“The honor will be mine, Professor.” A woman, he thought. Well, this was Israel. A good third of the soldiers he’d seen had been women. He shouldn’t have been surprised.
The chairman conferred in Hebrew for a moment with the professor who had been inspecting the papers, then nodded.
“All of the papers appear to be in order, Mr. Hall. New, I wonder if you would, for the benefit of me and my colleagues, review the nature of your request to visit this site.” He pointed with open hands to the younger men at the table. “These gentlemen will be briefing you this afternoon on the current status of explorations and archaeology at Metsadá, and we are all somewhat curious, as I am sure you understand.”
“Of course, Professor.” David turned in his chair to include the two younger academics, then briefly gathered his thoughts while the Israelis waited politely. He thought he heard someone come into the room behind him but did not turn around. He had anticipated this question. Whatever he said now had to convince them that there was a genuine reason for his being here.
“I’ve been a professional engineer since college. My field is nuclear power, what we used to call atomic energy. I’ve been in that business one way or another until just recently, when my company, a major nuclear energy conglomerate, got into trouble with our regulatory authorities because of something I discovered and then revealed.”
“Revealed?” the chairman asked.
“Yes,” David said. “Are you familiar with the term ‘whistle-blower’?”
“Oh, yes,” the chairman said. “We have those in Israel, too. Lots of them, in fact.”
“And everyone loves them forever after, right?”
The chairman laughed. David saw that Ellerstein was watching him, as a snake charmer watches his cobra.
“Well, I am currently an unemployed nuclear engineer,” David said. “So I decided to pursue a project that had been close to my girlfriend’s heart for many years, involving Metsadá.”
“She is here with you?” the chairman asked.
“Mr. Hall’s girlfriend worked for our embassy in Washington,” Ellerstein said. “Ministry of Tourism. She was ordered out of the country unexpectedly, and Mr. Hall decided to pursue her longtime dream in her sudden absence.”
David nodded at Ellerstein, acknowledging his cue. “Her name was Adrian Draper. I met her while doing a course in Washington, and we became a couple. Among other things, she was fascinated by the history of the first century, and especially by what she called the Masada myth. Metsadá, excuse me.”
The academics nodded but did not comment on his use of the word “myth.” David had discovered that most archaeologists preferred to remain at professional arm’s length as to the veracity of the story of what happened up on the mountain fortress — however dramatic and amazing — until there was more physical evidence.
“The Roman occupation of what they called Judaea is a particularly interesting nexus in the history of the ancient and the modern worlds. I’m a Christian, and for most Christians, as you well know, what happened here in the early first century remains a mesmerizing focus.”
“So, Metsadá?” the chairman prompted gently. Crunch time, David thought. He had to tell enough of the truth to convince them without revealing his real purpose.
“Sometime in the early fourth decade A.D., Jesus of Nazareth and his followers were declared to be revolutionaries. Jesus was executed, and his movement scattered. That should have ended the story. Yet from that point forward, starting underground, sometimes literally, the Christian movement evolved into a historical colossus. Thirty years or so after Jesus was executed, the Roman province of Judaea rose in revolt against Rome, a revolt ending five years later with the utter destruction of the ancestral city of Jerusalem, the Second Temple cult, and the annihilation of Jewish society. Except, of course, for those defiant survivors who holed up on Herod’s mountain at Metsadá, where they withstood the siege of the Roman Tenth Legion for over two more years.”
“I believe we know that history, Mr. Hall,” the chairman chided. “In other words, what’s your point, please?”
“My point is this: Adrian had always wondered what might have happened to the Jews as a nation and a religion if those Zealots, the warrior survivors of the Siege of Jerusalem, had not all killed themselves rather than surrender when the Romans finally breached the walls. In other words, was that a deliberate myth? What if they had fled from the mountain, instead, and gone underground? Like the early Christians.”
The room went silent as they considered the question.
“It was probably not to be, of course,” David continued, “and it’s taken nearly two thousand years for another Jewish nation-state to arise here in Judaea. Now, I know it’s a purely speculative question, one that a real scholar might dismiss, but it’s a thesis that fascinated her for a long time, and once she left my life, I felt I had to come here. I wanted to spend some time on the mountain, more time than just a one-day tourist trip. I’m told that it’s one thing to read about it, and quite another to stand among the stones and bones. So there it is.”
There was a long moment of silence while the Israelis looked at him, and then at each other. Professor Bergmann, who had said very little up to this juncture, began nodding his head.
“The stones and the bones,” he said. “As an archaeologist, Mr. Hall, I can understand that compulsion. When I was a young man, I was an unimportant member of the Yadin expedition for one season. Herod’s fortress draws you. We academics like to think that we are always dispassionate, that we can stand back when we poke around in the graves of history; that we, too, can look at the stones and bones, as you term it, and remain completely detached. That place, however — well, one cannot remain dispassionate when one is actually there. It is a haunted place, Mr. Hall, and a revered place. And your question is more relevant to the profession of archaeology than you might think.”
He looked up for an instant, his eyebrows lifting, as if he had become aware that he had said something seriously unorthodox. “You must never tell anyone I said that,” he whispered conspiratorially, and everyone laughed and relaxed. Then the chairman looked over David’s shoulder and stood up.
“Mr. Hall, permit me to introduce Dr. Yehudit Ressner.”
David turned around and pushed back his chair. Judith Ressner was tall and slender. As he got up to greet her, he absorbed a quick impression of enormous dark eyes, thick black hair coiled on her head, and a remote expression on a classical Jewish face. She did not smile when he proffered his hand, but she did accept the gesture.
“Dr. Ressner, my pleasure,” David said.
“Mr. Hall,” was all she said, withdrawing her hand after a perfunctory squeeze. Her voice was soft, her English accented but her diction precise. She seemed perfectly at ease, willing to just be there, as if waiting for someone else to make the next move.
“Yehudit, thank you for joining us,” the chairman said. “I think we can proceed to lunch now.”
They left the conference room and walked down a long hallway and then down a flight of carpeted stairs. The university buildings were built on a series of terraces on a hill, so the floor below was actually at ground level. The faculty dining room was small but well appointed, and a large circular table in a corner had been reserved for the group. David ended up being seated next to the chairman. He noted that Judith Ressner took a seat diametrically across the table from him, so there would not be much chance for any direct conversation. She did not seem willing to make eye contact with him or with anyone else, for that matter. Oh boy, he thought. Isn’t this going to be a wonderful little trip.