by Roger Herst
"How about getting a military escort?" "That's possible, but it would take time to organize."
She knew how to smile so dimples in her cheeks deepened. "Good, because I haven't figured out exactly where Ein Arugot is."
"Tell me, Gabrielle, what would stop me from letting you lead us to Tim's Torah scholar?"
She released a short giggle of amusement. "Because I trust you, Iti," she said.
"Why?" he shot back.
"Because, you're not as duplicitous as I am."
***
Rabbi Zechariah Schreiber was still uneasy about an unmarried woman visiting him. In a neighborhood where daily life was governed by a strict code of behavior in which extramarital sex was a major offense, not against fellow humans, but against God, neighbors appointed themselves policemen for the Almighty and zealously spied on each other. No matter that Schreiber was elderly, he was still a widower, presumably with a sex drive, and she was an eligible woman.
To make him more comfortable, she assumed the identity of Devorah Stencil Schreiber, a distant cousin by marriage from Crown Heights in Brooklyn and a friend of his daughter whom he had not seen in fourteen years. Along with this new identity came the unstylish clothing of an Orthodox woman, heavy cotton stockings, a long skirt, blouses with long sleeves, and a sheitle wig.
Tim's HP laptop was only marginally different from her own, and its Windows operating system, identical. But the software he used to decipher fragmentary documents taxed her skills. Essential keystrokes, whether codes or identity passwords, remained hidden. Why Tim had not left them in his final instructions for Schreiber was a mystery. Had he really believed he would return from the Negev? She allotted herself a week to become familiar with the software; that was if she could manage to open his program.
To offset her problems with the code, entering Tim's unsecured database of fragments was easy. Schreiber helped by describing the steps Tim had followed. With his assistance, she remained optimistic that sooner or later she would learn to duplicate Tim's method of combining fragmented text into word clusters, perhaps leading to full verses.
As she worked her way through one computer screen after another, testing and retesting, Schreiber used his magnifying glass to read from Baba Metiza, a tractate of the Talmud. His trembling hand could barely hold the glass steady, but without it reading was impossible. Several times, she was distracted when the glass slipped and fell on the reading table. To keep himself awake, he had become addicted to his high-octane Italian coffee. And that prompted frequent toilet breaks. Far too much caffeine, she thought, but said nothing.
When she began experimenting with program files on the standard C-drive, she discovered an unsecured file Tim had labeled "Proper Names." This seemed like an opportune time to see if her assumptions about the software would prove true. She went to Tim's Master File, containing fragments he had already worked on with Rav Schreiber. To this file, she applied the program, "Proper Names," and clicked.
The laptop's speed was impressive. The Master File, with what Tim had completed to date, represented no more than twenty percent of the fragments, so extracting proper names was nearly instantaneous. Thirteen immediately appeared on the screen, two of which she recognized as female:
Zarepheth bat (an unreadable family name) Ishimaris, Urias bar Nathan, Simon bar Amos, Ananus ben-Jonathan, Alcyon, a physician, Jochanan Gaddis, Judas bar Jairus, Joseph bar Daleu, Yahonatan, (unknown family), Netir of the Galilee, Noami bat Nadab, Shmiel ben Gera, Tephtus (unknown family), David, the Pharisee.
Why, she asked herself, were these names recorded among the Qumran fragments? And how were they related to the destruction of the yeshiva at Ein Arugot? Her compulsion to learn more made the barriers embedded in Tim's sorting all the more exasperating.
Still, the more she pondered what these names signified, the more she was driven to believe they were related to the yeshiva. Because the Roman government was so determined to obliterate the colony at Ein Arugot, clearly this was no ordinary school. Could it be that here was a roster of students or faculty? "Okay," she said to herself, as she often did when speculating; "now there's evidence of a remote yeshiva and perhaps a list of students. So why did they withdraw from society? And more importantly, what were they studying? Was the curriculum a threat to the government in Jerusalem?
