The Pharos Objective

1

Sixty feet under the harbor’s churning waves, his blue fins kicking just above the reef’s dangerous uppermost protrusions, Professor Caleb Crowe held the grapefruit-sized marble head in his bare hands, letting the colder currents wash off the sediment and muck. He turned the sculpture around, marveling at the late classical Egyptian artistry — the perfect symmetry, the deep-set, thoughtful eyes.

Isis.

The headdress and the Sothis star on her forehead placed this artifact in the Ptolemaic Dynasty — just about the right age. He reached for the camera hanging from his neck, considering how he might use this photo in a series of Ancient History lectures he was currently preparing for the spring semester at Columbia.

In the shadowy depths, the reefs and amphorae intermingled with the huge rocks, immense pillars and chunks of masonry thrust between the long-forgotten shipwrecks. Caleb’s breathing quickened, echoing in his ears even as the Mediterranean’s pressure squeezed his head in its grip. The current tugged him sideways into a massive block of moss-coated basalt.

He let go of the camera and reached out to steady himself. And as Isis looked on, the bare skin on his fingers touched the ancient slab—

— and something like an electric jolt ripped through his nervous system, starting at the base of his spine and spearing out in all directions. The water shimmered, the sea bottom shuddered, and a red-hot pain tore open the doors to his mind, barged inside and exploded in a blast of golden light like a swarm of maddened yellow jackets on fire, careening off the insides of his skull.

Caleb hadn’t had a clairvoyant vision in more than four years, and to have it strike now, of all times, at the bottom of Alexandria’s harbor, with his air running out and his dive partner wandering off on his own somewhere beyond the dim shadows, was about as dangerous as it was startling. The vision ripped through him like a teasing jolt of pleasure, then just as quickly left him alone again in the cold water, with Isis’s eyes looking upon him with pity.

There was a brief moment of confusion, then it returned with a vengeance. He doubled over, hyperventilating, burning through his oxygen, seeing…

His mind reeled and his stomach twisted. An armada of bubbles surrounded his head like ravenous fish, nipping at his skin, shouting out alarms. But his eyes, wide open, no longer perceived what lay before him, for they strode with his mind…

… to the tower… the lighthouse… the Pharos… there it is, rising before him, a three-stage construction, almost four hundred feet high, tapering to a glorious spire that seems to challenge the simmering Egyptian sun itself. The tower’s outer casing glitters on the western side, reflecting the sun with the light of a thousand stars, and all along its ascent hang statues of divinities and mythical guardians, peering down from their lofty perches.

He tears his eyes away and blinks, bringing into focus the man standing on the steps, welcoming him. A man he instinctively knows as the architect of the Pharos: Sostratus of Cnidos.

“Welcome, Demetrius,” he says. “Come, I have much to show you.”

Seeing through Demetrius’s eyes, Caleb speaks as if following a well-rehearsed script. His voice cracks and the words spill like gravel off his parched tongue. “Sostratus, engineering wonder this may be, yet it has the imposing grandeur, aura and beauty of the divine. My friend, this lighthouse will be adored for ages.”

Sostratus turns and looks up at his handiwork. “I hope you are right, and humbly, I trust in the gods that I have built it well enough to last.” He helps Demetrius up the final steps into the courtyard, where doves and sparrows coo in transplanted palm trees and fountains pour out fresh reservoir water at each of the cardinal points.

“And it is not yet done.” Sostratus raises his hand to the distant, dwindling spire atop the converging stages; past the mammoth two-hundred-foot rectangular lower section, pierced with three hundred windows; beyond the octagonal second stage, rising a hundred feet more, to the last part ascending the final hundred feet. Tiny forms climb on ropes and chisel at sections on the spire, at the cupola and the pillars around the beacon, working like industrious ants.

“I apologize that the masons have not yet removed the scaffolding. We are still hauling up stone for the outer casing and, of course, the great golden statue of Poseidon has yet to arrive by barge from Memphis. I have invited Euclid to pay me a visit and calculate how best to raise it to the apex.”

Demetrius makes a grunting sound, then reaches over and clasps his friend. “By Jupiter, you have done it.”

“Why so shocked, my friend? Surely you have watched my progress from your precious library across the harbor?”

Demetrius stops and teeters as he cranes his neck and gazes up. “In the scroll rooms, there are few windows. We need to safeguard the world’s most important books, not expose them to the elements.”

Sostratus chuckles. “Well said. And of course, in all your courtyard festivals you never thought to lift your head over the wall and glance westward to admire my creation?”

Demetrius looks down at his sandaled feet, taking strange comfort from such a common sight. “I have, my friend, I have. A remarkable achievement, your lighthouse has become an integral part of the landscape in the mere twelve years it has taken to build. Alexandrians may take it for granted, yet they speak of little else but its completion and the coming festivals Ptolemy has planned for its dedication day. Your lighthouse has, in fact, become synonymous with Alexandria. The thousands of daily visitors to our harbors are awestruck by its magnificence. Indeed, it is the first thing they see, well before the coast even appears.”

Sostratus smiles. “I hear they are already calling it ‘The Pharos,’ after the island itself.”

“True, Homer’s little epilogue in the Odyssey granted us fame enough.”

“Even if he had it wrong. Egyptian settlers at Rhakotis told Menelaus the island belonged to Pharaoh, and out of ignorance, the name stuck. Pharos Island.”

Demetrius nods, waving off the same boring discussion he’s endured uncounted times. “Believe me, I know the tale well. We have over ninety copies, translated into fourteen languages, with scholars working on the Iliad now.”

“Wonderful ambitions you have,” Sostratus says, intending the complement to be genuine, however eliciting a wounded look from Demetrius. “Or is it our king’s ambition?”

“A little of both. Although, from time to time I have to fuel our benefactor’s interests.” Sostratus nods in empathy. “Now, my friend, do I get the promised tour, or must I wait another twelve years?”

“In just a moment. First I want you to look up, right there.” He points to a low-level scaffold, untended for the moment, above which a lengthy inscription is chiseled in Greek letters large enough to be seen by arriving ships in the Eastern Harbor.

Demetrius squints and reads it aloud:

He blinks. “All honor to Castor and Pollux aside, I think Ptolemy Philadelphus may have something to say about your name on his monument.”

“Indeed he would,” Sostratus says, his lips curling into a grin, “if this were what he saw. Our king wants his credit, and he shall have it. I am humble and patient. My thoughts are ever in the future, beyond the horizon of mere generations.”

“What are you going to do?” Demetrius asks, genuinely confused.

“Tonight, when the sun’s heat diminishes, my slaves will cement over this inscription and carve into it all the credit due our great king.”

A smile creeps across Demetrius’s face. “Ah, ingenious! Assuming your slaves are mute, or you have them killed, in time, the cement will crumble and erode away, revealing your name.”

Sostratus spreads out his arms and closes his eyes, basking in some private, faraway vision. “I shall be immortal.”

“I had not thought you so vain. Is it so vital that you are remembered?”

“Only for what I have done. It is the same with your books, no? Those authors, their wisdom must endure. Hence the need for your library.”

Demetrius nods. “Of course, but—”

“This tower is important in more ways than are immediately obvious. Beyond safety, beyond practicality, beyond a mere symbol of our grand city and a testament to Alexander’s genius. Beyond all that, I intend it to house something even more precious, something that, like my inscription above, will emerge in time and bring truth to a clouded world.”

“Then by all means, sir.” Demetrius bows. “Now… the tour?”

High above, the sun peeks through the open-air cupola between gilded pillars supporting the roof where Poseidon’s feet are destined to stand. A lone hawk circles the mid-section, vainly beating its wings to ascend farther.

Caleb gagged, reached for the fading vision and saw his fingers spear through a cascade of bubbles — bubbles spewing from his own throat. He’d spit his mouthpiece out! The world was darkening, his mouth filling with foul water.

For so many years he had pushed this power away, dreading the visions that came: horrific sights of metal cages in the mountains, of emaciated hands reaching through the bars, of whimpers and moans and cries for help. Visions dredged up by a talent he couldn’t control, alive with sights, sounds and smells. A gift he’d never wanted.

A curse.

But today was different. What he saw was new — an original, unprovoked vision. Too bad it would be the last vision he ever saw. Then it surged back, and…

… Demetrius whispers, “It’s marvelous.” He shuffles around two slaves at work polishing a marble Triton as he exits the hydraulic lift, the water-powered elevator that has shot them up three levels in less than a minute. He steps up to the terrace’s southern wall. Mouth open, he gapes at the view: the sprawling twin harbors below, the Heptastadion connecting the mainland to Pharos Island, the hundreds of multicolored sails dotting the sea and the boats anchored at the docks, the wide stretch of the magnificent Imperial Palace, and behind it, the gymnasium, the Temple of Serapis… and there, the shining walls and columns and the golden domed roof of the museum. Inside its walls are the library and the mausoleum of Alexander, whom Ptolemy buried there, establishing his direct connection to the legend.

“Incredible, seeing it from this vantage.” His gaze follows the Street of Canopus from the Moon Gate by the sea across Alexandria and through the Gate of the Sun, parallel to the canal connecting to the Nile, then weaving across the sands back through the haze and dust of the desert toward Memphis and Upper Egypt. The fierce cobalt sky engulfs all else, until the startling turquoise sea grazes at the horizon and consumes everything beyond. Over the dark blue waves, the shadow of the Pharos arches to the east as a lone marker etching its imprint upon nature as it would graft itself onto human consciousness for millennia to come.

“You were saying?” Demetrius takes great gulps of air and slowly backs away from the edge.

Sostratus takes his arm and leads him inside the spire to a staircase weaving in a double spiral up the last hundred feet. “I was speaking of impermanence and of a future that is even beyond the sight of the oracles.”

“If even the gods are blind to it, then what must we fear?”

“The unknown.” Sostratus speaks as they make the same ascent he has made three or four times a day for the past three years. His friend, unconditioned to the exertion necessary for such a climb, needs to rest.

“Must we continue to the top?”

“I wish to show you something before we go back down — down into the very bowels of the earth to illuminate the real reason you are here.”

Demetrius shoots him a look. “What, was it not for the view?”

“Not entirely. Come, we are almost there.”

Caleb bolted back to the present, fighting the brackish, cold water rushing into his lungs. He screamed — or tried to — dimly aware of another figure swimming toward him. The darkness softened until it gave way to the bright light of day, and a familiar man in white robes…

… emerges alone at the top. Sostratus climbs inside the “lantern,” a thirty-foot-wide cupola, where four marble pillars, fitted with rare gems and studded with embroidered gold, support a domed roof twenty feet overhead. In the center of the floor, the empty brazier stands ready for its sacred task of alerting and guiding ships safely into the harbors past the deadly silt banks, shoals and reefs that for centuries have been the bane of seafarers. Sailors will be guided by fire at night, and by smoke during the day, the black coils visible long before even the tower emerges into view.

A noise at his back makes him smile. Demetrius appears from the trap door, holding his side and wheezing. He sits on the top step and glances around while wiping thick beads of sweat from his forehead. “I don’t believe I’ll look over the edge. Maybe next time.”

“Entirely understandable. But come,”—he motions to Demetrius to get up—“witness these automatons.” Great statues, twice the size of men, stand at three of the corners of the platform. “I’m sure you are familiar with Heron’s designs and inventions outlined in the Pneumatica.”

Demetrius nods, even though he’d had time only for a perusal of Heron’s work before other scholars, including Hipparchus, snatched it up to examine and debate with its author on the principles of hydraulics and thermodynamics.

“This one,” Sostratus says, pointing to a muscled statue in the likeness of Hermes with his finger outstretched along his angled arm, “was designed with help from your resident astronomer Aristarchus. It tracks the daily path of the sun, precisely mirroring its trails and changing with the seasons. “That one there”—he points to the western edge, where a silver-plated robed female faces the Imperial Palace and leans forward with hands cupped around her mouth—“screeches out a warning of the presence of a hostile fleet if one of the attendants trips that switch. The whole city can be mobilized hours before invading ships can be seen from the shore.”

Demetrius mumbles something lost in the winds, then rises to his feet. “And that last one?”

Sostratus laughs. “A trivial magician’s trick. It calls out the hours of the day. But here is what I am most proud of.” He lifts a heavy tarp, releases it from its bindings, and lets the wind rip it free, flinging it from the spire to sail with the winds out over the hills and the rooftops of Alexandria. “The great mirror.”

Demetrius gasps at the immense circular sheet of polished glass adhered to a thick layer of metal. He looks into its surface, and sees himself reflected back, but at reduced size.

“A finely polished lens.” Sostratus smiles. “It will direct the beacon’s fire by night, sending a beam out to sea to guide ships or, perhaps, harness the rays of the sun and set them to flames.”

“Apollo’s blood,” Demetrius whispers, hands shaking. “And you can move it, direct it?”

“We will have that capability, yes. Once mounted on the outstretched hand of Poseidon, we will control the statue by means of gears and levers.”

“Fantastic.” Demetrius involuntarily glances down — all the way down — where his gaze settles on the tiny dome of his library. “So, my friend, why did you really call me here if not for the enviable experience of being the first to have such a tour?”

Sostratus turns his back on his guest and stares out to sea, arms folded. “This was merely prelude, so that you could understand the extent of my tower’s defenses, the sturdiness of its construction, how I have built it to withstand the elements and the ire of the earth itself.”

“Fine, I have witnessed it. To what end?”

Sostratus coughs. “Do you know what the high priest of Memphis said when Alexander’s funeral procession passed through his city?”

“No.”

“He said, ‘Bury him not here, for where that man lies only war and strife will endure.’”

Demetrius remains silent, and listens only to the sound of the wind rustling through his clothes. “I’m sorry, my friend, I cannot fathom what this has to do with me. I understand your fears of war and how this lighthouse has been outfitted as more than a mere beacon, but—”

Sostratus turns abruptly. “Come with me back to the ground floor, then below it, beyond the hydraulic workings and through the tunnels under the harbor. There I will show you the true function of this tower.”

“But why me?” Demetrius asks, struggling to keep up as Sostratus starts back down. Immediately, he is pleased to find the descent infinitely more comfortable than the climb.

“Patience, my friend. You are about to see.” Sostratus leads the way, and they descend in silence, circling, moving ever deeper with each successive stage. “And before you glimpse into the vault that will house the greatest treasure ever assembled, I ask only for one thing — your pledge to guard its secret with your life.”

Caleb saw it all in a flash, as though time had altogether stopped its forward march while his mind processed the visions breath by breath, full of all the sense and clarity of lived experience.

But then it moved on and everything shifted back into place.

The water slammed him into reality. The bubbles, the currents, the mouthpiece flailing in the spirals of muck rising from his thrashing feet… the statue head falling from his grasp. And then other hands on him, holding him, forcing a spare mouthpiece between his lips. Gagging, choking, coughing.

He kicked away.

Disoriented, his mind still straddling two millennia, he broke free and sped upward, heedless of everything but the need to break the surface, to thrust his head out and see — see if it was true. To see the reality of the vision still locked in his mind’s eye of that glorious spire, that transcendent tower.

The lighthouse.

The Pharos.

Was it really there? A towering colossus dominating the harbor, all of Egypt, just as he had seen it?

He kicked and thrashed and ignored the raging fire burning his skull, in his blood, until a wall of pain halted his ascent. And then, fully believing it would be his final wish, he thought, Phoebe, forgive me! before his lungs died and he fell into a chasm of pain and mindlessness.

For the past ten years Caleb had been waiting for a miracle — for his father to dramatically stride back into their lives with grand stories of adventure and escape from that horrible Iraqi torture cell in the mountains, the one Caleb had seen time and again in his nightmares.

His father had been shot down in an Apache helicopter during the First Gulf War, and his body had never been recovered. It wasn’t long before everyone had moved on — everyone but Caleb, that is — who, although only five at the time, had already started having visions, a power his mother claimed to share, despite never witnessing the same things Caleb had seen every night: his father, very much alive, very much tortured, begging, pleading for help, for acknowledgment, for salvation. Images of things done to him — wooden shards under his fingernails, wires attached to the place between his legs — would wake Caleb screaming. He’d reach for the pencil and pad of paper he kept by the bed and scramble to draw the horrific visions that lingered, clinging to him in the waking world. He’d see…

… some kind of great enclosure, a fence or a gate, and a burning five-pointed star above it. Sometimes an eagle’s head, flying over a sun. And his father’s arms, bleeding from a hundred cruel cuts, reaching out, bloody fingers clasping at nothing, his voice a barely audible whisper, “Caleb… Caleb…”

And then a word he couldn’t make out.

But instead of even the slightest acknowledgment of his remote-viewing talents, his mother had sent Caleb to therapy. That had been the beginning of his split with her. With both of them, even his sister Phoebe, to some extent. His mother had refused to believe that his dreams could be populated by such personal revelations, especially in light of their terrifying nature, so she attributed them to childhood delusions, feelings of paternal loss and grave emotional trauma.

“It’s true!” Caleb had yelled one time when he was twelve, when it had all come to a head. Standing up to her, but only coming to her shoulder. In that moment he’d seen a flicker of fear in her eyes. Or was it a flash of respect?

Her eyes had snapped to the drawings on his bed, and she seemed to deflate, shrinking to his level. She gripped his shoulders. “I don’t see those things,” she whispered, and her eyes softened and seemed to implore, and neither should you.

Tears had spilled down Caleb’s cheeks as he tried to pull away from her. He wanted to shout that she was wasting her talents by drawing stupid old buildings and ancient shipwrecks. Those things didn’t matter. And the people in her so-called ‘psychic’ group, the members of the Morpheus Initiative, who came by the house to sit with her and go into their trances and talk to the spirits or whatever — they were leeches and imposters.

And so was she.

How could she have any real power? How could she be a true remote viewer if she couldn’t even perceive what Caleb, a child, had seen so clearly, if she couldn’t tell that her husband was crying out in pain, a prisoner forgotten by his country, and worse, by his own family? No, instead, his own wife had chosen to spend her time with strangers, helping them find useless old artifacts or sunken wrecks.

