Gabriel made his way over to the pit marked K and looked down. At the bottom of the trench, two meters below the surface, crouched an elfin figure wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat. He was scratching at the hard subsoil with a small pick and appeared thoroughly engrossed in his work, but then he usually did.

“Find anything interesting, Eli?”

The picking stopped. The figure looked over his shoulder.

“Just a few pieces of broken pottery,” he said. “How about you?”

Gabriel reached down into the trench. Eli Lavon took hold of Gabriel’s hand and pulled himself out.

THEY SAT IN the shade of a blue tarpaulin and drank mineral water at a folding table. Gabriel, his eyes on the valley below, asked Lavon what he was doing at Tel Megiddo.

“There’s a popular school of archaeological thought these days called biblical minimalism. The minimalists believe, among other things, that King Solomon was a mythical figure, something of a Jewish King Arthur. We’re trying to prove them wrong.”

“Did he exist?”

“Of course,” said Lavon, “and he built a city right here at Megiddo.”

Lavon removed his floppy hat and used it to beat the gray-brown dust from his khaki trousers. As usual he seemed to be wearing all of his clothing at once—three shirts, by Gabriel’s count, with a red cotton handkerchief knotted at his throat. His sparse, unkempt gray hair moved in the faint breeze. He pushed a stray lock from his forehead and appraised Gabriel with a pair of quick brown eyes.

“Isn’t it a little soon for you to be up here in this heat?”

The last time Gabriel had seen Lavon, he’d been lying in a hospital bed in the Hadassah Medical Center.

“I’m only a volunteer. I work for a few hours in the early morning. My doctor says it’s good therapy.” Lavon sipped his mineral water. “Besides, I find this place provides a valuable lesson in humility.”

“What’s that?”

“People come and go from this place, Gabriel. Our ancestors ruled it briefly a very long time ago. Now we rule it again. But one day we’ll be gone, too. The only question is how long will we be here this time, and what will we leave behind for men like me to unearth in the future? I hope it’s something more than the footprint of a Separation Fence.”

“I’m not ready to give it up just yet, Eli.”

“So I gather. You’ve been a busy boy. I’ve been reading about you in the newspapers. That’s not a good thing in your line of work—being in the newspapers.”

“It was your line of work, too.”

“Once,” he said, “a long time ago.”