by Paul L Maier
“You mean, you’ll let me starve to death here?”
“I was thinking of that. But Qumran’s nearby. And it’s at least possible that someone walking on the highway down there might hear you scream and come to your assistance. Besides, I wouldn’t want you to suffer.”
“You’re going to kill me, then!”
A long silence followed. At last, Jennings said, “Propane really is quite painless, Jonathan. It has only a slight tracking odor. Clive Brampton seemed to have no problem with it at all.”
Jon froze in horror. “What did you say? You killed Clive?”
“I had to, Jonathan, although I very much admired him too. You see, Clive had gotten too suspicious about the stratification in front of the cavern at Rama. One day I found him in my office, looking at the manuscript of Kensington’s earliest Rama Survey, and the sleuth had found reference to two exposed cavern mouths northwest of the site. Of course, I had edited this to one cavern mouth for the published version, and eliminated all references to the second. Brampton caught it. We had a nasty scene, so I lured him into this very cistern. Regrettably the propane had to follow. He cursed me for a little while, but then he passed away. Quite peacefully really.”
Bristling with revulsion, Jon struggled for composure. “How did you make it appear that Clive drowned?”
“Well, I winched him back out after he died, gave him artificial respiration to exhaust the propane, and then drove his body to Caesarea. Before dropping it into the Mediterranean, I put a catheter down his throat and filled his lungs with seawater. Then I rowed offshore in a dinghy and dropped the body overboard. What else could it have been but accidental drowning?”
“Why didn’t you simply leave him here?”
“His disappearance would have been too suspicious.”
Jon thought for a moment, and then asked, “What do you intend in the case of . . . of my body?”
“Yours, I think, we’ll simply leave here. If you’re discovered months or years hence, it will have been a tragic accident, of course. You must have fallen down a hidden shaft.”
A cold lump of terror building inside him, Jon said, “You want to foist Rama on the world. But won’t there be enormous suspicion if one of the two principal investigators simply disappears?”
Jennings was silent for some time. “You know, you do have a valid point, Jonathan. Hmmmm . . . Well, instead, perhaps I’ll return to Jerusalem and call the police, say we got separated, and we’ll mount a search party to look for you. You’ll be ‘found’ some-time thereafter, and then there’ll be no missing-body mystery. I, of course, will have retrieved the propane canister from the shaft before you’re found.”
“You’re crazed, Austin! You realize that, don’t you? You’re a bloody psychopath! A madman!”
“No, Jonathan. My logic is crystal clear. We all have to make sacrifices for the cause. The cause is everything! I surrendered my life to it. I’m only sorry that you must do so also.”
It was now time, high time, to play his trump, Jon realized—to reveal wider knowledge of the plot. This, he had calculated, would be his ultimate insurance against danger. Otherwise, he would surely have called Dov Yorkin and the Mossad.
“Austin, I hate to have to tell you this,” Jon called up, “but I’ve actually trapped you, rather than vice versa.”
“And how’s that, dear boy?”
“I was lying when I told you I hadn’t discussed this with Gideon or Glastonbury or Dunstable. They all know. You see, the only way I could worm the truth out of you was to make you think I was the only one who knew. But in fact, while you were in England, I was there, too! You see, I’ve already taken scrapings from the titulus exactly where I threatened to, and we compared these with fresh scrapings of soot Dunstable brought back from Pompeii. They match, Austin. Ceramic particles from the bake oven showed up in each and give it all away! They have the same ratio of three trace elements—strontium, rubidium, and lead!”
Jennings was silent for some time. Then he began chuckling. “And how, pray tell, did you get the Shrine authorities to give you permission to scrape? And how, pray tell, did Dunstable so conveniently supply another package of soot?”
“At the Shrine, I scraped first and explained later. I had a horrid phone conversation with Gideon. He warned me not to leave Israel, so I had to smuggle the granules out by swimming across the Dead Sea narrows at night from Masada to Cape Costigan in Jordan. There, Walt Rast and two Jordanian officials met me and put me on a plane to London. Meanwhile, Dunstable had made another trip to Pompeii, found the same bake oven, and brushed the area next to where he had brushed previously. We compared the samples at—”
Jennings was now emitting guffaws of laughter. “Oh, Jonathan, you’re so creative! Charles Dickens could have learned a thing or two from you, my boy! Attacking the titulus? Swimming the Dead Sea, no less! I know, I know, a whale swallowed you and spat you up on the other shore, not? Then little green men carried you in relays all the way to Amman, right?”
