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: “Brave and loyal followers! Long ago we resolved to serve neither the Romans nor anyone other than God, who alone is the true and just Lord of mankind. The time has now come that bids us to prove our determination by our deeds. At such time we must not disgrace ourselves. God has given us the privilege to die nobly and as free men. Let our wives die unabused, our children without the knowledge of slavery. While our hands are free and can hold a sword, let them do a noble service. Let us die unenslaved by our enemies, leave this world as free men in company with our wives and children.”
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: Masada shall not fall again!”
“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: The Masada Complex.”
“True,” Ness said. “When President Nixon accused Golda Meir of suffering from the Masada Complex, Golda responded, We do have a Masada Complex. We have a Pogrom Complex. We also have a Hitler Complex.”
The headphones crackled. Ness put them on and listened.
“Positive,” he said, “we’re on our way.”
“Look at the ramp,” Tara said. “What an engineering wonder.”
Ness flipped a few switches overhead and the engine started. “The Romans perfected siege technology. They knew how to break down the greatest fortifications and the most rebellious spirits.” The rotors sped up, and he raised his voice over the noise. “And to defeat the zealots on Mount Masada, Caesar sent his most brilliant general: Flavius Silva.”
Professor Silver kneeled at Faddah’s grave and promised him that, as soon as the State of Israel ceased to exist, his remains would be transferred to a new Palestinian National Cemetery in Jerusalem, along with all the other martyrs who had sacrificed their lives for the cause.
The helicopter reappeared over Mount Masada, but Silver paid no attention. With renewed clarity of purpose, he followed the rows of gravestones from the entry, looking for the four dead kids. He stopped at a grave that bore a familiar last name: Miriam El-Tal. The next grave was: Shlomo El-Tal.
Despite the heat, Silver felt a chill. El-Tal? Were these relatives of Masada? Perhaps her parents? Both were buried on 13.8.73. He calculated that Masada would have been ten or so. Could it be? Was this her kibbutz? He tried to remember if she had ever mentioned Kibbutz Ben-Yair.
The roar of the helicopter made him look up at Mount Masada, and it hit him. Of course! Her parents must have named her for the mythical mountain they had seen out of their window every day!
Masada. A young orphan.
As the initial shock passed, he realized this was a stroke of luck. Surely Masada knew about what happened in 1982, maybe even the name of the woman soldier who had killed Faddah!
Where was her little brother? She had always spoken of the three deaths in the same sentence, implying they had died together. But the next grave did not carry the name El-Tal. Was the boy only injured, dying weeks or months after the parents? The next few gravestones had other names. Had her brother been buried somewhere else?
Several rows down, he reached a stone dated 19.8.82. The next one was marked with the same date, and the next, and the one after that. The hostages! Four kids who would have lived but for the Israelis’ arrogance!
He wrote down the names, translating the Hebrew letters into English:
Orah Levtov
Dina Shemesh
Devora Almagor
Three girls. The fourth, he knew, would be the boy he had accidently pushed off the mountain. He jotted the first name:
Israel There was a nickname in parentheses: (“Srulie”)
And the family name: El-Tal
Silver stopped writing and peered at the stone:
Israel (“Srulie”) El-Tal
Son of Miriam and Shlomo
Murdered 19.8.82
Seventeen at his death
God Avenge His Blood
How could it be? He touched the letters, tracing each one, the concrete rough against the nerve endings of his fingertip. Israel (“Srulie”) El-Tal.
The roaring engine startled him. The helicopter descended from the mountain and flew across the arid valley, raising a dust storm that stung his skin in a thousand pricks. Fearing for his eye, he buried his face in his hands, bowing down until his forehead rested on the slab that covered Masada’s little brother.
“These tomatoes go to Europe.” Ness pointed at the greenhouses. “The hot weather and our advanced irrigation techniques give four crops a year. They use multi-level soil boxes to multiply field surface six times.” The helicopter hovered above a water tower. “The whole of Israel is smaller than Lake Michigan, so we have to produce more tomatoes per acre than any country in the world. Add efficient air transport and access to retail outlets, and you have speed and freshness. Within forty-eight hours of being picked, these tomatoes reach European consumers’ salad bowls.”
“And within another four hours,” Masada said, “the
ir toilet bowls.”