Insight, she had found, comes at unexpected moments. While walking from Mea She'arim to catch a bus to the Kings Hotel late early that evening, something clicked in her brain. Had Tim inadvertently found what she had long been searching for to support her thesis? If these names represented a list of students, perhaps they had taken refuge at Ein Arugot to live monastic lives and communicate with God. Could this be the crucial evidence needed to confirm what she had long believed but had yet to prove? Was it possible that the students at Ein Arugot were learning to become prophets?
Instead of returning to her hotel, she took a bus to the Hebrew University where one could look past Arab villages nestling on the hillside bordering the Jordan Valley. A warm, easterly breeze tousled a series of flags surrounding the university's amphitheater. Urban noises from the busy city faded from her consciousness. She imagined, in the distant rift valley before her, a wilderness school where the students were caucusing in seminars. Their soft voices echoed in a Siren wail, beckoning her to leap over two thousands years and visit them in their wilderness home.
The next day, Rav Schreiber produced a map of the Negev that Tim had left behind. Unfortunately, on this particular chart, he had failed to mark the suspected location of Ein Arugot.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Major Zabronski followed Israeli archeology with the passion of a dedicated sports fan. From the beginning, he assumed that Tim Matternly had been engaged in something to do with archeology when he was murdered, but until he was informed about a yeshiva at Ein Arugot, he had no evidence to back his hunch. Now, he was thrilled to be part of the discovery of such a school, even if it meant mounting a three-vehicle expedition and paying for it from his department's budget. Two of these vehicles were armed with 30 caliber machine-guns, and manned by nine of his security officers. The tenth man was Ahamd banu Badawi, a Dhullam Bedouin tracker with a nose as keen as a jackal and the eyes of an Egyptian hawk.
Itamar had done his homework. To help pinpoint the location of the yeshiva demolished by the Romans in 26 CE, he called upon the expertise of a cartographer and a geographer on the Antiquities Authority staff. They compared the map Tim Matternly had left behind in Rabbi Schreiber's apartment with the location mentioned in the imperial Roman decree. Using satellite photographs, they identified three potential sites, assigning each an order of priority. Since the three locations were within two kilometers of each other, a single expedition could easily reconnoiter each in turn. Itamar, given his experience working at roughly contemporaneous excavations, expected to lead the search once they were in the vicinity. Major Zabronski provided a precise location where the army helicopter team had found Tim Matternly's body, which corresponded roughly with the second site on the priority list.
Gabby's excitement increased while traveling in the second of three military vehicles south on Route 46, paralleling the Dead Sea. Her eyes were fixed on the machine-gunner in the first vehicle, a young border police officer she had noticed before setting out. The youth in his early twenties, whom his cohorts called Moishele, wore eyeglasses as thick as Coca-Cola bottles and a woven kippah. How he expected to fire his weapon accurately with such poor eyesight puzzled her. But that, she laughed to herself, was emblematic of Israel, a tiny nation forced to protect itself by tapping all its human resources, including partially blind machine gunners.
As the convoy followed a rough track leading from the Dead Sea into rolling hills to the west, the desert sun began to descend in waves of brutal heat. In higher country, rocks and craters made motorized progress impossible, even for four-wheel drive vehicles. When the convoy could go no farther, Itamar ordered everyone to walk, toting heavy backpacks. Zabronski s
ent ahead his Bedouin scout. Hardly taller than a meter and a half in height and possessing powerful but short legs, this scion of the desert nevertheless moved with exceptional speed. Gabby, Itamar, and Zabronski, accompanied by six police officers, tailed the Bedouin, pushing hard to keep pace. The other officers stayed behind to guard their vehicles and provide reserve firepower if required.
To cool off, Gabby rolled her sleeves and unfastened the top two buttons of an army surplus fatigue shirt. The dusty dryness called up childhood memories of riding mules through the Arizona desert with her parents. She followed Zvi Zabronski over the pathless terrain, accepting his choices about which rocks to scale and which to avoid. They changed directions often to navigate around bluffs too steep to climb. Itamar moved close behind her, periodically comparing the landscape against a topographical map. He admitted to himself that the task of finding an ancient school, one destroyed by Roman rulers two thousand years before, was more art than science. Fortunately, the Greek scroll addressed to Legionnaire Digius Silban provided several specific clues.