“No, Austin, this really happened!”
Even as he heard himself in the telling, Jon sensed that his own story did sound unbelievable. But he forged ahead.
“Listen, Austin, I’m telling you the truth. Two days of testing at Dunstable’s laboratory showed an identical source. Meanwhile, Paddington filled us in on your Irish tragedies, since the Queen had urged an all-out effort by Scotland Yard and MI-5, so he—”
“Oh, but of course! Now we’ll have a royal reception at Buckingham Palace from the Queen, no less!”
“No. Nothing like that.”
“Oho! Oho-ho-ho!” Jennings chortled in a fit of laughter. “Move over Lewis Carroll, we now have Jonathan in Wonderland! Wasn’t it Samuel Johnson who said, ‘Depend on it, Sir, when a man knows he is about to be hanged, it concentrates his mind wonder-fully’? Well, a similar prospect seems to have made you ever so creative, Jonathan. But I don’t believe a word of it! Carry on, now. I’ll be with you shortly.”
Jennings’s head moved away from the opening, and Jon saw only the cobalt sky overhead. Desperately, he combed the walls and floor of the shaft with his flashlight. It seemed to be a natural cistern the Bedouin probably used during the rainy season, since he saw water level marks at the low-est third of the shaft and green scum at his feet. It was also the finest natural prison Jennings could have found, not to say execution chamber. Fighting to keep a clear mind against the chilling dread that was numbing his extremities, he searched wildly for some plan of deliverance. The situation seemed shot through with unreality. All this could not be happening, he told himself, even as his gut cramped in panic.
Again Jennings’s bald visage hovered over the opening. “Let me explain propane to you, Jonathan,” he said as he tied a rope to a fat white canister of the stuff he had lugged to the edge of the shaft. “This is so much better than cyanide, because you can buy it at any sporting supply store as cooking fuel. And it’s not as smelly and dangerous as cyanide either. In fact, it’s not a poisonous gas at all. But it is heavier than air, and it displaces oxygen. So it’ll build up gradually at the bottom of the cistern, and you’ll die of anoxia—oxygen starvation.”
“Where’d you get that canister? I didn’t see you bring it along.”
“Of course not. After Clive’s death, I had it refilled and hid it again in the rocks here, just in case I’d need it a second time. You see, I provided for every possible eventuality. That’s also why I had to work absolutely alone all these years. Imagine! I sup-pose you could call it ‘the perfect crime,’ but for the fact that I’m liberating the world from the shackles of worthless beliefs, which is no crime at all.”
“It’s not the ‘perfect crime,’ Austin!” Jon cried. “It’s hopelessly flawed! Do you realize how many people now know what you’ve been up to? Nine or ten, at the very least! In Israel, that includes Gideon Ben-Yaakov, Dick Cromwell—he’s the one who drove me down to the Dead Sea—and Dov Yorkin of Mossad. In Jordan, there’s Walter Rast. In England,
we have Glastonbury, Paddington, Dunstable, Sandy McHugh, and others, including the Queen.”
“Oh, dear me. What about your White House and President Bronson?” Jennings sneered.
“The president and the State Department half know. They arranged for Jordan’s cooperation when I swam the Dead Sea.”
“And how about the United Nations?” Jennings taunted. “Nice attempt, Jonathan!”
“You’re a fool, Austin! I’m telling you the truth! Another murder on your hands will only make things worse for you!”
Jennings ignored him and said, “I’m turning the spigot on full now, Jonathan. It shouldn’t take very long. If you want to go quickly, simply lie down at the bottom of the cistern. If you must have your last thoughts, then stand up!”
“I was on the same plane with you from England, Austin! And I can prove it. You came on late and they had to open the door for you! I was disguised in a beard and moustache!”
