Cross Bones (6 page)

—I’m blanking on the name.”

“Flavius Silva.”

“That’s the guy. Silva was not amused. Masada was a pocket of defiance he would not tolerate. Silva set up perimeter camps, constructed an encircling wal , then an enormous ramp up the side of Masada. When his troops final y rol ed a battering ram up the incline and breached the fortress, they found everyone dead.”

I didn’t mention my source, but I remembered al this from an early-eighties miniseries on Masada. Peter O’Toole as Silva?

“Excel ent. Though your tel ing lacks a certain sense of scale. Silva didn’t just march a few platoons to Masada. His operation was massive, including his entire Tenth Legion, its auxiliary troops, and thousands of Jewish prisoners of war. Silva didn’t intend to leave until the rebels were subjugated.”

“Who was in charge up top?”

“Eleazar ben Ya’ir. The Jews had been up there seven years, and were as committed to staying as Silva was to ousting them.”

More miniseries memory bytes. Decades earlier, Herod had been into major development at Masada, ordering a casement wal around the top, defense towers, storehouses, barracks, arsenals, and a cistern system for catching and storing rainwater. Seventy years after the old king’s death, the warehouses were stil stocked, and the zealots had everything they needed.

“The main source on Masada is Flavius Josephus,” Jake went on. “Joseph ben Matatyahu, in Hebrew. At the beginning of the sixty-six revolt, Josephus was serving as a Jewish commander in Galilee. Later he went over to the Romans. Regardless of his loyalties or disloyalties, the guy was a bril iant historian.”

“And the only reporter in town at the time.”

“There is that. But Josephus’ descriptions are amazingly detailed. According to his account, the night the fortress was breached, Eleazar ben Ya’ir gathered his fol owers.”

Jake leaned forward and set the scene.

“Picture this. The wal was burning. The Romans would pour in at dawn. There was no hope of escape. Ben Ya’ir argued that a death of glory was preferable to a life of slavery. Lots were cast, and ten men were elected to kil al the others. Another set of lots determined who among the ten would kil his fel ow assassins, and, final y, himself.”

“There were no dissenters?”

“If so, those opinions were overruled. Two women and several children did hide out and survive. Most of Josephus’ information came from them.”

“How many died?”

“Nine hundred and sixty men, women, and children,” Jake said, his voice soft. “Jews view Masada as one of the most dramatic episodes in their history.

Especial y Israeli Jews.”

“What does Masada have to do with Kessler’s photo?”

“The fate of the remains of the Jewish zealots has always been a mystery. According to Josephus, Silva established a garrison on the summit immediately after Masada’s conquest.”

“Surely Masada has been excavated.”

“For years, every digger on the planet was drooling for a permit. An Israeli archaeologist named Yigael Yadin final y got the nod. Yadin worked for two field seasons using a team of volunteers. The first lasted from October of sixty-three until May of sixty-four, the second from November of sixty-four until April of sixty-five.”

I had my first inkling where Jake was going.

“Yadin’s team recovered human remains?”

“Three skeletons. On the lower terrace of Herod’s palace vil a.”

“Palace vil a?”

“The periodic uprisings kept the old boy nervous, so he fortified Masada as a sort of safe house should he and his family ever need to escape. And Herod wasn’t into discomfort. In addition to the wal and defensive towers, he commissioned palaces complete with colonnades, mosaics, frescoes, terraces, gardens, the whole nine yards.”

I pointed to the photo. “This is one of the three?”

Jake shook his head. “According to Yadin, one was the skeleton of a male in his twenties. Not far away lay the bones of a young woman, her sandals and scalp perfectly preserved. I’m not kidding. I’ve seen the pictures. The woman’s hair looked like she’d braided it the morning she was unearthed.”

“Aridity makes for great preservation.”

“Yes. Though the remains weren’t exactly as Yadin interpreted them.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not important. According to Yadin, the third skeleton was that of a child.”

“What about this guy?” Again, I pointed at Kessler’s photo.

“This guy.” Jake’s jaw muscles bunched, relaxed. “This guy wasn’t supposed to be up there at al .”

6

“NOT SUPPOSED TO BE UP THERE?”

“That’s my theory.”

“Anyone share it?”

“Some.”

“Who is he?”

“That’s the puzzler.”

