“Did you search the cisterns?” Ellerstein asked, remembering Skuratov’s concern.
“The cisterns? You mean along the southern rim?”
“No, the main cisterns,” Ellerstein said. “The big ones you get to by walking back along the water channels from the middle terrace.”
The colonel was about to answer when one of his men called him urgently. He was standing up on the outer casemate wall and pointing down at something on the eastern slope.
“What, dammit?” the colonel snapped, his lighter poised halfway to his cigarette.
“Water, sir. There’s water coming out of the mountain. Right down there. Lots of it.”
Shapiro looked at Ellerstein, and then they both headed for the eastern gate, along with the troops. One of the soldiers actually trotted down the Serpent Path to where a black stream was gushing out of the ground. Ellerstein and the colonel followed him. The water was coming from a small cave entrance. He followed Shapiro and the soldiers into the cave, climbing past the remains of a stinking pile of bat-soiled sand that was being washed out of the cave entrance as they crawled over it.
Each of the soldiers had a flashlight, and they were pointing them everywhere in the cave. The floor was flooded to a depth of a couple of feet. The water seemed to be coming from a spring at the back of the cave in a rhythmic upwelling. Ellerstein tried to identify the smell in the cave, and finally did.
“That’s warm water,” he exclaimed. He put a finger into the water and confirmed it by tasting a drop.
“No way,” Shapiro said, but then he, too, tasted a drop, as did a couple of the soldiers. “Okay, it’s warm,” Shapiro said. “So how the hell is a spring in the mountain generating warm water a thousand feet up?”
Ellerstein shook his head and asked one of the soldiers for his flashlight. He sloshed over to where the water was rising. Shining the light down into the swirling water, he could just make out the edge of a large slab through a cloud of turbid sand. What looked like the end of a staging pipe was jammed between the edge of the slab and the rim of the hole. When he saw the iron ring, he called Shapiro.
“Man-made,” he said. “There’s a lifting ring. And look at that pipe. Fresh scratches. Someone is under there, I think.”
“In what?” Shapiro asked. “Under there, inside what? A cistern?”
“I don’t know,” Ellerstein said, “but this is new. The presence of a cistern here, I mean. We need to open that hole.”
Shapiro straightened up, hesitated, and ordered the sergeant to get the slab out of the hole. The sergeant examined the iron ring and then had three men pull the end of the staging pipe through the crack. They all felt the slab thump back down into its hole once the pipe pulled clear, stopping the flow of water. Then they put the pipe through the iron ring. Three men got on each end, and they lifted the slab aside, revealing the rectangular hole. Water welled up again.
They shone their lights down into the hole, just in time to see a scuba air tank rising like a ghost right toward them before it popped up into their faces. Other bits of material were visible circling in the water below the opening. The sergeant hauled the tank up into the cave and read out the name of the dive shop in Yafo. When Ellerstein heard that, he signaled Shapiro and backed out of the cave.
“What?” the colonel asked.
“I think I know who’s down there, in that cistern,” Ellerstein said. “Have you found out who those vehicles belong to down behind the hostelry?”
“My people are checking on that,” Shapiro said, visibly angry now. “Now please, tell me what the hell you’re doing here.”
“Colonel Shapiro, I suggest you station some people by that hole in there,” Ellerstein said, “and then go find Colonel Skuratov and his people. I’ll bet they’re up in the fortress by now, what with all this commotion.”
“Skuratov? What do you know about him? Goddammit, Professor—”
“Please, Colonel Shapiro. Go find Skuratov. Take him to the terraces, away from this side, away from as many watching eyes as possible. I’ll wait here for whoever’s in the cistern to surface. Then we’ll sort it all out.”
“We?! Who is ‘we’?”
Ellerstein looked down at his shoes but said nothing.
“Look — I need to report all this,” Shapiro said, pointing at the slab opening and the debris that had come out of the hole.
“Yes, of course,” Ellerstein said, “but not just yet, okay? Let’s see who comes out of that water, and what they were doing down there.”
“But my instructions — to report immediately—”
“They will ask a thousand questions, yes? Why not wait until you have some answers, hunh? Meanwhile, Colonel, I really need a phone circuit, or even a radio, to Jerusalem. I need to call Israel Gulder in the prime minister’s office.”
Shapiro started to object again, but then the bit about the PM’s office penetrated.
“Who the hell are you, Professor?” he asked.
“Nobody famous, Colonel — but you will be if I don’t get that circuit up. Now go find Skuratov. He’s up there. And, Colonel? Keep some soldiers with you.”
31
Judith had almost finished reading Judah’s last testament when she stopped, her finger poised above the lampblack symbols.
“What?” David asked. The water had receded entirely from the cave, but the air was getting worse. They would have to get out of here soon.
She sat back down on the floor of the cave and frowned up at the writing. “There’s something he’s talking about besides the last night. He makes reference to some event, some disturbance that happened forty years before the siege. In Jerusalem. It concerns his brother.”
“What kind of disturbance?”
She shook her head. “It’s difficult, without time to really study it. There are many possible interpretations of the words. Like the word ‘brother’—it can mean his actual brother or brother in arms, like that.” She studied the writing some more. “It’s as if — oh, my God.”
“What? What?”
She pressed the back of her hand against her lips and glanced over at the pile of rags and bones. “My God,” she whispered again, “I think I know who this is. Listen.”
David was baffled, but she was obviously overwhelmed by what she thought she’d discovered.
“Listen to what he writes at the very end, down here at the bottom. Damn the saltwater — this stuff is disappearing in front of my eyes. He says: I regret, oh Lord, that we lost this war. It was madness to start it, that we all knew, those of us who had been in the hills for those many years. And now, desecration and abomination beyond words, or speaking. Something like that. Then it goes on: So be it. This could not have happened if it was not your will. I was just one of your instruments, as I now remain. Then there’s more, about his brother. It’s, well, an apology. To or about his brother, I think.”
“For what?”
“First he says he’s not apologizing for betraying him to the Romans. As the long-lost, disgraced, and exiled brother, he, Judah, had been the only one his brother could trust to do such a thing, because the priests and even the Romans would absolutely believe it.” She stopped again, working through the translation. “He is apologizing for scorning his brother, who had preached the other course, the way of love and reconciliation, just the opposite of the path the Jews had ultimately chosen, the way of war.”