Jennings was silent for some long moments. Then he laughed and called down, “I almost believed you, Jonathan! But you obviously learned that from Dick Cromwell, because that’s the first thing I told him at Ben Gurion!”
“No, Austin! I was there! It’s the bloody truth!!”
“Oh, shut up and don’t be tedious!” Jennings huffed. “Don’t make this more difficult than it has to be!”
Jon now heard an awful hissing and watched Jennings lower the bulky white canister, playing out his rope, a grimace of determination warping his features.
Again Jennings called down, “I want you to know that I do regret losing you as a friend, a colleague, and a son-in-law, Jonathan. And I’ll grant you the courtesy of not standing here to watch you die. I don’t think I could stomach that. After I’ve secured the canister, I’ll go back to Qumran and ask if anyone’s seen you there. I need to establish an alibi, of course.”
An invisible jet stream of gas was whistling from the spigot. The canister stopped five feet over his head when Jennings tied the rope to the steel crossbar.
“Stop it, Austin!” Jon screamed. “You’ll never get away with this! You’ll see! ”
Jennings shook his head sadly and muttered, “Why do they always say that?” He looked down at Jon for several moments, nodded, and said, “Good-bye, Jonathan!” Then he stood up, shouldered his backpack, ignored Jon’s shouts, and walked down the mountain path to the waiting Land Rover.
Late in the day, after he had duly inquired at the tourist cafeteria and gift shop at Qumran, Jennings returned to the cistern, this time taking along the portable air pump and hose they should have used when first entering the cavern at Rama. Lugging a heavy twelve-volt battery up the steep pathway left him breathless, but it would provide power for the last item on his meticulous checklist.
Leaning over the orifice of the cistern, he shined a flashlight down inside the shaft. Jon lay sprawled across the mossy floor, his legs stiffened in a step position, and his arms and hands submerged in the green, rocky slime. There was no breathing, no movement of the rib cage. He was dead.
Jennings tugged the propane canister up and out of the shaft. He then dropped plastic flex hose almost to the floor of the cistern and connected the pump to his battery terminals. The motor whirred into life, sucking propane out of the cistern and dissipating it into the air. During the half hour he calculated the pump should run, Jennings carefully staged the circumstances of Jon’s “accidental” death. Using a camp spade, he dug a steep slide next to the opening, where, obviously, the poor man had lost his footing and slid into the shaft. He also enlarged the orifice so that a sliding victim would easily slip through. Several large rocks were conveniently situated near the rim, on which he might have struck his head. To give him the appropriate wound, Jennings took a large stone, aimed it over Jon’s head at the base of the shaft, and let it fall. Training his light on the corpse, he saw that it had gashed the back of his skull. “Well done,” he said.
He looked at his watch. Forty minutes had passed. He turned off the pump and packed his things. Before leaving, he carefully scrutinized the entire site to make sure he had left nothing behind.
One last time he went to the lip of the opening and peered downward. “Rest in peace, Jonathan,” he said. “Rest eternal grant to him, O Lord, and let light perpetual shine upon him.”
He shouldered his backpack and made two trips to lug the battery, compressor, canister, and tools down to the Rover. Unexpectedly he was nagged by a small ethical problem. Why had he used the traditional words of the Anglican liturgy in a prayer over Jon’s dead body? Oh well, he consoled himself, he must have done it for Jon, who had still believed. He himself was beyond all that nonsense.
TWENTY-SIX
Returning to Ramallah that night, Jennings appeared highly agitated when he asked Shannon and Dick Cromwell whether Jon had somehow returned there in the meantime. No, they replied. He then picked up the phone and called the Jerusalem police to report Jon missing.
The next morning, authorities mounted a massive search effort along the western shore of the Dead Sea. Several helicopters from the Israel Defense Force were fluttering over the pinkish-beige escarpment above Qumran, in radio contact with search parties on the ground. Jennings, Shannon, and Dick led the central search column, Jennings pointing out where they had been surveying when Jon had wandered away with the words, “I’m going to climb that ridge and check the other side.”
