The Pharos Objective (22 page)

“A caravan,” he told her, slipping back to the present, “heading away from Giza.” The bright sunlight streamed onto his face as Lydia touched it and brushed back his sweaty hair. He sat on the rim of a fountain, a bubbling, dribbling marble façade. The choking smell of fish and dirty water entered his nostrils. He blinked and saw them . . .

. . . carrying a secret cargo under cover of night, tracking the Nile, a man in black robes supervising the operation.

“Do you know what year it was?” asked Lydia.

The flow of the Nile, the passing of hills, trees and great stretches of desert. Then, through a marvelous gate into a sprawling city full of wondrous temples and obelisks, a stadium and so many people, the caravan takes back routes through the darkened alleys and emerges onto a stretch of streets and warehouses in a harbor. And there, across the water, a dark shape rises from an island. Half-assembled, it stands and waits for morning, for the hundreds to resume work on its construction.

“Had to be around 300 BC,” he said, still watching the images flashing through his mind. “The Pharos isn’t completed yet.”

“What else?” Lydia prodded. Her grip on his thigh was fierce.

Caleb shook his head, resisting the onslaught of the present, the pigeons, the tourists, the accordion and singers in the distance, the tolling of the great clock tower all pulling at his consciousness. “They led the caravan past the Palace District, past the Temple of the Muses. Across the Heptastadion, to the Pharos.” He held his head in his hands and took great gulps of air. Another flash and he saw that figure again, the leader of the caravan, dressed in black robes and a deep hooded cloak
. . .

. . . stop at the first step leading up to the Pharos. All around him are great blocks, ropes, pulleys and workbenches. Discarded tools of the craftsmen. He pauses on the next step while at his back the convoy comes to a halt, and all the slaves look down at their feet.

A man appears above. In flowing white robes he glides to the top of the stairs. “Welcome. You have what was promised?”

The man in black nods. “I do. It is now in your safekeeping, Sostratus.”

“This collection will be but the first of many.”

“It is the oldest, the most important.”

“Then it shall be the safest.”

The man in black surveys the massive, half-finished structure masterfully etched upon the canvass of the heavens. A light mist drifts over the rocks from the sea and cools his face.

“The ancient resting place of Thoth has been emptied. Guard his treasures well.”

Another gulp of air and Caleb was back.

“Wow,” Lydia said with a look of dismay. “No matter how many times I witness that, I still can’t get used to it.”

“Me neither,” he said, wheezing.

“I believe you.” She lifted her head, distracted by something across the plaza. “Listen, I’ll go grab you an Orangina and ice. You need some fluids.”

“Okay.” He watched her go, then reached into the fountain, cupped some water and splashed it on his cheeks and forehead, feeling momentarily blasphemous for disturbing the sacred waters, before slipping on his sunglasses again

A minute passed, then another. Finally, he looked up toward the drink stand. A trio of pigeons swirled over its roof and flew up and away. The stand was empty. Caleb stood and glanced around, feeling a sudden bout of anxiety. But there she was, a short distance away, talking to a man in a gray suit with a beret tilted on his head, over bushy gray eyebrows. Then the recollection struck like a hammer blow and Caleb remembered him.

The hospital! Standing over my bed.

“The Pharos protects itself . . .”

Before he thought twice about it, Caleb was sprinting. The pigeons scattered at his approach. He bumped into a pair of Asian tourists, and kept running. Lydia turned as he closed in. The man lowered his head and swiftly walked away.

“Honey?” she called as she stepped toward him in a way which seemed to cut him off from following or even getting a better look at the stranger. She caught him around the chest. “Are you okay?”

“That man! Who is he?”

Lydia looked around. “What, that old guy I was just talking to? Don’t know. He asked me how much a gondola to the museum costs, and—”

“No!” Caleb shook his head, pointing after the departing figure, now stepping into a boat. “You knew him. You were talking. What did he want?”

“I told you.” She gripped Caleb’s shoulders, that same fierce grip as before. “Caleb, you’re acting weird. Let’s get back to the hotel.”

“No!”

Lydia took a step back. “Hey, I’m sorry I brought up the lighthouse. I didn’t realize it would make you this crazy.”

He glared at her. “I’m not crazy. I know that man. I’ve seen him before.”

“And that’s not crazy?”

“No! In Alexandria. He . . . he visited me in the hospital. Gloating that we had failed.”

Lydia looked over her shoulder at the gondola oaring away, joining three others cutting into the canals. “You can’t be serious. You think someone’s following you after all these years?”

He glared at her over the ridge of his sunglasses. “Lydia. Tell me now. Tell me if there’s something else going on here. Believe me, I’ll find out.”

She laughed and gave him a pinch. “Threatening me with your powers? Are you saying I’ll never be able to have an affair, because you’ll be remote viewing my every move?” She pushed back her hair, still grinning. “Guess I should have covered that in our wedding vows. Come on, my love. There’s nothing to hide.”

She offered the bottle of Orangina and led him out of the plaza. Her fingers caressed his, but he did not return the gesture. He was thinking of Phoebe’s warning, years ago.

A girl with green eyes . . .

But by the time they arrived back at the hotel, he had cast the incident in a different light. He’d been hallucinating, imagining the worst. He’d been miserable all his life, and now that he had found a shred of happiness, his subconscious had to dredge up reasons for the dream to fail, to engineer his fall. He wouldn’t let it succeed.

He had a renewed purpose. As it happened, that purpose now brought him back on the same path as his mother’s. But he planned not to tell her. Not yet.

This time, the quest is mine, and I have a new partner.

