She nodded. She had much to tell him, and something to give him.
“Not only no, but absolutely no,” Gulder said, visibly annoyed. “Get out of here.”
“You’re thinking like a jailer,” Ellerstein said. “The persona suits you, but you’re making a mistake.”
“Really.”
“Yes, really. The longer you keep Mr. Hall in one of your boxes, the longer Dr. Ressner has to wonder what’s happened to him. Eventually, she will ask.”
“And I will tell her that it is none of her damned business,” Gulder said.
“That’s if she asks you.”
Gulder opened his mouth to say something but then snapped it shut. He had been about to say Who else would she ask? when the answer dawned on him.
“If she does that, goes to the media, then we will return the favor and tell the world she was not the great discoverer everybody’s making her out to be.”
A secretary came in quietly with a sheaf of papers and put them in Gulder’s in-box. He groaned. She smiled at Ellerstein and left just as discreetly.
“Or you could let her go talk to him. Satisfy herself that he is not being mistreated, that he is well and unharmed. He is well and unharmed, Mr. Gulder?”
“Hmmpf,” Gulder grunted.
“I will take that as a yes. So: Let them see each other. Let them speculate on what’s going to happen next. Their imaginations will probably conjure up more possibilities than yours ever can. Drop a hint or two that this situation will not go on forever. Let them define what that might mean.”
“Why should I do anything, Yossi?” Gulder asked. “I can recalibrate her with one phone call. She promises to keep quiet. We promise not to shoot him. That’s all there is to it.”
“No, I think you’re wrong,” Ellerstein said. “Right now she is like a capacitor, slowly accumulating a big charge of electricity. Ultimately, all capacitors need to fire. Do this and you will head off a larger problem. You said that time would eventually lay this whole matter to rest.”
Gulder sighed in exasperation. “What I meant was that we will cloak the whole Skuratov business in a fog of paperwork and endless investigations. If she does talk, there will be no facts to back up her story. No Mr. Hall, either.”
“Has no one come looking for him?”
“Only his uncle, an official with their nuclear agency, and a brother. The uncle was seriously concerned. The brother seemed to be going through the motions. We gave them the diving-alone scenario, said we’d keep looking.”
“Did they contact Ressner?”
“I doubt it,” Gulder said. “The uncle knew about Hall’s Metsadá project and had heard of the great discovery. We told him Hall found nothing but piqued the interest of the IAA. They sent a team down and found what they found. More along that line. Hall was not involved. We are grateful, etc., but since we can’t find him…”
“This is the uncle in Washington who was part of the diversion investigation, started by David Hall? A diversion involving Israel?”
Gulder frowned. “What’s your point, Yossi?”
“That could be a rather large loose end, Mr. Gulder. Let me try another argument on you: If this uncle tries to make a connection between Hall’s disappearance and the heavy water diversion case, you will need an ally, someone outside of government. That could be Judith Ressner. If we spin this correctly, give her hope that we’re working on a solution to this situation, she will be motivated to support the government’s claim that the Skuratov business never happened.”
Gulder sat back in his chair, tapping a pen against his teeth while he thought about that. “Ressner is a beautiful woman,” he said finally. “He sees her, he’s going to agitate for her to do something about his — sequestration.”
“She will caution him to remain patient, not to do anything precipitous. She will give him hope.”
“There is no hope, Yossi — we can never let him go.”
“Then let me calibrate her, as you so quaintly put it: I’ll tell her to keep doing what she’s doing, being the face of the Temple artifacts. There are ‘people’ behind the scenes working on your other problem, the fate of your Mr. Hall. You must be patient. Like that.”
“To give a man hope when there is none is a dangerous game, Yossi,” Gulder said. “You’d best be very careful with your lies.”
“That’s a yes, then?”
Gulder gave him a long look and then nodded. He gave Ellerstein a phone number to call.
36
Two weeks later the abbot joined David in the garden right after lunch and sat down next to him. David smiled and closed his book. The abbot was known as Father Kamil, and he was somewhere between seventy and a hundred years old, with the face of an Old Testament prophet and a long white beard to match. David had told the abbot all about the Second Temple finds at Masada and explained his own presence at the monastery as a way of keeping the discoveries an Israeli triumph.
“How goes the Latin lesson?” the abbot inquired, apparently uninterested in David’s backstory.
“In res omnia, patiencia,” David said.
“Not even close,” the abbot said with a laugh. “I have news for you. A visitor.”
“Should I be afraid?” David asked.
“Your visitor is a woman, so I would say definitely yes.”
“How would you know that, Father Abbot?”
“I was not always a priest, Mr. Hall. Many of us here lived among the Gentiles, as we like to call the rest of the world, and now we’re here, of our own free will.”
“Recognize danger when you see it, do you?” David asked.
“Perhaps you are here because you did not recognize danger when you saw it, Mr. Hall?”
“Touché,” David said with a grin. “Is my visitor Judith Ressner, by any chance?”
It was evening when the helicopter announced its approach with the usual clattering roar. A few minutes later one of the monks escorted Judith into the cloistered garden, bowed, and left them alone. David stood up to greet her, not quite sure of how to do it. She solved his problem by dropping her tote bag and coming into his arms. They held each other for a long time before she finally lifted her head.
“I have missed you, Mr. Hall.”
“Never thought I’d see you again,” David said. “How did you manage this?”
“Yossi Ellerstein managed it, not me,” she said, sitting down on the stone bench and pulling her bag over. “Have you become a monk, then?”
David looked down at his monastery garb and then tugged on his beard. “How do I look?” he said.
“Suitably holy,” she said with a smile. “I must be quick. The helicopter must leave before full dark. I brought you something.”
“A ladder, I hope,” he said. “Or a one-way ticket out of this place? A sign that I’m not stuck here forever?”
“No ladders,” she said. “Yossi tells me that he and other people are working to get you released. First the government must bury the Skuratov incident. That takes time.”
“I told Ellerstein that I could damned well keep that secret,” he said. “I have nothing to gain and everything to lose by opening my yap.”
“Still, they must be very sure. Your uncle — Jack Hall, is it? — He has contacted the government. The fact that he is a nuclear agency official complicated matters.”
David sat back with a sigh. Of course it would, he thought. Heavy water diversion. Shit.
She took his hand. “Yossi says the government knows it can’t keep you here forever. He says that he and I must come up with a plan that solves the government’s problem for them. Hopefully before the prime minister’s political problems bring on an election, or the Arabs bring on another war.”