But a search of the other side revealed nothing. The first day’s effort turned up no clue whatever, because Jennings had intentionally started the search a mile too far northward. Shannon was beside herself with dread. “I’ll die if anything’s happened to him, Papa,” she cried. “I’ll just die! ”
“There, there.” He stroked her hair. “Don’t worry, my child. I’m sure we’ll find him.”
Cromwell, meanwhile, was torn between exposing Jennings for the monster he seemed to be, or, as he almost felt Jon urging him, not to blow their cover just yet. When Gideon Ben-Yaakov and Dov Yorkin had first arrived at Qumran, it was all he could do to inter-cept them and plead that they play the role with him. “You’ve got to!” he whispered, so Jennings wouldn’t overhear. “It’s exactly the way Jon would want it.”
“I say we should arrest him now,” said Gideon. “We’ve been led around by the nose long enough.”
“You do that, and we may never be able to find Jon!”
“He’s right,” Yorkin conceded.
“One more day, then,” Gideon agreed. “We arrest at sundown tomorrow.”
By lunchtime the following day, they had found nothing. “Maybe we should head farther south,” Jennings suggested. But a unit of the IDF had already anticipated him and was searching along the very ridge that led to the cistern. Twenty minutes later, all cell phones crackled with the news, “We’ve found him!”
The search parties converged on the site. When Jennings’s group arrived, Dick Cromwell asked the officer in charge, “Where is he?”
The officer pointed down the shaft.
“Why haven’t you pulled him out?”
“Well, because he’s dead. And we didn’t want to move him before the photographer arrived.”
Shannon shrieked, then buried her head against her father’s chest and sobbed convulsively. Meanwhile, the photographer stepped out of a helicopter and began his work.
“Give me a line,” the officer commanded when the photography was completed. He tied the rope under his arms and across his chest. “Now lower me down—slowly. I’ll send him up first the same way.”
Six of the soldiers dug their heels into the ground at the edge of the opening, slowly playing out the rope. Horror hung in the air. Shannon wept uncontrollably, while everyone else stood mute and somber. Gideon shook his head and tapped the ground impatiently with his boot. Dick clenched his fists, ready to smash Jennings in the face. Jennings himself feigned shock and sorrow.
“Okay, hoist away!” came a voice from the pit. “But slowly, slowly.”
The six troops started
tugging in unison. After a seemingly endless wait, Jon’s bloodied head appeared over the edge. His eyes were open, which only added to the horror. They removed the rope from his shoulders. Suddenly his corpse raised its right arm slightly, pointed at Jennings, and said thickly. “Arrest ’im . . . for murderin’ Brampton . . . me too . . . almost.”
Shannon shrieked again and collapsed. Jennings stood rock still and gasped, his skin first white then livid. Cromwell dashed to Jon’s side and shouted, “Water! Give him water! ”
They held a canteen to Jon’s lips as he slowly slurped, then gulped, the life-giving fluid. A medic swabbed the dirt off the wound at the back of his head and applied antiseptic and bandages.
Meanwhile, Yorkin had stepped up to Jennings and said, “Extend your arms, sir.” Jennings did so, limply. Yorkin slapped handcuffs onto his wrists.
They laid a stretcher on the ground next to Jon. “No, gimme a little time,” he protested. “I . . . think I can walk.”
“You’ll ride!” Cromwell commanded. “Congratulations, you magnificent fool! What do we have here, a resurrection?”
“Somethin’ like it. Tell ya later.”
They stopped at the cafeteria rest house at Qumran. Gideon Ben-Yaakov asked the few tourists inside please to leave the premises “due to an emergency,” and then they brought Jon into the air-conditioned lunch room. “Would you like a cold beer?” Gideon asked him.
Jon held up three fingers. Ben-Yaakov promptly placed three ice-cold bottles of Maccabee Beer in front of him. Disdaining a glass, Jon sucked the first bottle dry, almost without stopping. He was into his second when Ben-Yaakov suddenly realized that this was hardly the beverage for someone who had not had liquids for two days. “You might get sloshed in your condition, Jon,” he said, removing the bottles and replacing them with a huge pitcher of water. Jon drained two glasses before saying another word.