Finally, the Land Cruiser broke free of the outskirts of Jerusalem and hit a winding sand-dusted road that led eastwards into the desert. Conversation was almost impossible over the engine noise, so Ben leaned back in the passenger seat, cracked the window open a few inches and smoked in silence. Jude was quiet in the back seat. From time to time Ben glanced over his shoulder at him, and the content of Michaela’s letter would come flooding back into his mind, leaving him with a knotty feeling in his stomach.
The Land Cruiser wasn’t the only vehicle heading into the desert. A thin stream of cars and vans, as well as a tour bus, were venturing out in the same direction. The road carved its way onwards across an ocean of sandy rubble that stretched out to the rocky escarpments in the distance. A few lonely shrubs and small trees lined the roadside. Road signs flashed by in Arabic and English.
After almost an hour’s driving, the snaking road cleared a rise and Jude let out a whistle as a spectacular vista opened up ahead. ‘The Dead Sea,’ Hillel said over the engine noise, motioning grandly through the dusty windscreen towards the vast expanse of salt lake that stretched out ahead of them in the middle distance, before the seemingly limitless desert closed in again. Somewhere across the sands lay the Jordanian border.
‘And there,’ Hillel said, pointing up at a huge sandy mountain that towered high over the water, casting a giant shadow across the sands, ‘is Masada.’
‘What is this place?’ Jude asked in fascination, leaning forward between the front seats and craning his neck upwards as high as he could to see the top of the mountain.
‘Masada was a fortress,’ Ben told him, speaking loudly to be heard, ‘where the great Jewish rebellion against the Roman Empire made its last stand, forty years after the death of Christ. Nine hundred men, women and children, who’d fled from the sack of Jerusalem and the Roman purge against their race. They held out here for three years while a massive Roman army camped at the foot of the mountain and built a siege embankment and an assault ramp to storm the fort.’
‘I’m guessing the Romans killed them all,’ Jude said, straining to make out the fortress on the very top of the rocky crag far, far above the desert.
‘They didn’t get the chance. According to the Roman historian Josephus, when the soldiers eventually breached the stronghold, all they found were mounds of dead bodies. The Jewish resistants had committed mass suicide rather than let themselves be taken. Each man slaughtered his own wife and children, then a team was elected to kill everyone remaining before finally falling on their own swords.’
‘Shit,’ Jude said, shaking his head. ‘Nine hundred people.’
‘That’s what the history books say,’ Ben said.
‘What would the Romans have done to them if they’d captured them?’
‘Probably a lot worse.’
‘Those Romans were mean mothers.’
‘You are a historian?’ Hillel asked, glancing at Ben as he drove.
‘Hardly. I studied theology with his father,’ Ben replied, motioning back at Jude. ‘I’ve read a few background texts about this place, that’s all.’
‘Then you must know that for many centuries, the site of the great martyrdom was lost to knowledge,’ Hillel said. ‘Masada was rediscovered in 1842, and it was not until 1963 that excavations began, led by an Israeli archaeologist called Yigael Yadin. Such a huge task required a very large workforce. They hired men by the truckload. One of them, a boy of sixteen who was willing to do the hardest work to help support his family.’ Hillel prodded his chest with his thumb. ‘Me. That is where my story begins.’
‘What is it you want to show us, Hillel?’
‘The same thing I showed to Wesley, and then later to Simeon and the Frenchman.’
The Land Cruiser followed the other traffic into a parking lot near to a cable car station, from which thick steel cables soared skywards towards the looming mountain. Along with a mixed handful of tourists, the rowdiest of which was a contingent of Italians, Ben, Jude and Hillel boarded the next cable car. There was a delay while a corpulent American family squeezed themselves aboard, adding drastically to the cable car’s payload. It was the size of a minibus, offering all-around views as it glided up the mountain on a track running parallel to a second cable car bringing visitors back down to earth.
Jude shivered. ‘You wouldn’t expect it to be so chilly in the desert.’
In SAS desert operations in the Gulf, Ben had seen sleet, snow and soldiers suffering from frostbite and hypothermia. It wasn’t a memory he wanted to share with a cable car-load of tourists.
Despite the cold, Masada evidently attracted its fair share of seasonal visitors. Hillel informed Ben and Jude, not without a measure of pride, that it was Israel’s most visited archaeological site. The tourists noisily expressed their appreciation as the cable car made its way up the side of the mountain. Even Ben was struck by the sight, realising for the first time the incredible scale of the Roman military operation to take such an inaccessible fortress.
As they climbed, the traces of the Roman military camps dotted around the base of the mountain were clearly visible. Ahead, the great russety-red sandstone mountain loomed closer and closer under the cloudy sky. They glided over the tiny matchstick figures of people ascending the mountain on foot via a winding path, like pilgrims from some bygone age.
The cable car neared the fragile-looking docking station precariously erected on the face of the cliff. Finally, and to Jude’s obvious relief, they made it all the way to the top without being brought crashing down to the rocks by the weight of the lardy American family.
‘Holy shit, get a load of this,’ Jude breathed when they stepped out on the wide flat summit of the mountain and the full panoramic breadth of the view opened up. They were so high above the sweeping vista of the desert and the hazy Dead Sea that it was like looking down from the windows of an aircraft.
Ben gazed around him at the extensive stone remains of the fortress and could see that the modern-day excavation work had been almost as massive in scale as the Romans’ attempts to destroy the place nearly two thousand years earlier.
‘It did not look like this back in 1963,’ Hillel said. ‘Then it was only a field of rubble, half erased by time and the hand of nature.’ He pointed out the black painted lines that were visible on many of the buildings, archways and columns. ‘Those mark where the original stonework ends and the reconstructions begin.’
‘It’s very impressive,’ Ben said. ‘But as you know, we didn’t come here to do the tourist thing.’
Hillel nodded. ‘This way,’ he said, leading them through the ruins. As he walked, he began to tell his story.
‘I was the eldest of ten children. My family were very poor. My mother worked in a factory where the conditions were very bad and the pay was even worse. My father worked as a stonemason, until one day, when I was thirteen years of age, he fell from a ladder and his legs were smashed. He never walked again and was always in great pain. With my poor father crippled and no longer able to earn any money, much responsibility fell on me. I worked delivering goods for Jerusalem merchants. I stole eggs and resold them. I even stole a chicken once. We struggled every day just to stay alive and pay the rent for a tiny hovel that was not fit for a dog to live in.’
Hillel paused to run his hand admiringly along a wall, as if he’d built it himself. ‘When I heard of the huge workforce that was being gathered for the excavation of the Masada site, I signed on. I was big and strong and already used to hard work. Now, follow me through this set of arches, and I will show you.’
A few yards on, Hillel stopped to contemplate a section of the thick, craggy rampart wall. Beyond it was a sheer drop protected by a modern-day steel railing, and the dizzying view for miles