Victor Kowalski sat
on a bench beside the fountain and pressed send on his cell phone. Careful not to look back at the departing newlyweds, he held the phone to his ear, fixed his sunglasses and pretended to stare up at the church’s extravagant architecture. He was dressed in a light blue blazer and gray sweatpants, and wore a Yankees cap. Two cameras hung around his neck, and he was chewing three sticks of strawberry gum. Typical tourist.

The ringing stopped and he heard Waxman’s voice. “Yes?”

“She’s made contact.”

“In person?”

“Yes.”

“Then things are getting serious. They must be close.”

“I was positioned near enough to overhear.” Kowalski snapped his gum. “She told our old friend it wouldn’t be long.”

“So they’re headed there next?”

“Yes, although the kid doesn’t know it yet. They’ll be in Alexandria by next week.”

“Good work. Tail Mr. Gregory, but don’t get spotted. I prefer to have them think we’ve given up.”

“So, no action against him until . . .?”

“Until Caleb gets us in.”

Victor flipped the phone closed. He stood and made his way to the pier, where he hailed a gondola.

He might as well follow in style.

7

Alexandria—June

“Our meeting in Venice was stupid. Too dangerous,” Lydia said when the man emerged from the shadows in the nightclub alley. Caleb was back at the hotel, a block away, finally resting after nearly two sleepless days of research and work on the codes. They had settled in at Alexandria a month ago, and had started to work immediately.

“I hadn’t expected him to be so paranoid,” Nolan Gregory said.

“He has a right to be,” said Lydia, “after your dramatic appearance in the hospital. Was that necessary?”

“We will see, in time, what was necessary.”

“That’s not something he’ll ever forget.”

“All I know is that we need to keep Caleb on the path. Continue to steer his thoughts and dreams back to the Pharos. Otherwise—”

“Yes, yes I know. Otherwise, we’ll never succeed,” Lydia said impatiently. Then, quietly, with urgency, she added, “But he’s making progress. He’s seen them—the founders! Sostratus and Demetrius. And much more.”

“Good, good. You must now make him see the rest.”

“Why not tell him to the truth about who he is?”

“No. When he finds that out for himself, he’ll understand, and then he’ll lead us to the Key. Any other way could invite a disaster.” Gregory pulled his face back into the shadows. “And another millennium of darkness.”

A cab’s horn blared into the street, and a trio of laughing young women went running out of the club to their ride.

She sighed. “I fear I may have to do something drastic.”

“You have my confidence. I trust you will know the time.”

Turning, Lydia walked slowly east toward the hotel. Cars rumbled past, and the warm air played with her blouse and tickled her neck. Out in the harbor a few lights twinkled. Dim flickering beams cut through the night over Qaitbey’s fortress.

Lydia took her time, walking and thinking. And fighting back her emotions.

She put a hand to her stomach, and began to cry.

8

The advance from Doubleday paid for Caleb and Lydia’s hotel suite for the next month. The first book was still selling well across Europe, but only to limited success in the States, probably because they hadn’t had a chance to do any further promotions there.

Their room overlooked the harbor. And outside, across the Boulevard de la Rosette, they could reach the causeway and walk to Qaitbey’s fortress within an hour. The museum was a short distance away, as were the Municipal Palace and the Zinzania Theater. Near the harbor, where most archaeologists believed the old library once stood, now proudly stood the Bibliotheca Alexandrina—the modern version of the historic library. With construction finishing in 2006, it comprised ten levels, four of which were built underground to further protect the contents from environmental forces. Adjacent to the library was a science museum and planetarium.

But as exciting as all these attractions were, Caleb and Lydia had little time for sightseeing. Caleb had enlarged the photos of the great seal Phoebe had given him for Christmas years ago. He posted them on a wall and tacked up a bed sheet to cover them when he and Lydia went out. They spent hours each day analyzing every inch of the image, studying every carving, every symbol.

He sent Lydia out repeatedly, sometimes several times a day, for journal articles or books they couldn’t access online. Most of these she had to order from contacts at the UK Doubleday offices. They acquired some rare seventeenth-century texts on alchemy—Paracelsus, Geber, Hollandus and Kircher. They consulted works by Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton, Madame Blavatsky’s three-volume compendium, and so many other books of arcane knowledge. The trick, as always, was to focus on the truly inspired, those derived from the most ancient writings.

Their hotel suite quickly began to look like Caleb’s boyhood room back in Sodus. Dog-eared copies of books were scattered about, and stacks upon stacks of heavy tomes covered the floor.

One day late
in September, while Lydia was taking a nap, face-down on the couch as several fruit flies buzzed around a plate of dates and prunes on the coffee table, Caleb sat cross-legged before the wall, considering the enlarged photographs. He imagined he was there again, before the grand staff and the entwined serpents surrounded by seven symbols.

Those symbols were all familiar now, old friends, after fine-tuning his knowledge of alchemy, immersing himself in the subject for the better part of a year. The first four were Water, Fire, Air and Earth and their corresponding planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Mars and Venus. These were the principles of the denser matter, what the alchemists called the elements of the Below; while the realm of the Above hosted the intangible essences of soul and spirit. The remaining three symbols were the Moon, Mercury and, finally, the Sun, often represented as salt, quicksilver and sulfur, signifying the coming together of Above and Below into a new, immortal form of pure essence. The Gold of the soul, the Philosopher’s Stone. Quintessence.

It took Caleb a long time to finally accept the obvious: that the sequence might be the key. But no matter which way around the staff he read the symbols, they were not in the right order.

When Lydia awoke she found him staring at the sign in the lower left corner.