She stopped again, her lips moving silently, while David watched. She was totally focused. Then she put both hands up to her cheeks while she read aloud. “He puts no faith in all the talk of prophecies, the Messiah stories. He says there were Messiahs every year, before and after his brother. All of them lunatics. But there had been something innately good and — I can’t make this out — innocent? about his brother. He, Judah, should never have scorned him, as a child or afterward. That was his only sin, he says. All of the things told about him later were lies, but for that, for scorning the beloved son, he repents from the bottom of his heart.”
David felt the hairs rising on the back of his head. “Messiah? Beloved son?”
“Att-haw baree kha-beeba. Revered son, or beloved son. I’m transliterating here, David. It will take a crowd of Aramaic experts to get it precisely right.”
“Even so,” he whispered. She nodded slowly, gazing at the words.
They both stared in wonder at the writing on the wall. Then she looked at him, her face a pale oval beneath the yellow headlamp. “Say the name, David,” she whispered. “Say it out loud.”
“Whose? Judah’s?”
“No, the whole name: Judah Sicarius. Say it out loud, three times.”
David said it, and the third time he understood: Judah Sicarius.
Judas Iscariot.
“Holy shit,” he whispered. “This was Judas?” Then he looked at the plain bronze bowl. “Oh, my God, Judith — that bowl. Could that be what I think it is?”
She shook her head slowly. “I don’t know. He says that if the Romans find the cave, they’ll leave the bowl, and thereby miss the real treasure here.”
“He must have been an old man — this was forty years after all that.”
“He says he had three score years — that’s roughly sixty years old. He would have been twentysomething at the time of the crucifixion. That makes sense — they were all young men.”
“His brother. Does he name him?”
“No, and it could be brother in the sense of ‘every man is my brother.’”
He looked at the bronze bowl again. It’s just a bowl, he thought. Or was it? “I’m almost afraid to touch it,” he said.
Then they both felt a thump of pressure in the air, as if something had squeezed the entire cistern outside.
“Something’s happened,” David said, almost glad for the distraction. “We’d better get out of here. Go see if we have an airspace up there.”
“What if we don’t?”
“All the water has withdrawn from in here. It had to go somewhere. There were grooves in the side of that big slab, which is probably how this place filled up over the centuries. If the water’s down, there has to be air. C’mon.”
Five minutes later they rose toward the top of the cave, buddy-breathing on the single remaining tank. When they bumped against the ceiling of the cavern, David released an air bubble from his mouth, hoping almost against hope that it would move away from them.
It did. Perversely, it went behind them. They followed it, saw lights, and a moment later popped out into the space where the slab had been. Four large soldiers and Professor Ellerstein were standing there, looking down at them.
“Shalom,” he intoned solemnly, reaching for his pipe.
The soldiers brought them up into the fortress through the Serpent Path gate. They stopped while a sergeant held a brief consultation on his radio. While he did, Ellerstein took them aside. “Mr. Hall,” he said, his expression anything but friendly. “Communing with the spirits again?”
“You have no idea,” David said, wondering what was going to happen next. Both he and Judith were itching vigorously. He was still shaken by that wine bowl. Ellerstein was about to reply when Judith grabbed his arm, pulled him farther out of earshot of the soldiers, and spoke to him in rapid-fire Hebrew for a few minutes. David couldn’t follow a word, of course, but he saw the expression on Ellerstein’s face. She’s telling him what’s down there, he thought.
When she was finished, Ellerstein walked slowly back over to where David and the soldiers were waiting. Judith folded her arms around her chest and stood staring out over the Dead Sea.
“I don’t know what to say now, Mr. Hall,” Ellerstein said. “It seems you have made some amazing discoveries here. Despite all the deception.”
“Did she tell you about finding her husband’s body?”
“Yes, she did. She believes he was murdered, probably by the same person who closed that slab on you two.”
“And the pipes? She tell you about the pipes?”
“No. What about pipes, Mr. Hall?”
David hesitated. Ellerstein was asking a question to which he sounded like he might already know the answer. He described the pipes and the cylinders. Ellerstein gave him an odd look when he mentioned them. “Whoever’s been using this cistern did not know about that cave,” David concluded, “but they sure as hell knew all about the cistern.”
Judith came back over to where they were standing. It was light now, with sunrise imminent. A cool breeze had begun to flow up over the ramparts.
“Skuratov,” she said. “He’s here, isn’t he?”
Ellerstein nodded.
“Take me to him,” she commanded.
“Judith, are you very sure—”
“I am very sure, Yossi. He locked us in the cave, didn’t he? He or his people. Now, if you please.”
Ellerstein hesitated and then spoke to the sergeant, who made another radio call. Then they were escorted up to the north end of the fortress, where they were met by Lieutenant Colonel Shapiro and more soldiers. Shapiro and Ellerstein talked for a moment in Hebrew, and then the colonel took them down to the middle terrace, where they found Skuratov sitting by himself. In the soft light of dawn, his face was haggard, but his eyes were alert and angry when he saw Judith and David. He was perched on a marble bench fragment just inside the waist-high balustrade, his back to the stupendous view overlooking the sheer palisade that dropped down into the darkness.
Colonel Shapiro walked out onto the terrace, followed by Judith, David, and Professor Ellerstein. Above them, Shapiro’s team waited, bored now, their submachine guns draped casually as they lit up cigarettes. In the distance, David saw lights down on the coast road, approaching the mountain, coming fast. Too fast, he thought; that has to be a helicopter. Then he heard the whining engine noise. Skuratov glared first at David, then Ellerstein. The helicopter came whopping by, actually below them, the rotor disk silvery in the morning light, and then it hooked a lazy right turn, climbing up the south side of the mountain, turning again to line up on the top of the fortress and then landing in a cloud of dust and noise in front of the storeroom ruins.
32
Ellerstein waited for all the noise up top to subside before approaching Skuratov. He was pretty sure he knew who was in the helicopter.
Skuratov just glared at him. “So, Ellerstein,” he said in Hebrew. “What have you done here?”
“The question is, Colonel, what have you done here,” Ellerstein replied. “These people tell me that Judith’s husband, Dov Ressner, lies at the bottom of that cistern.”
“Where you should have left him,” Skuratov spat, “and them.”
Ellerstein was taken aback. He asked Colonel Shapiro to move his men back from the terrace above; ordinary conscripts should not hear this. He also asked the colonel to keep an eye out for any more of Skuratov’s people. Just then Gulder and two of the prime minister’s bodyguards appeared, coming down the terrace steps. Shapiro made a gesture, and the soldiers backed out of sight. The bodyguards started down, but Gulder waved them back up the steps.