“She didn’t bother to even call you?”
“You had to know Adrian. She was a very independent woman. Our relationship was never boring. Anytime I made marriage noises, she’d go off on a trip. I assumed maybe she was sending me a message, and by then I was up to my neck in a problem of my own causing.”
Ellerstein lifted his glass at the hovering waiter, who quickly brought him a refill. He raised his eyebrows at David, who shook his head. The alcohol was already affecting his jet-lagged head.
“You mentioned that you were no longer working in the nuclear energy field because of a, what did you call it, ‘whistle-blowing’ matter?”
“Yes,” David said with a wry smile. “My fifteen minutes of fame, in Washington at least. Short version or long?”
“Short, please.”
“After GWU I was reassigned to the company’s Washington office in the materials audit division. In the weeks before Adrian went walkabout, I uncovered what looked like a materials diversion scheme within the company. Went to management, who told me to forget about it. Talked to my uncle, who is a senior bureaucrat at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He opened an official investigation, confirmed my findings, and fined the company. That in turn got me fired.”
“They can do that? Fire you when you find out something illegal?”
“Well, yes and no,” David said. “I then was called to testify before the congressional committee with oversight of the atomic energy business. Having been fired, I held nothing back. After that, I heard there were some discreet meetings with other government officials, although I never learned what that was all about, other than it seemed to involve some kind of espionage case and heavy water.”
“Heavy water? Deuterium oxide?”
“Yes.”
“When was this?”
“As I said, about six weeks before Adrian left on her trip. She wasn’t too happy about it, in fact. We’d been talking about our future together, and now suddenly I was unemployable in the nuclear industry. As the cop shows term it, I was officially ‘radioactive.’ It caused some tension.”
“Perhaps she was having second thoughts, then?” Ellerstein asked. “Forgive me for presuming, but sometimes the prospect of permanence exposes fault lines that are not obvious in the bedroom. She was perhaps getting a case of the cold toes?”
David laughed. “Cold feet, remember?” He paused to finish his drink. “That’s possible. She was a bit of a wild child. Very smart, quick, opinionated.” He thought back to some of their arguments. Cold feet? By now he’d realized it had always been him bringing up the possibility of marriage, never Adrian. “I guess you had to know her. She was mercurial sometimes. Impatient with people who weren’t as smart as she was. Loved to scrap, then make up. The name Astarte ring a bell?”
Ellerstein smiled. “Of course,” he said. ”Usually depicted in stone or marble as a supremely lush female figure. Ancient goddess of fertility and motherhood.”
“And war,” David reminded him. “In my mind, Adrian was the reincarnation of Astarte, right down to that lush womanly figure and a fondness for combat. Anyway, after all the dust settled with the whistle-blowing flap, I was approached by a law firm who wanted to file a suit on my behalf for wrongful termination, for a percentage fee, of course. I was still angry with the company, Adrian was off on her trip, still treating me to hot tongue and cold shoulder, so I said yes. The company settled.”
“How much?” Ellerstein asked. David told him, provoking a low whistle.
“So that’s how you can afford the Dan Tel Aviv, a first-class airline ticket, and two weeks here in Israel. Well done, Mr. Hall.”
“I’m not sure I’d claim to be proud of myself, but I did feel a certain sense of vindication. Adrian was right — as they say in Hollywood, I’ll never work in that business again.”
“And so: Now you’re here.”
“I am indeed.”
Ellerstein nodded slowly, appearing to gather his thoughts. David thought he was about to ask him the obvious question: Why was he pursuing his ex-girlfriend’s obsession with Masada? Instead, he shifted subjects. “Metsadá is an important site to Israel,” he said. “A mythic shrine, in fact. A symbol of a calamity in our history that every patriotic Israeli vows never to let happen again. Do you know what the army does there?”
“Yes, I do. They take all the new lieutenants graduating from each class of officer school up to the mountain for a night vigil, and then at dawn they retell the story, and all the new officers swear an oath that basically says, ‘Never again.’”
Ellerstein pursed his mouth in surprised approval. “Just so. Of course, you know the history. The nine hundred sixty Jews who took their own lives rather than surrender to the Romans.”
“Yes. It is an astonishing and sobering story. I think that’s why Adrian was so mesmerized by the place. It was more than just a hobby with her. After a while she inspired the same interest in me.”
“You know that you are asking for a degree of access to this site that is normally granted only to professional archaeologists, and few of them at that? By your own admission you are no such thing.”
If you only knew, David thought. Access doesn’t quite describe it. He nodded but said nothing. Ellerstein swirled his glass for a moment.
“I agreed to put your request forward,” he said finally, “because I owed Professor Hanson a big favor.”
David blinked. Had Ellerstein already known about Adrian’s disappearance? He realized that the answer had to be yes. On guard, boyo.
Ellerstein sipped his drink and appeared to reflect again for a few moments. David noticed that the room was completely full, with standing room only at the bar. The ending of Shabbat apparently generated a very secular thirst.
“To answer your unspoken question,” Ellerstein said, “yes, Professor Hanson had told me the gist of what had happened to Adrian Draper. Sorry, but I wanted to hear it directly from you.”
“All right,” David said. Play along, he thought. Remember the objective.
“Okay,” Ellerstein said finally. “On Monday you will go to the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem, where the Israel Antiquities Authority head office is located. I will meet you there. There we will hopefully finish the paperwork. Then we will go over to the Hebrew University to meet with Professor Armin Strauss, who is chairman of the Archaeology Institute, and Professor Reuven Bergmann, a specialist who has cognizance over the Metsadá site. He will put you together with some other academics who will refresh your knowledge, and — you’ve read the Yigael Yadin exploration reports?”
“Yes.”
“Very well. All of these people will discuss the current status of the site, ongoing excavations, and also explain where you may not go because of work in progress.”
“I hope there won’t be too many restrictions. I know the public can’t go down to the lower palace terraces to see the mosaics, for instance, or to the cisterns.”
“Only for reasons of safety. It is a four-hundred-meter fall if they make a mistake. And the cisterns, did you say? Do you have a special interest in the cisterns?”
David felt a spike of panic. Get him off this, right now. “No, but I remember the Yadin reports said that the cisterns had never been explored.”
“Ah, well, they have been entered, but there was nothing in any of them except dusty rock. Basically, they’re just dry holes in the side of the mountain. Cavities. No, for you, the only restrictions will be because of ongoing restoration work. Basically, we’ll simply ask that you do not interfere, and, of course, no digging.”