Caleb had pushed her away and run out the door. He raced along Sodus Bay in a cool November rain, ran past that decrepit lightship he and Phoebe had affectionately named Old Rusty. He ran until he was too tired to keep running. And then, when he had spent his anger, he turned back and walked to the entrance of their own lighthouse — the historic landmark his family had managed for two generations — and climbed the narrow metal stairs to the very top, where he sat beneath the old burned-out light, the great lamp that had been decommissioned just after his father’s disappearance.

Hugging his knees, he’d stared out over Sodus Bay until the sun finally burrowed beneath the horizon and hid itself for another night.

And now, all these years later, in a rush of frothing bubbles, Caleb burst from the depths of Alexandria’s Eastern Harbor, expelling a lungful of acrid water, coughing as the other divers rushed him to the waiting yacht. He briefly regained consciousness and gasped when he perceived the grand lighthouse as it stood over two thousand years ago, leaning over as if to inspect his condition for itself. And at the very top, at the apex, Caleb imagined he could see someone gripping the railing and peering over the side, a man who looked, not surprisingly, like his father.

2

At the first bend on the promontory, just above a jumble of boulders and red stone rocks rising out of the sea, a man stood, watching. He wore a black tie and Ray-Ban sunglasses. His hair, trimmed short, had gray streaks that flecked his temples, matching the color of his just-pressed Armani suit. He held a paper bag full of stale bread crumbs, handfuls of which he tossed absently into the frothing sea while he stole glances at the scene in the harbor.

“It’s happening,” he said into the wind. Then he cocked his head, listening to the answer returned to a tiny plastic receiver in his left ear.

He tossed a few more crumbs out to birds that warily kept their distance. “Yes, I’m sure,” he said. “The young professor from Columbia. They just pulled him out of the harbor. Probably ascended too fast… No, Waxman’s yacht is right there, and my guess is he’ll have Caleb in the recompression chamber in minutes… If you recall, when we learned Crowe would be diving, a few us felt this possibility was not unexpected, yet our warnings were overruled.” The man paused, listening, then shook his head. “No. I can’t get closer, not without risk.” Another handful of bread crumbs launched into the wind blew back onto his starched pants and his polished leather shoes. “Yes, we have a microphone on the yacht as ordered. Fortunately, it’s in the same room with the hyperbaric oxygen chamber.” He made a scowling face. “Well, at least we did that right.” He nodded, coughed and then tossed the bag, crumbs and all, into the sea. “All right. I’ll wait here and listen in, but I won’t risk exposure. If Crowe has that kind of talent, and he happens to sense something…”

The wind kicked up and whipped his jacket open, flinging his tie over his shoulder. Head down, he walked behind two tourists snapping pictures. He opened a pack of cigarettes and spent some time and difficulty lighting one as he walked toward the fortress.

He switched the channel on his earphone’s receiver, and while he waited for the sounds from the boat, he kicked at a rock, sending it off the edge and into the sea. He walked along the breakwater stones toward the vacant citadel, pretending to admire its immense sandstone walls, its grand colonnades, gates and towers.

As if this decrepit hovel could compare with the Pharos.

He risked a backward glance. The activity on the yacht continued, with the other divers surfacing, climbing up to check on their team member. All aboard, he mused, smiling as he adjusted his glasses. Then he tapped his ear, increasing the volume. He listened, hearing the tension in their voices, the conflict between the members of the Morpheus Initiative and their leader, George Waxman. Conflict is good, he thought. Might even be in our best interest to get them working at odds, coming at this from different angles. God knew it was going to be hard enough as it was.

For two thousand years the Keepers had waited, but patience was running thin. He and his fellow Keepers were convinced that the time for passivity had long since passed. A combination of dedicated research and luck had finally led them to the Key. And now, knowing it was only a matter of time — time measured in years, not centuries — plans were set in motion.

The Key.

Several reliable sources had confirmed that it was close: one of the members of the Morpheus Initiative had it. Now, it was only a matter of finding out which one and answering the larger question of determining if whoever had it even knew what it was.

He turned and looked out across the sea, his gaze sweeping the harbor like a lighthouse beacon. Two millennia. Indeed, patience was running out. But still, they had to be careful.

The Pharos protects itself.

3

The yacht waited above the dive site, more or less, depending on the drift and the currents that had buffeted Caleb and the other four members of the group that had gone down with him. They had sailed out just a short distance from the promontory at the edge of the Ras el-Tin peninsula, and had anchored just beyond the shadow of the sandstone towers and imposing walls of Sultan Qaitbey’s fifteenth-century fortress — the castle some claimed had been built on the foundation of the Pharos Lighthouse.

And some, like George Waxman, believed the Pharos, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, had crumbled and plunged into the sea at this very spot. And here it remained — or at least, its pieces — preserved in the muck on the earthquake-rattled seafloor, inviting discovery for those with the resources to get past the Egyptian authorities and brave the currents, the treacherous reef’s minimal visibility, and pollution.

Holding a tumbler of hundred-fifty-year-old Grand Marnier, George Waxman watched from the railing as they hauled Caleb up over the side.

“Recompression chamber!” Elliot James yelled up to him.

Waxman stifled the urge to celebrate. Is this it? “What happened?”

“He touched something,” Elliot said, ripping off Caleb’s mask, pulling off the fins, the weight belt and the buoyancy vest. Elliot was a forty-two-year-old diver from St. Thomas, with a scar on the right side of his neck — a souvenir from a brush with a school of young tiger sharks.

“Looked like the head of a sphinx, or a goddess,” said the other diver, Victor Kowalski. Victor was a New Orleans native, bald and black as night, a veteran Navy Seal, and not without a bit of clairvoyant talent himself. Waxman had found him quite valuable over the years, in more ways than one. Everyone on his team had their talents.

Victor and Elliot had solid scuba expertise and physical strengths to complement their psychic abilities, while the other team members that comprised the Morpheus Initiative — Nina Osseni, Amelia Gaines, Xavier Montross, Tom Ellis, Dennis Benford and Mary Novaka — were all powerful remote viewers. But the members Waxman really had his eye on were the Crowes. Caleb and his mother, Helen, were here while Caleb’s younger sister, Phoebe, the final member of the Initiative, remained back at their home in Sodus, confined to a wheelchair after an unfortunate accident several years earlier. Even so, she managed to be somewhat useful. At times.

A whole family of psychics. Talented remote viewers. Just as he had expected when he first recruited them for the Initiative almost fifteen years ago. He had brought in Helen first, knowing that she would only come with her children. And if either child had any hereditary powers, Waxman would be able to discern that along the way. But after the tragic incident in Belize, everything changed. Helen was still more than willing, but Caleb… he blamed himself for Phoebe’s injury. Promptly at eighteen, he’d left the Morpheus team and gone his own way.

Bright kid, scholarship to anywhere he wanted, Waxman recalled. Cruised through Columbia. Teaching now — a professorship in Ancient History. At least he kept that interest alive. And he was here, wasn’t he?

Of course, that was partly a result of Waxman’s doing. He had pulled some strings with Columbia’s Board, then maneuvered Caleb into a slot on a research dive in Alexandria during the same time the Morpheus Initiative would begin phase two of their Pharos Project. Once he’d arrived, Helen had been more than persuasive and convinced Caleb to at least take advantage of Waxman’s offer to use his boat and resources to conduct his own research. Together again. And if Waxman got his way, it would just be the start. He needed Caleb, but he wasn’t about to let on just how much.

Waxman finished his drink and headed down into the lower level, where Victor and Elliot were just closing the door, sealing the tank and setting the dials on the recompression chamber. They stepped away, breathing heavily, and dripping all over his hardwood floors. Scowling, Waxman handed Victor his empty glass. “Fill that.” He approached the chamber and peered inside at Caleb’s twisted body on the cot. The kid’s eyelids were flickering.

Still dreaming? Still seeing visions? “We need to know what he saw. How long is he going to be in there?”

“Six hours at least today,” said Elliot. “And probably a few hours each for the next couple days until—”

Waxman waved away the details. “He can hear me?”

“Yep, just hit the intercom switch.”

He moved in closer, then turned back. “Oh and Victor, when you return with my drink, bring Caleb a pad of paper and a box of pencils.”

Waxman pulled up a chair and yelled over his shoulder, “And find me that statue’s head!”

4

Caleb awoke with a wheezing, breathless gasp and immediately sat up but reeled suddenly as his head spun in flaring pain. He was in what looked like the inside of a space capsule: all white and padded, one narrow cot to sleep on, and a tiny porthole window. A pad of paper, thick, with about a hundred sheets, lay on the floor next to his uncomfortable sleeping accommodations along with a dozen sharpened pencils, all bundled together with a rubber band.

The he heard it: knock, click, knock, click. He looked up and nearly blacked out again. He put his head back down and groaned. The air was thin, pure, almost cold.

“That’s right,” came a voice he recognized only too well from the small intercom speaker on the wall. “Concentrated oxygen to go with the pressure treatment.”

Caleb grunted. “Hi, George.” His voice sounded nasally, cartoonish, a by-product of the oxygen inhalation.

“Hello Caleb. Sorry about your predicament. Lucky I was here, and lucky I brought my own recompression chamber. Saved you a trip to the local hospital, where you’d be more likely to die from something other than what got you there in the first place.”

“Yeah, I’m so lucky.”

“Why’d you rise so fast, Caleb? Did you see something?”

Caleb rubbed his temples. A flash of light, the burning Egyptian sky suddenly turning dark as he stepped into the shadow of the Pharos. He blinked. “Where’s my mother?”

“In talks with the Egyptian Council of Authorities, trying to secure access to the catacombs along the old Canopic Way. Assuring dive permits—”

“A little late for that.”

“We used yours,” Waxman said. Caleb now noticed the face leering in at him from the porthole window. Hair the color of rock salt, wavy and slicked back over a high, triangular forehead; narrow cheekbones and a hard, pointed jaw set below pencil-thin lips. A cigarette dangled from his lips, and from the tip hung a long spindle of ash about to fall. Tendrils of smoke coiled around his face, obscuring his eyes and fogging the window. “Remind me,” Waxman continued, “to thank Columbia for their assistance in our little quest.”

“Your quest,” Caleb corrected, trying to sit up as the pressure chamber did its work. “I opted out of the Morpheus Initiative four years ago. Remember?”

“I seem to recall something about that,” Waxman said with a grin. “And again, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

“Tell it to Phoebe.”

“I did. I do… every time I see her.”

Caleb narrowed his eyes. “When do you—?”

“Didn’t your mother tell you? We’ve been using your home on Sodus Bay as our new headquarters.”

“She must’ve left that out,” Caleb said with some bitterness. “But then again, we don’t talk much.” And Caleb didn’t want to ask, So where do you sleep?

“Pity. You’d be proud of your sister. Even from her wheelchair, she’s become quite an asset. Her access to the University of Rochester archives and labs has proven invaluable, and the way she manages the sessions, catalogs the drawings, comes up with the targets and tests the group members… she’s really something.”

“Good for her.” Caleb wanted it to come out sarcastically, but he also meant it. He had known about her success at her first year in the university, but had limited his correspondence with her. The past was too much, the guilt too intense. He wouldn’t even pick up the phone when she called — at first, several times a week, then after his lack of response, once a month. Her messages piled up in the voicemail cache until he would be forced to delete them to free up space.

Waxman tapped on the door. “And something about being there, in your childhood home, with its tiny lighthouse overlooking the bay, I don’t know…”—he grinned and stepped back so only the streaky window remained visible—“it helps focus the visions, directs the team toward the proper mind frame for its mission.”

“And what exactly is the mission this time, George?” Caleb always called him George to his face. Maybe he was being unfair, but the man had inserted himself into their lives, into his family, like a splinter under a fingernail, and so soon after Dad had been lost. At the time, even at such a young age, Caleb had known the story of Odysseus. Enamored by his father’s bedtime tales of Greek tragedies and classical literature, Caleb imagined Waxman as one of Penelope’s suitors to his father’s Odysseus; and he kept alive a fantasy that his father would one day return with vengeance in his heart and rout anyone foolish enough to have tried to take his place.

Waxman’s face returned to the window, and his voice crackled over the knocking sounds. “Our project — our objective, this time — is the search for the perfect testable scenario; an archaeological enigma that, if solved, could once and for all, scientifically prove the validity of remote viewing.” He paused, taking another drag on the cigarette. Caleb could almost smell the menthol through the door. Waxman’s favorite brand, it was the smell he always associated with George’s presence, and with his father’s absence.

Waxman continued. “The Pharos Lighthouse! If we can locate it through psychic means, just think what that will prove. Imagine it: a documented success case, a melding of archaeology and parapsychology. It would open up so many avenues of research, generating interest and—”

“Grants… Money…”

“Yes, of course. But I’m not in it for wealth, Caleb.”

“No? Then what was the Bimini dive all about back in 2003? I seem to recall that Mom and your other psychic crackpots happened to pinpoint the exact location of three sunken ships and quite a bit of salvage.”

“That was different.”

“And what about Belize, George? Why did we go there, if not for the promise of the treasure Elliot drew in one of his trances? Why did we enter Tomb Fifteen?”

George remained silent for a long while. “Caleb, believe me, this is different.”

“Is it?” Caleb stood up, wobbly, biting his lip against the pain surging through his muscles due to the nitrogen narcosis, microscopic bubbles warring in his veins. He staggered and leaned against the wall. “Let me see if I can explain how it’s different. You’re here not to locate one of the lost Seven Wonders of the World or to prove the validity of something we already know is real, but to locate only one thing.”

Waxman was silent.

Caleb inched closer, sliding along the wall until his face was in front of the glass, his eyes locked on Waxman’s. “You know the legends. You’ve studied the same stories I have, the same rumors my mom was always on about, the same stories my dad told me as a kid.” He swallowed, his mouth dry. “You want the treasure. You want the lost treasure of Alexander the Great.”

“I’d be lying,” Waxman said, “if I said that thought hadn’t crossed my mind.”

Caleb sat back down, holding his throbbing head. “Good, finally you’ve said something I can believe.”

“But Caleb, think about it. We can do it! We’re better suited than anyone else. Why? Because we can see, truly see. The other archaeologists, they’re blind, just going on old words, faded texts or ancient relics, some of them two thousand years old. While they’re struggling with government officials and museum curators, we’re seeing beyond it all, far into the past, hoping to glimpse exactly where and how to get to it.”

“If it exists.”

“Caleb, like you said, you’ve read the same texts I have. And you’ve read your father’s notes. I know you have.”

Caleb lifted his head. Yes, his father’s notes. For a moment, he had a flash to a night seventeen years ago, his father in a room surrounded by stacks of old books, newspapers and magazines. And drawings — hundreds of drawings. Some of them Helen’s, some his father’s…

… and there he stands in his military uniform a week before shipping off, looking over his shoulder at five-year-old Caleb standing in the doorway, holding up one sheet of paper — a drawing of the Pharos, at night, besieged by an armada of Roman ships.

Caleb blinked, and he was back in the recompression chamber, listening to Waxman drone on about his father’s research.

“… his obsession, which became your mother’s. I thought it quaint that your father, the son of a lighthouse keeper in Upstate New York, should adopt as his life’s passion the very first lighthouse, researching and learning everything about it.”

“Yeah,” Caleb said, “quaint. Like it was ‘quaint’ that his children should follow you around the world, risking their lives in the pursuit of whatever treasure you thought you could get your hands on.”

“Your mother—”

“—should have known better. We lost our father, and then, as if that wasn’t enough, we lost our childhood, tramping around through bug-infested jungles and submerged wrecks, all for your cause.”

“I won’t apologize for that. A better education you couldn’t have asked for.”

“I didn’t ask for this. Phoebe didn’t—”

“Caleb, enough. Listen. We’ll have to clear out of this area soon, so let’s get to the point. What did you see down there?”

Caleb hung his head.

“Draw it, if you like,” Waxman ordered, pointing to the paper and pencils.

“Don’t need to,” Caleb whispered.

“What?”

“I don’t need to draw it. And it’s nothing. It was nothing.”

“So, ‘nothing’ almost got you killed?”

Caleb looked up. “Nothing that will help you. All I saw was the lighthouse. The Pharos. The day before its dedication.” Waxman was silent — a breathless silence. “And …”

“And nothing. Sostratus, the architect, was there, and I was, I don’t know, somehow I was seeing through the eyes of Demetrius—”

“The librarian?”

“Yes, I suppose.”

“Fascinating.”

“Yeah, whatever. So Sostratus showed Demetrius around. It was… beautiful, majestic, soaring. But, I saw no treasure. I—”

“But it was here, the lighthouse?”

Caleb nodded. There had been enough speculation through the ages, since the remnants of the tower, long-wracked by earthquakes and disuse, had at last been shaken loose and crashed into the sea, as to where exactly it had stood. But Caleb’s vision had made it clear. “Yes, the view I had from the top — the orientation of the coast, the landmarks — yes, it was here, at the tip of the peninsula.”

“Where Qaitbey’s fortress stands?”

Caleb nodded.

“Anything else?”

“No. Yes. I saw the inscription. Sostratus signed the monument, then plastered over it.”

“Ah,” Waxman grinned. “I read about that, one of the anecdotes in Heinrich Thielman’s study. So it’s true.”

“If you believe my visions.”

“Why should I doubt them?”

Caleb shrugged, thinking of his father, of countless drawings of a man, possibly still alive, held captive in the mountains of Iraq. “Others have.”

“Well, Caleb, consider me your number-one fan, then. I’m in your corner, I believe you. And I confess, now that I’ve got you here, locked in my vault for the next six hours. I don’t want to let you go, not without something in return.”

“How about a kick in nuts when I get out of here?”

“Really, is that all the thanks I get?”

“Thanks,” Caleb said, turning and limping back to the cot. He lay down. “I’m going to try to sleep it off, and when this is done, I’d like to get back to my hotel. I have a plane to catch in the morning.”

“No you don’t.” Waxman’s face disappeared. “I, uh, took the liberty of calling the university and explained the situation, explained your near-death experience—”

“You what?”

