The Last Man

by P. T. Deutermann

  The main road veered east toward the Dead Sea shore just north of the fortress mountain, so his headlamps should not have been pointed directly at the tourist center. On the other hand, he had seen no other vehicles out here for an hour. He spotted the entrance again and veered left onto a gravel road that wasn’t much wider than the Land Rover itself. He pulled a hundred yards off the road and shut the engine off, got out, stretched, and then walked to the back of a boulder to take a leak. To his left, two miles distant, the fortress loomed atop its sheer stone cliffs. The pale bones of Herod’s marble palace-villas, perched out on the descending step terraces, shone through the darkness. He shivered in the rapidly cooling desert air as he looked up at it. Ahead the desert track led up toward the western plateau where the main Roman siege camp had been set up. He got back in the Land Rover and started up the track, now using only his parking lights. There would be no moon for several more hours, but the starlight was adequate.

  A quarter mile in from the Dead Sea road he passed through the remains of the circumvallation wall, which now was just a two-foot-high pile of weathered stones disappearing in a ragged line into the darkness. The wall, a standard feature of all Roman sieges, was the first thing General Silva had erected after the main siege camp. It had then been an eight-foot-high rock wall thrown up around the entire circumference of the mountain, bolstered by outpost camps whose outlines could still be discerned from the mountaintop, and patrolled by sentries for the entire course of the siege. It had been designed to keep anyone from coming down off the mountain at night to escape the siege.

  The track rose steeply now, and he had to drop the Land Rover into a lower gear to make the climb. He heard the equipment shift behind him as the boxy vehicle tilted upward. The army had bulldozed this track up to the western plateau so that the Yadin expedition could get their equipment and tents closer to the fortress. He thought it ironic that the Israelis had sought the same ground General Silva occupied two thousand years ago.

  Once he got up onto the plateau he passed by the rubble of the main Roman camp’s wall. He pulled the Land Rover up to four old Israeli Army Conex boxes that stood next to the remains of a mining cable-car tower. The army had erected the cable tramway using two towers back in the early sixties, one at the base of the siege ramp and the other up at the top of the mountain on the western parapet walls. The tramway was no longer operational, but they had not seen fit to dismantle the towers other than to take down the actual cables and the tower top on the ramp. The corrugated steel Conex boxes were the World War II variant of modern-day seagoing containers, some twenty feet long, eight feet wide, and seven feet high. They had been used during World War II to move cargo and then as shelters for small field headquarters or radio communications stations once at the battlefront. The U-shaped cluster of boxes made for a perfect place to nest the Land Rover, which should keep it out of sight of anyone looking down from the mountain and, he hoped, any patrols passing along the western rim of the Wadi Masada. He doused the lights, got out, put on his windbreaker, and then sat down on the steps of one of the Conex boxes to listen and watch for a while.

  There was a light breeze blowing up here on the bare plateau. Surrounding the boxes and the tramway tower were small rocky enclosures that had been the foundations of the Roman army storehouses during the siege. The place was eerily beautiful in the starlit darkness. He marveled at the logistics of the siege. The Romans had had to bring everything they needed for subsistence down from the wreck of Jerusalem, including drinking water, because the Dead Sea was nothing more than a mineral stew. Water for the three thousand men of Silva’s army had been carried for two and a half years all the way across the Judaean fastness by women prisoners of war. They used Roman amphorae, the ubiquitous two-handled clay jars that could hold up to three gallons and weighed fifty-seven pounds. Once the women arrived with the jars, they were put to work building the siege ramp. When they became exhausted with the routine of filling baskets with sand and then carrying them up to the base of the mountain, they would be rounded up and marched back to the springs of Ein Gedi to bring more water. Those who could still walk, anyway.

  He had left a message on Judith’s voice mail saying that he was feeling out of sorts after what had happened in the harbor and that he’d be in touch in a couple of days. He’d deliberately called early so that he wouldn’t have to speak directly to her. It seemed the least harmful lie he could tell her, especially considering the larger lie of what he was attempting down here. If they caught him this time, the best that could happen would be immediate expulsion from the country.