I sat back and assumed a listening posture.

“Fol owing their victory, Silva’s troops would have thrown the zealots’ bodies over the cliffs, or buried the corpses communal y somewhere on the summit.

Yadin’s team dug some test trenches, but found no evidence of a mass grave. Wait a sec.”

Jake pul ed two items from a battered leather briefcase, and placed them on the table. The first was a map.

I scooted my chair close and we both leaned in.

“Masada is shaped like a Stealth aircraft, with one wing pointing north, the other pointing south, and the cockpit pointing west.”

My mind Rorschach-ed an amoeba, but I kept it to myself.

Jake indicated the upper edge of the summit, near the tip of his Stealth’s southern wing.

“There’s a network of caves here, a few yards below the casement wal .”

Jake slid the second item from under the map.

Old black-and-white print. Human bones. Boot-scuffed dirt.

Kessler déjà vu.

But not quite.

In this photo the bones of many people were scattered and jumbled. Also, this shot had an official north arrow/scale marker, and, in the upper right corner, an arm and knee could be seen as an excavator brushed something lying in the dirt.

“Yadin’s team found skeletal remains in one of the southern summit caves,” I guessed, not taking my eyes from the print. “This shot was taken during excavation.”

“Yes.” Jake indicated a spot on the Masada diagram. “The locus was designated Cave 2001. Yadin mentions it in his preliminary report on the Masada project, and includes a brief description by Yoram Tsafrir, the supervising excavator of the locus.”

“Minimum number of individuals in the cave?” I asked, counting at least five skul s.

“Depends on how you read Yadin.”

I looked up, surprised. “MNI shouldn’t be that tough to determine. Did a physical anthropologist examine the bones?”

“Dr. Nicu Haas of Hebrew University. Based on Haas’s evaluation, in his first field season report, Yadin gave a total of twenty-five individuals: fourteen males, six females, four children, and one fetus. But, if you read his wording careful y, he treated one very old male as separate from the other males.”

“Bringing his actual total to twenty-six.”

“Exactly. In his popular book—”

“The one that came out in sixty-six?”

“Right.Masada: Herod’s Fortress and the Zealots’ Last Stand. In that publication, Yadin does basical y the same thing, saying Haas found fourteen males aged twenty-two to sixty, one male over seventy, six females, four kids, and a fetus.”

“So it’s unclear whether the total count was twenty-five or twenty-six?”

“You’re quick.”

“Blistering. Could be an honest error.”

“It could be.” Jake’s voice suggested he didn’t believe it.

“Ages of the women and children?”

“The kids were eight to twelve years. The women were al young, fifteen to twenty-two.”

Sudden insight. “You think our fel ow here is the septuagenarian?” I tapped Kessler’s photo.

“I’l get to him in a minute. For now, let me focus on the cave. In their reports, neither Tsafrir nor Yadin indicated when Cave 2001 was discovered or when it was cleared.”

“Could be just sloppy—”

He cut me off.

“The find was never announced to the media.”

“Perhaps that was done out of respect for the dead.”

“Yadin cal ed a press conference when the three palace skeletons were found.” Jake shook his hands, fingers splayed like E.T. “Big excitement. We’ve got remains of the Jewish defenders of Masada. This was late November of sixty-three. Cave 2001 was discovered and cleared in October of sixty-three, one monthbefore that press conference.”

Jake’s index finger augured into the photo.

“Yadin knew about the cave bones and never brought them up.”

“If the dates weren’t made public, how doyou know when the cave was discovered or excavated?”

“I’ve spoken with a volunteer who worked the site. The guy’s trustworthy, and he’d have no reason to lie. And believe me, I’ve researched the media coverage. It wasn’t justthat press conference. Throughout both dig seasons the media reported regularly on what was being found at Masada.

TheJerusalem Post keeps topical archives, and I’ve spent hours with their Masada file. Articles mention mosaics, scrol s, the synagogue, themikvehs, the three skeletons from the northern palace. There’s not a single word on the remains from Cave 2001.”

Jake was on a rol .

“And I’m not just talking thePost. In October of sixty-four theIl ustrated London News published an extensive spread on Masada, pictures and al . The palace skeletons are mentioned, no respect for the dead there, but there’s zilch on the cave bones.”