“—and the fact that you have nitrogen narcosis, a life-threatening condition. Air transportation is out of the question. Besides, you need rest. A minimum of two weeks. And your colleagues, they quite agreed.”

“No, no, no.”

“Yes, Caleb, it’s for your own good. And your mother, she’ll be here in a few hours to take care of you.”

“Great.” Caleb sat back, fuming, but he knew Waxman was right. He’d never be able to fly in this condition. He should, by rights, be in a hospital.

As if reading his mind, Waxman said, “The offer still stands, I can drop you off at the local infirmary and you can take your chances.”

“All right, what the hell do you want?”

“I want two weeks, Caleb, just two weeks.”

“Of what?”

“Your time.” His face at the window again, beaming. “Your talents. The paper, the pencil… your visions. That’s all. Join the Morpheus Initiative again, just on a temporary basis.”

Caleb shook his head. “I’d be a waste. This is the first vision I’ve had since… since Belize.”

“It’s like riding a bike, I hear.” Waxman grinned. “You never really lose it.”

“What makes you think I can help?”

“Call it a hunch. Come on, kid. Spend some time with your mom, live in luxury on my yacht or at the five-star hotel in the city, not that dump you’ve been staying at. Just come to the sessions, try to remote view the targets, and let’s see if together we can’t solve one of the greatest mysteries of the ancient world.”

Caleb held his head as the knocking sounds intensified and his temples throbbed in time to the pulsing of the boat’s engines. Again he thought of his father, surrounded by all those dusty texts; he thought of the two-story lighthouse above his childhood home, the long shadow it threw over the grass on summer days when he and Phoebe would chase each other on the hill over the bay.

“All right, I’ll help,” he whispered.

“Fantastic—”

“But not for you.”

“Fine,” Waxman said.

“And not for Mom, or even for Phoebe.” He looked up. “I’m doing this for my father. If I find it, if I help locate the entrance, the passageway or whatever it is you’re all looking for, I’ll have done it for him. For his memory.”

Waxman nodded, grinning. “Whatever works. Glad to have you back, kid.”

5

“Where’s Helen?” George called out when he returned to the yacht’s lounge. The motors were running, with Elliot at the wheel, turning the ship back toward the harbor as the sun started its long descent over the spires and mosques, over the scintillating glass dome of the newly completed Alexandrian library. In the lounge he found Victor and Mary watching the LCD screen, catching up on CNN. Behind the bar sat the dark-skinned Italian, Nina Osseni, with short curly hair and piercing green eyes. She wore a tank top that exposed her shoulder tattoos: Egyptian symbols, the two eyes of Horus, left and right. She leaned over in a pose at once seductive and restrained.

She was young but perfectly suited to Waxman’s needs. He had recruited her right out of Annapolis, where she had been planning for a career at the FBI. She knew seven languages besides her native Italian, including Egyptian and Saudi; she was skilled in hand-to-hand combat; proficient in most firearms, with a specialty in handguns; and to top it all, her psychic scores were off the charts.

“Haven’t seen Mrs. Crowe yet,” Nina said. “But we have another… situation.” She showed him two small dime-shaped objects with wires sticking out of them. “Found these on the boat just after the last sweep. We must have been careless.”

Waxman bristled. “What else?”

Nina angled the silver-plated Dell laptop slightly so that only Waxman could see the screen. It displayed a familiar man, the one on the pier, in his gray suit. “I took this with the zoom lens while you were talking with the Crowe kid. He’s on shore, trying to be discreet.”

Waxman smiled. “Not too good at it. You run the facial-recognition program against our database?”‘

“Of course.”

“And?”

“It’s Wilhelm Miles.”

“Ah, Miles.” Waxman filled his drink, took a long sip. “Must be the son. The father took ill last year.”

“Died two weeks ago,” Nina said.

“Very good. So, this is indeed a lucky break. Gives us the edge.” He met Nina’s eyes. “You know what to do?”

Nina’s upper lip curled slightly and her eyes sparkled. “Looking forward to it.”

She closed the laptop, nodded to Elliot and Victor, who were busy talking about the dive, and left the room. Waxman walked outside and watched the approaching shore, keeping his focus on the waving flags over the Qaitbey fortress. He blinked, narrowed his eyes and, in the heat, imagined the Pharos, imagined it as Caleb had seen it — nearly complete, with the scaffolding tracking up along the sides, the great mirror settling into place, and Sostratus at the base, arms folded, smirking with the knowledge of a secret he alone held.

But not for much longer.

Waxman thought of his most valued passenger, down in the recompression chamber. Two thousand years was long enough. Some secrets were not meant to last.

6

Five hours to go.

Caleb dreaded what was to come, alone in his chamber for five more hours. Nothing to do but think. And possibly… He eyed the sketchpad. Waxman had sent the other divers out looking for the statue’s head that he’d dropped. If they could find it, or some other relic, maybe he could spend this time productively, trying to return to the vision to finish it.

Caleb sighed. He probably didn’t need the head. His visions had never been dependent on touch or proximity. The images of his father, tortured in that Iraqi cell, were proof enough of that. Although, back then he had been at home, sometimes in his father’s room, among his books, his precious books and notes and drawings. Maybe there was a connection.

He reached for the pad, pulled out one pencil. He pressed the graphite tip to the page, closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and started. He would let his subconscious be the artist; and once set free, it would steer wherever it willed, wherever…

Caleb opened his eyes. His hand, pausing only for a moment, went right to work, sketching a distinctly Mayan pyramid set among roughly drawn jungles. A stone staircase, worn and chipped, leading up to a great door, a door Caleb feverishly colored in, dark.

Black.

Onyx.

He broke out in a sweat, blinked, and the drawing took on a life of its own, tugging him into it.

A humid blast of air, the scent of cocoa and papaya, the buzzing of insects, the wind through the palms.

He gasped, and his eyes rolled back in his head. “No,” he whispered, but then he realized this, too, was inevitable. He wasn’t done suffering, paying for his mistakes.

“No…”

“Yes! Come on!” Phoebe bounds up the steps ahead of him. She’s only twelve, but she is so quick. Her auburn hair is tied back in a pink scrunchy, her t-shirt stained with mud and dust, her jeans rolled up over her ankles. Caleb follows more cautiously, seeking precise footholds on the crumbling stairs. He pauses and looks back down, forty feet below, to where the jungle greedily consumes everything beyond the base of the pyramid, stretching for miles in every direction.

Back to the north, almost half a mile, is their base camp. Their mother is there with George Waxman and two others. They are all so excited; this is the first inland mission for the Morpheus Initiative. Last month they spent a week in seclusion in Mexico City while Phoebe and Caleb stayed in their room, subsisting on enchiladas and bad attempts at American hamburgers, doing nothing but playing War and Go Fish, and reading, of course. Caleb was always reading. Seven books that week, much to Phoebe’s dismay. But then it happened: Helen came in one morning, looking haggard, but excited.

“We found it!” she exclaimed, and then brought Caleb and Phoebe into the smoke-filled conference room they’d reserved, a room full of drawings, taped sequentially on the walls, all showing a pyramid and a black door. Then distant shots of landscape, and colored thumbtacks placed on geological maps.

“Found it,” she repeated, and approached Waxman where he pored over a map with a compass and a protractor.

“Here!” he announced. “We’ll make our approach along this trail, then plot out the course to the tomb.”

“Tomb?” Phoebe asked, eyes brightening. She was definitely her father’s child. She loved anything ancient, especially anything that might be full of mummies and treasure.

Now, a month later, in the heart of the darkest, deepest valley in the jungle, they’ve found the small pyramid, the tomb of the sixth-century Mayan King Nu’a Hunasco, inside of which lies the vast wealth he had entombed with himself and his wives.

The knocking sounds of the recompression chamber thrummed in his skull. White walls bleached over the jungle hues for a moment, and Caleb tried to focus, making a half-hearted attempt to re-entangle himself in the present. Focus on the vibrations here, in this chamber, the subtle movements of the waves tugging at the hull. But it was no use. The white chipped away, layer by layer, revealing the alluring scene painted behind it, impatient to be viewed…

Caleb and Phoebe wait on the stones at the top of the tomb an hour after dawn, surrounded by bugs, swarms already alert and hungry, while their mother and the others are still back in their tents, just waking up. “Bug spray’s wearing off.” Caleb slaps at plump mosquitoes with annoyance, trying to imagine some purpose to their lives, some ultimate destiny determining the course of their aerial struggles. He sighs and approaches his sister, and then they both put their hands, palms out, on the cool onyx slab that served as the door to Nu’a Hunasco’s tomb.

“So now what?”

Phoebe grins. “We both saw it, right?”

“I saw something,” Caleb admits. “You were the one that drew it.” He looks around, checking the vine-consumed alcoves, the shadows deep with mystery.

“There, I think.” Phoebe points to the uppermost stone on the left side of the door — an octagonal block, coated with moss. Caleb pulls out his pocket knife and tries to reach it.

“Too high.”

“Let me get on your shoulders.”

Caleb sighs. “All right, but hurry. I don’t want Mom and George to find out we’re gone.”

“Having second thoughts?” He bends down and she climbs on his shoulders.

“About stealing the glory from George? Not at all. But Mom…”

“She’ll be pissed.”

“Yeah, but she’ll get over it if we find the treasure.”

“We’ll find it, you and me. We’re a great team. And we’ll show them we’re just as good, that we saw it when they couldn’t.”

“We did.” Caleb wobbles, trying to keep her stead. “Jeez, you got heavy.”

“Shut up, I’m in a growth spurt.”

“Too many Doritos, if you ask me.”

“What else are we going to eat down here? Now, hold still, I think I’ve got it.”

Caleb tries to look up into the shadows where her hands are fumbling around the octagonal stone. Then he has the sudden fear that something bad is about to happen — that Phoebe is going to trigger some trap, like in the Indiana Jones movies, and spring-loaded darts will riddle their flesh before a giant boulder pulverizes their bones.

“Got it!” she shouts, and Caleb hears something above turn with a grating sound that releases a cascade of dust. Coughing, Caleb lets Phoebe down and drops to his knees, just as the stone slab shakes and slides sideways into a thick groove in the stone wall.

Phoebe quickly pulls out two flashlights from her backpack and hands the bigger one to Caleb. “Ready, big brother?”

Caleb glances back, expecting a horde of spear-wielding Mayans to burst from the thicket at any moment, but the trees sway and the cicadas sing and the sun glares with blind ferocity that all but pushes him inside the sheltering darkness after Phoebe.

They descend a straight, narrow staircase, stepping carefully around rubble where the jungle has found its way inside. Vines and roots hug the walls and smother the ceiling. Further down, the steps seem to grow steeper, and Caleb and Phoebe take their time with their footing, shining their lights ahead and, occasionally, back.

“Thinking about Dad?”

Caleb looks up, surprised. She rarely mentions Dad, and barely even remembers him. He was shot down when she was only three, but Phoebe has been watching Caleb intently over the past couple years, sympathetic to the internal conflict her older brother has been struggling with. He continues following, then pulls ahead, shining his light into the gloom, adding his brilliance to Phoebe’s steady beam. “Let me lead.”

“I think I’ve seen him too.” Phoebe touches his shoulder.

He pauses. The cool air is musty, a little rank, full of dust, and the walls are cracked where brown vines protrude. The back of Caleb’s neck breaks out in a cold sweat. He turns, shines the light on her face.

“When?”

She chews on her lower lip and it reminds him of how, as a baby with two new teeth, she used to nibble on a piece of cheese. “Sometimes I feel, I don’t know, dizzy, and I sit and the world kind of disappears and then I see this bright white room, and this Middle Eastern man walks in, carrying something shiny and I scream…”

Phoebe’s eyes glaze over.

“… and the walls change color. And suddenly I’m in a desert, and there’s a man in a rusty cage and a dirty dish filled with little white worms and there are scorpions and then…”

Caleb’s mouth is dry as sand. He tries to reach for her but can’t move. “What then?”

She shrugs, blinks. “I don’t know. Sometimes it all just vanishes and I’m back in the present. Other times I look up and I see the sun, except on top of it there’s this bird’s head and a beak and tiny brown eyes looking down at me.”

Caleb’s fingers go to his mouth. “The eagle and the sun! The same thing I’ve seen, that I’ve drawn! And Dad… tortured in that place.” He wants to run screaming to anyone who will listen — to the police, to the American embassy, to anyone but his mother, who won’t hear of it. But then he tells himself to relax. Maybe Phoebe has just been influenced by his vivid descriptions, and subconsciously she has begun experiencing the same things.

She squints. “I don’t get this vision often, and it’s not very strong. Mom says it’s nothing. You’ll outgrow it, too, she says, eventually.”

“I won’t.”

“You will.” Phoebe gives him a nudge back down the stairs. “And Mom says someday you’ll learn to separate the… the objective dreams from the others.”

Caleb scowls. “You even sound like Mom.”

She shrugs. “You’re my big brother, and even though you’re a real nerd sometimes, I still like you.” She stares at her shoes. “I don’t want you to hate me, too.”

“I don’t hate Mom.”

“Yes you do.”

“I hate that she won’t believe me. She won’t look for Dad. He’s been calling for our help all this time and we’re ignoring him, hoping he’ll just die.”

“He might be dead,” Phoebe whispers as they start descending again. Too eager, she squeezes past him, determined to go first. “Did you ever think of that? Maybe it’s like Mom says, and you’re just picking up on stuff from the past.”

“Maybe, but—”

Something shifts, a barely perceptible sound, but in this hollow passageway it echoes in Caleb’s ears like a thunderclap. He shines his light down to Phoebe’s foot and illuminates the step sinking beneath her weight.

Another spring.

She freezes, turns back with a look of surprise, a look that begs her big brother to say everything is all right, that it’s just a weak step. “Caleb?”

He reaches for her—

— just as she drops into the darkness, the entire stairwell suddenly falling away, and everything beyond Caleb’s step just vanishes, sucked into the distant floor, somewhere in all that darkness. But he catches her, barely. Just her wrist. Her scream pierces his ears and lets loose a hailstorm of dust and rocks from the walls and the high, tapering ceiling.

“Don’t let go!” she shrieks.

“Got you, I’ve got you.” He sets down the light, which promptly rolls and spills off the step, turning end over end, then clanking and winking out below as the darkness claims it. Only Phoebe’s light remains, spinning wildly in her free hand.

“Drop the light, Phoebe, and grab my arm with both hands!” He has a hold on the upper stair with his left hand while clinging to Phoebe with his right.

“Wait. Just hold on. I think…” She steadies her light, aims it down, where it highlights something that glints like the sun about twenty feet away. The beam, full of captured dust, plays slowly over the chamber below, tracing objects that flash back at them. Heaps of golden ingots, statues, jade and ruby necklaces; monkey gods with sapphire eyes holding plates heaped with golden cups and chains, coins and spheres; and in the center, a gold-inscribed crypt. And there… a mosaic face, pierced nose and ears, and slanted eyes leering up at them, mocking their predicament.

“Phoebe!”

She looks back, eyes glazed, as her hand slips.

“Drop the flashlight! Come on Phoebe, come on! Reach for me. We’ll get the others and come back.”

She drops the light, and the seconds drag out until the flashlight smashes on the hard rock floor below. “We found it,” she whispers and lifts her hand, reaching for Caleb. He feels her palm, sweaty from holding the flashlight, slipping along his skin. Her other hand, the fingers sliding down and then through his—

“NO!”

— then his empty hand, fingers open, snatching at nothing but swirling dust. The darkness swallows her up, greedily enveloping everything, it seems, but her fiercely shining blue eyes and the words screaming from the depths.

“Big brother!”

Caleb clenches his eyes…

… and opened them, to see his etchings of the pyramid, the door, the stairs, and page after page, roughly torn from the pad and scattered across the cot and the floor of the recompression chamber. And the last one, still on his pad: a hand reaching out to him from the darkness beyond a broken stairwell. Caleb tore it out, crumpled it into a ball and brought it to his mouth, chewing into the edge to stop from screaming.

When the thrumming in his ears subsided and only the knocking and whirring of the chamber remained, he glanced at his watch.

Only two hours to go.

7

The Keeper stepped out of the white and blue cab, buttoned his suit coat and strode toward the crowded sidewalk. Somehow, in this sweltering city, the temperature had actually managed to rise since the sun dipped below the hillside rooftops. He noted their silhouettes, squat rectangular eyesores where there once stood magnificent temples, royal palaces and centers of learning.

He grumbled as a mob of unwashed, barefoot kids ran past him. Brushing off his suit and checking to make sure none of them had picked his pockets, he shuffled into an alley that smelled of human waste. He trod carefully around an open sewer grate, breathing through his mouth. Overhead, white sheets and shirts hung from a stained clothesline, and dusty fans whirled in the open windows.

He turned one corner, paused and, glancing over his shoulder, he expected to see something out of place, someone following him. He scanned the crowds, the hundreds shuffling away from the markets like ants back to the colony after a fruitful campaign. He saw nothing out of the ordinary. Relaxing his shoulders, he summoned a weak smile and wondered whether he hadn’t let the paranoia go to his head.

Then suddenly he felt it. He was certain of it, sure he was being tailed. And the tension crawled up the back of his neck. Could be anyone, he thought, imagining narrow faces pressed against car windows, eyes blinking at him from shadowed doorways. There was no reason to expect danger now, but he sensed it nonetheless. Perhaps because they were getting so close.

The Pharos protects itself.

But from us? He shook his head, turned and kept walking. No, the Keepers were the protectors. We’re only doing what’s right, following the plan.

Seeing no one in the next alley, a cramped space between the walls of two butcher shops, he opened the closest door and ducked inside. Within, the dark hallway was lit by a single naked bulb and littered with old newspapers and chicken bones. He walked to the only door on the left wall.

There was a keypad next to the handle. The door itself was made of heavy iron with large hinges set in a reinforced frame. The Keeper typed in a five-number sequence, whistling softly, and shot a quick look around at the shadows that seemed to gather at the other end of the hall.