  After watching for a half hour, he began unloading equipment from the Land Rover. He had brought two large cotton laundry bags, into which went all his gear. The four filled air tanks were belted into dual-tank harnesses on luggage wheels. There were two additional bags with camp food, water, and other necessaries.

  He took one more look around. No way around it, he thought and began humping the gear up the siege ramp. Thank God he’d asked for lightweight tanks.

  * * *

  It took him four hours to get everything up to the top and then over to the bat cave. Knowing that moonrise was going to be at just after three in the morning, he had first taken everything up the ramp to the casemate wall and then worked to move it across to the cave. That way, if there was a patrol out there on the wadi, he would not still be exposed in full view out on the ramp. The Land Rover was a potential liability. It was hidden, sort of, between two of the Conex boxes. If they did find the Land Rover, they’d know something was going on, but by then he’d be hidden in the cave. Even then, it could still all go wrong. They could trace the Land Rover to his rental information; the moment that news penetrated the archaeological network, there’d be an angry crowd on the mountain looking for him. Dogs could find him quickly.

  After getting everything into the cave, he had taken a look down at the visitors center lot. There were four vehicles parked in the lot and, surprisingly, one darkened tour bus. By this juncture, he had modified his own plan slightly. He would take a quick nap through the remaining hours of darkness and then go down to get the Land Rover just before dawn, when any patrols should be on their way to breakfast. He would drive the Land Rover back to the main road and go north instead of south, until he got to Qumran. Then he would turn around and come back to the Masada visitors center, arriving as if he were an early tourist. With a floppy hat and some wraparound sunglasses, he should be unrecognizable, especially if he waited for the first tours to arrive. He would get something to eat and additional water, then take the first cable car to the top, or perhaps the second, which would be more crowded. After that, he would play tourist until late morning and then get in line for the downhill cable car. At the last moment he would pretend to have lost something, drop out of the line, and make his way into the casemate and from there to the bat cave.

  He planned to do the first dive right away, so that if he did make a discovery, he would still have time to get down the mountain and call Judith before everything shut down for the Sabbath. That would also allow him to resolve any head-count discrepancies at the end of the day down at the visitors center. He didn’t need the security force getting all spun up over the possibility that a tourist was missing on the mountain, and he especially didn’t want soldiers searching the Serpent Path.

  He looked at his watch. It was just after 4:00 A.M. on Friday. He shone his flashlight around the musty cave, making sure he kept the light away from the small entrance hole. The ammonia stink was still there, although there was no fresh bat sign. The water remained at the same level as before, right up even with the bottom of the slab ledge. He shone his flashlight down into it but saw nothing except the refracted beams. He would rest for an hour and a half and then go back down the ramp.

  21

  Judith got to her office at a little after nine Friday morning. She went through her e-mail and voice messages, hoping that there might be word from the American. Despite their intimacy,
that was how she still thought of him in her mind—the American. Mr. Hall. David. She couldn’t quite bring herself to call him by his first name. His message about not feeling well had really disappointed her, more than she had expected. He had kissed her, a gentle, opening gambit kind of kiss. So very nice. She paused, staring at her e-mail screen without seeing it. She hadn’t slept for two hours thinking about her day with him and that kiss, but of course, anyone would still be upset after witnessing what he’d seen.

  There were no other messages. Nothing. She thought about calling him at the hotel, just to cheer him up a little. The phone rang. The departmental weekly meeting. She groaned and gathered up her portable and coffee cup.

