“Is there no other way to lift the slab at the top of the main cistern?” she asked.
“Not from below. Even from up top, it was very, very heavy. I had to use staging pipes to lever it. That’s why I wanted those pipes — if there’s another opening, above the cave here, two of us might be able to lever it open.”
She didn’t answer. He became aware of her breathing in the silence, along with his own. He had never experienced such absolute darkness before. For a vertiginous moment he felt as if they were floating out in deep space.
“If that is — was — Dov down there,” he asked, “what do you think he was doing here? Did he ever express an interest in Metsadá?”
“Not that I recall. He’d visited, of course. Everyone comes at least once. But—”
“But?”
“The weekend before he was supposedly killed in the accident, he had gone off for a diving day with two of his college friends. They were active with LaBaG.”
“That’s the group you mentioned earlier. What is LaBaG all about?”
“LaBaG stands for Lochamim b’Sakanah Garinit — Fighters Against Nuclear Danger. They are anti nuclear everything — weapons, energy, everything. These are the people with whom he got into trouble with that protest I told you about. Oh, God, David, what is going on in this place? If that’s Dov down there—”
He nodded in the darkness. Dov had gotten across the breakers with the people who ran Israel’s nuclear program. If that was his body down there in the main cave, it meant two things: Someone had killed him and then dumped him here, or caught him here, killed him, and left him here. The same way someone had replaced the slab on them? Which brought him to the second thing, and this thought really chilled him. Did this cistern have something to do with Israel’s nuclear program?
“I hate to do it, but I’m going to climb that altar structure,” he said. “See what I can see. Can you read the writing on the wall?”
“Yes, I can. It’s Aramaic.”
“Then maybe you ought to read it, because if I succeed, it may not be there for very long.”
“Two thousand years it has been here,” she said. “We can’t endanger this.”
“Judith, we don’t have much air left. I can go get those other two Scuba tanks, assuming I can still find them, but they’re partials. After that, we start breathing CO2, and that’s the end of us.”
28
Ellerstein could barely see. The dust cloud being laid down by the army truck was overwhelming his own headlights. He kept glancing up at the mountain to his left, but there was only its silent black mass, against which the dust looked like a billowing curtain. He swore as his sedan banged and bumped over rocks and ruts that had probably felt the tramp of Roman sandals. Nothing changed out here.
When they pulled out onto the plateau on the west side of the fortress, he slowed to see why the truck was stopping. Once the dust blew aside, he saw the reason: There were two vehicles parked next to some old army Conex boxes. Four troopers piled out of the back of the truck and went toward the vehicles, their weapons at the ready. It looked to Ellerstein as if the vehicles were empty. Their windows were fogged over with night dew, and there was no movement showing through their windows in the glare of the truck’s high beams.
Two vehicles, he thought. The Land Rover he guessed was the American’s, but the other he recognized — it was Yehudit Ressner’s Subaru. He swore again. Whatever was going on up here, they were now both involved. His beautiful minder had gone over to the wrong side of this equation. The officer was walking back toward his car. Ellerstein rolled down the window.
“Professor?” he asked. “Know anything about these vehicles?”
“I recognize the one,” Ellerstein said. “It confirms my suspicions. There’s something going on. Up there.”
As they both looked up the ghostly slope of the Roman ramp, the radio operator called to the officer to tell him that the Dimona security force was five minutes out.
“I used to work at Dimona, years ago,” Ellerstein said. “So why in the world would the Dimona security people be interested in something happening up here?”
“Beats the shit out of me,” the young officer responded with an elaborate shrug, “but once they get here, they can take over. I don’t like this place. Gives me the creeps.”
“This is where the Romans’ Tenth Legion camped,” Ellerstein said. “I suspect there’s a ghost or three down in that wadi on either side of the siege ramp. Do you know how they built that thing?”
The lieutenant did not. Ellerstein told him. “Don’t tell my troops that,” the lieutenant said, looking over the top of Ellerstein’s car. “These Metsadá patrols are spooky enough. Ah, here come the Dimona specials.” There was relief in his voice.
Ellerstein looked over his shoulder and saw a convoy of at least a dozen trucks grinding up the military track, their headlamps reduced to yellow slit beams. As he watched, trucks peeled off the line at the back and stopped to disgorge troops around the base of the mountain. Just like Roman times, he thought. Circumvallation. Except, of course, for the trucks. Who knows how far Rome would have gone if they’d had trucks. Or tanks. Lord.
He watched as the remainder of the procession came up the slope and spread out into the Roman encampment. He saw one of those American Humvees leading the column. It stopped next to Ellerstein’s car, and three officers climbed out. They were dressed in desert fatigues, and two were carrying submachine guns. They wore different hats from those of the desert patrol. The oldest-looking officer received the lieutenant’s salute and announced that he was now in charge here. Then he came over to speak to Ellerstein, but they had to wait until the rest of the trucks spread out over the encampment grounds. Once all the engine noises subsided, he asked Ellerstein for some identification, glanced at it perfunctorily, and handed it back.
“Now, Professor,” he asked, “would you mind if I join you?”
Shapiro, in his forties, was well built and looked as if he took things seriously. Ellerstein waved him in. They rolled up the windows to shut out the noise and the dust. The colonel immediately produced a cigarette and lit up. He rolled down his own window a few inches. “I’m Lieutenant Colonel David Shapiro. I’m in charge of the military security detachment at the Dimona laboratories. My information is that you think Colonel Skuratov is up on the mountain and that there’s a problem, yes?”
Ellerstein nodded, wondered for a second how much he should tell this sharp-eyed colonel, and then decided to give him the full background. When he was finished, Shapiro nodded thoughtfully as he exhaled a plume of bluish smoke out the window.
“Those two civilian vehicles over there — one’s the American’s, and the other belongs to this Dr. Ressner?”
“I know Ressner’s car; I’m assuming that the other is a rental and the American leased it. Shouldn’t be hard to find out.”
“No, it should not,” Shapiro said. He fished a particle of tobacco from between his teeth for a moment while he considered the story Ellerstein had told him.
“Begging your pardon, Colonel,” Ellerstein said, “but why does the mention of Colonel Skuratov bring out the Dimona military security force?”
The colonel just looked at him, his expression noncommittal. “You say that you know Skuratov?”
“Not exactly; he came to see me about the American’s expedition down here with Yehudit Ressner. I know he’s connected with Dimona.” That’s all I’m going to say, he thought. He dared not mention his own connection with Shabak, or the Zealot conspiracy. “I used to work there, years ago, and I remember him.”
“You worked at Dimona?”