“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.

“Following their victory, Silva’s troops would have thrown the zealots’ bodies over the cliffs, or buried the corpses communally somewhere on the summit. Yadin’s team dug some test trenches, but found no evidence of a mass grave. Wait a sec.”

Jake pulled 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 wall.”

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 skulls.

“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 carefully, 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 basically 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 all young, fifteen to twenty-two.”

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

“I’ll 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 called 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 month before 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 do you 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 just that press conference. Throughout both dig seasons the media reported regularly on what was being found at Masada. The Jerusalem Post keeps topical archives, and I’ve spent hours with their Masada file. Articles mention mosaics, scrolls, the synagogue, the mikvehs, the three skeletons from the northern palace. There’s not a single word on the remains from Cave 2001.”

Jake was on a roll.

“And I’m not just talking the Post. In October of sixty-four the Illustrated London News published an extensive spread on Masada, pictures and all. 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 hell is that?”

“My cockatiel. He doesn’t usually 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 following the second season’s excavation. In the Jerusalem 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 rolled 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 skulls to a type unearthed in the Bar Kochba caves in Nahal Hever. At the time, those burials were thought to be Jews killed in the second Jewish revolt against Rome.”

“Were they?”

“Turned out the bones were Chalcolithic.”

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

“Physical anthropologists hold little confidence in skull 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?”

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

“Allegedly?”

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 ballistic. 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 all 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, all 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. All 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 all. 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.”

Jake leaned back and picked up his mug. Lowered it.

“Wait. Change that. There is an addendum at the back of volume four. A carbon-fourteen report on textiles found in the cave. That testing was done years later. But that’s it.”

Displacing Birdie to the floor, I slid Kessler’s photo from below Jake’s Masada diagram.

“So where does this guy fit in?”

“That’s where things get really weird. Cave 2001 contained the remains of one fully intact skeleton completely separate from the intermingled bones. The individual was supine, with hands crossed, head turned to the side.” Jake impaled me with a look. “Not a single report mentions that articulated skeleton.”

“I assume you learned about the skeleton from this same volunteer who worked the cave back in the sixties.”

Jake nodded.

“This is the part where you tell me that the articulated skeleton wasn’t reburied with the others,” I guessed.

“This is the part.” Jake drained his mug. “Press coverage of the reinterment consistently refers to twenty-seven individuals, three from the northern palace, and twenty-four from the cave.”

“Not twenty-five or twenty-six. Maybe they left out the fetus.”

“I’m convinced they left out the fetus and the articulated skeleton.”

“Let me get this straight. You’re saying a volunteer excavator, an eyewitness, told you personally that he and Tsafrir recovered a fully articulated skeleton from Cave 2001. But no such skeleton was ever mentioned in press coverage, or in Yadin’s official report or popular book.”

Jake nodded.

“And you think that skeleton was not reburied with the rest of the cave and palace bones?”

Jake nodded again.

I tapped the Kessler photo. “Did this volunteer remember if photos were taken?”

“He snapped them himself.”

“Who had possession of the remains during their five years above-ground?” I asked.

“Haas.”

“Did he publish?”

“Nothing. And Haas typically wrote exhaustive reports, including drawings, tables, measurements, even facial reconstructions. His analysis of the burials at Giv’at ha-Mivtar is incredibly detailed.”

“Is he still alive?”

“Haas took a bad fall in seventy-five. Put him in a coma. He died in eighty-seven without regaining consciousness. Or writing a report.”

“So Haas won’t be clearing up the body count or the mystery of the intact skeleton.”

“Not without a séance.”

“Hey, big spender…” Charlie was sticking with a winner.

Jake changed tack. “Let me ask you this. You’re Yadin. You’ve got these strange cave bones. What’s the first thing you do?”

“Today?”

“In the sixties.”

“I was still losing baby teeth.”

“Work with me.”

“Carbon-fourteen testing. Establish antiquity.”

“I’ve told that back then carbon-fourteen dating wasn’t done in Israel. So tally this into the picture. In his rants to the Knesset, Lorinez insisted that some Masada skeletons had been sent abroad.”

“Lorinez was the ultra-Orthodox MK pushing for reburial?”

“Yes. And what Lorinez was saying makes sense. Why wouldn’t Yadin request radiocarbon dating on the cave burials?”

“So you think Lorinez was right,” I said.

“I do. But according to Yadin, no Masada bones left the country.”

“Why not?”

“In one Post interview I read Yadin said it wasn’t his job to initiate such tests. In the same article an anthropologist laid it off to cost.”

“Radiocarbon dating isn’t that expensive.” Even as long ago as the early eighties, testing only ran about $150 per sample. “Surprising Yadin didn’t order it, given the importance of the site.”

“Not as surprising as Haas’s failure to write up the cave bones,” Jake said.

I let things percolate a moment in my head. Then, “You suspect the cave folks may not have been part of the main zealot group?”

“I do.”

I picked up Kessler’s photo.

“And that this is the unreported articulated skeleton.”

“I do.”

“You think this skeleton may have been shipped out of Israel, and not reinterred with the others.”

“I do.”

“Why not?”

“That is the million-dollar question.”

I picked up the print.

“Where’s this fellow now?”

“That, Dr. Brennan, earns a million more.”