The Last Man

by P. T. Deutermann

  “Professor,” he said, holding out a chair. He caught the scent of a tantalizing perfume in the air as she sat down.

  “Mr. Hall,” she replied solemnly.

  “Oh dear,” he said, sitting down. “So it’s back to Mr. Hall, is it?”

  “Are you drinking alone?” she replied, raising her eyebrows at his glass of white wine. He laughed and signaled the waiter. She ordered a white wine by name, and the obviously smitten waiter bustled away.

  “I appreciate your sending a car to pick me up. Now tell me: Why did you ask me to come have a drink with you?”

  “I wanted to see you again,” he replied evenly. “Why did you accept?”

  “I am practicing. Today I agreed to become a normal human being again.”

  “Ah, yes, the dreaded Monday meeting. With the committee of ultimatum givers. How did all that go?”

  “Quickly. I preempted them. I told them that I would give up the widow’s weeds and rejoin the scintillating fold of academia.”

  “And will you?”

  “As soon as I figure out precisely how, yes, I probably will. I remembered that handful of pills you mentioned. The thought did not appeal.” The waiter returned with her wine.

  “Well, I’m glad to hear that. The new you definitely does appeal. You look absolutely smashing.”

  He watched her as she considered the compliment. He could see that she was suddenly at a loss for words. It must indeed have been a long time. “I’ve booked a table in the dining room for seven thirty,” he continued. “Can you join me for dinner?”

  She turned her head to one side and gave him a speculative look. “You’re awfully sure of yourself, Mr. Hall.”

  He shrugged. “I have to have dinner somewhere. So do you, and you’re thirty miles from Jerusalem. I promise not to duck out to investigate any ruins during dinner.”

  She gave him a reproving look. “That was not an intelligent thing you did down there. On any level.”

  He understood at once: We were doing pretty well until you pulled your stupid stunt of going up on the mountain at night. If you liked that, he wanted to say, you’ll positively love the next act.

  “I admit that wasn’t too bright,” he said. “On any level. It’s just that I tend to be a focused man. I came here to Israel to see and feel Metsadá. For the final defenders, the climax to that story came at night. I needed to experience that.”

  “Focused. Another American euphemism?”

  He shrugged. “It’s how I achieve things,” he said, looking directly at her. He paused for a second. “Sometimes I focus to the extent that the consideration due to other people gets pushed into the background. Nuclear engineering is an unforgiving business.”

  “Especially when you become a whistle-blower, yes?”

  “Especially then. The power companies desperately need for the public to believe they have the dragon firmly in the cave. Anyone intimately acquainted with the dragon knows better.”

  “As the Japanese just found out.”

  “Yes,” he said. “A monster earthquake overwhelms the design; then a tsunami drowns the backup systems.”

  “The Japanese are a very clever people,” she said. “One would have expected a better outcome.”

  “At some point in commercial power, your shareholders force you to balance cost versus redundancy. The Japanese got it wrong.”

  She gave a wry smile at that. “My life is a matter of balance, I suppose,” she said. “Lately I haven’t done a very good job of that, either. Hence this morning’s meeting.”

  He nodded. “Believe it or not, I’m going to have to do something very similar. When Adrian disappeared my personal life was suspended.”

  “Except that, in your case, she might come back.”

  He nodded. “No closure,” he said.

  “Closure is overrated, Mr. Hall.”

  “Maybe,” he said, “but in my case, the lawsuit resulted in my never having to work again. The truth is, however, that after this trip I suppose I’m going to have to do what you’re doing: get back into the swim.”

  “The industry would let you back in?”

  “No chance,” he laughed. “I could possibly go back to working for the government, except for the fact that the bureaucracy just loves a whistle-blower.”

  He got a real smile that time. He could still detect a bittersweet aura in her face and lips, but it was a smile worth waiting for. She saw him looking, and looked down at the table, embarrassed, and then smiled again, a more gentle expression this time. Behind her, David saw the bartender grinning widely at him. Go get her, tiger.

  “Tell me about your work, Mr. Hall. What does a nuclear engineer do?”

  “First, it’s time to call me David.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “No, it’s David.”

  She spoke his name, softly, still looking down at the table. He leaned back in his chair and saluted her with his glass. “See?” he said. “That wasn’t hard. What shall I call you?”

  “Dr. Ressner?” she suggested, her face a study in innocence.

  * * *

  He told her about his engineering career over dinner, up to the point where he opened the can of worms on missing nuclear material.

  “Where had it gone?” she asked.

  “The funny thing is, I only got as far as proving that there was a large quantity of heavy water unaccounted for. Once the NRC got into it, I discovered that I was no longer in the loop, as we say. Once the company terminated me, I was really out in the cold. I have no idea where it went.”

  “In the loop. Out in the cold. I have much to learn about American idiom.”

  “If you could hear us talking in the office, it would sound like alphabet soup.”