Just as a hissing sound emanated from the door and the handle clicked, he had a surge of doubt, and the suspicion that he had just made a terrible lapse in judgment. He glanced down, and instead of opening the door he pressed the cancel button, then smeared his hands across the keypad, ensuring that no one could determine which keys had just been pressed. Can’t be too careful.

The Keepers hadn’t survived this long by being reckless. The greatest danger had always come from within, from the choices of the other Keepers; and there was only so much you could do to avoid such events. One had to choose carefully, that’s all, as his father had done with him.

He lowered his hands and flicked his right wrist.

Choices.

A slender blade that had been concealed up his jacket sleeve descended from a wrist strap. The smooth ivory handle settled comfortably in his grasp, and the feel of the cool grip calmed his pounding heart. He strode toward the shadows, wishing they had installed more lights overhead, despite the obvious protection such a dingy, dark location afforded to their secret entrance.

Something glinted in that darkness. An eye? A weapon? He strode faster, crouching, preparing to leap.

Then came a whisper. And another. Quick and powerful.

Deadly.

Two bullets punched through his chest and stopped him cold. The dagger clattered to the floor, a second before his knees. He looked in astonishment at the spreading stains from two meticulous holes in his left breast.

Footsteps.

A woman peeled herself away from the shadows, dark hair, a flash of bright green eyes, dressed all in black.

And smiling.

She placed the silenced Beretta into a pack over her shoulder and stood over the Keeper as he slumped to the floor, gasping, choking on his own blood.

“Too bad, Wilhelm,” she said. “Now I’ll have to do this the hard way.”

Nina Osseni bent down and rummaged through Wilhelm Miles’s suit coat, found his wallet, then searched his lapels for the microphone. She pulled the receiver from his right ear and placed it in hers, then secured the microphone on her turtleneck, stood up and opened the wallet.

She cleared her throat and tapped the dime-sized microphone.

“Hello?” She faced the metal door and took deep, quick breaths. “Hell-oo.”

The earpiece crackled. “Who is this?” A man’s voice, confused, but somehow still confident.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but I don’t believe you’re in a position to ask questions.”

“I see. You’ll indulge me, then, won’t you?”

“Perhaps, but be quick.”

“Am I to assume Mr. Miles is no longer with us?”

“Yes.”

“Am I also to assume that you’re standing outside our entrance, since you’ve obviously found and deactivated our hallway cameras?”

“Two for two. Now, my turn.”

“Yes, of course.”

“I have a message from my employer.”

“We know all about your employer,” said the voice in her ear. “And we know all about you, Nina Osseni.”

Nina froze.

“We’ve tracked your employer’s actions for some time. We know what he did to the Renegade, and we’ve been expecting you, actually, for quite some time. What took you?”

Nina sighed. “Well, well. My employer wants you to stay out of our way. You can do so voluntarily, or we can ensure it. We know your identities, every Keeper. We know—”

“And that’s supposed to scare us?”

“Yes, Mr. Gregory, it should. As it should scare your son and daughter. And Jonathan Ackerman and Hideki Gutai and Annabelle Marsh and… Shall I continue?”

“No need,” said Gregory. “You’ve made your point. But you must understand. If you know so much about us, you know our legacy. Our history. We are Keepers, and if we are struck down, others have been prepared to take our place. We have endured for two thousand years, protecting the secret, guarding the treasure.”

Nina laughed. “Guarding? Is that what you call it? Is that why you’re following the Morpheus Initiative? Or is it that you want the same thing we do?”

“What we want is only our right. We are the heirs to this legacy, not you.”

“You’ve had two thousand years to claim that legacy and you’ve failed.” Something shifted behind the door, stealthy footsteps.

Nina reached for her Beretta.

“No,” the Keeper said, “we didn’t fail. The Pharos won. There’s a difference.”

Nina cocked her head. Sure she heard movement beyond the door, perhaps guards readying themselves for an attack, she stepped back into the alley.

“Time for me to run,” she whispered, hoping that Nolan Gregory hadn’t alerted any other security who might cut off her escape out in the street.

“Nice of you to drop by,” he said. “I hope we’ll have the pleasure to meet in person soon.”

“Count on it,” she said, then tossed away the microphone and the earpiece, just as the door clicked and the hinges squealed.

Her would-be pursuers found the alley empty. Nina Osseni had vanished into the heat and the heart of the city.

8

When he next glanced at his watch, Caleb was pleasantly surprised. One hour to go. Then he looked down at the floor, at the seven scattered pages and the elaborate illustrations his subconscious had been drawing for the past sixty minutes.

Free-drawing, his mother called it. Kind of like the free-writing other psychics did while in a trance. With Caleb and others like him, especially those in the Morpheus Initiative, free-drawing was the key — the key to the past, the key to the present, the key to anything you set your mind to, giving it free rein like a dog off its leash in a great open park. Sometimes it returned empty-handed, other times it came back with something you really wanted, something valuable.

He stared at the drawings. Each one held a recognizable scene, something familiar. In some cases, he had drawn these very images before, years ago as a frightened kid hauled along with his baby sister on exotic romps around the world with his mom and a bunch of weirdoes claiming to see things.

Sheet one: a dizzying spire, so high it scraped the clouds, with a burning flame at its peak and a beam striking out below, seeking out the next target among the fleet of Roman galleys braving the greedy reefs. Two ships were ablaze, sinking as men leapt into the sea.

Sheet two: a smaller, much more modern lighthouse erected atop a hill beyond an apple orchard while below, a rusty iron ship with a lantern on its mast approached from the horizon.

Sheet three: a rugged mountain range and a series of caves, one with bars and withered arms reaching out from the darkness. In the sky hung a five-pointed star behind a crudely drawn fence. The entire picture was dark, drawn in deep lines and angry shading, as if he had wanted to be finished with it as soon as possible.

Sheet four: a girl in a wheelchair at work in a lab, peering into a microscope. Caleb frowned. What was that about? He had definitely drawn Phoebe, but as far as he knew she had never had an interest in biology or chemistry. What could it signify? He shook his head and considered the next one.

Sheet five: another ship, a naval clipper with striped sails — red and white, Caleb saw with sudden clarity — braving a dangerous sea while fleeing a small armada hot on its trail.

Sheet six: a finely detailed caduceus, a thick staff entwined with knotted snakes facing each other with huge glowing eyes.

And finally: a turbaned man standing atop a windswept dune, gazing at the ruins of a once-great tower, and a small flame burning at its peak while the stars blazed in the night sky. Caleb stared at this one, then back over the other six for a long time.

The minutes passed, his vision blurred, and it seemed another trance beckoned, just within a breath, a finger’s reach, a blink. He caught the whiff of jasmine, the thick pungent aroma of hashish, and the musty signs of old, wind-eroded stones.

Then the door whirred, the speaker crackled, and everything in his mind dissolved into a pale sheen of white as Waxman, lowering his head, stepped inside the chamber.

“Time served, young man. Ready for parole?”

Caleb blinked. “No, but how about dinner?”

9

An hour after Caleb checked into his new hotel he was struck down with a violent strain of food poisoning. He and the other members of the Morpheus Initiative had eaten at the same café outside of the mosque of Abul Abbas al-Mursi, but it seemed Alexandria had only intended Caleb as its target. He had been sitting next to the only one who actually seemed interesting, a Mediterranean beauty named Nina-something. She had tried to get him out of his shell, even bought a round of Ouzo shots, but Caleb passed on the drinks, already feeling queasy.

He’d avoided his mother’s gaze and tried to shut out Waxman’s ceaseless lecturing, going on just to hear his own voice talk about the glory of past missions or the strengths of the visions the group had achieved.

Maybe it was the food, or maybe Caleb really just didn’t want to put on a happy face for this gaggle of psychic misfits, so his body supplied the best possible excuse for his absence. Unfortunately, this bug left him unable to think, much less sit up to reach the cache of books he had brought along. The fever took hold quickly and didn’t let up for two brutal days and nights. People swam in and out of his vision, in and out of his consciousness, darting around the hotel room. But other times he was left extremely lucid, if unable to speak or move. He remembered his mother appearing frightened at first, then increasingly haggard. A pale face wavering in the watery blur of his room, a blur in which he could see every detail: the petals in the flowery curtains, the watermarks on the stained wallpaper, the cracks in the ceiling that mirrored the spider web lines in his mother’s skin, and the red jagged lines against the whites of her eyes.

Once, as Caleb tried taking a sip of water from the bedside cup in the middle of the night, he felt another presence. He saw a dark figure standing beside the rectangular outline of the door, head bowed, long arms at his side. Menacing, yet motionless. He was a blur, a melding of form and shadow, darkness and deep tones of gray and green. A low mumbling emanated from his throat, but in Caleb’s fevered state the words meshed into gibberish that echoed off the walls. Caleb trembled, and saliva dribbled down his chin as fresh chills ran over his body. Pajamas formerly stifling now felt like frost-covered rags. And the presence, whatever or whoever he was, appeared to be pointing at him and trying to speak. Then the door opened and blessed light stabbed inside, chasing away the image. Caleb was at the same time grateful and frustrated.

Helen entered and curiously paused on the threshold, as if she had caught the scent of something familiar, yet impossibly frightening.

Caleb fell back against the soaked pillow, the room spun, and he drowned in a frothing whirlpool of dreams…

… as he grips a wooden rail on the prow of a ship heaving upon turbulent waves. The surf pounds against great rocks, and only by furious rowing do the men manage to pull up to the embankment. And with a shout of thanks to Triton, they scramble overboard.

The rain spits upon them as they jump into the shallows and trudge to shore. His cloak is drenched, his armor unbearably heavy. Titus — his name is Titus — looks up as the others rush past, and there he sees it for the first time up close: a hulking shadow, black against the churning clouds, a brooding tower defying the angry storm. Far, far above, the seething flame of its beacon burns against the swirling winds, and the great mirror sends a crimson beam through the pelting rain, stabbing over the sea through the infinite folds of night.

Titus hurries forward with the others, his legion part of a small team of reinforcements for Caesar and his personal troops. In the pounding surf, the howling wind and the driving rain, even the sound of his own boots upon the granite stairs are muffled. He runs between two immense statues, an old king and queen greeting arrivals, then into a dark courtyard. Once more he turns his face up to the merciless rain and has the impression that the glowing tip of the Pharos is tickling the thunderclouds until they erupt in a laughing cacophony of light and sound.

Inside, the men shake off their cloaks, remove their helmets and dry their faces. Their leader, Marcus Entonius, orders Titus to follow him into a nearby doorway while the others set about their tasks. Hastening to obey, Titus has time only for a glance around the torch-lit interior to notice the winding ramp, the weathered statues clinging to the precipitous walls, the central shaft and the cauldron ready with oil.

He follows Marcus, trotting close to his torch as he is led through a winding labyrinth of passageways, one door leading to another exactly the same. It seems they double back, then forward again, before they finally descend a small ramp and turn into a tunnel-like chamber that drops sharply to a spiral staircase.

The stairs descend endlessly. The steps feel worn, as if water has coursed through this shaft for centuries. After circling for what seems like hours, breathing in the acrid smoke from Marcus’s torch, Titus’s legs nearly buckle beneath him.

The well opens into a massive, brightly lit chamber. They approach two guardians, enormous Egyptian statues carved out of black onyx — an Ibis-faced god with a long staff and a writing palette to one side flanked by a female statue wearing a peculiar half-moon headdress and holding a large book to her chest.

Titus respectfully bows his head to these native deities and steps between them. Ahead looms an imposing red granite wall covered with strange carvings and images. Centered and most prominent rises a large staff with twin snakes wrapped around it and facing each other at the top. Standing before this symbol is Gaius Julius Caesar.

Titus kneels as Marcus bows his head. “My Lord.”

Caesar slowly raises his left hand. In his right he holds an unbound sheaf of papyrus. The flickering torchlight from two braziers mounted on opposite sides of the wall illuminate scrawled lines and symbols on the papyrus similar to the images on the walls.

Titus peers at the wall ahead, observing seven strange symbols enclosed in raised circles spaced around the great snake-entwined staff. He recognizes some of them as ancient Greek signs for the planets.

Caesar turns. His eyes are haunted, glazed and exhausted. Titus has heard whispers that since his taking of the Pharos, he has been rarely seen, spending all his time inside the lighthouse. Doing what, no one would say. Some of the men whisper that the ancient gods have trapped him inside their shrine and will not let him go until Rome has left their land. Others claim Caesar has found an ancient source of power and seeks to wrest it from the gods. Still others believe he has discovered Alexander’s lost treasure.

“Titus Batus,”—Caesar clenches the papyrus tightly in his hand—“your skills are needed. These papers were in the possession of this tower’s keeper, an old, pathetic man who, with his son, alone kept the fires burning and directed the great mirror above.”

“What, only two—?”

“The boy is dead.” Caesar says sharply. “He fled, and when we caught up with him, down here, he was trying to throw these”—he holds up the papers—“into the flames. We had to stop him.”

“What are they, sir?”

Caesar shakes his head. “Whatever these scribblings represent, that boy died for them. We brought his father here, and the old man actually broke free, lunged for the papers and tried to tear them up.”

Titus frowns, looking from those sheets to the wall again.

“Titus. Get the answers from the old man. He is secured in the living quarters upstairs. Use whatever means necessary.” Caesar turns his back and regards the wall once more. His shadow leaps from his body and dances obscenely across the wall, mimicking his stance and mocking his ignorance. Behind him, Titus imagines the two Egyptian statues expelling low, indifferent sighs.

“Yes, sir.” Titus stands and extends his arm in salute. “I—”

But then a trampling of feet pounds out from the stairwell and four men rush into the room. “My liege, Egyptian forces are approaching. Twenty ships.”

Caesar lowers his head as if a great weight pulls on his neck. He looks at the papers trapped in his fist and then considers the wall once more.

Marcus glances from the messenger to his leader. “My Lord, we do not have the strength to withstand such an assault.”

Caesar sighs. “Very well. We leave for the safety of the palace and wait for Mithradates and reinforcements. I will return once we have the situation in hand. Bring the old man with us.”

“Sir,” says another soldier on the stairs, “it is too late. He has chewed off his tongue and drowned in his own blood.”

Caesar swears. He pushes past Titus, muttering a curse on the local gods, and stomps up the stairs. Titus follows the others, the last to leave the silent chamber. Turning one last time, he meets the unnerving stares of those two snakes carved deeply into the granite wall. In the flickering light, they appear to slither around the staff, turn their heads and warn against his return. Then Titus risks a glance at the female statue, who seems to be smirking, confident in the secret clutched tightly to her heart.

Caesar’s forces leave Pharos Island, fleeing from the lighthouse on the few ships remaining after the Egyptians caught them unprepared. Several Roman galleons are already floundering, however, as too many men cram onto their decks. The Emperor’s vessel, too, sinks and men are crushed by planks and become entangled in arms and legs, ropes and moorings.

Titus swims feverishly, finds a floating piece of wood, and kicks his way toward a distant boat. Up ahead, in a flash of lightning, he sees the purple cloak of his leader. Caesar struggles, trying to swim using only one hand. In the other, he holds aloft the papyrus sheets.

A flash.

And then, leaving the brilliant afternoon sun, Titus enters the central palace. Caesar stands on the balcony above the great square as the Fourteenth Legion waits in the hot sun for him to pronounce the words they all expect — that they would be moving out.

Alexandria is in Caesar’s hands again. Pothinus and Achillas, instigators of the rebellion, have been executed, and Ptolemy XIII died trying to escape. Lovely Cleopatra rests comfortably on the throne, her gambit of capturing Caesar’s heart a success.

Caesar leans on the railing and stares across the harbor. He gazes over the waves to the lighthouse, with its mirror reflecting the sun’s rays back at him. Titus has the sense that two great warriors are regarding each other in a contest of wills, deciding whether to continue the struggle or to bow out in mutual respect for the other’s prowess.

Caesar looks away. He stiffens at a touch from the alluring Cleopatra, her olive skin shining in the sunlight. “You must go,” Titus hears her say. “Your enemies stretch your forces thin. Seek them out, one by one, and consolidate your empire once more.”

Caesar nods and gazes one last time at the lighthouse, acknowledging it as an opponent he cannot overcome and determining to press ahead more vigorously in matters he can. “Here,” he says to Marcus Entonius, standing at his side, “take these papers to my father-in-law. They shall be safe in his personal library until I can return my attention to their mysteries.”

“My love,” Cleopatra says, “why not leave them here at the museum? Our scholars can study the symbols and put their great minds to the task of unlocking their secrets.”

“No. The harbor fire makes it clear that they are not safe here. These scrolls must be preserved.”

“But all the original books are safe. Only the copies were lost.”

“It is decided.” He raises his arms to his men and they shout up at him, reaffirming their loyalty and their readiness to leave.

Cleopatra lowers her head, but when she steals a glance at the Pharos, Titus swears he sees her smile.

10

Caleb awoke from the dream at the same time the fever broke. It was mid-afternoon on a nameless day. He struggled out of bed, weak to exhaustion, and in the sunlight filtering through the curtains he found a bowl of raisins, nuts and bananas on the table.

Still in Alexandria. How long had he been out? What was happening back in New York? He needed to check back soon. He could only imagine if he were stuck here past the start of the semester. How would his students fare with Lombardo or — God help them — Henrik Jenson as his substitute? He had to get out of here as soon as he was cleared to fly, if not sooner. Pain he could handle. He wasn’t quite sure about his tolerance for his mother or her crazy friends.

With a full stomach and confidence that the food would not be coming back up, he made it to the shower. After dressing in sweat pants, sandals and an old T-shirt, he left the room and took the stairs down to the lobby. His head still felt weak, lost in a fog, but he kept moving, taking a short break against a wall as he made his way to the conference room. He forced a smile to a rotund, dark-skinned maid who gave him a wide berth and then he opened the door.