Ness pushed on the stick, taking them low over the red roofs of Kibbutz Ben-Yair. She caught glimpses of her childhood-the narrow asphalt paths, the dining hall where members had met for hours to argue over socialism, the children’s house higher on the hillside, with swings and a tree house, now painted red, yellow, and green rather than the peeling white she remembered.
They came full circle over the crest of a hill, returning to the kibbutz cemetery, facing the blue water and the mountains across.
“It’s gorgeous,” Tara said. “Absolutely magnificent!”
Masada nodded. “The best spot is always reserved for our dead.”
“Let’s make a stop,” Ness said, “and pay our respects to your parents and brother.”
“No!”
“It’ll be good for you.” Ness maneuvered to land at a field bordering the cemetery. “Somebody’s down there. Let me land before he chokes on dust.”
She reached over Tara and pushed his hand on the stick. The helicopter tilted upward, and the engine uttered a tortured clattering.
“Hey!” Ness shoved the stick forward. Red lights flashed on the instrument panel. They lifted sharply, swayed from side to side, and dropped to the right, toward the ground.
Tara screamed.
The rotors cut the air faster, and the rate of descent slowed while the view disappearing in plumes of dust.
A buzzer joined the ruckus.
Ness pulled a lever over his head, which seemed to increase the noise. He shifted the stick sideways, back and forth, and held it in place as they began to ascend. The swaying reduced to shaking until they stabilized, finding themselves over the water.
He turned off the buzzer and increased power, moving up in a stable, direct course toward the mountains. Soon the kibbutz was only a green patch in the brown desert.
“Are we safe yet?” Tara peeked though her fingers.
Ness glared at Masada. “If you want to kill yourself, do it alone!”
The helicopter finally departed. Professor Silver pulled himself up and made his way through the graves. A voice repeated inside his head: Israel (“Srulie”) El-Tal.
He stumbled down the path, leaving the cemetery behind, his vision fogged in a haze of fear and confusion.
Murdered 19.8.82
God Avenge His Blood.
There was no other explanation. The boy he had pushed off the cliff was Masada’s brother!
“Allah hu Akbar!” His foot hit a rock, and he fell, the hot asphalt burning his hands.
Voices approached, talking urgently. Someone helped him up.
A woman spoke to him in Hebrew.
He hurried off, following the path between the cottages, passing by the laundry.
Masada’s brother!
Allah’s sense of humor.
“Professor!” Ezekiel emerged from the communal dining hall holding a plastic cup.
Silver got into the golf cart. “We must go! Back to Jerusalem!”
“Your wish is my command.” Ezekiel got behind the wheel and drove the cart down to the gate. As they walked through, the guard handed them each a sheet of pale blue paper.
Colonel Ness landed at a military base in the Jordan Valley, where they refueled and collected lunch boxes. They continued north, passing above a section of the security wall surrounding the West Bank. Beyond the Sea of Galilee, somewhere over the Golan Heights, he recited the number of gourmet wine boxes exported every year. Passing low over Safed, he showed them the apple orchards covering the graded mountain slopes and the pine forests burnt by Hezbollah rockets from Lebanon. He noted the vast industrial complex owned by Warren Buffett, which produced jet engine components for Boeing and Airbus. The citrus groves formed a green carpet across the Valley of Jezreel, reaching almost to Haifa, where Ness took them over the Technion Institute. He named the two scientists who recently shared a Nobel Prize for inventing a lifesaving HIV drug.
Masada knew exactly what he was doing but kept quiet, planning her ultimate retort.
They followed the Mediterranean coast southward, flying by the high-technology park at the foothills of Mount Carmel where, Ness explained, Medical Resonance Imaging-MRI-had been invented, and over the golden beach where the latest Olympic gold medalist in windsurfing had grown up learning the ropes.
Over the endless expanse of the Tel Aviv metropolis, he listed international corporations, such as Intel, Microsoft, Motorola, and General Electric, whose research and development centers employed thousands of Israeli scientists.
“These Israeli scientists,” Masada said, “would gladly relocate to the United States if they could get through immigration barriers.”
“And you,” he said, “now that the Americans kicked you out, where would you gladly go? Iceland?”
She wondered how he knew that. “I was deported because you hid the document I needed.”
“You got deported because a Jew-hating government official found a way to hurt you, just like the Jews who had been expelled from Spain, England, France, and Portugal. And those persecuted, robbed, and burnt at the stake on false charges for centuries. Anti-Semitism is as old as the Covenant. An independent Jewish state is our only refuge-your only refuge, as it turned out.”
