The Masada Complex (45 page)

A taxicab stood in the circular driveway by the main lobby of Hadassah Hospital. Professor Silver got in the back seat. “Ramban Hostel, please.”

The cabby drove fast with his right hand, the left stuck out the window with a burning cigarette. “Gorgeous day, isn’t it? Where are you from?”

“Arizona.”

“Hot!” The driver changed gears. His frizzy gray hair danced over his shoulders, and his bald spot glistened with beads of sweat. “I’m Ezekiel.” He drew from his cigarette and held it out the window. “Twenty-five years in the army. Sergeant major, Maintenance Corps.” He tapped the steering wheel. “I do this to get out of the house. Wife drives me crazy. You married?”

“Not anymore.”

“You’re lucky.” They were going downhill very fast. The driver pointed with his cigarette. “That’s Herzl’s grave.”

“A great man.” Silver covered his mouth and spat.

“Want to visit him?” Ezekiel hit the brakes, swerving to the middle lane.

“Another time.” Silver patted his watch. “It’s late.”

“He’s not going anywhere, right?” He accelerated, forcing his way back into traffic. “You like retirement? I love it. Two years, one month, and three weeks.”

“Where did you serve?”

“Where
didn’t
I serve?” The driver drew a wide circle in the air with the cigarette. “Tell me, is America going crazy?” He grabbed a yellow flyer from the seat beside him and passed it to Silver. “Take a look.”

One side of the yellow sheet was printed in Hebrew, the other in English:

Other than the U.S., Israel has the highest number of:

High-technology companies on NASDAQ!

Academic graduate degrees!

Books published annually!

Venture capital funds!

Startup companies!

And Israel leads the world (incl. U.S.) with:

Highest percentage of scientists of any country!

More museums per person than any other country!

Highest gain in number of trees planted every year!

More new medical patents a year than any other country!

The highest percentage of immigrants of any country in the world!

The best solar energy, irrigation, and medical imaging technologies!

United States of America: Aid Yourself! Israel Doesn’t Need You Anymore!

“Fantastic!” Silver held up the yellow flyer. “Can I keep it?”

“Take more.” Ezekiel pulled a fistful from a box on the floor. “I have plenty.”

“Brilliant.” He was amused. Their bragging, even if justified, was like the last flare up of a dying candle. None of these achievements had gained them a shred of popularity in the world. On the contrary, their self-congratulating aggressiveness was fueling resentment and disgust. The Jews were becoming delusional, just like the zealots who had assumed the Romans couldn’t capture Mount Masada. Like a modern-day Flavius Silva, Abu Faddah had returned to give them a lesson to last another two millennia. “Very impressive,” he added. “We’re ahead of everybody else.”

“So why does America think she can scare us with aid suspension?” The driver flipped his cigarette out the window. “We had a Jewish kingdom here, which stretched from Syria to Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and all the way to Egypt, while America was run by redskins who chased buffalo.”

“Speaking of history,” Silver said, taking advantage of the turn in the conversation, “I’m looking for a distant cousin. She was a big hero in the army.”

“In the Israeli army everybody thinks they’re heroes.”

“She saved some hostages.” Silver couched his words carefully.

“In eighty-two.”

Ezekiel twisted the steering wheel to pass a car and cut off another, which began honking. “Where? Lebanon?”

“On Mount Masada. Does it ring a bell?”

“I need bells to ring? I would remember a hostage situation on Mount Masada in eighty-two, or at any other time. Never happened.”

“Are you certain?”

The cabby lowered the volume on the radio. “Are you
meshugge
? Mount Masada is our national inspiration. The world would stop rotating if Jews were taken hostage on Mount Masada. You think I’d forget such a catastrophe?”

“Maybe my relatives exaggerated. Did anything happen on Mount Masada in eighty-two?”

“It was a busy year. The Lebanon War started.” He used his mobile phone to call a friend. They exchanged a few quick sentences in Hebrew. “My buddy says that the only event on Mount Masada that year was an accident that killed a few kids.” He pressed the phone to his ear. “August nineteen?” He glanced at his watch. “Hey, this coming Tuesday is the anniversary!”

Silver recognized the date. They had climbed the mountain on August 18, 1982. The woman soldier murdered Faddah at dawn on the 19
^th
. “What kind of an accident?”

“They were playing with an old hand grenade.” The cabby shook his head. “Terrible.”

Silver understood. The survivors had been instructed by the military to keep the truth secret, to adhere instead to the official version of a tragic accident. But if he could find those survivors, they may know the whereabouts of the woman soldier. “How sad. Were they from the same school?”

The driver nodded. “A kibbutz nearby.”