Around a long table littered with papers, pencils, tape recorders and half-full ashtrays sat the ten members of the Morpheus Initiative. A video camera on a tripod was set up in the corner to record everything that transpired. Helen sat at the far end of the table, peering at four pages spread in front of her, and George Waxman stood behind her, busily taping sketches to the wall in groups that seemed to be related by their subject matter. He wore a white polo shirt with a turned-up collar and starched blue jeans and cowboy boots, like he had just stepped into a country bar, the kind with peanuts on the floor and a mechanical bull in the corner. He turned at the sound of the door.

“Caleb. Good of you to show up, finally.” He pointed to an open chair. “Take a seat. I didn’t realize you university types had such weak constitutions.”

Caleb’s mother offered a tired smile. “Feeling better, hon?” She wore a multicolored local shawl and big red plastic sunglasses pushed up on her head. She was radiant, her face tanned and her eyes shining. She had the poise and grace of a deity. In fact, in silhouette she looked like an Egyptian goddesses painted on the crumbling walls around this city, like Isis maybe, or Caleb’s local favorite, Seshat, the wife of Thoth and the goddess of writing and libraries.

This blasphemous comparison made Caleb even angrier with her for intruding into his imagination, weaving herself into the tapestry of the ancient religion he had found so fascinating and liberating. Caleb opened his mouth to speak, but suddenly felt overwhelmed with nausea. Weak and his head spinning, he staggered toward the table. He smelled menthol. Smoke clogged his lungs and stung his eyes, a blinding light…

… and he is descending the narrow spiral staircase again, rounding the final bend as the statues of the god and goddess come into view, leaning toward him with wide, staring eyes.

Hands held him upright. Someone guided him to the chair and he slumped forward, turning his head and taking sharp breaths.

“Okay,” said Waxman, oblivious to Caleb’s condition, and stretched and walked back to the wall. “Let’s see where we are. Caleb, you can just listen for now and play catch-up later. The rest of the team has just come back from the morning session with their impressions of the assignment, which we’ve now taped to the wall. They were each asked to concentrate on a single object and draw whatever came to them.” He set his burning cigarette down in an ashtray as he adjusted his shirt and regarded the drawings again. Helen frowned and moved the ashtray away from Caleb.

Waxman continued. “You were all directed to focus on a symbol, one familiar to most of you. It is a staff with snakes wrapped around it—”

Caleb sat up straight.

“—the caduceus, symbol of medical practice everywhere.” Waxman adjusted his collar. “I’m sure everyone had preconceived notions of its meaning, but that’ll simply be another factor to account when we analyze your visions.” He looked down his glasses at everyone before taking stock of the pictures on the wall.

“Okay, what do we have?” continued Waxman. “Xavier, you drew what look like spheres or balls circling around a snake. Consistent, but unusual. Not sure what that means, yet.”

Caleb’s breath came out in shallow, choking puffs. Flashes of his dream returned with pounding clarity…

… showing him the subterranean chamber, Caesar’s shadow thrust impotently upon the wall, the snake heads eyeing him with indifference.

With the back of his ballpoint pen, Waxman tapped the next sheet. “Two of you, Tom and Nina, drew something like a door with bars across it, and above this Nina sketched a flame and wrote something… that I can’t quite read.”

At the other end of the table, with her lustrous hair tied back behind her head in a yellow scarf, Nina Osseni cleared her throat. Caleb took deep breaths, trying to ground himself in just one world. Sensing the pull again from the other side, he forced all his attention onto this woman. She seemed cat-like, calm and calculating. Her eyes scanned everyone sitting around the table, like she trusted no one and was ready for an attack to come from any angle. “I wrote ‘Light,’” she said, “just because I had the impression that the flame was different somehow. Like it wasn’t meant for warmth, but for illumination only?”

“I see, Nina. Thank you.” Waxman chewed on his pen and took another step to the right. Caleb watched his mother, saw how her gaze followed Waxman, like he was some kind of god, or hero at least, in her eyes.

“Then,” Waxman continued, “we have five mostly unrelated drawings: Mary drew waves with some kind of wreckage or bodies floating in the water; Elliot sketched a tower tipping over on its side; Amelia drew a temple-like building with lots of pillars and put a gate around it; Victor drew a pyramid in the desert, near an oasis; and Dennis… I don’t know what this is.”

“Sorry,” said a heavyset bald man, sweating and smoking across from Caleb. “I didn’t get a good impression of anything this time around. I had the sense of something choking or smothered under heavy layers of, I don’t know, something black and hot.” He rubbed his forehead and took a sip of Pepsi. “Sorry.”

“Don’t worry, Dennis.” Waxman smiled. “It’s not an exact science. Good days and bad.”

Helen held up one last drawing. “Then there’s mine,” she said, “which, admittedly, is biased, since I know the ultimate target.”

“True, so while we can’t count yours as a valid blind experiment, it’s telling nonetheless.” Waxman gave her a light pat on the shoulder.

Caleb narrowed his eyes, then tried to focus on his mother’s picture. She had drawn a series of doors, one after another. Seven in total, with some kind of dog or jackal standing guard before each one. But what pulled his eye was something she had drawn in the upper corner, away from the doors.

He stood, reached over Helen’s shoulder and snatched the sheet from her. He held it up, staring at the smaller image of a crudely drawn mountain, its top blown off. Jagged lines rolled down its sides toward two separate sites that looked like domed houses, one on each side of the mountain.

Waxman was frowning. “What are you doing?”

Helen tried to grab it back from him. “Honey,” she said, “just sit and listen for now.”

“I know what this is,” Caleb said, and the room quieted down. He stumbled forward, took a piece of tape and stuck her picture on the wall, overlapping Tom and Victor’s drawings.

“Looks like a volcano erupting,” said Dennis, chewing into a Mars Bar.

“It is.” Caleb glanced back to the drawing and he pointed to the rightmost pillared structure threatened by the zigzagging lava flow. “Mom, what is this you’ve drawn over this house?”

Her face reddened as everyone looked at her. “A book,” she said at last.

Caleb smiled, took a step back and sat down. “In my fever, I had a dream.”

Waxman and Helen both sat quietly, inching forward. Caleb expected one or both to tell him to be quiet, to let them get on with their important analysis and the next phase of the experiment, but in their stunned silence, he continued. “I know what she’s drawn. I know what the caduceus represents and how it relates to the treasure.”

“Treasure?”

“In a minute, Dennis.” Helen snapped her chewing gum. She leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms. “Okay, Caleb. Go ahead, enlighten us.”

Caleb pointed to Helen’s drawing. “Vesuvius. It erupted in seventy-nine AD, burying both Pompeii and Herculaneum.” He indicated the two houses she had drawn, believing she had intended them to represent two distinct cities. “It happened so fast that people died in their sleep or even walking on the street. All the buildings were encased in seventy feet of volcanic ash and mud, and buried until excavators rediscovered the city by accident in the eighteenth century.”

“Lava!” Dennis exclaimed. “I knew it. I—”

“We all know about Vesuvius.” Waxman coughed and lit up another cigarette. “How does this information help us?”

“My mother drew a book over one of the cities.”

“And…?” Helen led, getting annoyed.

Caleb’s voice faltered a little. Am I on the right track? Everyone was looking at him, and he was sure, with the exception of Waxman, that none of the others believed he had any real psychic abilities, let alone that he shared their vaunted remote-viewing powers. He gathered his confidence. “She drew a book. That’s the key. The key to the doors, the gates, the caduceus — in short, everything the rest of you have drawn.”

“What do you mean?” Waxman leaned forward. Caleb could see the bright blue of his eyes, and he imagined that something black slithered and crept behind them, patiently waiting for a moment to strike. He had the sudden impression that Waxman knew exactly what Caleb was talking about, and was simply hiding it from these people, waiting to see what they could find out on their own.

Caleb took a deep breath. “There was a large personal library in Herculaneum. With few exceptions, such as at Athens or here in Alexandria, most libraries in those days were the possessions of wealthy individuals with a passion for collecting books. The library at Herculaneum belonged to a man named Lucius Calpurnius Piso.”

Someone coughed. Others looked around the table.

“Who was he?” Helen asked at last. She leaned forward in her chair, and her eager eyes met his.

Caleb let the question hang for a moment. When no one else answered, he said, “He was the father-in-law of Julius Caesar.”

Around the room interest piqued, but still the blank stares remained. Nina seemed to be watching him more intently, hungrily even, and it took all of Caleb’s willpower to pull his eyes away from hers.

He took another breath. “In my dream I saw Caesar flee the lighthouse, holding papers he had stolen from its keepers.”

Helen stood up. “Did you see the caduceus? The snakes wrapped around a staff?”

“Carved on a door, about eight feet high. It’s the symbol of Mercury, by the way, of Hermes, and before that the Egyptian equivalent, Thoth.”

“God of Medicine,” Waxman said, eyes beaming.

“And writing,” Caleb added. “They believed he was the one who gave language to mankind and taught us everything from astronomy to medicine and farming. He also counseled the other gods and judged the dead. And it was rumored that he put all of this knowledge into a series of books, the greatest of which he called the Emerald Tablet.”

The room was quiet, so quiet that Caleb could hear his heart thudding against his ribs. Everyone was looking at him through the haze of smoke.

Helen cleared her throat. “So Caesar may have taken some kind of important papers from the Pharos Lighthouse?”

“Yes,” Caleb answered, his voice cracking. “And unable to decipher the cryptic words and symbols drawn by the lighthouse keepers, he ordered the scroll sent to the library at Herculaneum. His father-in-law’s library. With all of his attention then focused on Rome and other various campaigns, he forgot all about it, and those papers were still there when Vesuvius erupted.” He glanced around at his attentive audience. “Anyway, it could’ve happened that way.”

Waxman was grinning like Caleb had never seen anyone grin. “The Villa of the Papyri! Found in the 1750s as workers tunneled under Herculaneum. A team of archaeologists have been trying to open and restore the scrolls recovered from the volcanic rock for years.”

Caleb triumphantly sat down and returned his mother’s glowing smile. A sinking feeling nagged at him, though, tugging at his victory. How did Waxman know about Piso’s library? From what Caleb understood of his background, Waxman was a mathematics teacher from Cleveland who had begun a project to document paranormal abilities after receiving visions of his dead mother. His published articles had caught the eye of an archaeological team pursuing sunken ships in the Caribbean, and he had formed a group of like-minded psychics, people like Helen, who had scored well on such tests. Despite all his worldly experience, book smarts never appeared to rank high on his resume, although somehow he had managed to come up with a fitting name for the team, as Morpheus was the lord of dreams, whose mother was the goddess of visions.

Now, at Waxman’s direction, the room burst into a frenzy of activity, of discussions and revelations. Helen and Waxman set about explaining to the others the nature of the real subject, filling them in on the Pharos Lighthouse and the supposedly hidden chamber below.

“We know now what the visions are showing us: there’s a sealed door with the sign of the caduceus on it, and there are seven symbols around the staff, which might represent seven keys or puzzles to solve before the door can be opened.”

The next phase, Waxman said, would be to see if there was anything at Herculaneum that could help them. “We know that a series of earthquakes destroyed the bulk of the Pharos, with the last great quake in 1349 toppling what was left.”

“And,” Helen added, “we can assume that the shifting earth, the collapsed structure and tons and tons of limestone blocks have made it impossible to tunnel down to wherever the original entrance may have been.”

“So isn’t this all just a moot point?” asked Dennis. “What do Caesar’s papers matter if we can’t get into the Pharos chamber?”

“We’ve been scuba diving,” Waxman said, nodding to Victor and Elliot, “but with limited success. We’ll need to focus our energies on that front, see if any of you can find a way in from the sea.”

“What about Qaitbey’s fortress?” Xavier Montross asked. He was in his thirties, with a thick head of orange-red hair. He was shaped like a soccer player, muscular and lean. He never smoked, drank, or consumed junk food, and always sat as far as possible from anyone else, as if he feared contamination. “Anyone check inside there? Snoop around down in the basement?”

Something about his eyes made Caleb anxious, as if of all the psychics assembled here Xavier had something, some speck of real power, the ability to shred Caleb’s own meager gifts. He had always given Caleb the creeps. But fortunately, Xavier was the most reclusive Morpheus member, rarely speaking his mind or voicing his visions.

Helen shook her head. “We have detailed surveys of the structure from the Alexandrian government. Looks like there’s nothing but bedrock accessible from any location. Unless there’s a hidden entrance or tunnel somewhere.”

Caleb coughed, and his voice cracked again. “We could try sonar and see if we could locate hollow chambers?”

“It may come to that,” Waxman said, “although getting permission to excavate the fortress or damage the foundation in any way would be extremely difficult, given the level of protection it enjoys as a Muslim historical site.”

“So we’re back to the sea route,” Helen said. “We know from early writings that the designer of the lighthouse, a brilliant architect named Sostratus, used all sorts of advanced building techniques, including hydraulics, winches, gears and pulleys. We also believe there had to be vents in the harbor where the seawater could funnel in and out to power the internal mechanisms.”

“Such as traps,” Caleb couldn’t help but say.

Waxman shot him a look of caution. “Yes, there are those rumors. And maybe Caesar’s papers reveal exactly how to bypass them. If you did have a true vision, maybe Caesar found the door to the lower chambers, but either couldn’t open it… or feared springing such traps if he didn’t open it in the right way.”

Helen stood up. “If we can find and decipher that ancient document, which miraculously may have been preserved in Vesuvius’s eruption, we might just have the key to the treasure.”

Dennis scratched his head. “What’s this treasure again? A ton of gold or something?”

“We don’t know, exactly,” Helen said. “It could be Alexander’s spoils from his conquests across Asia and India. Legends are vague. All we know is that whatever it is, it’s valuable enough that many have died trying to find it.”

And, Caleb thought ruefully, recalling the father and son who had died before letting Caesar have the scroll, to keep it hidden.

He took a deep, cleansing breath and looked down at his shoes. As the others talked and made plans for a visit to Herculaneum, he noticed a leather case resting by his feet. Waxman’s bag. It had several folding compartments, but one had been left open slightly, and inside was a folder of formal-looking typed pages. At the top right margin of one sheet was a stamped seal—an eagle’s head in profile atop a banner with a radiant sun in the middle.

Caleb’s blood went cold as ice water. The tiny hairs stood up on the back of his neck. He looked up at Waxman. Close to Helen, he was talking and waving his hands, flicking ash into the air as she returned his enthusiasm and pointed at various drawings, making connections.

The eagle… the sun and its rays… He had seen that image, again and again, leaving bloody trails in the nightmares of his father. Seeing it here tied his stomach into barbed-wire knots.

Helen’s smile dropped when she saw Caleb’s face. But he had slipped out of the chair and was backing away from the table, from Waxman. He turned and stumbled out of the room, muttering that he needed to find a bathroom. Around the corner, he staggered into the men’s room, collapsed into the first stall that smelled as if it hadn’t been cleaned since Vesuvius blew its top, and his stomach heaved.

Caleb struggled to the sink, washed his face, then looked into the mirror. Standing behind him, against the wall, was a man with long stringy hair over his face, his head down, arms at his side. He wore a faded-green khaki jacket, dirty pants and muddy boots.

His hands were trembling, his whole body shaking. A mumbling, throaty ramble came from his mouth. Caleb turned, a scream forming—

— and saw no one. Unable to look in the mirror again, to face either that haunting intruder or the prospect of his own insanity, Caleb crept out of the bathroom, staggered up to his room, collapsed on his bed and descended at once into a gratefully dreamless sleep.

11

They arrived at the Bay of Naples on an afternoon favored by sun, warmth and the ever-present scent of olives wafting over the calm waters. The Royal Palace, its immense southern facade of red and gray, with hanging trellises and countless windows, could be seen a mile away as they stood on the front deck of the tourist-laden ferry.

After docking, they walked down the ramp and passed through a small plaza. Waxman efficiently handled the customs procedures, then strode ahead with Helen, who only glanced back once to make sure Caleb and Nina were following. Helen’s urgency showed in the way her arms swung forward and back and the strides she took bounding up the plaza stairs.

Her enthusiasm was catching, Caleb thought. Despite the nagging fear that Waxman had tricked him, that this was all part of a setup to get him back into the group, and despite the stationary in the briefcase — and the certainty that Waxman was more than he seemed — this was exciting. He couldn’t help but feel that unavoidable thrill, that rush of adventure scholars only fantasize about while locked away in their libraries or rectangular classrooms in front of bleary-eyed students.

He and Nina tried to keep up, but soon decided on keeping their own pace. The other members of the team had stayed in Alexandria with instructions to continue remote viewing, focusing on the harbor and a way into the chambers under the lighthouse.

Caleb felt more than a little awkward being around Nina; he hadn’t had a girlfriend in two years, nothing more recent than a few passing crushes from infatuated students. But compared to those innocent and naïve flirtations, Nina was a lioness, a tempting and refined young woman with skin like molasses and eyes so green they blinded him to the very fact he was staring. He had been caught snatching glimpses at her more than twice during the ferry ride. She had merely smiled, amused by his fawning interest.

“Let’s keep up,” she said in a low voice, nudging him with her elbow as she pulled ahead. She wore a summer blouse, red and white, colors that reminded him of the billowing sails of a visionary boat, and shorts that showed off her golden legs ending in high-heeled sandals. Mirrored sunglasses nestled on the soft-gelled curls of her thick black hair.

Caleb picked up the pace, his pulse rising in time as he caught up, painfully tearing his eyes away from her body as she climbed up a marble staircase toward the palace.

Up ahead, Helen and Waxman were talking about how to document this part of the project. “If we find what we’re looking for, the discovery will be documentation enough of our success,” Helen argued.

They crossed the square as pigeons flew away, parting biblically before them, then resuming their settled positions after they had passed. Caleb held the door open for Nina, whose bright lips peeled back into a playful smile before she slipped through, and gave a lingering glance to the palace grounds, to the lush lawns, manicured rose bushes and polished statues on the terrace overlooking the shimmering harbor.

Once inside the palace, Waxman directed them away from the crowd of tourists and went to a side door where a dour-faced man in a blue suit waited impatiently. When Waxman introduced himself, the man looked quite relieved.