Zabronski's Bedouin tracker was already surveying the first site when the others caught up. Reckoning that topographical conditions would lead to a positive identification, he concentrated on examining the surrounding terrain. From time to time, he would climb to a higher elevation and make another visual survey.
Gabby dropped behind Itamar who walked in a circle, periodically crouching to sift rock and sand between his fingers. "What's he up to?" Gabby asked about Ahamd banu Badawi.
Itamar's eyes remained on the ground when he answered. "He's calculating where rainwater flows."
"Isn't that an oxymoron in this desert?" she asked.
He glanced over to her and said, "It only rains about two inches per year, but it comes in torrents causing dangerous flashfloods. A camp or school in the wrong place could easily be washed away in minutes. We learned this from studying the Nabateans, who could have written a textbook on capturing and storing scarce water in parched regions like this."
Major Zabronski completed his own survey of the site, then climbed to higher rock to confer with his scout. Gabby and Itamar watched the pair, their heads bobbing as they talked over the possibilities. Ahamd banu Badawi pointed to a series of spots in the higher rock, then shook his head. Zabronski turned away to make his way back toward Itamar and Gabby.
"Hard to imagine a yeshiva in this place," Zabronski declared. "My man concurs. Nobody in his right mind would locate a structure in the path of an ancient wadi. And remember, the rainfall two thousand years ago is believed to have been greater in the region than it is today."
"What do you think?" Itamar asked Gabby.
"I must defer to your expertise."
"Well then, let's take a look at the second site, the one nearest the place where they found Tim's body," he said, unfolding his map to check coordinates. "I estimate it's about forty minutes from here."
The scout failed to return, moving south along higher ground. Itamar's guess that it would take forty minutes was off by nearly three hours. Impassable terrain forced the party to backtrack rather than move in a straight line. When they finally arrived, they found the Bedouin scout repeating his earlier survey of the landscape above the proposed site.
Itamar instructed the group about how first-century buildings were situated to take advantage of the wind for ventilation and to block hot sunlight in the afternoon. Gabby wandered off to search on her own. She didn't want to know exactly where Tim's body had been discovered, though she guessed that Major Zabronski would tell her if she insisted. The thought of wild animals feeding on his remains was too gory to contemplate. Besides, what did it matter, whether he was found here or there? Instead, she let her imagination roam to more pleasant thoughts. In the desert's silence, she heard student voices chattering in Aramaic, occasionally referring to Hebrew passages from their sacred literature. Smoke from their cooking fires filled her lungs. Desert dates and cactus fruit left a tangy aftertaste in her mouth.
While Zabronski took digital photos and recorded code numbers in a frayed notebook, his officers spread out to search for signs of previous habitation.
"Major Zabronski, major." The name sounded like chimes ringing in a gentle breeze. It originated from the Bedouin scout working some fifteen meters above the others. He was waving his arms to get the police officer's attention. Zabronski turned immediately and started climbing until the two met shortly afterward, both examining what the Bedouin held in his hand.
"What is it?" Itamar called, his voice echoing in the surrounding rock.
Zabronski was holding something, but it was too small to be seen from a distance. "A bullet casing," he howled back. "It's recent."
Itamar replied. "What kind?"
"Nine millimeter. It's quite fresh."
Discovery of a shell casing launched Gabby and Itamar into heated conversation. Tim had been shot multiple times. Whoever shot him probably collected the spent casings from the ground, but it was easy to overlook one or two because they burst from the chamber of an Uzi with great velocity. A slight movement of the gun while it was being fired would eject the individual casings considerable distances from one another.
"This might tell us about Professor Matternly," Zabronski said as he approached Itamar, "but it doesn't reveal anything about a yeshiva. I'll send the cartridge to the lab. My guess? It will match the slugs from Dr. Matternly's body."