  She did not get back to her office until after lunch. There was still no word from the American. She decided to call his hotel in Tel Aviv after all. The desk rang her through to his room and then to voice mail. She left a brief hope-you’re-feeling-better message and hung up. Then she wondered. Had the police come back? Was he waiting in some interrogation room at headquarters? Or maybe he’d eaten something last night that had made him ill—it happened to visiting Americans all the time. What if he’d been hospitalized? She called back, asked for the concierge, and explained the situation. The concierge put her on hold and came back a few minutes later. No report of Mr. Hall being ill or being taken anywhere; shall we check the room? Yes, please. Fifteen minutes later the concierge called her back. The room appears to be in order; his things are still there. No signs of trouble—is it possible that there’s a different interpretation? As in, he’s decided not to call you, Mrs. Ressner? Instantly embarrassed, Judith thanked him for his trouble and hung up.

  What the hell, she wondered. Had she totally misread the American? That he’d failed to “score” that night in her apartment and had decided to just move on? She frowned. Not at all, she thought. That good-night kiss. There’d been a gentle promise there. She thought about it. Then she remembered he had originally been planning some more diving expeditions, although that was unlikely after what had happened at Caesarea. She fished in her purse for the receipts from the dive shop and made one more call.

  * * *

  David was suited up and ready to go into the cistern just before noon. Everything with the Land Rover and the morning ascent to the fortress had gone as planned. As long as he got back down before the entire place shut down for Shabbat, he could make sure the security people got a correct head count. Stupid tourist just wandered off somewhere.

  He checked his gear for the umpteenth time, switched on his headlamp, activated his dive console, and then lowered himself into the black rectangle of water at the bottom of the slab opening. He had pulled two of the steel staging pipes across the opening so he would have something to grab when he came back up. He’d also attached a hundred-foot-long rope to one of the pipes and then tied a spare handheld battery lamp to the end of it and added a few rocks in a catch bag. He switched the lamp on and then lowered eighty feet of the rig into the water, paying out line until it hung straight down. This would give him a reference point within the cistern to lead him back up to the hole. From the surface, he could not make out the light down below in the black water.

  He’d measured the water temperature and found it to be warmer than he had expected, sixty-two degrees. Although this was far from warm, he calculated that this would give him an extra two minutes at maximum depth. He’d split the difference in his calculations and set the bottom time for fifteen minutes, with bottom time defined as the time from beginning of his descent until beginning of his ascent. If he came up to a lesser depth sooner than that, he’d gain an extra few minutes at the lesser depth, but not much. He was using the rules for recreational diving and trying to be conservative.

  He sat there on the edge for a moment. What are you waiting for? he asked himself. The image of that wet-suited figure hovering above him looked back at him from the black surface. Was he really ready to go back underwater? He’d been mentally skating around a grimmer possibility regarding the incident in the harbor. Had someone tried to warn him off what he was doing? If so, that someone had to know what he was up to, and if that was true, the someone might decide to take even harsher measures now that he’d come back to the mountain. He shook his head like a wet dog to clear away the dark thoughts and then dropped into the water.

  He adjusted his mask and regulator and let go of the pipe. He was now neutrally buoyant, not floating anymore but definitely not sinking. He arced over and began to swim down into the cistern. The water was not exactly clear, but it wasn’t murky either. He turned periodically to sight in on the reference line with its dangling light, which was more visible now that he was heading down into the cavern. Of the walls he could see absolutely nothing, and he experienced a moment of vertigo as he stopped, suspended in a volume of water, his headlamp sending refracted beams of light into the void. He was absolutely, positively breaking all the rules here: a deep dive, by himself, no backup on the surface, and into a cavern about which he knew nothing. Brave? Yes, but not very bright, as he had heard his Uncle Jack say all too often.

  After three minutes, he finally reached the bottom and hovered upright, paddling upward with gentle flapping motions to stay near the bottom. Then he bent over to touch the bottom and found, to his amazement, that it was littered with what looked like crusty, earthen half-sized bricks. There was a film of superfine silt along the bottom, and his efforts to inspect the bricks immediately enveloped him in a brown cloud. He swam sideways away from the silt cloud until the water cleared. He looked around for the reference light and found it behind him, not where he expected it to be. He looked straight up to assure himself that his bubbles were going up, not sideways or even down. They were. His wrist depth gauge indicated one hundred and four feet. He looked at his dive console compass and then started swimming due west, which should take him to the interior wall of the cavern. After a minute and a half he came up against it, a smooth rock surface that appeared to be natural, not man-hewn like the cisterns in the fortress’s side walls.

