The Masada Faktor

by Naomi Litvin

  The name Hershel was quite familiar to me but could it be the same Hershel in Mother’s mystery? Before I had a chance to process the information properly, Saul planted a close mouthed kiss on my lips.

  “Look Saul, if you are a real man, then give me some tongue.” And then we were on the ground and I was on top. I was wearing a summer dress and I reached up and pulled my panties to the side.

  I was the aggressor, in charge, and at that point I wanted his cock inside me. I would think about his father later. “Hurry up Saul, before anyone comes in here.” I was breathing a bit heavily at this point.

  He unzipped his cargo shorts and what popped out was rigid and of a decent size. He started to talk and I said, “Just shut up.” By that time I was plenty wet and grabbed his prick and guided it in. I started riding him like a bull. The rhythm began and the world was tilting. Then everything went black.

  I awoke to see a circle of people gathered around me asking me if I was all right. Saul was gone but my dress was back down where it belonged.

  I pondered why Saul had disappeared and then the realization that Saul was the son of Hershel the Kapo hit me. He was part of the Nazi plan. He had pursued me online for those many years for this reason only. He had laid in wait for me. Baiting me. Befriending me.

  I planned to get even with him. He had not only betrayed me, he was betraying the entire Jewish world. I swore revenge right then and there. Still, I had fucked him. Did I feel guilty? No. But I would find him and make him pay, one way or another. At least now I had more proof that there was truth to this matter.

  I needed to leave Masada. I had a slip of paper in my backpack with the number of a personal tour guide who had advertised himself on Craigslist as an English speaker. I called him to see if he could pick me up. He was available.

  His name was Arthur Goldin and he had an American accent. He was there in forty minutes and because the sun was setting and Shabbat would soon be upon us, he firmly told me that he would take me to his home in Jerusalem. “My wife Dalia will feed you and you will spend the Sabbath with us. There is plenty of room.”

  That is how it works in Israel, complete strangers adopt you out of the blue. You have to simply accept that. I didn’t object, just thanked him for his kindness. I had a good feeling about this man. It felt right. I left my fate, at least for the next few days, in his hands. Yes, I had a feeling that Arthur Goldin would be of help to me.

  Feeling refreshed after a beautiful weekend with Arthur and Dalia Goldin I took a direct bus from the Jerusalem Central Station to Tel Aviv’s Alozorov Station and then the #5 bus back to Dizengoff Square. I was eager to return to some privacy where I planned on tacking up the information I had gathered on one wall. I needed to see everything in front of me, especially the map of Masada.

  I made a few quick stops, first at the Bug Electronic Shop at Dizengoff Center to buy a new computer and printer, then to the health food store to get some food. Luckily, I had a ‘no foreign transaction fee’ credit card from the United States with a high limit.

  I thought, Screw it, I can’t work without the proper tools. I had to download the Masada photos to a computer and seriously pour over them to figure out if there were really any clues.

  I also went to a stationary store and got thumbtacks and colored map pins, scotch tape, colored markers, and some other things I might need. I tacked the map of Masada on the wall and then marked the five spots for the clues with red map pins.

  The question of why Absalom was giving me any clues at all had me wondering who that person was. I was puzzled by this part of the mystery. If he was part of the conspiracy then why was he attempting to assist me by telling me there were clues? And if he wasn’t, how was he involved?

  On index cards I wrote the names of the five locations and started jotting down what had happened at each and what I had noticed. I put up my street maps of Tel Aviv and Haifa.

  I was happy to see that Millie wasn’t home. I made a mental note to remember to lock my room when I wasn’t home.

  Trying not to succumb to paranoia I told myself, Better to be safe than sorry. It took me some time to set up my new computer and printer and I needed to sleep. I wasn’t sure how deep Millie was caught up in the conspiracy but it seemed to make sense that she had something to do with it.

  Sex with Saul had refreshed my memory of some information from his old emails to me in the beginning of our friendship. I would go back into Saul’s emails and reread them and his tweets to me to try to figure out what he was up to. I contemplated why he disappeared at Masada. I didn’t think he was on to me about knowing that his father was Hershel the Kapo.

  It took a long time to reread all of Saul’s emails. We had corresponded for at least five years. Good thing I had kept a file on him in my mail server. I saw that his first contact with me was on Twitter. He had kept after me for quite a while before he sent the first email.

  I did a search online to find the old tweets from Saul as I had not saved them. It was funny, that his tweets had started out with flirting but stopped when we began to write as pen pals.

  In the beginning Saul spoke a lot about Rabbi Meir Kahane and claimed to have been part of the Jewish Defense League before Kahane was assassinated in 1990 by the first Al Qaeda terrorists.

  I thought back to our first telephone conversation. Saul had said he was going to become an Israeli. “It’s about fear and doing it anyway. It’s about chance, and taking it. It’s about life, and going for it. Let’s meet in Israel.”

