Inside was a single cotlike bed with two blankets, an armoire, a small wooden desk, and a chair. There were two candlesticks, a large enamel pitcher, and a glass on the desk. In one corner was a washbasin, under which there was a chamber pot. There were two tiny windows, embrasured as if for defensive purposes, with small apertures in the room’s wall opening to larger apertures outside. The walls were made of polished stone, and the ceiling was domed in a four-part arch of white tiles.
“You rest now, Mr. Hall,” the monk said in what sounded like a Greek accent. “Water to drink is in the pitcher. Drink much water. Help with the head.”
“What is our altitude here?” David asked, looking out one of the windows, where a stunning view of snow-tipped mountains covered the visible horizon.
“Above the sea? Nearly three thousand meters, Mr. Hall. Rest. Food soon.”
He had had plenty of time to rest for the next few days, because he had not been let out of the room. A package with some of his clothes had arrived the second day. A silent monk brought him two meals a day, simple fare of tea and bread and fruit in the morning and a meal of hot soup, usually vegetable, more bread, and a glass of wine just before sundown. Once a week there was meat, which he was pretty sure was stewed goat. He had tried speaking to the monk, but the man simply put a finger to his own lips and shook his head. When David had pantomimed a book, they brought him a Bible written in Latin. His headache had finally gone away after five days. He had no way to shave, so now he was growing a beard.
There had been no question of escape. The curtain walls were easily eight feet thick, and the windows no more than a foot square. The door was made of old wood that felt like it had turned to stone. The monks got up at first light and went to bed at dark. He had candles but no matches. He had studied some Latin in preparation for the expedition, out of personal interest in Roman siege warfare. Now it seemed he was going to get the chance to learn a lot more Latin. Then Gulder had paid a visit.
He heard the helicopter hammering the mountain air but never saw it. A half hour later, what sounded like the same ancient lorry had come grinding up toward the monastery. They took him to the garden cloister to meet with Gulder, who showed up with the same two stone-faced bodyguards. Gulder had brought a stack of thin newspapers rolled up in a shopping bag.
“These are for you, Mr. Hall,” he had begun. “They are English-language versions of the Jerusalem Post and the Herald Trib. So you can see what has happened with the amazing discoveries at Metsadá.”
“Thank you, Mr. Gulder. Although what I really want to know is how long you plan to keep me imprisoned here.”
“Imprisoned is too harsh a word, Mr. Hall,” Gulder said, sitting down at the other end of the bench, just out of David’s reach should he be inclined to violence. “We have prisons, and they do not have gardens.”
“Same net result. Solitary confinement by any other name…”
“Yes, well. They are treating you all right here?”
“They are treating me just fine, although I could use some exercise and something to read besides a Latin Bible.”
Gulder nodded and tapped the bag of newspapers. “These will help. Yehudit Ressner is now a very famous archaeologist.”
“I can just imagine.”
“Probably you can’t, Mr. Hall. It has been a veritable circus. The whole world is agog.”
“There were scrolls in those holders?”
“Oh, yes, and the holders were sealed with a resin mixture. They are in perfect condition. Of course, the scholars are already arguing.”
David laughed. That fit.
“There was more: Did you notice anything about the bottom of the cistern when you went searching for your equipment?”
“Lots of silt. Oh, yes, it looked like there were bricks lining the bottom.”
“Bricks, indeed. We hoped they’d be solid gold, Mr. Hall.”
“They weren’t?”
“They were not, unfortunately, especially given today’s price of gold. The archaeologists said they were actually worth more than gold. They were testamentary tablets, not bricks.”
“Which are?”
“Each of the tablets had a name. There were nine hundred and eighty names. They think that, once the decision was made, each man was given a tablet, and then the trusted ones took the tablets to the cave. Against the day.”
“Oh, my,” David said. “No longer the Metsadá myth, is it. What about those cylinders?”
Gulder reached into his shirt pocket and extracted a package of cigarettes and a lighter. He offered the pack to David, who shook his head. Gulder lit up, shocking the pristine monastery air. He smiled. It was a sad little smile, and David suddenly realized they had finally come to the heart of the matter.
“Skuratov was telling the truth about the cylinders, as far as he went,” Gulder began. “Our original investigation was triggered by suspicions that someone was diverting small amounts of weapons-grade material. It was actually much worse than that.”
“Worse in what way?”
Gulder described how the government suspected they had diverted enough material for a single weapon. “They had plans for making five weapons, Mr. Hall. Five, not just one.”
“You said earlier they were diverting bomb materials. Were they actually selling plutonium or HEU?”
“No, Mr. Hall,” Gulder said patiently. “They got their money by selling some of the heavy water to Iran through a series of middlemen. The deuterium oxide production system at Metsadá has been there a long time. They simply restarted it. They also needed heavy water to conceal the materials they were accumulating at Dimona. They couldn’t steal both heavy water and fissile materials. They acquired some from other sources, but that cost money, so they then went back to the Metsadá plant.”
“And when it produced much more than they needed, they saw the opportunity to sell it, make money for the other components they’d need.”
“Precisely, Mr. Hall.”
“So they weren’t just facilitating Iran’s bomb — they were working on making some of their own.”
“I think Colonel Skuratov was concerned that the government of Israel might have a failure of nerve when the time came,” Gulder said. “I think these weapons were going to be their insurance.”
David nodded. “I have to tell you, this would be very, very hard to pull off in our uranium fuel production facilities. In a weapons facility, ten times harder.”
“I am told that our own controls would have eventually caught them, except for the fact that they could conceal their ‘stash,’ as it were, using the heavy water as a shield. Hiding that diversion is not that difficult if the right people are involved. Hiding the growing mass of weapons grade material is the problem.”
“So it all came back to the heavy water.”
“Correct, Mr. Hall. So now you know.”
“What happened to the remaining conspirators?”
“Skuratov, of course, is dead, as is Colonel Shapiro.”
“Meant to ask you about that,” David said.
“Shapiro was Skuratov’s number two at Dimona. Impossible that he did not know what was going on. He tried his best to deflect Professor Ellerstein that night. Yossi noticed, told me. He was too dangerous a loose end, so I simply took the opportunity to let him try out the full Zealot experience, too.”