  Suspicions confirmed, he thought; much too big to have been man-made. He turned right, or north, and swam along the wall, ascending now to eighty feet, looking for steps or a ladder of some sort cut into the wall, but there was nothing. He did notice that there was a thin, boiling cloud of silt trailing behind him.

  He kept an eye on the glow of his reference light out in the middle and realized that after a minute or so, it was moving to his right, which meant the cavern was indeed spherical, with a continuously curving wall. When he got to what should be the north side, he checked his time and found he had about eight minutes left, based on a hundred-and-ten-foot dive. He kept checking his compass, and when he was swimming in a southerly direction he ascended to seventy feet, some thirty-five feet off the floor of the cavern. Here there were no more silt clouds. The bottom must be layered with very fine mud particles. He kept going until he was headed west again, which meant he had reached the southern curve of the sphere. Still no features worth mentioning, just smooth rock walls, with the occasional vein of quartz gleaming back at him.

  He stopped when he was pointed north again, alongside the west wall, and checked time and depth. The timer was based on the deep dive of a hundred and ten feet, but he had been at eighty to seventy feet longer than he had been at the deepest depth. He had a few extra minutes. He was comfortable enough from the exertion of breathing and swimming, but he knew he dared not push it. One of the first deadly things nitrogen did was to cloud a diver’s judgment. He checked his reference light once more and was just barely able to see its glow out there in the middle somewhere. He realized he should have left another light on up at the exit hole, in case something happened to the reference light.

  Crazy shit you’re doing down here, he thought. His old diving instructor would kick his ass three ways for this: long, hard, and often. Along with a lot of Israelis, too, he thought with a mental smile. He ascended again, now up to fifty feet, and reversed course, goin
g back counterclockwise around the vast cavern, looking for anything at all. He’d made it all the way around the southern and eastern sides when his timer alarm pulsed. He reset it for two more minutes and kept going; if he was going to break all the safety rules, why not one more? Was that nitrogen talking?

  He had traversed what should have been the western face when the timer pulsed again, and this time he turned his face up and began the ascent, straight up the wall.

  Fifteen feet up a dark shadow caught his eye. He stopped and turned around.

  There.

  He swam over to the shadow and saw that a large round boulder was protruding out of the smooth rock wall like a bulging eyeball. It stuck out enough to create a shadow when his headlamp hit it from below. He swam around it, wondering why there would be this discontinuity in the otherwise smooth cistern wall. There was another shadow ten feet away. He swam over to this and discovered a narrow opening. A cave? He put his head in and saw that the cave was very shallow, a pit more than a cave. It ended about eight feet back. He pulled out and saw yet another shadow. Same thing—another small fissure that went nowhere.

  He went back to the boulder and checked his console. Thirty-five feet. Air to spare. Swimming in place beneath it, he ran his hand over the slippery rock surface. Bits of rock fell away, as if it were rotten. It looked like sandstone, and the water had corroded the edges. He saw a small cloud of silt squirt out around the bottom of the boulder. Silt? Why would there be silt up here on the side of the cistern? There shouldn’t be—

  With a swelling wave of pressure, the boulder began to move, tipping out of the hole behind it and then coming straight down toward him. He backed furiously out of the way as the stone slid silently past him like a ship going down the building ways, grazing his chest and boots and rolling him in the water with its wake vortex. Then he was moving again, but this time, he was being sucked into a cave opening that had been behind the boulder. His tank and then his arms banged on the rock walls as he went in, rolling out of control, for a distance of about twelve feet before the cave narrowed to the point where the inrushing water pinned him to the walls. Finally everything settled down, and he could extract himself.