“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 tel 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 fetusand the articulated skeleton.”

“Let me get this straight. You’re saying a volunteer excavator, an eyewitness, told you personal y that he and Tsafrir recovered a ful y 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 typical y 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 stil alive?”

“Haas took a bad fal 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 stil 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 tal y 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 onePost 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.