You have no idea, she thought. Which is when she realized she wasn’t going to tell him. She was going to go down there. Relics from the Second Temple! He had used the correct words to describe scroll holders. Hall knew what he had been looking at. My God! Right under their feet the whole time.
“He certainly has, Yossi,” she said, “but look, this was just — how shall I say it? An interlude. We did not fall in love or anything. He was nice, we had a nice day together, a nice evening. He made no false moves, and, really, no promises other than to call. It’s not the end of the world.”
“Nice, nice, nice,” he grumbled. “He got your hopes up and then dropped you without a word. Not so nice, I think.”
“Well, what can I say?” Her voice caught in her throat and she cleared it.
“You’re all right, then, Yehudit?” he asked.
“Yes, fine, Yossi. Enjoy a quiet evening. That’s what I plan to do.”
“Indeed. Very well. I will probably see you next week. At the Scrolls conference. The ownership debate again. You will attend, yes?”
“Now that I am back among the earnest academics? Yes, I will attend.”
“Very good. Until next week, then. Shalom.”
“Shalom,” she intoned, suddenly anxious to put the phone down. Her heart was beating faster. She was going to do this crazy thing? She began to think of how she would justify it, if they were caught. Nothing plausible came to mind. So call him back, she thought. Call him back and tell him. Then the siren song intruded: Second Temple artifacts. At Masada. The last stand. The Copper Scroll had described several treasure hoards taken down into the Judaean desert when Jerusalem fell. People had been looking for years. Allegro himself had searched and found nothing. Had that been disinformation? To keep anyone from looking at Masada? What more logical place than Masada for Temple artifacts? Hall’s lady friend had been right all along. It would be the discovery of the millennium.
Diving gear. Bring your diving gear, he’d said. She shivered. Diving alone into an unexplored cistern inside the mountain? What an incredibly stupid, foolhardy thing for him to have done. There would necessarily be no light, no landmarks, and no rescue if anything at all went wrong, and yet he had obviously done just that — and was now asking her to do it.
She sat there in the comfort of her living room, almost paralyzed, wondering if she’d lost her mind. Then, with a start, she realized she would have to hurry. She shivered again and then got up to get her equipment.
25
Ellerstein sat at his desk, looking down at the telephone, replaying Judith’s answers in his mind. The strain in her voice. The rush to put him off. Was he imagining these things? Was it just female embarrassment, or something else? Was somebody there with her, and she couldn’t talk? Hall, perhaps? He swiveled around in his oak desk chair. The lights of Yafo spread before him. Beyond lay the darkened Mediterranean.
He thought hard. The American had gone with Yehudit to Masada, and had been caught by an army patrol walking around the base of the mountain at night. He had admitted to going up there at night, the stones-and-bones business. Yehudit had been embarrassed professionally by the whole incident. She should have been furious with the American, and yet they had made up and spent a day together. Two evenings as well. Then he drops her and just disappears? Hall was an attractive, wealthy man, and Yehudit was a beautiful woman, on the cusp of coming back out into the world of the living. No man in his right mind would dump her like that. Unless — what?
Now Hall was missing, in so many words, and Yehudit was being, what — evasive? No, not that, but something. Did they have an affair going, maybe? She was embarrassed to tell him? Hall was there, at her apartment?
No, he didn’t think so. Something else.
The incident at Caesarea — a total mystery. The news reports said only that a German tourist had been shot and killed with some kind of spear gun at the undersea museum. No immediate suspects, but terrorism was suspected. A random killing at a burgeoning tourist attraction. Except: David Hall had witnessed it.
Masada. Hall. A senseless murder at Caesarea. Yehudit under pressure.
He swung back around and dialed Gulder’s number. He got voice mail. Shit, he thought. Shabbat. He hung up and rose to stare out the window. He needed instructions, and now would be nice. He redialed Gulder’s number and this time waited for the robot voice mail to take his message. “I think the American is up to something. It involves Masada. There’s something going on, and Ressner is involved. Please call at once. There’s something going on.”
He hung up as suspicions were solidifying in his mind. Now he needed to wait by the phone. What in the world was the damned American up to? Was this why Skuratov was so damned sensitive about Masada? He fixed a whisky and went into his study. The phone rang five minutes later.
“Tell me,” Gulder’s voice ordered without preamble.
Ellerstein reviewed the whole matter and concluded with his growing suspicions that Judith Ressner and the American were up to something, something that had to do with Masada.
Gulder was silent for a long minute. Then he sighed. “Tell it to me again,” he said. “Slower.”
Ellerstein went over everything he had again. This time he remembered to mention the dive shop manager’s comment about the tanks. Gulder interrupted him when he mentioned the tanks.
“Scuba tanks?”
“Yes, of course. They had been diving together. At Caesarea Maritima. On a scuba tour. Where Hall witnessed a possible terrorist attack on a tourist. Underwater.”
The line hissed for almost a half minute as Gulder absorbed that. Then he surprised Ellerstein.
“I appreciate the call, Yossi,” he said finally. “Upon reflection, however, I think it’s nothing. I think you may have been right with your original theory — only I think they’re seeing each other, and Ressner doesn’t want you to know.”
“Well, that’s possible, of course,” Ellerstein said doubtfully, “but—”
“No, I think it is nothing,” Gulder insisted.
“Well, if that’s what you think…”
“It is. The American was caught once messing about at Metsadá. He knows if he went back there, we would deport him. Or maybe even charge him and jail him right here, no matter who he thinks he is. No.” He sighed, a weary sound. “No: This is romance. This is beneath our attention, Yossi.”
“You said to keep tabs on Ressner.”
“So we did, Yossi, but now — well, now I think you can back off.”
“Very well,” Ellerstein said, somewhat baffled by Gulder’s nonreaction. “You almost sound disappointed.”
“In a way, I am, but not with you. It was a precaution, that’s all. Now, well…”
“All right, then, I suppose that’s it,” Ellerstein said.
Gulder gave a grim laugh. “What, Yossi, you’re not going to wish me to have a nice day?”
Ellerstein smiled. They both hated that trite American expression with a passion.
“Shalom, “ he said dutifully, hung up, and finished his Scotch, still wondering what the hell was going on. Had been going on. There was absolutely nothing going on now, it seemed.
He scratched his head. Still, he thought.
It took her just over two hours to drive down to the Dead Sea rendezvous with the American. With the start of the Sabbath, there was hardly any traffic, but always the checkpoints. She passed the tourist site at Masada, rounded the headland, and slowed to look for the turn-in to the geothermal plant. She saw the building, with its halo of amber security lights, but could not see the turn-in road. Following his instructions, she drove past the complex for a mile, doused her lights, and then made a U-turn to come back to it. This time she saw the entrance, no more than a sandy lane, and turned in. She drove nervously into the lighted zone and right past his Land Rover. He flicked on his parking lights when she was abeam of him. She stopped and backed in alongside him.