  At that time I hadn’t yet considered becoming Israeli since Mother was still alive, but I liked what Saul had said. We continued to speak on the phone about once a month. Sometimes he would not call, and I would call him.

  I found what I was looking for. There was one email that went back almost five years. He had written about his father’s experience in Nazi captivity and that he was employed by the commandant of the slave labor factory. He must have slipped in telling me this, and now also slipped in his sobriety. If he was off the wagon and drinking then conceivably he hadn’t been as careful as he should have been.

  I printed the email and reread it many times. I had evidence now, the connection between Hershel and Saul. Hershel had to be the Kapo from Mother’s slave labor factory. Hershel was sent out into the same Death March along with Mother. He followed her throughout post-war Germany to see where she would end up. And now Saul was following me into my own death march. Or so he thought.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Absalom was messaging me again, asking about my trip to Masada. I decided not to discuss it with him. I responded by telling him that my mystery was off limits. He didn’t seem troubled at all by that and continued his outrageous flirting and sexting. I was just as bad. But I wanted to see if I could get him to divulge some information.

  Absalom: “How did it go at Masada?”

  Natasha: “Let’s talk about that later. I can’t keep my hips still.”

  Absalom: “I am going to slide my two fingers into your wet pussy.”

  Natasha: “Ready. And I am saving silk scarves to tie you up.”

  Absalom: “What is the wildest thing you have ever done sexually?”

  Natasha: “You tell first.”

  Absalom: “I have had threesomes. Going to ask the guy question. Have you ever had a woman?”

  Natasha: “Are you drinking?”

  Absalom: “No, I never drink. At all.”

  Natasha: “Do you know any Arabs from Haifa?”

  Absalom: “No, why do you ask?”

  Natasha: “I am curious because when I lived there I met some nice Arab guys.”

  Absalom: “I hope you didn’t f**k them.”

  Natasha: “No, and please don’t say that kind of stuff to me.”

  Absalom: “You are a woman that I want to f**k and I don’t want to think about you with Arabs.

  Natasha: “You don’t get to tell me who to be with. I should tie you up and punish you.”

  Absalom: “Will
you kiss me with your juices all over my face?”

  Natasha: “Yeah.”

  Absalom: “That’s hot and sexy and animalistic.”

  Natasha: “That’s me.”

  Absalom: “What are you into besides cleaning up my face after you cum in my mouth?”

  Natasha: “You have such a way with words. Who are you, why you are keeping your identity secret? Do you know Saul from America?”

  Absalom: “When the time is right you will know.”

  Natasha: “This is a one-dimensional relationship. If I find that you are part of a conspiracy or scheme, you will be sorry.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I was invited back to visit the Goldins in Jerusalem for a three-day weekend. I was eager to go. I wanted to tell them everything about my life in Israel in regard to the mystery. I needed help. We had been talking on the phone and I liked them very much.

  Before leaving for Jerusalem I messaged Absalom again and told him that I was going to be in his area and if he wanted to continue our friendship that we needed to meet as soon as possible. He had said he lived in Jerusalem and I told him I would be there for the weekend. I didn’t receive an answer right away and that troubled me.

  Then he messaged, “No, we cannot meet, you cannot know my real identity yet.”

  I arrived in Jerusalem on a Friday morning and wanted to take a few photos inside the bus station after I disembarked. I liked the look of where the buses lined up inside and snapped a few shots. Before I could get through the door into the terminal, I was approached by two uniformed policemen.

  “What did I do?” I asked in a sweet, polite voice.

  “Why are you photographing the bus station?” One of the policeman spoke English.

  I went through the same spiel that I had said to the cop at the Haifa Port. It worked, and I deleted the last few photos. We had a friendly chat and lots of smiles and they let me proceed.

  The Goldins were waiting for me in the pickup zone outside the Central Bus Station. We found parking and went to Mahana Yehuda Market, the glorious Jerusalem Shuk. We bought some beautiful produce for the long weekend. I got some cherry tomatoes that reminded me of giant red pearls. The radishes were the biggest I had ever seen. We bought cauliflower, three kinds of lettuce, beets, kohlrabi, green onions, cabbage, mangos, pomegranates, grapes, and pears.

  Dalia was planning to make Tunisian roasted chicken for Friday night dinner and we would make enough salads and side dishes to get us through Shabbat. I was in the process of getting her recipes down in my notebook and looked forward to some cooking lessons.

  Before getting back to their house, Arthur and Dalia wanted to take me on a little tour around the Gush, also known as Gush Etzion, a bunch of Jewish communities which included the area between Jerusalem and Hebron. This was an important location that was fiercely fought over during 1947 and 1948 during Israel’s War of Independence.

  It was Friday, June 13, 2014 and we were driving around and they were pointing out different places to me when we noticed a television camera crew set up at a bus stop and also in the median area of the road. We hadn’t heard any news and I remember wondering if they were filming a documentary.

