The Masada Complex (53 page)

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 19
^th
of August at Herod’s Fort on Mount Masada. “Cable car leaving at 4:15 a.m. Bring sweaters!”

The solution came to him like a puff of fresh air. Silver threw his head back and laughed, drawing a glance from Ezekiel. But he could not help it. His laughter grew as he dropped the flyer and clutched his hands together.
Allah’s sense of humor!

Rabbi Josh saw Professor Silver get out of a taxicab in front of the Ramban Hostel. “Levy!”

Silver turned slowly.

“You won’t believe what I discovered!”

“Yes?” He folded a bluish paper and put it in his pocket.

Rabbi Josh took his arm, and they strolled down the street. He described breaking into Masada’s room and finding the bar napkin. “If she suspects me, it means she can’t be guilty!”

They passed by a large poster showing a yellow Star of David, from which emerged a black fist with the middle finger sticking up at Uncle Sam.

“Let’s rest.” Silver pointed to a bench under a carob tree. “It’s very confusing.”

“There must be another explanation to what you heard.” Rabbi Josh was too hyped to sit, and he paced across the sidewalk and back. “Perhaps she was mocking Al.”