple artifacts. His theory was that heavy water would be too hard a story. Too technical. No one would care.”

“How did the objects look when they brought them out, cleaned them up?”

“Spectacular beyond belief,” she said. “Even damaged, the menorah simply glistens, and the scrolls were intact inside.”

“Glows, hunh?” he asked. “Like a certain bowl?”

She giggled. “What bowl? No one knows anything about a bowl.”

“But the patriarch from Jerusalem—”

“Ah, yes, the patriarch. He went to the monastery. He returned. Apparently the room failed to glow.”

David sat back against the insulation on the side of the cargo bay. “Sure as hell did when I was there.”

“Yossi Ellerstein questioned me about that. Had I ever seen this mysterious glow.”

“And?”

“I told him yes, I had. The bowl does not glow: The room it’s in does. Know what he said?”

“What?”

“That the glow appears only when the bowl is in the presence of someone who believes Judah Sicarius’s testament.”

“That would be—”

“You and I, yes,” she said. “For now, it remains at the monastery chapel, and the monks remain outside. Yossi said that the government would open an inquiry on the bowl, just as soon as you and I come back to Israel.”

He took her hand. “That might be a long damned time, Judith. Especially the you-and-me part. The coming back to Israel? I don’t think so.”

“Well then, Mr. Hall. Mission accomplished, as Mr. Gulder would say, yes?”

He shook his head in wonder. “What about you?” he asked. “What are you doing here on my freedom bird?”

Her expression changed. “Yossi thought it might be nice for me to take a break from all the media circus business,” she said. “Suggested a trip to America. Perhaps give some lectures, but mostly to get away from it all for a little while.”

“At this juncture? With all the media interest?”

“Well, his ‘suggestion’ just might have to do with what was said up there on the mountain. About the nuclear stuff? I’m the other person who knows, remember?”

“Ah,” he said. “Yes.” David remembered Ellerstein’s comment about corresponding. He took her hands in his. “Will you come stay with me, Judith? In Washington? I mean, I’ve got lots of room. A housekeeper, even. I could show you Washington, hell, the whole country. If you’d like to, of course. I mean, that is, if you don’t have—”

“Yes, I would like that, Mr. David Hall,” she said, a shy smile on her face. “I think I would like that very much. Although it’s Yehudit, not Judith.”

He grinned like a teenager. Yehudit it would be. Maybe she could teach him some Hebrew, against the day when he went back to Israel. When they went back.

When pigs flew.

“I hope you’re right about all this,” Gulder said as the army staff car left the airbase and headed back toward the lights of Haifa.