  She sipped her wine, an iced Carmel white, letting her lips linger on the rim of the glass. She held the glass in both hands, her elbows on the table, which accentuated her lush figure. A tiny drop of condensation was forming on the bottom of the wineglass, gathering heft and curvature, threatening to drop strategically into that heavenly cleft, and he found that he was having trouble staying … focused, yeah, that was the word. He had noticed that her manner had changed during the course of dinner, the stoic, ultraserious academic blossoming into an entrancing woman who might be making up her mind about something. Or him.

  “Anyway, it worked out, in the end. The big problem now is what to do next.”

  The drop finally let go, but she tipped the bottom of the glass forward just enough to keep from getting wet. It still took an effort not to follow the drop.

  “Have you never wanted to do something more, I don’t know, adventurous?” she asked.

  Now he had to really control his face. He wanted to laugh out loud. Or cry. Part of him was once again dying to reveal what he was actually doing here. Why? To impress her? He realized he wanted this woman to like him.

  “About the only adventure I get is through diving. Didn’t you tell me you were a diver?”

  “Yes, but not for some years now. Nothing too challenging: shallow-water dives off the coast. Things like the Caesarea Maritima dives you are doing. Back when … when I was still married. Dov was an excellent diver. I was technically competent, but not addicted, like Dov. He went everywhere to dive.”

  “I’ve become something of an addict. Did it scare you?”

  “I was not so much frightened as uneasy. I felt we did not belong down there. Too much imagination, Dov said. So once he was gone, I put my equipment away. Looking back, I did the scuba mostly to please him, to be with him, I think.”

  Equipment. Another idea surfaced in his mind: Tell her now and take her along. Then he shelved the notion just about as fast as he’d thought of it.

  “Yes, well, I understand that feeling,” he said, finishing his wine, “and sometimes things come into view down there that reinforce the notion of whose place it really is. That’s the adventure, I suppose. We live in such a controlled environment these days that we almost have to create risks to exper
ience life.”

  She nodded slowly, but her eyes were no longer quite focused. He started to say something but then held back, keeping quiet while she communed with some comforting reverie from the past. Then, with a start, she came back.

  “Sorry,” she said, putting down her glass and fidgeting with her napkin.

  “I understand,” he said. “Really, I do. Listen, I was thinking: As you said, I’m going to spend two more days diving at Caesarea. Would you want to come along? I realize tomorrow’s short notice, but perhaps Wednesday?”

  She gave him a mildly surprised look across the table, a look that said, Why are you asking me?

  “Look, I hope I’m not being insensitive. You just told me that diving was something you did with your husband, but you’re also trying to make a break with that past, to start doing things despite the fact that your husband is gone. Not to mention the fact that I would very much enjoy your company. Everything’s arranged. You still have your gear—why not?”

  “Well, I do have a job, Mr.—David. I’m a professor, remember?”

  “Sure, but you go see your chairman and tell him what you’re doing, and why. There’s no way he can tell you no. Especially after I call and offer him generous bribes.”

  She smiled again, eyes down. He was getting to really like that smile. Then she nodded. “Okay. I’ll see what I can do. They’ll have to refresh my qualifications.”

  “I’ll have the dive shop take care of that. Bring your PADI card. They’ll do a quick review and then check you out in the harbor at Caesarea—it’s usually flat water. The weather’s supposed to be great, and we’re not going beyond ten meters down anyway. Do you have a buoyancy control device?”

  “No, those came along after I stopped. We used weights.”

  “I’ll have them bring one out. This is great. Now, how about we get our check and maybe take a walk on the beach. I think I ate too much.”

  * * *

  The waiter slipped out of the dining room long enough to make a quick call on his cell phone. A man’s voice answered.

  “International Planning.”

  The waiter gave his name. The man told him to wait, and then he was connected with his controller.

  “They have just left,” he said, turning his head as a couple of tourists came out of the dining room and walked right by him. “I think they are going for a walk on the beach.”

  “Together?”

  “Yes, together; what do you think?”

  “I think they could be going separately. How the hell would I know?”

  “You haven’t seen her. That would tell you quick enough. You have people out there?”

  “Thanks for the call. Go back to work now.”

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later they walked down between two swimming pools to the beach itself. He got her to open up a little more about her own life, her childhood in Haifa, college, and then the long haul to the Ph.D. She ran aground slightly when it came to talking about Dov, how they met, and their first few years of marriage, but it seemed to get easier as she talked. He was enjoying the way passing men looked at her but remained painfully aware of the underlying deception.

  “I just folded in,” she was explaining. “I felt profound loss, and then, of course, the absence of completion. There was no funeral, no grave, no memorial I could visit. Because of the security I couldn’t tell my friends at the university anything except that Dov had died in an accident. Everyone assumed a traffic accident, of course.”

  “Then the government made some things happen? A pension, an insurance policy, perhaps, and maybe a little influence with the appointment?”

  “Yes, they did all of those things. In return for my silence, I suppose. There was this scary-looking man, a Russian émigré, someone who was involved with security matters for the Dimona laboratories, who laid it all out for me. In fact—”

  “What?” he asked.

  “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but he came to see me just before this trip to Metsadá. Our trip.”

  A mental alarm bell started ringing in David’s head. “A security officer from Dimona?”