They flew in silence until he swung inland toward the Weitzman Institute and commenced naming the Noble Prize laureates working there.
“That’s nothing compared to what Jews achieved before Israel existed,” Masada said. “The Diaspora produced the Talmud, the books of Maimonides, the interpretations of Rashi, the Shulkhan Arukh, which every religious Jew accepts as the codification of Jewish law. We made huge contributions to medicine, science, banking, music, art, and human rights. For two millennia we’ve made the whole world better, why do we suddenly need our own state?”
“Because the gentiles kept killing us!” Ness banked sharply and headed west toward the sandy Mediterranean coast, increasing the speed. “The Holocaust proved Jews could never be safe without a state.”
“On the contrary.” Masada ignored Tara’s elbowing. “It proved that Jews should be allowed to immigrate freely. The Germans were not the first regime wishing to get rid of its Jews. From Spain, Jews went to Turkey and Portugal, where they were even more successful. When Portugal merged with Spain, they went to Amsterdam, which is still enjoying the trade they established five centuries ago. England expelled them, so they moved to Poland and built it. And the first Jews in New York were refugees from Catholic South America. If the United States and England had allowed German Jews entry in the thirties, there would be no Holocaust in the forties.”
“Nonsense!” Ness reached the coastline and swept right again, back toward the tall hotels along the Tel Aviv beach. “Our people had a two-thousand-year experiment in living without a homeland, without an army. We were resilient and flexible and recovered from expulsions, pogroms, and crusades, but we still lost half the nation-six million Jewish lives! — to the German butchers.”
“Because of Zionism!” Masada was on a roll now. “If the Jews would be going to Palestine, why should other countries let them in? The European Jews were trapped because of the illusion of Zionism!”
“That’s an ass-backwards logic!” Colonel Ness raised his voice. “Only the early Zionists, who went as pioneers to Palestine before the war, only they survived the Holocaust. And the only defense against a second Holocaust is Israel! We’re only safe here!”
“Here?” Masada waved at the Tel Aviv metropolis that filled their view. “You call this safe? In exile, we were dispersed among the nations, able to sustain attacks, even a Holocaust. We were like seeds, spread by the wind, growing wherever we landed. But Zionism put all the Jewish eggs in one basket. A single devastating blow-nuclear, biological, chemical, or an earthquake-”
“Or a tsunami,” Tara added.
“Or a shower of conventional rockets,” Masada said. “thousands of them, which are already aimed and primed around the borders of this tight-waist country. The Jewish state
is the biggest danger to Jewish survival. We make it easy for our enemies. Where would Islamic terrorism be without Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank?”
Ness adjusted the headphones so his lips came closer to the microphone. “Where do you get your ideas about the Holocaust? Your friend’s book?”
“Lenin,” Tara said. “Are you talking about Lenin?”
“What’s Lenin got to do with this?” Ness jerked his head impatiently. “I’m talking about her friend, the professor. Is he your inspiration?”
The derisiveness in his voice stabbed Masada. “Levy is a better man than you.”
“You’re blind!” Ness flicked a switch on the instrument panel, and the headphones died. He found a major highway and flew over it through the Valley of Ayalon toward Jerusalem.
Professor Silver’s panic subsided only when he saw the Sea Level billboard pass by. He turned, catching a last glance of the blue oval of the Dead Sea through the rear window. He thought of the tall teenager who had wrestled with Faddah on Mount Masada, of himself ramming the boy, sending him over the edge.
Masada’s brother!
The possibility had never occurred to him. Why should it? Masada had only spoken once or twice about her parents and little brother-little! — causing Silver to assume the boy had died with their parents. But now he knew. Would he be able to face Masada as if nothing had happened? If she sensed his wariness, her tenacity could turn to investigating him. And if she discovered he was her brother’s killer, she would connect all the dots and expose the whole plan. She must be dealt with as soon as possible, her death staged to appear like a suicide. But how?
Silver picked up the pale blue flyer. Under a drawing of a burning candle, the kibbutz secretary announced a predawn memorial service at 4:30 a.m. on the 19th of August at Herod’s Fort on Mount Masada. “Cable car leaving at 4:15 a.m. Bring sweaters!”
The Masada Complex Page 30