“Giuseppe Marcos,” he said. “Director for the Biblioteca Nazionale, the largest collection of books in Italy outside the Vatican archives, here in the Royal Palace.” Caleb took a look around, marveling at the architecture and contents of this first hall alone. Apart from its great collection of Renaissance artwork and sculptures spanning several centuries, the palace also contained the Officina dei Papiri, which analyzed and preserved the ancient scrolls recovered from nearby Herculaneum.

Despite his lack of personal charisma and his occasional stumbling over English vocabulary, Marcos had a fluid, beautiful voice; in another life he could have been a tenor in the Royal Opera. Nina seemed to adore hearing him speak, sticking close, making the man uncomfortable. Giuseppe briefly covered the palace’s construction in the early seventeenth century, begun as a suitable resort home for Spain’s King Philip III who, ironically, had promised to visit Naples but never quite got there.

Waxman, in his usual tactless manner, cut off the history lesson and the tour. “Can we move on? We’re short on time, and we came to see the laboratory.”

Apologizing, the guide led the way, glancing over his shoulder frequently. “This is very irregular, no? We do not get many visitors to see the papyri, or the library. They think it is, how do you Americans say… lame.”

“Others might,” Caleb protested, “but I’d like to see your library very much.” He was salivating at the chance to actually touch the leatherbound spines of books hundreds of years old. He pictured lonely monks working away in dusty monasteries, copying down the Classics while the world toiled in ignorance through the Dark Ages.

Giuseppe smiled. “Well, you will get a look, sir. But I must say, Mr. Waxman and Ms.…”

“Mrs.,” Helen said. “Mrs. Crowe.”

Caleb saw Waxman make a face Helen missed.

“Or just Helen,” she added. “Please, Signore Marcos. I realize what we’re asking is very unorthodox, but we have good reason to believe that a certain scroll in your Herculaneum collection is of great archaeological interest to Alexandria.”

“I respect that, Miss — eh, Helen, but I fear you may have come all this way for nothing.”

They passed from one marble-tiled corridor into the next, where large tapestries hung side by side, presenting dull-faced members of Bourbon royalty observing the humble approach of visitors through their ancestral home.

After stepping through a mahogany doorway, Caleb’s heart skipped a beat when he saw a wall-spanning series of bookshelves. He tried to peer around Waxman’s shoulder to see the rest of the library foyer.

Giuseppe said, “You must understand. Of the two thousand or so scrolls recovered from the excavation at the Villa dei Papiri, we have only succeeded in opening some fifteen hundred. And that has taken two hundred years.”

They entered the library wing. Then quickly, before Caleb had a chance to peruse the titles or even to see how deep the shelves went, they hurried after Marcos down a central staircase. Caleb grinned and followed quickly. The smell of ages past, of old, musty paper, was exhilarating to him.

Giuseppe stopped at a brightly lit, bookshelf-lined room that reminded Caleb of his high school library. “The Officina dei Papiri,” their guide said. “Here we work on the scrolls. It is a difficult process. First, we paint the burnt exterior of the rolls with gelatina. When it dries we separate and unroll them, sometimes only millimeters at a time. This is a new process, developed recently by Norwegian papyrologists. It is much better than the previous method — a machine designed by Antonio Piaggio in 1796.”

He made a depressing face.

“But you must understand the situation: hundreds of scrolls were lost when the first excavators tossed them into the trash heaps. They believed the pieces carbonizzati to be lumps of coal. Also, early attempts to open the scrolls, they destroyed many. If the scroll you seek is not among those already opened, I fear your odds are not very good.”

Caleb saw his mother’s expression fall.

Nina sighed.

Giuseppe pointed to where seven men and three women, all in white coats, peered into microscopes at tiny fragments. Others worked at aligning blackened shreds on a steel table. Another woman held a magnifying glass and examined some fingernail-sized fragments.

Caleb cleared his throat. “What if we were to give you some help and tell you where this scroll had been located in Piso’s library?”

Giuseppe made a perplexed face, as if he feared his knowledge of English had failed. “What do you mean?”

Helen offered a weak smile. “We may be able to tell you in what part of the library this particular item was stored at the time of the eruption.”

“That,” he said, looking at them sideways, “would be impressive indeed. I should like to know how you came by such knowledge. However, it would still do no good. All the recovered scrolls were found in great heaps, buried by five-hundred-degree mud, then compressed through time.”

Waxman coughed. “So you’re telling us you can be of no help?”

“I am sorry. As I said, you are welcome to look through the scrolls we have already managed to catalog. Mostly we have discovered the writings of Philodemus, a first-century philosopher. Apparently a friend of Piso—”

“So you’ve come across nothing unusual?” Helen asked. “Maybe something astrological?”

Giuseppe shook his head. “Regrettably, no. Such findings would be of great interest to me personally.” He spoke under his breath so the others wouldn’t hear. “To be honest, philosophy has always bored me. I spend many, many hours dreaming of finding some treasure map or magical incanta—”

“So,” Waxman interrupted him again, pointing to a room in the back, where great shelves were stacked with the assorted chunks of what appeared to be black rock, “in there might be what we need, but your little team here won’t get to it for, what… decades?”

Giuseppe nodded. “Manpower is short, and the process is—”

“Difficult,” Helen said with a sigh. “So you said.”

“Mi dispiace.” Giuseppe shrugged and sighed. “There is always hope that new techniques will aid our search. Some new application of MRI technology perhaps? But until then, this is the way we must work. We know there is also another section of the library still buried, and we are waiting for permission to excavate. Maybe we find thousands more scrolls.”

Caleb hung his head so he didn’t have to see the expression on his mother’s face.

“But it is ironic, no?” Giuseppe smiled, and he seemed surprised that his guests didn’t join in the joke. “Don’t you see? Vesuvius, the very event that caused such destruction, also preserved these scrolls. They exist far beyond the normal lifespan of papyrus and ink. Frozen in time, just waiting”—he motioned to the lab and the shelves and the people all diligently poking and teasing the material free with tweezers—“waiting here for future generations to give new life to history.”

Caleb lifted his head, and gave him a smile. “Just like the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi texts were preserved in caves or underground.”

“Yes, yes. These scrolls are like… who is it, Rip Van Winkle? They go to sleep for a long time and wake up to a different world. And best of all, they escape the elements and the persecutions, the fanatismo of book burning and intolerance of the Dark Ages.”

Caleb thought for a minute, and was about to give away their real purpose. He was about to say how the same thing applied to the lighthouse: if there really was some kind of treasure down there, the earthquakes had sealed it in and prevented intrusion by another ten centuries of curiosity-seekers and treasure hunters. Sealed it in, possibly, until technology — or our developing psychic powers — could offer a way inside. Maybe that time was now. As much as he hated to admit it, he was starting to feel the contagious sting of his mother’s obsession.

Waxman pulled Helen out by the elbow. In the stairwell he said, loud enough for Caleb to hear, “A wasted trip, then, unless we can RV the exact scroll and then wait for these guys to unroll it and hope we can actually read something of what’s left.”

“I know. But there has to be another way.” Helen looked away from him and met Caleb’s eyes. “We’ll review the scrolls they’ve already translated—”

“But it doesn’t sound like they’ve found it.” Waxman shook his head at Caleb as he walked past. “Thanks for the wild goose chase.”

After they all went back up the stairs, Caleb returned to the library. He thanked Giuseppe and shook his hand. Then he lingered for a moment, looking about the room with envy. Every one of those scholars in there, peering into the creases of time… he wanted to join them, wanted to pull up a microscope and hunker down for hours, days and weeks, sifting through the past. But that dream would have to wait.

He found Nina in a courtyard, standing between the paws of a massive marble lion. Sunlight danced among the ferns and tomato plants, and a large iron fountain bubbled nearby. The scent of espresso carried on the breeze from a street-side café. They were surrounded by three-story walls lined with gorgeous balconies and doorways beckoning into splendid rooms. Through two archways in the western wall Caleb could see the colorful sails of the pleasure boats basking in the glittering Bay of Naples.

Helen and Waxman were standing in the shadows under the east section, engaged in a heated discussion. Helen waved her hands, at times pointing in their direction, then to the ground. Her bright shawl made her stand out, even among the European tourists in their colorful outfits and wide-brimmed hats.

Nina playfully put her hand into the stone lion’s mouth to feel its teeth. “So what do you think they’re talking about?”

Caleb shrugged. “Probably blaming me for slowing down their project.”

“Probably,” she said, laughing and petting the lion’s head. “Sorry Caleb. Just kidding. You know, your mother thinks you’re the most powerful psychic she’s ever seen.”

“What?”

“It’s true.” Nina tilted her head, resting it against the lion’s mane as she stared around the courtyard with a contented eye, as if she imagined herself a princess and this whole palace was hers. “It’s true. I heard them talking earlier, on the boat. She told Waxman that you seem to pick up things without even trying, unlike the others. Visions just come to you.”

“Only the ones I don’t want,” he muttered. “Visions of… my father, images everyone says can’t be real. What about those?” He glared at his mother. “How could she think I’m so talented while she denies those visions?”

“I don’t know.” Nina closed her eyes. “Maybe… maybe she does believe you. Did you ever think of that?”

“What do you mean?”

She shrugged and peered into the lion’s mouth this time. “Maybe she sees him too.”

“What?”

“But she can’t do anything about it, so she tries to shut them out.”

“Of course she could do something!” Caleb’s hands were fists at his side. “She could tell the State Department!”

“And they’d believe her?” Nina’s fierce eyes, like jade buttons, held him in place. He had barely talked to this woman before, and now to speak so bluntly, like they were old friends… or as he imagined Phoebe would be speaking to him if she were here. Phoebe was always the logical one to poke holes in his fantasies — at least as far as Dad was concerned. “Why would they believe a woman who claims to be seeing her dead husband?”

“Because she — I could tell them where to look! I’ve seen landmarks that they could search for. A river by a hill. The layout of buildings on the hillside. They could triangulate by the shadows or the direction of the sun, anything!”

Nina shrugged, stood up and stretched like a cat. A silver necklace sparkled and drew his attention to the curves around the V in her dress. The eye-tattoos on her bare shoulders seemed to stare at him. “Maybe you’re right.”

“I am.” Caleb turned from her and plodded over to the fountain. The chaotic bubbling and splashing calmed his nerves. She had him thinking, questioning, second-guessing his anger. He glanced sideways and for a moment Helen looked over and met his eyes. Something passed between them, a mutual softening of emotions maybe.

Then Nina was at his side, digging into her purse for change. “One Euro,” she said, looking at the shiny coin. “Whatever that’s worth these days.” She tossed it in, closed her eyes and whispered to herself.

“What did you wish for?” Caleb asked.

She gave him a wink. “Not supposed to tell, but I’ll let you know. I wished that your mother gets her wish. That we find it.”

They’re all the same, Caleb thought. Every one of them.

“We need to find it,” Nina whispered. “So we can go home.”

“What?”

“I want to go home,” she said. “I don’t care about the treasure. I don’t even want to know what it is anymore. I just want to go home. I miss my family. We have a cherry tree orchard in Virginia. This time of year the air is filled with the scent flowering blossoms, the buzzing of bees, and the sound the wind makes through them at night.”

Caleb blinked, gaping at Nina in a new light, as if the sun striking her features now revealed an even deeper beauty emerging from the shade. “I had apple orchards,” he said.

“Really?”

“Apple trees. Back home, in Upstate New York. Haven’t you been there, with the group? Waxman said he’s been using the house as a base.”

Nina blinked at him, smiling. “Nope, haven’t had the pleasure. I’m new, but it sounds divine. Bet you had some delicious apple pies every fall.”

“Twice a day,” Caleb said. “After lunch and for dessert. At least until Dad left and Mom, well… she got caught up in this crowd. No offense.”

“None taken. I’m — well, this is all new to me.”

“So you really can see things?”

Nina blushed. “Yeah, sometimes, but I don’t think I’m all that good at it. Can’t control it very well. Still, Waxman seems to think I can help.”

“I’m sure you can,” Caleb said. “But just be careful of him, Nina. He’s… not what he seems.”

“Really?” Her voice cracked. “How do you know? Did you see something?”

Caleb shook his head. “No. Don’t worry about it. I’m probably just overreacting.” He looked over Nina’s shoulder to where Waxman was holding Helen’s shoulders and talking in animated tones.

“Sorry about your father,” Nina said. “I heard he was interested in the Pharos too. He would have loved to be here.”

“He came to Alexandria a couple times right after I was born. Did a lot of research and even made a couple dives himself. At least he told me that much. Sometimes, while we were up in our little lighthouse — a museum now, really, since they put up a new one a mile away at the pier — he’d tell me all kinds of stories about the Pharos, about Alexandria at the time of its construction, about Sostratus and the Great Library and the temples and everything.”

Nina folded her arms, chilled suddenly. “Maybe you’ll see it soon. Like it was in your mind.”

“Maybe,” Caleb said, remembering the all-too brief glimpse he’d had while nearly drowning, and his gaze grew distant.

Nina absently scuffed the sole of her sandal over the thin layer of gravel on the flagstones. “What are you thinking about now?” she asked.

Caleb blinked, smiled. “Actually, thinking about Dad still. How he’d take us out to see the other landmark historic property on our land: ‘Old Rusty.’”

“Old what?”

“Rusty, it was my sister’s favorite thing. An ancient, rusted lightship. You know, the kind they used to send out in the foggiest of nights, with lanterns on its masts, to guide ships into the harbors. Phoebe loved the sound its hull made when we threw stones against it, and then we’d run before anyone could catch us. We used to sneak aboard, make up stories and pretend to be in great sea battles, captain and first mate, raiding the high seas.”

Nina sighed. “Sounds like you had a one-of-a-kind childhood. But you’re right, you should have been allowed to grow up there without racing all over the world with your mother.”

Caleb smiled. “Well, too late now.”

Nina closed her eyes and turned her face toward the sun and breathed in its warmth, then looked back to where Helen and Waxman were still arguing. “Do you think we’ll find the way in to the lighthouse vault?”

“Nope. I think old Sostratus hid it too well.”

Nina looked depressed. “Then they better accept defeat soon.”

“They won’t. My mother won’t, either. She’s obsessed.”

“So was your father.”

Caleb winced as if she had reached over and smacked him across the face. He thought for a moment, remembering his father’s eyes, the tenderness in his voice, the way he would crack open a book, spread out its spine, and sometimes take a deep sniff of the pages, savoring the old smell of the paper. “Yes,” Caleb said, “but for a different reason. He didn’t want the treasure, didn’t care about money.” Caleb was getting excited, and felt a strange energy fueling his cells. “Dad just wanted knowledge. He loved everything about ancient Alexandria, and he wanted to understand the lighthouse completely. Just as he was intrigued with the library and…” A strange connection tugged at him — a spark of a great inferno waiting to be ignited. Suddenly he was certain that his father had known more than he’d let on.

The sun ducked behind a cloud and the courtyard flickered into shadow. In mid-thought, nearly at a revelation, he noticed someone watching them, standing in the opposite section from Helen and Waxman, beside a pillar in the deeper shadows.

Who is that? How long has he been there?

He waited, narrow and trembling, with long arms and ragged hair, so out of place amidst the tourists who just walked by, snapping their pictures, ignoring him.

Caleb’s blood went cold and the hair on his arms stood on end. He shuddered.

“Caleb?”

“Do you see him?” he tried to raise his arm to point but couldn’t.

“See who?” Nina asked, whipping her head around.

The sun reappeared, dazzling off the stone tiles and the limestone pillars. Caleb blinked and the figure was gone.

Someone’s throat cleared. Caleb looked up and saw Waxman with Helen standing beside him. “Let’s go,” he said. “We’ll see if the team has fared any better.”

When he walked past, Caleb looked at his mother and saw that she had taken off her glasses and was staring across the courtyard, squinting.

“What?” he asked.

She shook her head, blinked and put her glasses back on. “Nothing, come on.” She took one last look around. “I still think what you saw in your dream is the key, Caleb.”

“You do?”

She nodded. “But it’s just so frustrating. The Pharos is taunting us from the past, giving us scraps and keeping the larger secrets to itself.”

Caleb looked warily at Nina. “Maybe,” he urged, “we should let it keep them.”

Helen chuckled and pushed a strand of hair from her eyes. “You’ve got a bad attitude, you know that? What would your father say?” She rubbed his head in a rare display of affection, and then followed after Waxman.

Caleb gave Nina an “are you coming or what?” look, to which she smiled and followed after Helen and Waxman. He couldn’t help but take her in once more before he threw a tentative glance over his shoulder to where the figure had stood, watching.

Before they boarded the ferry, Waxman used the payphone to call the other Morpheus members who had remained at Alexandria. When he hung up, he was smiling.

“They’ve found the entrance!”

12

Nina asked Caleb to wait for her by the pier with Waxman and Helen, telling them that since they had another half hour before the boat left she wanted to get a few more pictures first.

Quickly returning to the palace, Nina entered the south stairwell and, pretending to admire tapestries and framed royal crests, she blended in with the tourists, murmuring to a group of Americans about her favorite exhibits and commenting on the grandeur of the palace and the grounds. Eventually she made her way back to the lower levels, where she waited for her target to emerge from the lab.

Only a few minutes had passed before he appeared. Gregor Ullman. She sized him up in an instant: bald, hawk-faced and slightly overweight, rolled-up white sleeves and a new pair of Levi’s. He had a Bic pen behind his ear and a toothpick in his mouth. Nina smiled, but she was no one to judge. She only carried out the sentences.

“Scusa, signore?” She stepped into his path, interrupting what was either a trip to the restroom or his chance to call and update his colleagues.

“Si?” He stopped and smiled, admiring the frisky young woman moving in so close.

Nina licked her lips and set a hand on his chest, while her other hand swept up and around and plunged a hypodermic needle into his neck. Ullman staggered, gasped and shot her a look of dawning recognition. He tried to call out, but only whispered something indistinct, and collapsed at her feet. With a quick glance around to make sure no one was in sight, Nina took his legs and dragged him around the corner into a storage room.