  “Well, actually, I don’t know. Those people are all so mysterious and elliptical. We have so many secret agents here in Israel, who can keep track? Anyway, part of my job down there was to make sure you were, how did he put it—that you were what you said you were. It didn’t make too much sense.”

  It did to David. The watcher in the airport, and now evidence of someone looking into his computer. He could understand perhaps the Ministry for Internal Security, but Dimona? What the hell was this?

  “No wonder you were mad at me for wandering off the reservation,” he said, to cover his own confusion. “Did that get you in trouble, by the way?”

  “Apparently not,” she shrugged. “Although now that I think about it, Yosef Ellerstein seemed to be interested in what you were doing as well, but I think that was only because he was part of the committee. You know.”

  “Yeah.” David kicked some sand. The beach was well lighted from all the hotels, but the sea itself was dark. Only the sounds of a small surf breaking in lazy curls against the sand revealed its presence. There were other people out walking, their faces pale blurs in the light coming down off the main street.

  So there was more to this minder business than just the professors. A state security officer from Dimona, and also Ellerstein, his interlocutor? He sighed. “I apologize again. If I’d known there were security people—”

  She shrugged it off. “Israel is full of security people. Mossad, they are the spies, of course. Shin Bet is counterintelligence. Mishtara, the national police. Shabak, like your FBI. Aman, the military intelligence. Then there’s Mishmar Hagvul; they’re the border police, part of the army, I think. The customs. The immigration. The army and the navy and the air force security. We seem to have security people in inverse proportion to how much real security we have.”

  As she was speaking, two border patrol men came strolling up the beach, Uzis slung over their shoulders. To David they looked like high school kids dressed up as soldiers, their uniforms sloppy and their hair modishly long. Judith greeted them politely in Hebrew, and they waved and walked on.

  “Against the PLO from Gaza and the Hezbollah from the Lebanon,” she explained. “Sometimes they send small teams of terrorists in rubber boats to shoot up the beach resort areas.”

  “Lovely. So those two guys are supposed to catch them?”

  “Oh, I think not. I think the foot patrols are out here to reassure the tourists. The real guys are probably up there on the tops of all these hotels, with night-vision devices.”

  “Ah, so heaven help the lovers.”

  She gave him a sideways look but said nothing. They had wandered down the beach hotel strip for nearly a mile and had started back again. They continued in silence until they reached their starting point, where they encountered the same two border patrol troops eating ice cream cones. As they walked back up a boardwalk to Hayarkon, he toyed with the idea of inviting her to the hotel bar for a nightcap but thought better of it. So far she’d gone along with everything he had suggested: coming down for drinks, dinner, joining him at Caesarea, and the beach walk. Quit while you’re ahead, he thought.

  When they reached his hotel’s entrance he checked to make sure the car was there. She turned to say good night.

  “It has been very pleasant, David Hall. Thank you for inviting me.”

  “It has been very pleasant indeed, Judith. There’s Ari.”

  “Thank you especially for the use of your car and driver.”

  “Jerusalem is too far away for a night drive. The least I can do. I’ll call your office to confirm the arrangements for the dive on Wednesday. If you have any doubts about equipment, I’ll get the dive shop to call you. I’m looking forward to it.”

  “I think I am, too,” she said. “Although it has been a long time.”

  “It’s like riding a bike or making love: Once you know
how, you know how.”

  That provoked an amused look on her face as Ari pulled the Mercedes into the hotel driveway. David opened the door for her. One last dazzling smile, a flash of those glorious legs, and then she was gone. He stood in the driveway for a moment after the car pulled out.

  Riding a bike or making love? Where had that come from? As he turned around he saw the bellhop giving him what looked suspiciously like a sympathetic look.

  “Can’t catch ’em all, sport,” he said and went in.

  * * *

  Judith sank back into the cushions of the Mercedes after confirming that the driver knew where he was going. So: first outing for the new Yehudit. She had followed Yossi’s advice and deliberately kept her mind blank for the last half of the evening, compliantly letting David take the lead, even saying she would go on a dive with him. Everything was so new. Putting on a sexy cocktail dress. Wearing makeup. Paying the slightest bit of attention to how she looked. Meeting a strange foreigner—well, not strange, but not a longtime friend, either—in a hotel bar. Having dinner with him. Talking about Dov. Walking on the beach like lovers. If he had proposed that they go back to his rooms for a nightcap she might well have done that, too. Well, maybe not.

  She tried to assess her feelings but couldn’t manage it. She stared instead out the windows of the car, her eyes unseeing as the suburbs of Tel Aviv raced by. Going through the motions. In truth, she could go through the motions forever, as long as she did not look over that wall and see her former life with Dov, the times when neither one of them had been going through the motions, those first years of love and marriage and romance and fun and contentment. Even when he had begun to get politically involved, it had been exhilarating to watch him get swept up in a cause and, when their jobs were threatened, to prove to him that she was with him even if it all went wrong and they had to start all over again. That was the problem, wasn’t it: She simply did not believe that she could ever bond that hard to another human being again. No matter how long she went through the motions. Not even with this attractive American.