  As soon as we arrived at the Goldin’s home and turned on the TV, we heard the news. The night before on June 12, Gilad Sha’ar, Eyal Yifrah, and Naftali Fraenkel, students from a nearby Yeshiva, had been kidnapped at the very spot where the TV reporters and cameras had been. The teenagers were tremping home from one of the many religious schools in the area. Hitchhiking is common in Israel, and the kidnappers took advantage of this to grab the boys.

  I learned a lot about the Goldin family that weekend. Arthur was American and had come to Israel to take Hebrew classes and live on a kibbutz in 1967. He met Dalia, a beautiful Israeli Sabra on the kibbutz where she had grown up. In those days the kibbutzim were rural communities based upon the premise of socialism entwined with Zionism. The first one was established in 1909. The kibbutzniks are credited with making the desert bloom.

  Arthur and Dalia fell in love in ’67 but Arthur went back to the United States and was drafted into the Vietnam War. After the war ended he returned to Israel where he and Dalia were married. Arthur volunteered to become a member of the Israeli Defense Forces and served for twenty years, both on active duty and in the reserves, mostly in and around Lebanon. They raised a beautiful family and they were happy. I felt completely accepted into their lives. They had adopted me.

  Arthur had told me about the day he arrived in Israel. “I landed in a black out during the Six Day War. The Egyptians were progressing across the Sinai. Israel had already won the war in the first six hours.”

  “I had sold my motorcycle, a red Bridgestone 60cc with Ohio license plates before I left for Israel. My dad was so excited that I was going to Israel that he bought it back from the guy I sold it to and shipped it to me as a surprise. The first thing I did was drive across a mine field on my cycle on the road between Netanya and Tulkarem without knowing it. I was promptly picked up by the IDF and interrogated. Of course they didn’t understand a word I was saying.”

  Arthur promised that he would tell me a lot of stories about his time in the IDF. But he hadn’t spoken much about his tour in Vietnam except that he had been trained to be a helicopter mechanic. He said that he didn’t really see that much action. I kind of doubted that from the look in his eyes. Later when he returned to Israel, the IDF was quite interested in using his skills.

  We were sitting at their dining room table drinking tea. “I need your help with something that involved my recent trip to Masada. But more than that I need your friendship.” I was hoping that I would not cause them any unease.

  “We are happy to have you in our lives.” They were both saying this at the same time and I jumped up to hug them both. And then I told them about The Masada Faktor.

  I told Arthur and Dalia the entire story of The Masada Faktor, except for the part about having sex with Saul. They were stunned. They offered to help me in any way that they could. I told them that there might be some danger involved.

  Dalia laughed. “You think Arthur is afraid of anything? No way!”

  I told the Goldins about Absalom, but did not go into too much detail about the sexting. I thought his getting involved with the clues at Masada quite odd and I told the Goldins about my online disclosures, but that they did not include information about The Masada Faktor mystery.

  Arthur and Dalia both believed that he was part of the mystery and wanted me to cut it off with him. I was angry that Absalom had refused to meet me or disclose his identity. I was playing with fire on that front. But not for much longer.

  I found a print shop and made a copy of the old German document and gave it to Arthur. He would try to get it translated.

  Everything in Israel changed that weekend when the three kidnapped boys did not come home. We were all worried sick. Returning to Tel Aviv after the weekend, I had a foreboding feeling. I was feeling the same as all the Jewish population in Israel at that time. The kidnapped boys were our family and we were terrified that they had come to some harm.

  People began to get agitated. You could tell at the bus stops, on the buses, and in the markets. Everyone looked worried. Something had changed. It was in the air.

  At Hebrew class the following morning the instructor was practically hysterical about the kidnapping and told us she was sure the boys were dead. We didn’t want to believe her and argued with her about it. We spent the entire class time discussing various aspects of the situation. She told us it wasn’t good and we believed her. After all, she was a Sabra and she had lived in Israel her entire life. She knew the score. We were all terrified as to what might happen next.

  During March and April while I had been living in Haifa the country had seen a rise in the number of terror attacks and it was increasing since the month before I had come to Israel. An increase in rocket attacks from Gaza was not a good sign.

  Besides the rocket attacks, there were ple
nty of firebombs, stabbings, stone and concrete block throwing in Judea, Samaria, and other places within the Green Line, the old demarcation lines set out in the 1949 Armistice Agreements.

  Steadily, the rocket attacks from Gaza were increasing, although at this point they hadn’t done too much damage and had not reached central Israel. But the residents in southern Israel were under incredible stress.

  In April and May the increase in terror attacks seemed to concentrate in Judea and Samaria. In May the high-trajectory launchings from the twenty-five mile long Gaza Strip and Sinai started to intensify.

  Jerusalem was having a rise in firebomb terror attacks. Now, with the Yeshiva boys kidnapped, that and all attacks were all over the news and all that everyone was talking about. Most bus drivers drove with their radios on. You could stop and ask a taxi driver, pedestrians, shop keeper, or just about anyone what was going on and it seemed like no one did not know. The country seemed transfixed.