“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.