Gregor Ullman awoke to find his wrists secured with duct tape, and the barrel of a Beretta pointed at his left eye. A dull pain registered in his legs, but in the drug’s aftereffects, he couldn’t quite place the source.

“Hello, Mr. Ullman.” Nina sat on an upside-down plastic bucket, with her legs crossed, smoking a cigarette. “You know me, I’m told, so I’ll skip the introductions and get down to it.”

Ullman grunted and coughed as a cloud of smoke rolled into his face. She didn’t tie my legs, he realized, and at once he sprang at the chance to escape. With a shout he tried to lunge forward, but only collapsed, howling in sudden, blinding pain. He rolled onto his back and looked down in horror to see the bright red slashes through the back of his pants.

She had severed his hamstrings.

Nina sighed. She hated this part of the job, and really didn’t like the sight of blood. At times like this, she reminded herself of the importance of the mission, the nobility of the cause. What they were doing, what she was a part of, would help preserve everything she cared about, everything she loved. All her life she had sought a way to stem the advance of time, to hang onto beauty and the perfection of youth; and when she had been singled out for this opportunity she knew it was her chance: an opportunity for a different sort of immortality.

Of course she had lied to Caleb, tossing him a sympathetic tale about her childhood home and orchards, a story to snare him in her web. It was a secondary mission, but in all likelihood the most important. Caleb, after all, was the key, and she and Waxman had to get him to realize it. They had to prod him, guide him, get him to see, truly see. But it had to be soon. And it would be, if she played her part perfectly.

She bent down and looked into Ullman’s straining eyes. “The morphine I mixed with your tranquilizer will help, but only for a few more minutes. I need you calm and able to answer questions.” She stood up and stepped toward him. “Tell me what I need to know, Keeper, and I’ll call for an ambulance on my way out.”

Ullman groaned and turned his face toward the cold floor. “What do you want?”

“Tell me,” she whispered, bending down and putting out her cigarette right in front of his face, “if Water is the first symbol.”

“What?”

“You heard me, and you know what I’m asking. Water. Is it the first symbol?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re mad.”

“And you’re dead if you don’t tell me the truth.” She stood and placed her spiked heel against his neck. “Is it Water? Or Fire?” Nina held her breath. She needed him to confirm the first symbol to validate what their other informant had given up. Torture was never perfectly reliable, but in that case her boss had felt reasonably certain of the information they had elicited. But not certain enough. He wanted a second confirmation.

“The first code…” she repeated, pushing down on his neck, “is it Fire? Is it Air? Earth?”

Ullman coughed. His legs twitched, his arms flayed about in his pooling blood. “I told you, I don’t—”

She increased the weight on his neck.

“Aaaaaah — all right, all right!” he hissed, bringing his hand to his throat as Nina eased the stifling pressure. “It’s Water… Water! But you won’t get in. You don’t know the rest of the sequence. No one does.”

“Don’t be coy,” Nina said. “Of course you know the sequence. What you don’t know is how to bypass the defenses.”

“And you do?”

“We will, soon.” Very soon, if Morpheus’s remote viewers continued with their hits, or if Caleb found his sight. But she guessed that the Keepers were in the same boat as far as the scroll’s recovery — hoping for a miracle. She tapped the barrel of her Beretta on the floor in front of his nose. “So you say it’s Water. What if I said I don’t believe you?”

“I would say I don’t care. I already know my fate.”

“Such pessimism.” Nina sat down again. “How long have you been here in Naples, Mr. Ullman? Well, not you, but you know what I mean — the Keepers. How long have you known?”

“About the scroll?” Ullman gave a wheezing chuckle. “Be serious. As soon as the Villa was rediscovered, we put a man on the inside.”

“All that time,” she clucked, “and nothing to show for it.” She sighed and shook her head in disappointment. Caleb probably had gotten closer to it in his one lifetime than six generations of Keepers. She checked her watch. “Well, Mr. Ullman, it’s been a pleasure. Your leader claims each of you has a successor lined up. In your case, I hope you haven’t delayed that obligation.”

Ullman laughed again as he looked up at her with a bland grimace. “See you soon.”

Nina frowned, tightened the silencer on her gun, aimed and fired, punching a hole through his forehead. She stood and contemplated the body, replaying the conversation, weighing his words, his gestures, debating whether his answer was reliable. In the end, she decided it didn’t matter. She was thorough in these matters of life and death. If a second independent confirmation was insufficient, she would simply seek another.

13

They returned to Alexandria just before midnight. Exhausted, the others retired upstairs to their rooms. Caleb fully intended to do the same, but there was something he had to do first. Today, after all, was the anniversary.

Phoebe.

Eight years ago.

Looking ahead at the others, Caleb saw his mother who, if she had even thought of today’s importance, had given no indication. She was in the thick of the group, Waxman at her side, still talking, going over plans and relating visions.

Caleb headed to the hotel’s lounge, where subdued techno music droned in contrast to an elegant mahogany-walled interior lit with evenly spaced blue-flamed oil lamps. He wanted to call his sister, needed to hear her voice, wanted to apologize, again. He checked his cell phone; the battery was almost dead. There might be enough juice, but in his head whirled an uncompromising swarm of thoughts about Alexandria, the Pharos, Caesar and Herculaneum; the impossibility of their task of recovering a vulcanized scroll from the ashes of a two-thousand-year-old library; and discovering the entrance to something that may never have even existed, except in legend.

He reached the bar, a smooth black surface that reminded him of the tomb door back in Belize. He stood before it, staring at the surface as if paralyzed.

“Martini,” said a voice behind him, “and whatever this guy’s having.” Caleb spun around as Nina slid into the seat beside him, crossed her legs and smiled. “Good idea, ditching that crowd.” She looked fatigued yet infused with an indefinite sense of vigor, a nervous hyperactivity streaming through her every muscle, as if she had just been on a thrill ride and the high hadn’t yet worn off.

Caleb shook off the chill and leaned against the bar. The large bald man making Nina’s martini gave him a questioning glance. “The same, I guess,” Caleb said, then turned to Nina, whose penetrating stare made him so weak he leaned back and slipped into the chair. Cool air from the overhead vents breathed fresh life into his lungs, and seemed to pull out the heat and humidity.

“Needed a little drink, I suppose. Been a long day.”

“And it’s not over yet.” Nina held up her glass. The vodka glowed a cerulean blue with a lamp shining behind it. When Caleb received his drink, she said, “A toast?”

“I love toast,” Caleb said, wearily. He felt stupid, but relieved when she smiled. “Raisin, Texas, wheat…”

She leaned forward until he could smell her perfume — a deep mix of carnal power and animalistic subtlety. She clinked her glass against his. “How about… to us?”

“Us?”

“To us,” she whispered, “you and me. To us, finding the treasure first. Finding it and then getting the hell out of here.”

Caleb lowered his glass. “How?”

“Upstairs.” She drained her glass. “Come with me, I know a way.”

“A way to what?” Caleb choked as he drank too much too fast, trying to keep up with Nina.

“A way to get the mind working.” Her green eyes sparkled. “It’s a tantric thing, a combination of meditation and physical exhaustion that’s been known to—”

“Wait.” Caleb put his hand on her wrist. “I don’t want any more visions. Especially tonight, of all nights, I can’t—”

Nina gripped his hand, and then settled her other hand on his thigh, squeezing slightly. She whispered, “I know, Caleb. I know.”

“What do you—?”

“All about you… and Phoebe. I came down here because I know what day this is, and I know what it is that you’re facing tonight…”

Caleb’s heart was pounding, his flesh chilled in the cool air, his temples throbbing, as he stared dumbly into Nina’s eyes.

“… something you shouldn’t have to face alone.”

He couldn’t pinpoint exactly when it had happened, at what point in the candle-lit darkness of Nina’s suite the visions had actually exploded, blossoming like a pinwheel fireworks display, because he had long since lost track of time.

The memories blurred together: the door opening, Nina pulling him inside, both stumbling into the room, her fingers tearing at the buttons of his shirt, his already under her skirt, sliding under a silk barrier. Their lips mashed tight, tongues in a desperate duel. The bed had been nothing more than a prop to be used much later, after the walls, the couches, the tables and the floor had been put to punishing use. Nina had relentlessly and skillfully pushed him to further and further acts of extreme physical exertion, exploits he had never even contemplated, positions so exotic his muscles screamed even as the pleasure intensified.

And when they couldn’t move any more, she coaxed him gently into a mode of breathing and visualization. Her legs locked around his back, they sat up, face to face, breath to breath, eye to eye.

How long they had kept this position, with only barely perceptible synchronized movements, as if they thought with one mind and moved with one connected will, Caleb had no idea. But at some point, the green of her eyes had leaked out into the darkness and swirled into the shadows, twisting like serpents. And then the floor had given way and his spirit was tugged, gently at first, then ripped free and thrust into a kaleidoscopic world of sensation.

The images came fast, full of vivid clarity. Caleb never knew exactly how remote viewing worked. Specialists in the field of parapsychology theorized it was some variation on Jung’s collective unconscious theory — that all the memories of everyone who had ever lived or ever would live out there, and anyone could dip into that collective pool and perceive anything in the mixture — people, places, events — anywhere in time and space. In such visions one used all their senses, fully experiencing their environment.

Caleb’s own belief was that it had something to do with the fundamental nature of reality. Intriguing experiments had revealed that quantum particles shared some sort of telepathic bond; one particle instantaneously changed its characteristics when another, no matter how distant, was altered. Another theory held that the observer’s consciousness acted on these particles, implicitly changing them because, in a sense, the particles were not truly independent or distinct from the greater reality of Mind. What this and other properties of quantum behavior implied about the universe was astounding. The early alchemists — and further back, the disciples of the Egyptian Mystery Schools — adhered to the belief that everything from the smallest particle to the most massive planet was all related, one seamless tapestry. “As above, so below” was their sacred creed. They re-created the heavens structurally on the earth, and they read into the stars the nature of things terrestrial. The spiritual was a direct extension of the physical, and it could be accessed if one knew the proper codes and ways of belief.

Maybe it was true. On some level, everything was connected. And that’s why, when Nina and Caleb entered the last trance before their descent, they shared the same visions. Unconsciously they tapped into something that revealed, in a succession of chronological scenes, what they needed to see. It started with a sense of impending disaster, and then the earth…

… begins to tremble. Three men sit atop the lighthouse. They are dressed in heavy cloaks and turbans, warming themselves by the great fire. It is Naseer’s turn to make the descent and haul up more fuel, but he is too afraid to move. So he waits with the others for the quake to stop, praying.

Outside, beyond the four renovated pillars surrounding the roofless circular platform, the stars burn fiercely, trying to compete with the smoke churning from the pyre. The bitter winds rise, snatching at their clothes and scattering the smoke, but the sea lies peacefully slumbering under the blanket of a hundred ships, the entire Muslim fleet, preparing to launch at dawn.

Naseer and his two friends have been manning this lookout post and tending the fire for three years. They meet each other’s bloodshot eyes, and whisper their personal prayers to Allah. “It is happening again.”

“No, Farikh, it is too soon. The earth shook only twenty years ago. My father was at this post, and he said the quake only succeeded in knocking free part of the lower balcony and a few stones from the east side.”

“That only means the lighthouse has been weakened. A hundred years ago the highest section fell off, and we have been building these fires on the ruined top of the second level ever since.”

“God willing,” Alim-Asr says, “it will hold again this time.”

“Perhaps we should make our way down,” Naseer whispers.

But it’s too late.

The tower rumbles and sways. One of the pillars cracks down the middle. Naseer springs to his feet and races to the west edge. Balancing on the shifting floor, he risks a look down. A dozen stones tumble free from the midsection, consumed by the darkness. He spins, fighting his vertigo, before his knees buckle with the floor beneath him. He reaches for his friends—

— but they are gone. Naseer is left alone, holding fast to the one remaining pillar on a jagged section of the floor while an open space yawns before him and a stairway ends in the night air.

The fire is gone. Only darkness and smoke have taken its place. He perceives movement, an immense shadow sliding down and away. Screams rise from the precipice, but are cut off by a rumbling of masonry and the baleful whimpering of an old giant casting off its dead skin.

He blinked, and…

… it is now daylight. He is somewhere else. Someone else. Dazzling sunshine spreads over the metallic azure sky. The ships are gone, the harbor quiet but for a lone sail. The city’s beachfront looks different, with new domes and mosques, pillars and minarets dotting hills as far as he can see.

He sits astride his horse, a beautiful Arabian with a bejeweled purple saddle and harness. It paws at the ground and shakes its mane in the shadows cast by giant slabs of stone. To the east, the cracked monoliths and the enormous piles of granite and limestone lead a twisting trail to the ruined heap of the once-proud tower.

It still ascends nearly one hundred feet, and its foundation seems strong and defensible, buttressed on all sides by a low barrier, broken in places but repairable. Its lower levels breathe with potential. Many rooms are still intact despite the crushing weight of the collapsed superstructure. He hangs his head and can only imagine the way it once was. Forty years have passed since the last great quake finally brought down its magnificence. Forty years since a flame has burned at its top and led mariners to safety.

He listens to the wind and the crashing of the sea over the ancient blocks, and he imagines the wondrous fragments lying just ahead in the pounding surf — the great stones, blocks and statues that had so long enjoyed the breezes and the awed stares of countless visitors. He turns as a man approaches.

“Lord Qaitbey.” His lieutenant slows his horse and bows. “The men are ready. We have two hundred horses, enough rope and pulleys and carts. And stonecutting tools.”

Qaitbey nods, satisfied as he looks over the ruined structure. He notes the placement of the fallen stones, the edges worn by rain and wind. “Do what you can to build it up,” he orders. “We must defend Alexandria.”

“As you wish.”

Qaitbey turns again to the haunting, desolate ruins, and he gazes into the few remaining windows and a half-collapsed doorway. A chill runs down his spine as he prepares the next question. “What of the descending staircase and the chamber below?”

His man coughs. “We know no more, My Lord. It ends at that wall, the one with the devilish carvings. That snake and the staff… Your men, Lord, they…”

“They are afraid?”

“Yes. They know the legends. They fear what awaits below to defend the treasure. The hundred horsemen who were slaughtered.”

Qaitbey nods, lost in thought. Legends are of no concern. His purpose is to protect this city from the Turks and to avenge past evils not to trespass into vaults locked away for good reason. Without turning, he instructs his lieutenant, “Cover the stairway entrance with a false wall, a slab of granite controlled by a secret lever on the eastern wall of the second floor.”

“It shall be done.”

“Then,” Qaitbey adds, smoothing his horse’s mane, “kill the men who build it, and swear yourself to secrecy.”

After a moment of silence, he consents. “Understood, My Lord. I so swear.”

“Thank you.” Qaitbey makes his voice heard above the rising winds. “What is down there must not be found, not by the likes of unworthy ones such as us.”

“My Lord,” he bows.

“Others will find it, infidels to whom the symbols mean something. And may they be cursed by what lies within.”

The wind dies and the crumbled remains of the Pharos quiver in silence, anticipating the hammers and chisels that will come and shape the blocks and pillars into a new form, a dwarfish, stunted relic of its former glory.

When Caleb opened his eyes Nina was breathing heavily, staring back at him. Her breasts still tight against his chest. She exhaled and lifted herself slowly off of him.

With a sigh he fell backward onto the rug, the muscles in his arms like wet rags. “What did you see?”

“A man in black,” she whispered, hugging her knees to her chest, as if suddenly feeling exposed, “on a horse, watching while hundreds of men and animals worked at building that fort — that place we were at last week.”

“Qaitbey,” Caleb said. “What else? Did you see a door?”

She nodded, wide-eyed. “I saw the switch, I know where they put it.”

“It’s still there,” they both whispered at the same time.

“Why didn’t anyone else see it?” Nina wondered. “No one else on the team?”

“Not sure. I don’t think Waxman asked the right questions. He had them probing the harbor, not the fort.” Caleb looked up. “They’ve been looking in the wrong place.”

14

One hundred feet below the streets of Alexandria, beneath a dilapidated warehouse in the eastern section of the city and down a long corridor littered with construction materials, tools and concrete girders, with hallways that led into unfinished storerooms and antechambers, a polished set of steel doors parted slowly — too slowly for Nolan Gregory. He was late. The others were here already, impatient and, most likely, scared.

He squeezed into the dusty chamber lit by a succession of floodlights connected by yellow extension cords to a generator below the floor. Forty feet overhead, the domed ceiling caught the shadows of the occupants at the central table. Nolan eyed them as he strode into the room, and he imagined them taking on their celestial counterparts in the freshly painted cobalt blue dome, soon to hold a host of stars and zodiac imagery. He buttoned his gray sports coat and quickly took his place at the head of the long mahogany table. Fifteen others sat around it, drinking tea and whispering among themselves.

“Keepers.” Nolan’s voice was soft and controlled, as if humbled from recent setbacks. “Thank you all for coming.”

“Is this wise?” asked a gray-haired woman at the opposite end of the table. “All of us in one spot?”

“No,” Nolan said, looking over his dull-eyed counterparts, “it definitely is not. But we have no choice.”

“We heard,” said a younger man on his right, “about Ullman and Miles.”

“Horrible,” said the man to his left, who was perspiring despite the cool air filtering through ducts along the floor. His gray suit coat hung on the chair at his back.

Nolan hung his head. “Yes, we’ll mourn their loss. But now we must consider succession.”

“But their successors are not ready,” said the older woman, slapping her hand on the table. “It’s too soon, and they were too young, not prepared properly.”

A younger woman, with short hair and sad brown eyes, stared up at the unfinished ceiling. “Who else is ready?”

“Mine are,” said Nolan. “And if there are no objections—”

“Why does he get two?” asked the young woman.

“Because,” the older woman replied, making a face, “Nolan can’t decide which child he loves more.”

Nolan Gregory shrugged. “They each have valuable strengths. I’m only volunteering them because I see no alternatives. It was unfortunate that our fallen colleagues were not prepared, but I am.”

