“What? That’s impossible. I would have to notify—”
“No!” he shouted and then lowered his voice. “I mean, you can’t — you don’t know what I’ve found, but if you come, you will be the discoverer of record.”
“Mr. Hall—”
“Because you’re the archaeologist. I’m just an amateur. I haven’t touched anything. You will be the one, the archaeologist who makes the greatest discovery in modern Jewish history. Think of it.”
She did think of it, and then recoiled at the enormity of what he had done. Gone excavating at Masada. After being warned off the site. The IAA would expel him from the country. Any Israeli citizen helping him, especially an Israeli archaeologist… well, it was just unimaginable.
“Mr. Hall, this is impossible. I am a professional archaeologist, just as you say. I have responsibilities. A duty to protect ancient sites and relics. I am horrified at what you’ve done. I couldn’t begin to—”
“A gold-plated menorah, two meters high,” he whispered. “A dozen or more gold-capped theca, still sealed. A skeleton with a dagger. A cave whose walls are covered in writing.”
She was speechless. Two meters? Just like on the Roman coins. Judaea Capta. My God, could it be?
“Meet me in three hours,” he said. “By that geothermal building. South of the mountain. Drive past it, turn off your lights, and turn around and come back to it. And Judith? Bring your diving gear. It’s in a fully flooded cistern. Huge — a hundred feet across, easy. Three hours.”
He hung up and she just sat there, the phone pressed against her ear so hard it hurt, still in shock. Slowly she put the phone down and sat back on the couch. Almost unconsciously, she drank the entire glass of wine, while she tried to figure out what to do. Helping him was out of the question, of course. She had to call the chairman immediately. Report what this madman was saying. That he had been digging, illegally, on Herod’s mountain. That he was claiming to have made an enormous discovery.
Second Temple artifacts!
Then she got angry again. He had lied at every step. He had come to Israel with this crazy mission in mind all along. All the rest of it had been cover and deception. Getting them to help him gain access to the site. The bumbling amateur act. She should have known when they caught him out on the mountain at night. Communing with the spirits. Scouting was more like it.
And their evening together? More of the same. Now he wanted an archaeologist to somehow legitimize his discoveries? Right.
By now she was furious. The police, that’s who he was going to get, she decided. The police, who were already familiar with this man, would treat him to a little scouting expedition to an Israeli jail. She’d call the Interior Ministry, get one of their security teams to meet him in his precious three hours and haul his impudent ass off to jail. Let him spend the night in a cellblock with some bored Palestinian teenagers.
She swore out loud, reached for the phone, and jumped when it rang again. She grabbed it up, ready to yell at him.
24
David left the hostel and went out into the parking lot. It was coming on twilight, and most of the buses had already left. The lights up in the hostel were flicking off. He walked over to his Land Rover, got in, looked around to see if anyone cared what he was doing, and then drove out of the lot. He turned right and headed south toward the bottom of the Dead Sea. A spectacular sunset was shaping up over the escarpments to the west. He drove slowly, enjoying the view but dreading what Judith might do.
Would she come? Or would she call the cops? There hadn’t been a crucifixion in Palestine for a good many years, but he could imagine that they might work one up if she called the right people in. Maybe a mistake to have called her. Maybe he should drive back to Jerusalem and hold a little press conference.
The lonely road bore straight south into a landscape of glazed white evaporation ponds dotted with motionless yellow bulldozers. The gaunt shrubbery that littered the seashore up by the mountain was all gone now, the land so saturated with salt that nothing would ever grow there. He checked his rearview mirror; no lights. All the traffic from the site would be northbound, back up to Jerusalem. Then he realized that if he kept going, he was bound to run into an army patrol, and that might be awkward. He slowed and made a U-turn, lowering his own lights to parking lights. He loitered on the way back, going no more than ten miles an hour, killing time to full darkness. He planned to stay down on the seashore to wait for Judith. He’d grabbed one of the last sandwiches out of the cold case and three bottles of water before they shut the place down, so he had the makings of dinner. He was almost too excited to eat.
Would she come? What would he do if she did not?
He finally reached the geothermal complex, which had some security lights blazing on the high chain-link fence surrounding it. He turned off the coast highway and drove down the dirt track toward the salt lake, praying that the place wasn’t manned, and parked between two security floodlight poles. Their amber cones of halogen light created a deep shadow right alongside the fence between them. He shut the Land Rover down, doused the parking lights, and sat back to see what would happen. Behind him, just visible in the side mirrors, the tall steel tank tower rumbled quietly in the darkness, as if something were boiling in there. From this angle he could see a large, six-inch-diameter pipe that came out of the low windowless building and ran a few feet above the ground toward the back right corner of the fenced enclosure. Just before the fence it dipped down into the ground and disappeared to the northwest. He wondered if this was a desalinization plant for the tourist site at Masada. That would account for the boiling noises. The sulfurous stench of concentrated bromine salts infiltrated the Land Rover, even though he had the windows almost fully closed against nighttime mosquitoes. Out on the highway nothing moved. The mountain and the hostelry were hidden behind the shoulder of the high mesa that projected out toward the sea like some ancient headland. He waited.
She picked up the phone again. It was Ellerstein.
“Judith, shalom. Forgive me for intruding on your Shabbat.”
“That’s quite all right,” she said, suddenly in a quandary. She’d forgotten it was Shabbat. Should she tell him about David? Yossi probably had connections to the security people. He would know exactly what to do.
“I wasn’t able to find out anything about Mr. Hall,” he was saying. “His things are all still there in his hotel room, although they haven’t seen him and his bed has not been slept in.”
“Indeed,” she said. Tell him, her conscience urged. Tell him now.
“Yes, well, I realize this must be a bit awkward for you. He says he will call, then he does not. The housekeeping people don’t think he has been ill, either. I don’t know what to say.”
“Did they say his diving equipment was there?”
“What? Diving equipment? They didn’t mention that. You think he has gone diving somewhere?”
“I called the dive shop where we went. They said he still had some of their tanks. I think that must be it.” Tell him, the voice in her head was saying. Shouting. “So I must suppose he is on tour somewhere, then, perhaps getting his nerve back after Caesarea,” she continued, aware of the tension in her own voice. “Or he has had a better offer.”
He laughed. “I can’t imagine a better offer than your company, Yehudit. Still, this David Halclass="underline" He has done stupid things before, yes?”