“Ah.” He wondered if that’s where the Israelis had buried Faddah. “Perhaps I should visit the kibbutz. Someone could still remember my relative.”

“It’s an hour’s drive, maybe a little more. The lowest human settlement in the world, measured by sea level. The lowest in the world!”

“How interesting.”

“I can take you tomorrow. You wake up early? Seven okay? Better we go before the heat builds up.”

In her room at the Ramban Hostel, Masada lay on the bed, two pillows under her head and a rolled-up blanket under her right knee. She placed the telephone on her stomach and began her search for Colonel Dov Ness.

She called every plausible agency—the Veterans Affairs office at the Ministry of Defense, the Personnel Command at the IDF, the Organization of Bereaved Families, the Disabled Veterans Agency, and the IDF’s Pensioners Command. But none of them had ever heard of Ness.

“He was my commander in the army,” Masada told a secretary at the Payroll Department in the Ministry of Defense. “He must exist somewhere!”

After a long silence, the secretary asked, “Have you tried finding him in the phone book?”

Elizabeth had finished unpacking when the phone rang. It was Bob Emises. “Flavian Silver is staying at the Ramban Hostel. Do you need a ride?”

“No, thanks.” She wrote down the address and telephone number.

The front desk clerk at the Ramban Hostel answered the phone in Hebrew, but switched to accented English. Professor Silver had just left for a funeral and would return in approximately two hours. Elizabeth asked for directions from the Kings Hotel.

“When you leave your hotel,” he explained, “turn right and keep going for five minutes. You can’t miss us. Good Sabbath.”

“And to you,” she said.

A colorful tourist magazine on the night table advertised day tours to the Old City, Israel Museum, art galleries, and archeological sites. Overnight trips went to Tel Aviv, Haifa, Nazareth, and the Dead Sea. After the ceremony, she could travel to those places, get to know her homeland in a way she had not been able to as a child.

Rabbi Josh watched the men in black coats and black hats pushing the gurney up the gravel path to the open hole in the ground. The dug-up soil formed a mound next to the grave. It was the soil of the Promised Land, the sacred soil in which Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were buried, in which Jews were buried without a coffin, lying in wait for the Messiah to arrive and resurrect the righteous.

A prayer shawl covered Raul, showing the outline of his small body. Rabbi Josh wanted to pick him up and cuddle him, talk him back to life.

One of the black-garbed men jumped into the grave and pulled one end of the gurney down into the hole. With practiced motions, he slid the white-shrouded body from under the prayer shawl into the grave, laying Raul flat on the bottom, while the other man pulled out the gurney.

Rabbi Josh kneeled by the open grave. He removed the plastic wrapping from the two blood-stained flags that had once stood together by the Ark of the Torah at Temple Zion, symbolizing American Jews’ joint loyalty to the two nations. The U.S. and Israeli flags were still attached to each other with Raul’s congealed blood as the rabbi reached down into the grave and placed them on his son’s shrouded chest. He imagined Raul’s face under the cloth of the shroud.

One of the Orthodox men shoved an open prayer book into his hand, tapping the page.

Rabbi Josh looked around for the wood sections he had cut from the temple dais. They weren’t there.

He left the graveside and walked through the tombstones to the bottom of the hill, where the station wagon was parked. He opened the back door, lifted the package, and groaned under the weight. It had not become heavier, but he had weakened with grief, little food, and a long journey without sleep.

Someone came to help him, but the rabbi shook his head. This was his burden to bear. He bowed, shifting the wood pieces onto his shoulders.

Bent over, he made his way up the hill, placing each foot ahead of the other in the narrow spaces between the tombstones. His back ached. The wood rubbed his skin raw over his shoulder blades. Sweat dripped down his face.

He lowered the wood sections into the grave, placing them upright by Raul’s legs, and recalled his son playing on the temple dais as an infant during sermons, crawling to the Ark and banging on it with his little hands, or tugging on his father’s pants while he read from the Torah. He wiped his eyes and recited the verses of Psalms, forcing from his mouth these words of praise for God and His justice while feeling nothing but anger at His cruelty.

Professor Silver stood by the rabbi’s elbow and repeated the words, sniffling.

Before he recited the
Kaddish
, Rabbi Josh looked around, searching for Masada. He didn’t blame her for Raul’s death, which was God’s doing. But did she blame herself? Probably, and this was the time for her to beg Raul’s forgiveness, as mourners traditionally did, speaking directly to the deceased by the graveside, bringing closure.

Disappointed that Masada wasn’t there, he kneeled at the grave alone. “I’m sorry,” he said, his vision misted. “I beg your forgiveness, my son.”