“Now, Mr. Hall,” Gulder said. He gestured again with his chin.
When they got up to the top, there were many more soldiers standing along the eastern parapet walls, looking down. The sergeant was busy shouting orders, and there appeared to be a recovery detail shaping up by the eastern gate. David had little time to watch; the bodyguards escorted him directly to the helicopter, whose turbines were already spooling up. They sat him in the left rear seat, helped him strap in, and put a headset on his head. Then one of them strapped in next to him while the other got in the right front seat, next to the pilot. A soldier outside closed the door and stood ready with a fire extinguisher until the engines came up to power. Then they lifted off.
As soon as they were safely airborne, the bodyguard next to him produced a set of plastic handcuffs and snapped them onto David’s wrists. He did not resist: What would have been the point, at two thousand feet over the Dead Sea? Then the guard produced a black sleep mask, which he gently fit over David’s eyes. David felt a hand on his chest, pushing him back into the seat. The gesture said it alclass="underline" Relax. He slumped in his seat. After watching Gulder calmly send the colonel to his death, he wondered now if the ministerial aide had told them to throw him out of the helicopter somewhere out over the Mediterranean.
33
Judith saw the helicopter lift off without Gulder and asked Ellerstein where David Hall had gone. Ellerstein nodded at the rapidly disappearing helicopter.
“Yossi!” she exclaimed. “Where are they taking him?”
“Away?” he tried. She stared at him. Gulder had been talking on a small radio set and now ended the call. He walked over to them. “So, Dr. Ressner, tell me in complete detail, please: What have you found down there in that cistern?”
“Not until you tell me where you’ve taken Mr. Hall,” she declared. Some soldiers were standing at the top of the steps, watching them. The morning heat was rising in shimmering waves, distorting the view.
“We’ve taken Mr. Hall to a safe place, Dr. Ressner,” Gulder said. “Until we can sort out the ramifications of what you two have done here.”
“What ramifications?”
“Well, because you chose to speak in English, after I twice asked you to speak in Hebrew, Mr. Hall knows things that he might otherwise not have known. Also, in certain respects, you are responsible for the death of a senior counterintelligence officer. For starters.”
“Mr. Gulder,” protested Ellerstein, but the aide waved him silent.
“Listen to me, Dr. Ressner. Yossi here tells me you have found artifacts from Herod’s Temple in that cave. Is that true?”
“Yes, I believe it is.”
“And there is writing on the walls? The testament of the last Zealot?”
“So it says.”
“Anything else?”
“What appears to be the remains of my husband at the bottom of the cistern,” she said defiantly. “If that matters to you.”
“Yes, yes, I understand that, but I’m talking about antiquities. What else is down there?”
She glared at him again as if he were inhuman. He shook his head impatiently and tried again. “Dr. Ressner,” he said, “I am truly sorry that your husband was killed by that man, but now you’ve wiped that slate clean, yes? So: Now you must see things my way. The government’s way. We must deal with the present, and the present is a gathering avalanche of international media interest even as we stand here talking. You know you will be the most famous archaeologist in the world in about six hours, don’t you?”
“Me? What do you mean?”
“Because we are going to announce these discoveries, immediately, just as soon as the army can either get some divers down here or get the water pumped out of that cistern. Independent confirmation, then announcement.”
“It wasn’t my discovery. It was David Hall—”
“No, it was not, Dr. Ressner,” Gulder interrupted. She looked at Ellerstein, who nodded his head at her. Listen to this man, he was telling her.
“This discovery was made by you, Dr. Yehudit Ressner,” Gulder continued. “After years of solitary study and analysis. The American’s visit was simply an annoyance, which was why you were upset by the requirement to shepherd him around this site. Then he trespassed at night and was invited to leave. He went scuba diving and then went back to America. The American is most definitely not part of this story, Dr. Ressner. You, on the other hand, are the story. Along with the artifacts, of course.”
“But—”
“Yes, I know, we have Mr. Hall in custody. Of course. We will need to debrief him, and then we will send him home, but not until we have established the provenance of these amazing discoveries, in a proper public relations setting, as it were. Now: Tell me in detail, what is down there?”
Bewildered, but not sure what to do about it, she told him about everything they’d found. Gulder’s eyes gleamed when he heard it. An officer called down to them from above that a navy dive team was on the way from Haifa.
“Well, Dr. Ressner: Do you think you could manage to go back down there? One last time? Based on what you’ve said about its size, it may take days to drain that cistern. We need to verify these things immediately.”
“And preserve them,” she said. “The cave must be atmospherically sealed before the water level drops below the entrance. We have no way—”
“Yes, yes, of course, Dr. Ressner,” he said, steering her with his hand on her shoulder toward the steps. “Trust me, we will shortly have more archaeology experts here than there ever were Zealots. First, I think, we need pictures. Now: Yossi, take her up to wait for the dive team’s helicopter. These are military divers, Dr. Ressner. They will take good care of you down there. Trust me, Dr. Ressner.”
As she went with Ellerstein she realized she had not told Gulder about the wine bowl.
34
David completed his one hundredth circuit of the garden cloister and finally sat down, somewhat out of breath. After three weeks, he had not yet entirely acclimated to the altitude. Every time he was brought out to exercise, one of the monks took up station in a corner of the cloister, ostensibly reading a book of prayer. He seemed to pay no particular attention to what David was doing, walking or not walking, but he didn’t leave, either.
The blindfold had come off as soon as they took him out of the helicopter. He was pretty sure that they had landed somewhere up in the Golan Heights, because the truck that had picked him up couldn’t have gone more than a few miles away from the landing site, and most of that had been damn near straight up through snowy mountain ravines. They had taken him to a mountain monastery, through massive wooden gates, and into a bare white stone courtyard, flanked by thick, high walls on two sides and a stone building in front of him. Two very old men in black robes were bobbing at him and smiling a welcome. His Israeli guards took off the plastic cuffs and left without a word through a man-sized metal door embedded in one of the two enormous wooden gates.
David hadn’t known what to do next. The sun was intense, and the air was very thin. He already had a headache, and he wasn’t sure that any of these people spoke English. Then another monk came out into the courtyard, younger, only in his sixties or so, and greeted him in broken English. He took David through the front door of the building, down a short stone corridor with no doors, and out into a garden enclosure surrounded by a columned walkway on all four sides. There was a still fountain in the center, flower beds in four quadrants, and what looked like the entrance to a small chapel on one side. The battered remains of a stone tower rose over one corner of the walls. The monk walked straight across the enclosure and took David into yet another corridor. David noted that there were no lights or any other signs of electricity in the monastery. Finally they came to a plain wooden door at the end of the cross corridor. The monk produced a set of antique keys, unlocked the door, and showed him into a bare room that was about fifteen feet square.