Charlie chose that moment to yodel.

“What the hel is that?”

“My cockatiel. He doesn’t usual y do that unless you give him beer.”

“You’re kidding.” Jake sounded shocked.

“Of course.” I stood and gathered our mugs. “Charlie gets quite maudlin when he drinks. More tea?”

Jake smiled and held out his mug. “Please.”

When I returned, Jake was working a kink from his neck. I thought of a goose.

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “Yadin talked freely about the palace skeletons, but never once discussed the cave bones publicly?”

“The only mention I’ve ever found of Cave 2001 is in coverage of Yadin’s press conference fol owing the second season’s excavation. In theJerusalem Post on March 28, 1965, Yadin is quoted as lamenting that only twenty-eight skeletons had been found at Masada.”

“Twenty-five from the cave, and three from the northern palace.”

“If it was twenty-five.”

I rol ed that around in my head.

“Who did Yadin think these cave burials were?”

“Jewish zealots.”

“Based on what?”

“Two things. Associated artifacts, and similarity of the skul s to a type unearthed in the Bar Kochba caves in Nahal Hever. At the time, those burials were thought to be Jews kil ed in the second Jewish revolt against Rome.”

“Were they?”

“Turned out the bones were Chalcolithic.”

Mental Rolodex. Chalcolithic. Stone and copper tools. Fourth mil enniumB.C.E. , after the Neolithic, before the Bronze Age. Way too early for Masada.

“Physical anthropologists hold little confidence in skul typing,” I said.

“I know. But that was Haas’s conclusion, and Yadin accepted it.”

There was a long, thoughtful silence. I broke it.

“Where are the bones now?”

“Al egedly, everyone’s back in the ground at Masada.”

“Al egedly?”

Jake’s mug clunked the tabletop.

“Let me fast-forward a bit. In his popular book, Yadin touched briefly on the human remains recovered in Cave 2001. Shlomo Lorinez, an ultra-Orthodox member of the Knesset, read the thing and went bal istic. He’d missed the one press report back in sixty-five in which the skeletons were mentioned.

Lorinez mounted a protest in the Knesset, charging that cynical archaeologists and medical researchers were violating Jewish law. He demanded to know where the remains were, and insisted on proper burial for the defenders of Masada.

“Major public controversy. The religious affairs minister and the chief rabbis proposed placement of al Masada bones in a Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives. Yadin objected, and suggested interment of the three palace skeletons at Masada, but reburial of the Cave 2001 folks in the cave in which they’d been found. Yadin was trumped, and in July of sixty-nine, al remains went back into the ground near the tip of the Roman ramp.”

I was finding this very confusing. Why would Yadin have opposed reburial of the cave bones on the Mount of Olives? Why suggest reburial of the palace skeletons on Masada, but return of the cave bones to the cave? Was it a question of keeping the cave folks off holy ground? Or was he uncomfortable with the idea of the cave folks and the palace folks sharing the same grave?

Charlie broke my chain of thought with a line from “Hey, Big Spender.”

“Did anything else turn up with the cave bones?” I asked.

“A lot of domestic utensils. Cooking pots, lamps, basketry.”

“Suggesting the caves had been lived in.”

Jake nodded.

“By whom?”

“It was wartime. Jerusalem was toast. Al sorts of refugees might have fled to high ground. Some might have lived apart from the zealot community.”

Ah-hah. “So those in the cave could have been non-Jews?”

Solemn nod.

“Not what Israel wanted to publicize.”

“Not at al . Masada had become its sacred emblem. Jews making their last stand, choosing suicide over surrender. The site was a metaphor for the new state. Until recently, the Israeli military held special ceremonies inducting troops into their elite units on top of Masada.”

“Ouch.”

“According to Tsafrir, the cave bones were in disarray, with clothing fragments intermingled among them, as though the bodies had been dumped,” Jake said. “That’s not a typical pattern for Jewish burial.”

Birdie chose that moment to hop onto my lap.

I made introductions. Jake scratched the cat’s ear, then picked up his thread.

“To date, the Israel Exploration Society has published five volumes on the Masada excavation. Volume three notes that the caves were surveyed and excavated, but, aside from that, and a map with an outline drawing of Cave 2001, there’s no mention anywhere of anything found at that locus, human or material.”