The two vehicles joined up just near the entrance to Maale Adumim, the large urban center just East of Jerusalem, on the road to Jericho.  Sally sat beside Yigal staring out the window, silently wondering what she had gotten herself into.  Yigal spoke non-stop on his cellphone making and receiving endless calls, all of which seemed to be concerned with the discovery and the day's activities.

Sadiee was in her rental car trying to stay with Yigal in his rather decrepit looking jeep.  Looks can be deceiving.  Half the time she feared she would loose control as she sped ever faster in her almost futile attempt to keep up with him.  Crazy idiot! she thought!  She could see from her position several car lengths away that not only was he driving as if this was some sort of car race, but he was doing it with one hand, half the time picking up his cellphone to carry on distracting conversations with the other.  She couldn't see who his passenger was, but she certainly didn't envy them.

As they raced down the hills from Jerusalem toward Jericho Sally watched as the landscape became drier, browner, more desert like.  Plateau after plateau of desert sweep past her, every couple of kilometers a large concrete marker indicated their relationship to Sea Level.  Starting at 500 meters above just near Maale Adumim, gradually the markers said , 300, 200, 100 then sea Level.  Playing a silly game with herself as Yigal both drove and talked non-stop on his cellphone, Sally held her breath imaging going under the waves, all-the-while watching for more markers by the side of the road.  Around the first cure she saw, -100, after another few minutes, incapable of holding her breath any longer she saw -300 meters below Sea Level.  Somewhere after the -400 Meters marker she either missed them or lost track.

Yigal slowed down as they neared the Jericho By-Pass Road.  When Israel had relinquished control over the administration of the Arab population in the so called West Bank captured in the Six Day War of 1967, they created a series of by-pass highways permitting the free flow of traffic around the various densely populated areas under Palestinian Authority control.  Unlike the older highways that snaked through the cities, like Jericho, the by-pass highways were straight modern highways that avoided intersections and built up areas, except for the various interchange where one could get off the highway to enter the cities or villages.  The other difference was that the by-pass highways were protected by Israeli Defense Forces and patrolled by the Israeli Police, unlike those under Palestinian Authority control that no one understood any more who 'protected' what there were so many rival militias and multiple 'police forces' it was hard to keep track.

Near the junction of the road that turn North toward the Galilie, a large while truck waited patiently on the side of the road.  Stopping just ahead of it Yigal got out to speak with the driver, then walked forward beyond his jeep to speak with Sadiee who had pulled over just ahead.

"Your the hostess!  I'll let you lead us back to the site, okay?" asked Yigal, more rhetorically that really asking.

"No problem.  I don't drive as fast as you.  You think you'll be capable of following such a slow moving vehicle?" quipped Sadiee?

"I'll do my best" laughed Yigal, just now realizing that he must have been driving a little too fast for his own good.  "Tally ho!" he offered, inviting her to pull out as he turned and got back into his jeep.

"Who's she?" asked Sally, the first time she had spoken since they left Jerusalem, and Yigal had started his cellphone-conversation-marathon.

"Oh, she's the Project Manager of the construction site where all this began." explained Yigal, proceeding to fill in the details he had left out in his previous fragmented conversations with her. "So in short you are going to be the first person in the history of humanity to photograph the artifacts we discovered in this cavern!  Sound exciting?"

As he described the nature of the discovery, and his late afternoon exploration, she had to admit she catch some of the excitement in his voice and realized how important this was to him.  Somewhere remotely she also appreciated that her name on all the photographs of the items they would find, that sounded as if at least the country if not the world would find them of interest, certainly would not hurt her flagging career.  "As a matter of fact," sally offered in reply, "it's beginning to sound more and more like a fascinating and professionally challenging experience!"  She then proceeded to interrogate him on questions of ambient light and what would they do if it was insufficient.  She lectured him on the effects of the light from artificial flashes, and although she'd come prepared, she had a limited amount of battery power which might not suffice if there really were as many artifacts as he said there were!

"Oh there are definitely as many as I've described and most probably many many more!" he boasted as they pulled in behind Sadiee's car in the make-shift parking lot beside her construction site trailer-office.

When everyone, including the two big burly men in the white truck, all demounted their various vehicles, Sadiee invited them into the larger of the two rooms where a large table held a detailed blue print of what was to be a luxury resort hotel.  Excusing herself for a moment she entered the other smaller room, evidently an office where they could hear her speaking to someone in rapid clipped Arabic.  Upon her return she started the conference by pointing out where they were in relation to the schematic on the table, placing a glass there, where the wadi (dry river beds) were, lying two rulers on the diagram, and finally the corner where the cavern had been discovered.  There she placed a small piece of broken pottery she had found lying on the ground near her officer several days ago.  A find that would not have been significant in Israel if it was not for yesterday's discovery.

"The entire area is little more than a field of alluvium soil washed down from the desert plateau above us", she explained absently waving toward Jerusalem and the twenty miles of desert that cascaded from 900 meters above sea level to their present location more than 400 meters below Sea Level, the lowest place on the face of the earth!  "Yesterday I started scraping off the most recent layers, piling them in the center of the plot along this line." She demonstrated on the diagram with her hand. "When the tractor driver discovered the cavern, I sent him to work in the second area, leaving all this area", she again circled with her hand an area of hundreds of meters around the location of the cavern.  "Hopefully," she concluded", we haven't inadvertently destroyed any above surface structures associated with the cavern, or at least, minimized the damage we could have done if we had not discovered the cavern."   Looking around at her audience she finally turned to Yigal and suggested, "Where do we go from here?"

