The Masada Faktor by Naomi Litvin

one hundred years. We could see what he described on both sides of the highway. There was some construction going on that slowed traffic and we were told that the road to Jerusalem was being widened from the west.
     
    We finally arrived at Masada and all loaded into the cable car that would take us up on the east side of the mountain in three minutes via Road 90. It was too hot to reach the top walking up the Snake Path, although we saw people hiking the Siege Ramp path, which would take them a minimum of forty-five minutes.
     
    …one of these ways is called the Serpent, as resembling that animal in its narrowness and its perpetual windings…and that he that would walk along it, must first go on the one leg and then the other; there is also nothing but destruction in case your feet slip, for on each side there is a vastly deep chasm and precipice sufficient to quell the courage of everybody by the terror it infuses into the mind.” Josephus Flavius
     
    There was also an alternative ramp path on the west via Arad. The cable car was crowded, feeling hot and sticky as we ascended. I was claustrophobic and was breathing heavily as I looked down to the Snake Path and the Dead Sea, amazed at how high up we were.
     
    We piled out and people were chattering in Spanish. That just irked me, considering that I had come all the way from California where Spanish was heard everywhere you went. The hell with diversity. I wanted to hear Hebrew.
     
    I had decided that I would, indeed, look for the clues to the mystery that Absalom has indicated were important. He had named five locations out of many at Masada that I should go to. I had no idea what the clues were meant to be and hoped that this would be the end of this wild goose chase. I cursed Saul for canceling. I had hoped he would help me.
     
    I learned a fact that moved me. The guide told us that all Israeli Defense Force soldiers go to Masada and take an important oath.
     
    Never again Masada. Masada shall never fall again .
     
    The tour was poignant and I was interested in seeing everything. King Herod had built Masada as a stronghold for himself and his family. Seventy years after Herod had died, the Jewish Zealots, last of the rebels who fled from the Roman invasion of Jerusalem, ran to Masada. This would be their final hold out, for three years after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE.
     
    I had a strange feeling, I felt spooked. Something was vexing to me. It was about the number seventy, shevim in Hebrew. Then, as if a bolt of lightning went through my entire body, it hit me. It had been seventy years since Hitler died. The realization of the mystery about Hitler’s obsession came to me both in piercing sunlight and crashing waves.
     
    The puzzle pieces fit perfectly, exactly like I had read in Mother’s letter. But until I heard the tour guide speak about the Masada crisis, seventy years after King Herod’s death, I hadn’t believed that next year’s seventieth anniversary of the end of World War II was connected to Masada. Slow on the uptake, that is me. It was true, it was real.
     
    I didn’t know how to look for the clues and if they actually existed but first I needed to ditch the tour. I went to the guide and told him I was meeting a friend who would drive me back to Tel Aviv. He wasn’t happy to hear this, and proceeded to tell me that he was responsible for me. I pulled a fifty note shekel out of my backpack and handed it to him.
     
    “Well, okay, if that’s your plan, fine. Thanks for joining us for half the tour.” I didn’t exactly know how I would get back but was sure I could hitch or call a cab to Jerusalem, then get a sherut from there back to Tel Aviv if the buses were already stopped for Shabbat . I was compelled to continue following my instincts.
     
    I had grabbed a map of Masada at the tourist souvenir shop and quickly located the five designated places mentioned in Absalom’s instructions. I circled each one with a red pen from