“How about the rest of Skuratov’s cell? You going to shoot them, Mr. Gulder?”
“No, Mr. Hall. We reserve the death penalty for monsters like Adolf Eichmann. No, these people will serve life imprisonment in a special facility down in the Negev Desert. Their nights, anyway. Their days will be spent at Dimona, cleaning up the mess they made. They may become a little ‘hot,’ as they say, but—” He shrugged.
“So why are you telling me all this?”
“Because it doesn’t matter that you know, Mr. Hall.”
David just stared at him until he realized what Gulder was telling him. “Are you going to execute me?”
“No, Mr. Hall, we are not.”
Imprisonment, then, he thought. For life. They were going to just leave him up here, locked up in this monastery, forever. “You can’t get away with this,” he said, clearing his throat, knowing even as he said it that, yes, they probably could. The image of this ice-cold bureaucrat pushing Colonel Shapiro off the wall was still vivid in his mind.
Gulder snubbed out the cigarette. “You violated our hospitality at Metsadá, Mr. Hall. Everyone at the IAA heard about that. You became, how shall we say it, persona non grata, yes? You then went on scuba excursions from your hotel at Tel Aviv, where you and Dr. Ressner became involved in an underwater murder.”
“Involved?” David protested. “I damned near got killed.”
“That’s not what you told the police, though, was it?”
David started to answer and then just swallowed. Gulder smiled again.
“Did you know Colonel Shapiro was an expert scuba diver? Ah, well, it doesn’t matter now, does it. You then took some extra dive tanks from the dive shop. You did not return them. Your rented Land Rover was found mysteriously abandoned, not at Metsadá but on the coast. Your personal effects were left in the hotel room. The assumption is clear: You went diving on your own. An accident. One should never dive alone, isn’t that the rule?”
“People back home aren’t going to buy that, Mr. Gulder.”
“What people, Mr. Hall? Your missing girlfriend? You have no girlfriend. You never did, actually.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” David demanded. One of the guards began to stand up when he heard David’s tone of voice, but Gulder motioned for him to sit back down.
“Adrian Draper. How did she feel about your whistle-blowing plans, Mr. Hall? Was she enthusiastic?”
“Quite the opposite,” David said. “She was adamantly opposed. Said it would wreck my career in nuclear power. We had some big fights.”
“That whistle that you were going to blow, that involved heavy water, correct?”
“Correct.”
“Heavy water that was being diverted within your own company. Who else, besides yourself, would have noticed such a thing within your company?”
“Nobody. That was my job. That’s one of the reasons I’d been sent to school, for special training.”
“Where you met Adrian Draper.”
“Yes.”
“Was it a loving relationship, Mr. Hall?” Gulder asked softly. “Were you two planning for babies and a suburban future? Or more like an exciting relationship between two intellectual equals, great sex and fiery battles? Head games and then bed games?”
David, stunned, could only blink. How could this man, this foreigner, know the first thing about Adrian Draper and their all too brief time together? Gulder leaned in, looking David right in the eye.
“Did you ever find out where the heavy water was going, Mr. Hall?”
“No, I didn’t. The company quashed the investigation immediately. Once I got some of our government people into it, like my uncle, I was kept out of the loop.”
Gulder nodded, reached for another cigarette, then apparently decided against it.
“Right after this scandal broke in Washington, Adrian left, isn’t that correct?”
“Yes,” David said. “The Israeli Embassy said she’d been called away on travel. I don’t know if she’s even alive.”
“Oh, but she is, Mr. Hall,” Gulder said. “Alive and well, and back in her own country. She even misses you. A little.”
David was stunned. “What are you talking about?” he asked.
“You’ll figure it out, I’m sure, Mr. Hall. Follow the heavy water. It will become clear to you. Now: Judith Ressner.”
David’s mind was still reeling from the implications of what Gulder had been saying about Adrian. “What about Judith? Does she know all this, too? Does Ellerstein?”
“Well. Dr. Ellerstein works for me, after a fashion, and cares very much for Dr. Ressner. So when your uncle of the NRC calls, he will call Ellerstein, I think, because Dr. Ressner, the discoverer of the most fabulous treasure in the history of biblical archaeology, is very, very busy, Mr. Hall.”
David started to shake his head. Judith would never go along with this. Gulder saw it. “Dr. Ressner is a realist, Mr. Hall. She knows that, sometimes, extreme measures have to be taken by a small state such as ours. Her husband was something of a case in point, correct? Killed by a madman, but stilclass="underline" Skuratov was state security. Dr. Ressner is quite fond of you, I think.”
Then David got it: They had told Judith that he wouldn’t be executed as long as she kept her mouth shut about the Skuratov conspiracy. Gulder was smiling that Cheshire cat smile again. David went back to the matter of Adrian. “Are you telling me that Adrian Draper worked for you? For Israel?”
“I never said that, Mr. Hall.”
“Then our whole relationship was what, an assignment for Adrian, an Israeli spy? She was just playing me? You were playing me?”
“Much like you played Judith Ressner, is it not, Mr. Hall? Coming here under false pretenses. All that deception, first getting close to her, then striking out at the right moment? Leaving her wondering what she had done? How does that feel, Mr. Hall?”
David opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Gulder got up.
“I will ask them to let you out for exercise in the mornings and afternoons,” he said, motioning to his guards that they were leaving. “These papers, of course, are for you. There will be more, from time to time, as long as you cooperate with these gentle people. They are not jailers, but they do live an exposed existence up here in the Golan. They depend on the Israeli Army, don’t they, Mr. Hall? You can see Syria from your windows, I am told.”
David just sat there, his mind bowled over by what this strange little man had been telling him.
“I’ll send up an English-Latin dictionary, Mr. Hall. This is a very old-fashioned place. Who knows, in time they may teach you how to illuminate a manuscript.”
David got up again and resumed walking, counterclockwise this time. The afternoon sun beat down out in the middle of the square, heating the stones around the fountain and wilting some of the plants and herbs. At nearly eight thousand feet, there was over a mile of atmospheric protection missing, and David took care to stay out of the sun. Gulder had been as good as his word. He had sent the dictionary and another round of newspapers. David had been able to enjoy, if only vicariously, the triumph of the discoveries in the great cistern. Adrian’s theory. His discovery. Judith’s triumph, which was as it should be. There were pictures of the treasures themselves, and also of Judith Ressner, who looked increasingly exhausted by all the media attention. The discoveries made world headlines, and already the scholarly debates had begun, with various religious factions taking widely different positions on interpreting the finds, especially the contents of the sealed scrolls. He sympathized with her. Hell, he missed her.