Ahamd banu Badawi now climbed down the hillside to scrutinize a flat area, already surveyed by Major Zabronski. Within a few moments, he dropped to his knees, studying the ground before him. "Over here," he called to Zabronski. "I've found something else."
The others moved in his direction. Zabronski stood over the Bedouin's shoulder peering at the ground, but saw nothing. "What are you looking at?" he said, annoyed that whatever it was he had obviously overlooked it.
"The soil's been removed from this spot," the Bedouin stated. "And recently, too."
"How do you know?"
"See these small stones with the sharp angles? They don't belong here. If they were old, they would be smooth and the wind would have blown them away many years ago. And this indentation. A sharp tool made it. See this shallow hole?"
The police officers gathered nearby. Itamar joined the scout on his knees, studying the upturned stones. Zabronski shot photos from above, then from the side. When he was finished, Itamar carefully lifted two of the displaced stones into his palm for closer inspection.
When he failed to return them to the ground, Gabby asked, "What are you looking for?"
Itamar opened his fingers to display the stones. "Do you see the darkened side? Probably carbon caused by fire. It could have originated from a fire only a few years ago, but then, it might be from the yeshiva. I'll take samples back to the lab for testing. Didn't we read that Digius Silban was ordered to burn down everything?"
Nearby, Itamar found clumps of desiccated green ash, the result of sandstone exposed to extreme temperature. The soft material crumbled in his fingers. "Could have been the same fire," he announced.
Zabronski took another round of photos. Itamar marked his map with the precise location and made a long list of topographic details. Gabby scribbled her own set of notes. Satisfied that these discoveries had exceeded their expectations, the three agreed that little more could be done without filing a formal excavation permit with the Antiquities Authority. Itamar was adamant about not violating his own agency's regulations.
En route back to the police escorts, Gabby left Itamar's side to speak with Major Zabronski.
"When the helicopter crew discovered Tim's body, didn't they find stones in his pocket?"
"There were some personal belongings, but offhand I can't remember more than a broken wristwatch."
"Weren't there two plastic bags?"
"I don't recall."
"But if there were, they'd have to be stored someplace, wouldn't they? Your investigation isn't closed yet, is it?"
"No, it definitely
isn't closed. And yes, as a routine matter we store everything."
"Well, if Tim gathered carbonic stones and green ash, you'd be able to compare them with what Itamar just picked up, wouldn't you?" "No problem."
"Good, because that would be additional evidence that Tim had discovered the yeshiva at Ein Arugot."
Zabronski threw a suspicious glance at her, wondering where she was going with this line of questioning.
***
The stones and copper ash that Itamar found near Ein Arugot were submitted to a laboratory at the Hebrew University. While the results would not be available for two weeks, Gabby was confident that the carbon would date back near the year 26 CE. Because she was convinced that Tim had also visited the site, the stones found in his plastic bags were bound to match. Positive lab results had implications far beyond the desert school. If they proved that there had been a fire at a location specified on the Greek scroll, it was reasonable to assume that the document was authentic. And if its date were established with relative certainty, then the Hebrew and Aramaic fragments found in Cave XII were probably contemporaneous.
The discovery of Ein Arugot inspired Gabby to expedite her collaboration with Rav Schreiber. Unfortunately, when she returned to his apartment two days later, he was gone. The neighbor said that an ambulance had come for him the day before. Another stroke. This time, he had not fallen, though he had lost the ability to use his left arm. Gabby went to the hospital immediately and found him sitting in a chair, with a black leather-bound tractate of the Talmud on his lap. Movement had returned to his left arm, but not to his fingers. Optimistic as ever, he recited a bracha, a blessing, for being able to study Torah. For the first time, he showed interest in what she said about the yeshiva and seemed eager to resume their work. Both believed the fragments would shed additional light on what happened at Ein Arugot. He gave her his apartment key so she could work when he wasn't there.