“Yes, but, as I said, it was many years ago. I’m a theoretical mathematician. I believe, however, that things at Dimona have probably passed the theoretical stage.”
The colonel laughed out loud, two sharp barks. “You’ve got that right, Professor,” he said. “Please wait here. As to your question, the answer is I’m damned if I know. A report was forwarded to our ops center that there was a problem up here at Metsadá and that it involved Skuratov. That report went to the laboratory director, who ordered us out to secure the site and to see what, if anything, was going on. So that, Professor, is what we’re going to do.”
Shapiro stubbed his cigarette out in the car’s ashtray, got out, and walked around the back toward his command vehicle. Ellerstein rolled his window down and called to him. Ellerstein said, “I need to make a phone call. Does anyone have a cell phone?”
“Probably, but there are no towers out here, Professor. It will have to wait.” He walked away and began shouting orders to his officers to deploy the force.
Ellerstein watched as the elite troops fanned out along the rim of the Roman camp. Some trotted down into the wadi on either side of the siege ramp, while others formed up and marched back down the military track toward the Dead Sea side of the fortress. One of the trucks was apparently a mobile communications station, and men began setting it up as a temporary field headquarters.
By now the original desert patrol group was sitting next to their truck on some rocks, smoking cigarettes and watching with the detached curiosity of soldiers who were happily on the sidelines. Colonel Shapiro took ten men and headed up the siege ramp. They set an impressive pace. The men carried submachine guns at port arms. Shapiro had a holstered pistol and a small tactical radio.
Ellerstein got out of his car and fished around for his pipe. The night was startlingly clear and cool, and he reached back in to retrieve a jacket. The gray battlements at the top of the mountain were etched in stark relief against the night sky. Behind him the black silhouettes of the Judaean hills stood guard. He could almost imagine that he could see pale, bearded faces flitting between the arrow slits up there, the ghosts of the Kanna’im keeping an eye on all the commotion in the Roman camp once again. He shivered despite himself. Colonel Shapiro and his team reached the western gate, stepped through the battlements, and disappeared. Ellerstein waited for half an hour and then decided to make his own move. The troops around the comms truck were all settled in, and the rest of the force was deployed out along the old Roman circumvallation perimeter of the site. Puffing gently on his pipe, he walked casually over to the base of the siege ramp, looked back once more, and then started up. No one seemed to notice.
With Judith’s help, David climbed back down from the altar and switched off his headlamp. Judith kept hers on.
“Well?” she asked.
“I can’t see anything up there that looks like an entrance. Doesn’t mean there isn’t one there, but if I can’t see it, I can’t work it.”
She sighed. They walked back over to the ledge on the side of the cave. “So now what?” she asked. Her voice sounded dull, and David realized she was still in shock over finding Dov’s remains.
“Well, for starters, I’ll get my rig back on and go retrieve those air tanks and the extra light.”
“That sounds like we’re just postponing the inevitable,” she said.
“That’s how survival works, Judith. You keep at it, and something might break our way.”
“Sure.”
He patted her hand. “Give me your headlamp — I’ll need it to mark the entrance here. You can use the spare, although you should just shut it off until I get back. I want to look around the entrance to this cave to see if we’ve missed something. Then I’ll retrieve the bottles and get them into the cave.”
“And then?”
“And then we keep on trying things until something works. Give me a hand with this rig, please?”
She helped him into his tank harness. He checked his weights, tested the regulator, and pulled on his mask. She was clutching his forearm. “Don’t leave me here,” she whispered.
“Never,” he said. Then he got down on his hands and knees, flattened out, and crawled into the water like a crocodile. He bumped and banged his way through the flooded narrow passage until he came out into the main cistern. He was just able to turn around in the cave entrance. He checked his gear one more time and then took a compass bearing to get himself to where he remembered the main slab was. That’s where the bottles had been; where they were now, of course, was anyone’s guess, except they should still be bumping along the ceiling of the cistern. He was aware that he might have to search for them, expending more precious air in the process.
He positioned Judith’s headlamp at the cave entrance and turned it on. It was not as strong as it had been. Then he launched from the lip of the entrance and headed up toward the ceiling, searching for the slab hole and the air tanks. After five minutes he had found neither and felt the first strings of panic. Then he remembered the air bubble trick. He exhaled and watched, but the bubbles now just drifted along the ceiling. Of course, he thought, the damned slab is down. He checked his compass and headed due east. If he had to, he would crisscross the ceiling from east to west until he found either the tanks or the slab hole.
He finally fetched up against the eastern wall. Nothing. Just the smooth grayish rock of the ceiling and upper walls staring back at him. He reversed course and swam back, offsetting as best he could, heading west now. He ran up against the western wall without finding anything. He reversed again. In his mind he was executing a search pattern along the ceiling, trying to offset his track by three or four feet each time, but he knew full well that, without a visual reference, he might be plowing through the same water over and over again. Have to keep trying, he thought grimly. Not going to just sit in that cave and suffocate.
The third time he hit the eastern wall something caught his eye, but it wasn’t an air tank. It was another pipe, similar to the one down at the bottom. There was a mesh screen over this one, but otherwise no indication of what it was for. He paused, treading water, while he tried to figure it out. It felt like his air supply was beginning to resist his breathing, a sure sign that he was running out of air. He didn’t want to look at his gauges. Pipe at the bottom with a current coming in. He felt the screen, and his gloved hand adhered to it. Current going out. A recirculating system of some kind? Water pumped in from that plant and then taken back out up here at the top of the cistern? He put both hands up against the mesh screen; after a few seconds the suction effect was more pronounced. It gave him an idea.
He turned around and swam back over to the western wall. When he hit the rock on that side, he turned off his light and looked down. His reference light was visible as a dim glow almost directly beneath him. Finally did something right, he thought, as he dived down to the side cave entrance. A minute later he broke through the air-water interface in the cave. Judith was standing next to the wall with her headlight still on, studying the symbols. He took off his mask and told her he had good news and bad news. The bad news was that he hadn’t found the tanks. The good news was about the second pipe.
“I think I know how to get us out of here,” he said, “but it’s going to be complicated.”
“I’ve been reading the walls,” she said, as if she hadn’t heard him. “Whoever wrote this was the Last Man — the one selected to make sure everyone else had committed suicide. He is telling the story of that night. It is… terrible, terrible beyond words.”
“Wow,” he said, momentarily forgetting their situation. “What was his name?”