The helicopter ended its aerobatics over Mount Masada, disappearing to the right, its sound dying down. Professor Silver looked at the vast cemetery and wondered how one kibbutz had produced so many dead people. The gravestones from August 1982 would be next to each other. He would write down the names and go to the office of the kibbutz to ask to meet the relatives. Someone would know where Faddah had been buried, maybe even the whereabouts of the woman soldier.
He noticed a single grave outside the cemetery. He looked again, focusing beside the blotch. He coughed, pounding his own chest until the pressure eased.
“You okay?” Ezekiel held his arm.
He nodded.
The driver pounded Silver’s back. “It’s the atmospheric pressure. You’re standing on the lowest dry land in the whole world.”
“I’ll walk around.” Silver coughed more. “Alone, please.”
“No problem. I’ll fetch us something to drink.” He drove the golf cart down the hillside toward the cottages and checkered plots of vegetables.
Silver followed the fence around the cemetery perimeter, through thorny shrubs and scattered rocks, and reached the isolated concrete slab. There was no name on it, only a crescent and a few numbers. He kneeled, removed his glasses, and gazed sideways. The writing was faded. A drop of sweat fell from the tip of his nose onto the dusty concrete, and he smeared it with his thumb, bringing out the numbers:
For years he had dreamt of finding Faddah’s grave, of breaking down and crying over his son. But now, his knees on a concrete slab that covered the boy’s remains, he felt relief, almost joy. It was a new beginning, a chance to correct a terrible wrong.
Silver gazed up at Mount Masada. Had they carried Faddah’s broken body along the whitened shore of the Dead Sea? Had they walked the distance through the desert, or had they thrown him on the back of a tractor? Had they dropped him into a hole in the dirt and laughed at his delicate hands and smooth cheeks?
He looked over the cemetery fence at the manicured flowers adorning the Jews’ graves and seethed at how Faddah had spent decades in this unattended grave. “They’ll pay dearly, my son! The woman who killed you and all the other Jews! Do you hear, Faddah? Your papa won’t fail again!”
The sound of steps made Rabbi Josh pause. Whoever had knocked on the door was walking away! He let go of the knob.
When the hallway outside was quiet again, he turned to face Masada’s room again. On the floor near the bed, he noticed a crumpled napkin. It bore the logo of Maccabee Beer and a few handwritten lines:
Rabbi Josh read the note again. It made no sense. He recalled Masada calling him
He sat on the bed, confused. Hadn’t Masada dominated Al with sexual favors? Hadn’t Silver heard them clearly? So why was this note implying that she was investigating him, that she was convinced he had used Al to bribe Mahoney on behalf of the Israelis!
He crumpled the napkin and tossed it on the floor. This was too much!
The room suddenly felt too small. He needed air.
Masada returned to the chopper and accepted a can of iced tea from Ness. She listened as he told Tara about the ruins. “See the rectangular shapes over there?” He pointed to the northeast corner of the mountaintop. “These are the storerooms where King Herod kept dried food, enough to support ten thousand soldiers for a whole year.”
Tara whistled. “Who was he afraid of?”
“His Jewish subjects,” Masada said. “Herod was the son of an Edomite slave who converted to Judaism. He took advantage of internal Jewish fighting to convince Rome to make him king of Judea. He even married a Jewish princess, Mariamne the Hashmonaean, but the Jews still hated him.”
“Over there,” Ness pointed, “archeologists found a ritual bath that meets the strictest religious rules. The larger ruin further back is the main palace, which the Zealots later subdivided into small rooms when they holed up here at the end of the Great Revolt against the Romans. They found food, still edible seventy years after Herod’s death, and held out for almost two years. But the Roman army built the earthen ramp, dragged up siege machines, and broke through the wall.”
Tara asked, “That’s when the Zealots jumped off the mountain?”
“They didn’t jump.” He unfolded a green pamphlet. “Josephus wrote that the Zealots realized the Romans would be able to break through in the morning, so they met in the synagogue to discuss it.” He pointed at a ruined structure near the casement wall. “Josephus recites the speech given by their leader, Elazar Ben Yair: “
Tara shook her head. “How sad!”
“How predictable,” Masada said.
Ness gestured at the fort. “They drew lottery to choose the ones who would help them die. In fact, Professor Yadin excavated eleven pottery shards with names. One of the pieces carried the name Ben-Yair.” He folded the pamphlet and stuck it in his pocket. “They believed in freedom, in national sovereignty on God’s Promised Land. They were the last free Jews until, two thousand years later, the modern State of Israel was founded.”
“They weren’t free,” Masada said. “They were captives of fanatic ideology that led to mass suicide. And now they are a myth, modern Zionism’s rallying cry:
“Do you want it to fall?” Ness asked.
“It will fall, because Jews can’t live in peace with each other.”
“There are challenges,” he conceded. “But this citadel was a Jewish stronghold, and these stones prove that Jews lived here in freedom while the strongest army in the ancient world spent two years trying to break in. That’s a fact. You agree?”
She shrugged.
“And because there’s so much ballista ammunition left in the fort, it’s clear that Josephus was telling the truth. The zealots allowed the Romans to build this huge ramp up to the wall because they didn’t want to hurt the Jewish slaves whom the Romans used to do the work.”
Masada saw through his reasoning. “A mass suicide is not an example of freedom, but of extremism that leads to a dead end. You people glorify death rather than admit that sovereignty is worthwhile only if it protects lives. You Israelis have a mental sickness:
