He lost it and then found it again. It took three more tries before he could hook a foot into the lattice of the ladder and stop his swing. He was puffing from the exertion and took a minute to regain his breath. He was now hanging like a hammock, his feet locked around the ladder structure while the rest of his body hung out over the blackness as he gripped the rope. He considered just letting go. It was some forty cubits to the floor of the cavern, certainly far enough down to smash the life out of him when he landed. There were two more things he had to do, however, and they had to be done in the cave.
He extended his feet through the lattice, hooked his knees, and then let go of the rope. He felt it swing back out into the center of the cave, his last connection to the world above gone forever. He raised himself on the scaffolding and began to climb in the total darkness, visualizing the ladder wall and the tiny cave entrance in his mind from the times before. Then there had been torches. When he got up to the top lattice of the scaffolding, he felt his way along it until the lip of the side cave entrance came under his hands. He stepped up onto the top of the lattice, swung around it, and crawled into the narrow tunnel. Keeping his head low, he eased his way up the tunnel on hands and knees until he felt the tunnel widen as it opened into the cave itself.
He stood up then and reached into the leather pouch at his waist. He carefully extracted the smoldering ember of wood he’d taken from the palace and blew on it. One end glowed red, revealing just the tips of his fingers. From a second compartment in the pouch he took a twist of lint that he had dipped in lamp oil. He pressed it to the ember and blew on it steadily until the lint flamed. Holding it upside down, he found the first of the oil pot lamps on the wall of the cave and lit it. Using that lamp he lit the rest, until he had a dozen flickering lamps going, their tiny lights throwing eerie shadows onto the walls. He walked across the sloping floor of the cave to the wooden altar where the Temple artifacts gleamed in the lamplight. Then he bent down and probed the sand beneath the altar with his dagger until he felt it hit something solid. He dug in the sand with his fingers and extracted a small, unadorned bronze wine bowl. Straightening up, he poured all the dry sand out of the bowl and held it in both hands, overwhelmed once again by a flood of memories. Holding the bowl in one hand, he picked up a piece of charcoal and began to write on the wall.
When he had finished writing his testament, the oil lamps were guttering. He stood up by the altar and faced the entrance to the cave. He bent down and positioned the haft of his dagger in a crack in the cave’s floor with the blade pointed straight up. He took one final deep breath, stiffened his back and his arms, and fell forward like an old tree.
He never felt the floor of the cave smash him in the face. Instead he felt a white-hot lance of pain transfix his consciousness even as it paralyzed that final deep breath in his chest. He opened his eyes but could not see. So this is what it felt like, all those men he had killed. A roaring red haze gathered in his mind. His last thought was that he was dying exactly like a Roman general who has been defeated on the battlefield. For some strange reason, he found that amusing. He tried to laugh, to make one last time that most human of sounds, but he could not.
Part II
Tel Aviv, Israel
1
David Hall took a final standing stretch at his seat before sitting back down and refastening his seat belt. The beauty queen masquerading as an El Al stewardess had slunk through first class to tell each of the ten passengers individually and somewhat breathlessly that the captain would soon be turning on the seat-belt sign in preparation for landing at Ben Gurion Airport. David had paid close attention to her every word and the effect they had on her quivering superstructure. At these prices she better be a beauty queen, he thought, although one look back into the coach section upon boarding had confirmed the wisdom of electing first class. The crowd back there was somewhat eclectic.
It was early afternoon as the Airbus descended toward Tel Aviv over the eastern Mediterranean. Virgil’s famously wine-dark sea glittered out the window, except that it was a deep blue, edged with precisely aligned, spidery whitecaps. The sea actually looked chilly. Well, why not, he thought. It was the first week in September, which meant that he would be visiting Israel four weeks before the major religious holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, compliments of careful planning. Landing and getting through security, immigration, and customs would be the first hurdles, especially with some of his special equipment. He had all the proper paperwork, which was good because the Israelis were extremely thorough about entry paperwork. The portable computer and his scuba regulator pack should not be a problem. Some of the seismic sensor stuff might attract attention, but it was pretty well disguised as part of his underwater camera equipment. Besides, everything had made it through the equally strict El Al security inspection back at Dulles, so he was fairly confident he would get it past the security people here in Tel Aviv. Immigration would be relatively pro forma for an American tourist, and customs, well, who ever knew about customs.
He swallowed as the cabin pressure was adjusted. He caught the beauty queen looking at him. In her tight-fitting uniform she could adjust the cabin pressure just by sitting down, he thought. He smiled at her and she smiled back, but it was a professional smile and not any indication of interest, he decided. He turned away, looking out the window for a first glimpse of Israel, but there was only the sea, a bit closer as the big jet bumped gently through light coastal clouds. He’d been planning this thing for a year now, ever since Adrian had disappeared. It still made his spine tingle when he thought about what he was going to attempt here and what he might discover on that haunted mountain down at the literal bottom of the world.
“He’s here,” the man with the pockmarked face breathed into the public pay phone, his face averted from the shuffling crowd of bleary-eyed tourists streaming past him from the customs hall.
“Anyone meet him besides his driver?”
“No. Shall I follow them out to the car, or are we done here?”
“You know the answer to that one.”
“Just thought I’d ask.”
“Shall I run that question by the boss for you?”
“Thank you, no.” The man in the phone booth was silent for a moment. “I’ll confirm him in the car, and again at the hotel.”
“Yes, you will.”
The watcher mouthed a silent insult, hung up, and hastened down the carpeted aisle of the customs area, keeping the big American and his driver in sight over the shoulders of the milling tourists. He thought this was all something of a waste of time: What did they think this American was going to do, jump in a sherut at the last minute and whisk off to Amman to see the king? According to his supervisor, they had the American’s official Israeli government itinerary, his hotel, his driver — what the hell was the big deal? A nobody nuclear engineer turned whistle-blower who was now famous in Washington for winning a seven-figure settlement after suing his former employer for wrongful termination. Coming to Israel to play amateur archaeologist, do some skindiving, and then go home. Ridiculous. Who could care? He wondered again whom he had pissed off to get a shit detail like this on a Friday afternoon.