Clearing his throat, Yigal paused to collect his thoughts.  This was it!  His first real action on the first site he would be associated with as an archaeologist, bureaucrat or not. "Okay people," he said, twice, once in Hebrew and once in English so both Sadiee and the two burly Israeli's would understand him, "the objective of today's little outing is to try to photograph the initial discoveries without touching or disturbing them."  With this he looked directly at Sally. "Ms Berkhof will be our photographer and," shifting his gaze toward the gentlemen with the truck, "Ami and Ron from the Regional Council's Public Work's department are going to help Sally 'float' above the floor of the cavern without touching anything while she photographs.

With Yigal's last pronouncement Sally's eyes went wide and she arched her eye brows toward her forehead as he interjected, "And exactly how are 'we' going to pull that one off?"  Her lack of trust apparent to all concerned.

Ami answered her, explaining that he and his partner Ron, in addition to working as the Ein Gedi Regional Council's Public Works foremen, also volunteered with the Judean Desert Rescue Squad.  In that capacity they both climbed and rappelled that awesome deserts many wadi's and cliffs, rescuing the various trapped and lost tourists who wander astray, usually, but not always, unprepared to deal with the desert's dangerous ascents and naturally unsafe trails.  He explained that they had a couple of ideas how to accomplish the task at hand, reassured Sally they were old professionals at their vocation, and most importantly she would be a full partner and not just an unwilling victim in deciding what they were going to do.

That accomplished Yigal asked the men if they had brought the generator.  Surprisingly it was Sadiee that answered before they could. "I've arranged to have a generator brought from our company's storage site to sit here permanently for the duration of the project." She explained it was supposed to be set up tomorrow but she had just arranged to have that done a day earlier.  "It should be up and running in an hour" she concluded.

Sally, Ami and Ron left the room to visit their truck.  Sally wanted to see what type of lighting they had brought, and to begin discussing how they intended to help her 'float' over the floor of this cave without touching anything!

Left alone in the office Sadiee took the opportunity to share with Yigal some of the details from her conversations the night before, both with her uncle, Professorel Berukea and the partner in her firm she reported to, Paul Martin.  "In short, we'd tentatively like to offer the funding needed to identify the scope of the find, and to turn it from an impediment to this project to some form of positive ..." she stumbled, searching for the best word.

"Attraction?" suggested Yigal.

"Well, perhaps, but you do get the general idea!  We can't fight this.  The opposite as responsible members of the community we'd like to use this as a way of making a positive contribution.

"You are aware, " suggested Yigal rather hesitantly, "that the powers-that-be might just shut down this project because of this find?" And seeing the instant flash of  recognition in her eyes, softened the implicit threat by adding, "or at least offering you alternative land which doesn't impinge on the area of the find."

"Yes.  That was an obvious possibility, especially so early in the project.  We'd like to avoid that if at all possible.  I mean it took, if I understand correctly" explained Sadiee in her most solicitous yet professional tone", it took almost three years to identify which track of land could be allocated for this project, and negotiate the agreement that enabled my company to finally start work here!" She held herself back from saying 'And now this!'.  Instead she continued, "We'd really like to avoid that if at all possible."

"I definitely understand" agreed Yigal, more sympathetically than he liked. "I'll do everything I can which isn't much, to help seek out a win-win solution on this? Believe me?" he asked, wondering to himself why was he being accommodating.

"Yes, definitely, I appreciate it!" answered Sadiee thinking that it might be true that Yigal didn't have much influence on the outcome, but she was certain that Professor Elon definitely had. 

"By the way," Sadiee said, lowering her voice a little to indicate she wanted to confide something, and continuing in Hebrew she said, "Ani mevina Hevrit hetev!  Ein tzorek letargem avori!" (I understand Hebrew well, you don't have to translate because of me!).  She could see the surprise in Yigal's eye!

"Okay! You'll have to tell me that story some day.  You are definitely full of surprises!" he said jokingly, looking at her face, realizing she was enjoying this subtle game of one-up-man-ship that somehow had been part of their conversations almost from the word go.

"Let go get something accomplished!" suggested Yigal, extended his hand to seal the tentative agreement she'd struck.  Her hand was firm but gentle, a warmth he realized was more than the temperature of her flesh. Their eyes met as they both realized there was more to the chemistry involved in this exchange than just good business when a horn sounded from outside the trailer.  Together they walked outside, Yigal ever the gentleman opening the door and offering to let her go first. Laughing they stepped out on the iron steps to see a large red truck with an even larger generator trailing behind on its own trailer.  The truck driver got out of the cabin and walked up to Sadiee stopping a few feet away.  "Tzebach elChir!" (Good Morning) offered Achmed.  "Where do you want to place the generator?" he asked.

Sadiee took him inside and explained where she wanted it to be placed, returning outside to point to the location she must have demonstrated on her table sized blue print.  Achmed took off to accomplish the task his task.  "He'll roll a 220 volt cable from the generator to the entrance of the cavern within the hour.  Your people can plug into it just as if it was regular grid current!"Sadiee explained.

Seeing the others standing outside the rear of the white truck, looking at him and Sadiee, Yigal decided, "Time to start doing something!  You guys ready?"  When they made it clear they were more than ready to get moving, Yigal waved themtoward the direction of the cavern.  sally joined Ami and Ron in the cabin of their truck, and Sadiee joined Yigal in his jeep.  the two vehicles took off slowly over the uneven ground toward the large black shadow that indicated the hole in the otherwise flat ground.

Next Chapter