“I understand — and please, I really do appreciate the help. I know this is probably, no, surely, an inconvenience for you real scholars, as Professor Hanson constantly reminded me.”
Ellerstein showed another brief smile. “How is my colleague George Hanson?”
“Fine and in pretty good health,” David said. “He said you were at Columbia together. Why did you emigrate, may I ask?”
“I came over at an exciting time. I was a theoretical math mechanic and, of course, a Jew. It seemed to me that I might be a bigger fish in this pond than in the United States.”
“I see. Did it work out that way?”
Ellerstein smiled enigmatically. “After a fashion, Mr. Hall. Although I may have contributed to some of your country’s nonproliferation efforts.”
David laughed out loud. Ellerstein was telling him that he had worked at Dimona, Israel’s atomic energy research facility down in the Negev Desert. He knew the old man would not elaborate, though.
“Look,” he said, changing the subject, “I’ve engaged a car and driver. Would you like me to have him pick you up before we see the IAA people?”
“No, no, thank you, Mr. Hall. Some of my colleagues at the IAA are already teasing me about this, ah, project. A car and driver would only add to the fun and games.”
David, feeling a twinge of embarrassment, nodded. His visit was indeed causing some discomfort. Remember why you’re really here, he told himself. This is no time to waver.
“I’ll try to get out of your hair as quickly as I can, then,” he said. “I’ve scheduled some diving tours after the site visit.”
Ellerstein shrugged again, as if to say, There’s nothing for it but to get it over with. “You are established here?” he asked, indicating the hotel. “Your logistics are in order?”
“Yes, it’s fine. I’m out of sorts with the time change, but I’ll be okay by Monday. I hope.”
“Yes, it is difficult. Too many Americans expect to function on the very first day. You are wise to allow two days. So, what will you do tomorrow — go see the Old City in Jerusalem, perhaps?”
“Yes, I thought I would. Any recommendations?”
“The usual things. Begin with very comfortable shoes: The whole place is made of stone, and it’s very hard on the feet. Take a hat and some water, and first have your driver take you to the scale model of ancient Jerusalem at the time of Christ. It’s at the Holy Land Hotel. It’s worth seeing before you go into what remains of the Old City. Sets things in physical perspective.” He finished his drink and pushed back in his chair. “So,” he concluded. “Monday at the Rockefeller. Ten o’clock, yes?”
“I’ll be there, Professor. Thanks for coming down this evening. It’s been good to meet you.”
“And you, Mr. Hall. Monday, then. Shalom.”
Twenty minutes later the waiter who had been taking care of David and his guest stepped out the hotel’s employee entrance and made his way to Hayarkon Street. He turned left down the sidewalk and started walking north. A few moments later a large black Mercedes sedan with deeply tinted windows pulled up alongside the curb, facing the wrong way in traffic. The waiter quickly looked around and then got into the left rear seat of the car, which pulled away from the curb with a clack of electric door locks. In the gloom of the backseat was an elderly white-haired gentleman. He was wearing a dark coat over a business suit, with expensive-looking black leather gloves on his hands. A black homburg perched on his head.
“Well?” the man asked. His voice was barely more than a hoarse whisper. It almost seemed to come from speakers hidden in the car’s lush upholstery.
The waiter gave his report but did not look directly at the other man. The driver, a large, impassive young man with no apparent neck, stared straight ahead as he steered the heavy car across oncoming traffic to regain the proper lanes. The sedan’s insulation muffled a chorus of blaring horns.
“Based on what I heard,” the waiter concluded, “I think he is what he seems to be. A successful American, very full of himself.”
“Aren’t they all. Did he elaborate on precisely what he wants to do at Metsadá?”
“The lounge was pretty noisy, but basically, he says he’s an amateur historian who mostly wants access to all the ruins and the time to take it all in. Says he wants to commune with the spirits.”
“Indeed.” The old man took a deep breath and then slowly let it out. “Hall. Not a Jew, correct?” The waiter cast a quick sideways glance, but the old man’s face remained in shadow. The waiter knew who he was but had never actually seen him before. Almost no one had. “No, sir, I wouldn’t think so.”
The old man lapsed into silence for almost a full minute. The waiter wanted another look but was almost afraid to take one. The stories were alarming.
“Commune with the spirits of Metsadá. Don’t you just wish one or two of those bloody old Kanna’im would pop out at him with their throats gaping open. I wonder if he would survive the experience. Psychologically speaking, of course.”
The waiter, a sergeant in the military intelligence organization known as LAKAM, swallowed. Colonel Malyuta Lukyanovitch Skuratov had an uncommon ability to evoke images of death.
“Did he indicate interest in any specific parts of the fortress?”
“He knew which parts are normally off-limits to tourists,” the sergeant replied. “He mentioned, for instance, the lower palaces, the mosaic remains, and the cisterns.”
“The cisterns? He mentioned the cisterns?” The big car swung right, away from the beaches.
The sergeant turned slightly in his seat, curious about the faint note of alarm in the colonel’s voice. “Only in the context that the Yadin report said the cisterns had never been explored. He was using them as an example, I think, not as a point of specific interest. Or to show off, to prove that he’s read Yadin. Professor Ellerstein took no particular notice, that I could see.”
There was another long moment of silence, when the only sounds in the car came from the raucous noise of a bus momentarily alongside. They were passing through an area without streetlights, which enveloped the colonel’s face in even deeper shadow. Then there was a splash of light coming from inside the bus, and the sergeant had to suppress a wince. Spiky, brush-cut white hair showing under the famous homburg. Starkly pink skin with the seams of the grafts visible as a mosaic of fine white lines. Deeply inset, hooded eyes, with bare wisps of eyebrows below a wide, gleaming brow. Long, bony nose. Thin, bloodless lips. His tight pink skin only emphasized his skull-like appearance, but it was the eyes that gave the sergeant a jolt: pale gray with glints of amber, projecting a gleam of what most people took for repressed fury. Colonel Skuratov of the Shin Bet, Israeli military counterintelligence, also known behind his back — a long way behind his back — as Colonel Lazarus. The Russian émigré who had risen from the grave called Gulag to a position of shadowy power in Israel’s counterintelligence apparatus. With a start, the sergeant realized the colonel was looking right at him. He snapped his face away, focusing hard on the driver’s head. Skuratov leaned toward him.
“Do not look at me, young man,” the colonel whispered in accented Hebrew. “I’m not someone you want to know.”
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant replied, also in a whisper, his throat suddenly dry. The car made another right, heading south now. The hotel towers were just visible a few blocks away.
“You have done well tonight,” Skuratov said finally. “Although this all is probably about nothing. Another insouciant American with more money than manners, imposing on the goodwill of a client state.”