The first man who spoke leaned across the table and pointed to Nolan. “Then that will leave us one short if you are next to die.”

“I’m aware of the math,” Nolan said with an exasperated sigh. His attention roamed about the room, noting the alcoves built into the rounded walls and the hundreds of empty shelves; and for just a moment he set his imagination free, allowing it to fill them. He completed the vault, applied the finishing touches and imagined it full. Whole.

Soon, he thought. Soon.

“This is our most desperate moment,” he said. “This new enemy threatens everything. We can survive without our full number for a time, but I maintain that what we have before us at this moment is an opportunity. With my successors in place, we may have a chance to get to the Renegade, to find the key, and claim our legacy.”

“Assuming,” the old woman said, hunched over, “we aren’t all killed first.”

Nolan crossed his hands in front of his face, simultaneously rubbing both temples. “My other reason for calling this meeting was for our protection.” He looked up. “We’re safe here, and here we’ll stay.”

The older man straightened up. “For how long? I have commitments—”

“—which will have to wait,” Nolan said. “We stay here until the threat has passed, which I promise you will be soon.”

“How do you know?” asked the young woman, her face flushing.

Nolan stared at her. He knew she and Ullman had been more than just colleagues. “I know, because our enemies are on the wrong track.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’ve been misled,” replied Nolan. “Misled about the codes. Someone — I don’t know who — first told them the wrong sequence, and based on the recovered recordings from Ullman’s body, he was able to think fast, and managed to strengthen the initial lie.”

The old woman frowned. “But then, who started it?”

Nolan shook his head. That is the real question. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “However our enemies know about the door and the sequence, they have it wrong; and in their blind impatience, they will surely try it.”

Smiles broke out around the room as the Keepers glanced at one another.

Nolan Gregory nodded and sat down with a heavy sigh. “Now, we only need to sit tight, and wait. Wait,” he repeated, “for the Pharos to protect itself.” And then we can get back on track.

He again stared over the incomplete shelves and the empty walls, and he listened to the echo of his voice as it traveled outside the room, down the desolate corridors and chambers of this venerable vault. Now I have ensured it: my successors will be the ones to find the key, and they will bring the treasure here, to its new home.

15

She waited in the hotel lobby café behind a wilting palm tree and a mosaic-tiled fountain. The others were still upstairs, those that were going on the descent, preparing. But Nina was already packed and ready. Now she wanted a minute alone with Waxman, and after calling up to his room five minutes before, he was on his way.

Of course, the merry widow had been with him up there. Always with him, Nina thought, stewing that she had to wait for her assignments until he had a chance to sneak around and come to her room in the middle of the night. He always stayed longer than necessary, which was fine by her. Waxman was powerful, and a skilled lover. Two qualities she desired in a man. But this time she only needed a minute.

She opened her makeup case, turned away from the lobby and started to apply, watching. The stairwell door opened and George came out, looking flushed with excitement, a book bag slung over one shoulder and a diving bag over the other. He came right up to the pillar by the palm tree and, glancing around the lobby first to make sure no one else from the group was lingering about, whispered, “What is it?” He stood on the other side of the palm’s trunk, pretending to check through his bag for a lost item.

Nina brushed her eyebrows. “I’m not convinced.” She waited for his reaction, then continued when he made none. “I want to find another Keeper and be more deliberate this time. I think I might have led the last one in my questioning—”

“I thought you were a professional,” he said. “Did you lead him or didn’t you?”

In her mind, Nina replayed Ullman’s last words again, trying to recall the nuances in his voice, listening for any signs that he had misled her. Then she cursed herself for killing that first Keeper so quickly, reacting out of fear. She snapped the case shut. “No,”… but I can’t be sure.

“Well, the rest of them won’t be so easy to find. Now that you’ve put the fear of God into them, they’re scurrying under the rocks, afraid of their own shadows.”

Nina shifted uncomfortably. “I know, but I can still get to them. We have the location of their families, and it would be easy to grab key relatives and convince one of them to—”

“No,” Waxman said. “You did your job. You got a confirmation. I say we go.”

Finally she nodded.

“Good,” Waxman said. “And remember, if we get inside the vault, the others don’t make it out.”

Nina grinned. “Believe me, I haven’t forgotten. And I assume you mean everyone…?”

“Yes. Make it look like the traps took care of them and only we survived.”

“So… Helen as well?”

“Yes,” he said without pause, “especially her. It’ll be easy. Caleb already believes we’re all doomed.”

Maybe he’s right, Nina thought. But at least Waxman hadn’t made this mission personal. If he had asked to spare Helen, Nina would have had to question his priorities. Despite last night, Nina’s priorities were intact. At least she could say that much, even though she had to admit she was tempted. Caleb had a certain darkness about him that attracted her, and a streak of individuality she saw as a challenge, something to tame.

“Okay,” she said, and steeled herself for the coming tasks, the culmination of their project, and hopefully the end to all this mess of novice psychics, codes, legacies and secrets. She glanced over her shoulder. But Waxman was gone, already heading to the front desk to call up to the rooms and bring everyone down to the waiting jeeps.

16

On the way to the elevators, his pack slung over his shoulder, Caleb stopped. Room 612. The door was open a crack, and someone was peering through the gap, watching. The door opened a little wider, and a patch of red hair emerged from the shadows, then bloodshot blue eyes darted up and down the hallway. “Danger.”

Caleb took a step to the door. “Xavier?”

“Danger,” he repeated. “I’m not going with them.” Shirtless, still in his striped pajama bottoms, Xavier Montross looked like he had been through a four-night bender. His hair disheveled, eyes dark, bits of food stuck in his teeth.

“Did you see something?” Caleb asked. “Is that why you’re not going?”

Xavier gave an almost imperceptible nod, retreating back into the shadows.

“Wait.” Caleb reached out as the door closed. “What was it? What did you see?”

The latch clicked and a bolt slammed home. The eye view on the door flickered. Caleb imagined Xavier pressed close, breathing the sour breath of an anxious man. “Xavier!”

From under the door, his voice, like a desiccated whisper came, “Climb, Caleb.”

“What?”

“I’ll see you again… at the…”

“What?”

“… mausoleum.”

Caleb knocked on the door. “Xavier?”

Down the hall, the elevator doors opened and Helen stuck her head around the corner. “There you are!”

Caleb shuffled away from the door, shaking his head. The mausoleum?

“Come on, lazybones!” said his mother, holding open the doors. “This treasure isn’t going to find itself!”

“How did George arrange this?” Caleb asked Nina as they stepped out of the jeep before the deserted lot around Qaitbey’s fortress.

Normally, the promontory was crawling with tourists and peddlers, couples enjoying the view and sitting in a revitalized courtyard, sipping cool drinks by transplanted palm trees. Some waited for their chance to tour the empty fortress, now a museum, although there were no artifacts inside and nothing to look at but the empty hallways. Normally, they would have had to sneak in during the early hours after midnight or attempt a brazen break-in. Now, apparently, they had other means.

Nina smoothed back an unruly wave of hair, gave Caleb a knowing grin and said, “It pays to have connections.”

“But this…” He looked around, amazed. Armed Egyptian soldiers stood guard outside, beyond the perimeter of the jeeps, keeping onlookers away.

Helen overheard them. She gave Nina a frowning look and said, “It’s what I’ve been working on, Caleb, building relationships with the Council of Antiquities. And George’s monetary influence helps.”

“Of course.”

“Let’s move, people!” Waxman spread his arms and turned in a full circle in the breeze. Seagulls took off behind him, circled and alighted on the castle’s ramparts. “Today is an historic day! For archaeology, for history, and for the new trail we’re blazing in paranormal research. Follow me, if you please.”

The members of the Morpheus Initiative followed through the outer gate, one by one, Waxman and Helen in the lead. They crossed the deserted courtyard to the inner citadel and mosque. Once, from these windows, arrows had rained down upon Turkish ships.

Inside, the fort was cool and refreshing. Caleb let his fingertips dance along a granite wall and took a moment to consider that they were possibly touching a remnant of the great Pharos Lighthouse. “This archway looks older,” he noted, catching his breath. “And those pillars — they have to be part of the Pharos.”

“I think you’re right,” Helen said, up ahead, her voice breathless.

Out the open window, three seagulls had followed them and were circling, screeching. Caleb had the sudden fear they were sounding an alarm, protesting an unwarranted intrusion. He looked past them into the harbor where a fleet of boats, dinghies and random vessels of all colors and types were moored, pointing toward Alexandria, waiting for some great pronouncement from Cleopatra, perhaps, or Caesar himself.

“Ready, Caleb?” Nina pinched playfully at the back of his thigh, then took off down a plain corridor that narrowed like the inside of a tomb. Waxman, Helen, Victor, Elliot, Mary, Amelia, Tom and Dennis waited, expectantly. Helen nodded, smiling.

“Your show, kid,” said Waxman. “You saved us from going in through the water vents and braving the currents, so this is your vision, go with her. Lead the way.”

Helen paused, counting. “Aren’t we missing one?”

“Xavier?” Waxman said, glancing around.

“Got the kid’s stomach bug?” Elliot asked.

“Or he’s hung over,” said Victor.

Or, thought Caleb, he’s the only smart one in this bunch.

“Well, we’re not waiting for him,” Waxman said, a little ruefully.

After adjusting his knapsack to the other shoulder, Caleb followed Nina, moving through the first hallway. “Wait up! Do you even know where you’re going?”

“Sure, I’ve seen it, remember? The stairs should be just past the mosque.” The hallway suddenly opened into a large chamber. They both peered at the beautiful dome three levels up. A single dove flew around the red brick ceiling, circling gracefully. “There it is,” she said, pointing to a faint outline in the far wall. “That’s where the door will open when you pull the lever.”

“When I pull the lever?” Caleb put his hands on his hips.

“I’m not a glory hound, you get the honors,” Nina said, sliding up to him, giving his leg a squeeze. “After all, you did all the hard work last night, you deserve it.”

Blushing, Caleb looked up the stairs. “If it’s even still there.” They went up to the next level and walked side by side through the slanting shafts of sunlight down the narrow sandstone corridors. When Caleb realized their strides were matching, step for step, he almost burst out laughing. He felt like they were the fort’s defenders, marching on patrol.

At a shadowy recessed area in the western corner beyond a chain with an “Off Limits” sign preventing public access, Caleb dug out his flashlight, switched it on and cut through the darkness. The beam continued inside an alcove about the size of a supply cabinet and illuminated three fist-sized rectangular slabs of rock, all about waist high, protruding from the wall. He had a moment’s hesitation. He had not seen three. He had not even seen this arrangement.

“Come on, slowpoke. It’s the middle one,” Nina said, leaning forward. She gripped the lever with both hands, pulled it up, then to the left and down. A grating noise echoed below, and Nina smiled into the flashlight beam. “You didn’t see them do that?”

Caleb slowly shook his head.

She patted his shoulder as she walked by and said, condescendingly, “Now, now, it’s okay. Just keep practicing.”

They squeezed into the narrow opening beyond the massive, three-foot-wide door. It had opened just far enough to let one person through, and they inched forward in the darkness, letting their eyes adjust. Caleb wondered how someone could bring any kind of significant treasure out this way.

The flashlight beam played off a narrow space and a wall just ahead of them. Caleb aimed it down. The shaft of light, alive with the thick dust stirred by opening the door, illuminated the steeply descending stairs.

“Ready?” Waxman’s voice dwindled and was quickly swallowed up by the dust and gloom. “Go on, Caleb.”

“How did I get into the lead role, here? I’m not even a member of this team.”

“You’ve always been a member, Caleb.” His mother’s hand on his shoulder. “But if you don’t want to go first—”

“Fine, I’ll do it.”

“I’ll understand,” Helen said. “Belize, and—”

Nina gripped his arm from the other side, digging her fingers into his flesh. “Don’t listen to her,” she whispered. “This is your time, make it up to Phoebe now.”

He started down.

“Should have brought sweaters,” Helen said, and Caleb cursed his stupidity. A cold, stale breath rose from the depths, chilling them to the bone. “How deep do you think it goes?”

An image materialized in Caleb’s mind. It was like an architect’s diagram — the tower, hollow and inscribed with its ramps and statues and fuel transport hoists and the same thing projected beneath it, as if a mirror were held under the design.

“As above, so below.”

Waxman looked up. “Huh?”

“Just a feeling.” Caleb took the first tentative step. “Sostratus might have built this according to the Hermetic tradition, representing below what is above.”

“So you’re saying we might be going four hundred feet down?”

“Maybe.” Or maybe the door he had seen was almost two hundred feet down, then there would be another stairwell or shaft to take the visitor to the “beacon,” the light — the treasure at the bottom.

Or maybe he was way off.

They descended toward the mystery slowly, one long step after another. Nina walked behind Caleb, clutching his t-shirt with one hand and steadying herself against the cold wall with the other. The subterranean gloom did its best to resist the feeble light cast by the flashlight, but they could see well enough to continue.

Around and around. Caleb counted seventy-two steps before the wall disappeared and the last step ended. They stood before a great darkness and had the sense of an overwhelming space ahead. The flashlight pointed down at their feet, at the dust and pebbles. The beam trembled, and Caleb realized his arm was shaking.

He felt Nina’s hand on his, and together they raised the light. It stretched across the floor, dipped into a rectangular pit, then came up the other side and struck the far wall. He moved the light higher, and his jaw dropped. There were the carvings — signs and stars, circles and moons. Shadows played among the shapes, danced around symbols, letters and images too far away to see clearly. Then he found the center and traced up the length of a painted vertical staff that had two brilliant, green-scaled snakes wound about it. He followed their coils around until they converged. Great fangs and eyes locked onto each other.

“Wow,” Dennis whispered, and pushed through the group to the front.

“Wait,” Caleb urged. He had a terrible premonition as a grating sound echoed in the chamber like something opening or sliding apart. He felt a shifting in the floor, and he quickly moved the light to his feet. One of the blocks had settled under their weight, but only a couple inches. A hissing and gurgling sound came from the pit ahead, and a whoosh like escaping steam whistled above. Dennis stumbled back as cries of fear and confusion rose.

Caleb whipped the light around in a frenzied sweep. He saw a crescent moon, then a bird-like face and a long sloping beak. Another pair of eyes peered at them knowingly, and huge arms clutched a giant book. Faces turned on great stone bodies that swiveled, expelling the dust of centuries.

“Statues!” Caleb shouted, taking another step back with Nina, overcoming his fright. “Only statues.” He remembered his vision of Caesar and how the immense statues of Thoth and his consort Seshat had flanked the entrance to this vault. But he wasn’t clear whether they posed any threat.

“How are they moving?” Waxman whispered, inching closer.

“Steam power?” Caleb replied, slowly panning the light from one to the other, willing his heart to settle down, his breathing to relax. “Just physics and hydraulics. Inventors back then were into making statues seem alive. It was a trick to thrill the worshippers—”

“Or scare the piss out of trespassers!” Victor offered.

“Did it work on anyone?” Elliot asked, stifling a chuckle.

Caleb tried to smile. “Okay guys, looks like the welcome is over. Let’s go in.” He played the light over the two statues one last time, then bowed his head as he passed between them. It might have been a trick of the light, but it almost seemed as if Seshat moved again as he passed, as though she bent at the knees and lowered her head in honor of his arrival.

They approached the wall. Four more flashlight beams appeared, heavy with collected dust, and darted over the floor, the walls, the ceiling. The team members gave the rectangular pit in the center a wide berth. From its depths Caleb thought he could hear plunks of tiny stones hitting water. He looked closer and saw that the pit had a set of stairs coming up from the watery gloom.

There was a tug at his arm and he moved the beam back in front of them. Before he knew it they were right in front of the wall, staring up at the great caduceus, with those snakes now appearing to eye him with quiet indignation. Caleb took a deep breath, and when he exhaled, his breath sparkled in the dusty air. He counted seven symbols surrounding the staff, each carved deeply into the limestone and bounded by a raised circle.

He figured someone could grip the symbols by their outside edges and turn them one way or the other, like wheels. “Should have brought floodlights,” he whispered, fumbling in his bag. “Hold the flashlights steady.”

“Why?” Waxman asked.

Caleb took out his camera, aimed and pressed the button. The room lit up. His eyes dazzled, and he suddenly remembered a night years ago on the hill overlooking Sodus Bay as the first bright fireworks rocked the night. He snapped another picture, then a third. Each time moving the aim a little more to the right until he was sure he had captured the whole wall. Strange symbols and images filled his vision until he could barely see even with the pitiful flashlight beams.

Waxman looked over his shoulder, and with the light blinding off the limestone wall, his face was draped in shadow, but pinpoints glittered in his pupils. He looked like an Egyptian demon ready to plunder the ancient treasures of the gods. “Guess we should have consulted Caleb from the beginning. Apples don’t fall far from the tree, do they, Helen?”

Caleb swallowed and glanced at the two of them as Waxman reached out and traced the path of the snakes on the wall. He had found a crack in the wall, a vertical split right down the center of the staff.

Nina moved closer to whisper something in Waxman’s ear and pointed at one of the signs on the wall. More footsteps approached, and more beams of light roamed the wall. The others gathered in a semicircle behind Waxman. “Give me a minute,” he said, after whispering something back to Nina. He traced some of the symbols.

Again Caleb was struck with the certainty that Sostratus had designed this tower and its antecedent, the “below” extension, according to the matching principle. If the visible and familiar were above, then this was the occult — the hidden and mysterious. Yet, according to the mystical tradition, it should still consist of the same basic elements. He would then expect this door to lead to the second level, the octagon-shaped section, and once inside, another stairwell would take the visitor down to the final level, ending in a small pillared chamber.

As Waxman viewed the symbols, Caleb had the notion that he was looking for one in particular; and once more, he sensed that George hadn’t been completely honest with his mother, or with the rest of the group — with anyone except for Nina Osseni. Seeing them talk, whispering together, hit him with a feeling of something stronger than mere jealousy.

Waxman pointed to the inscription ten feet up, above the caduceus. “It says, in Ancient Greek, something like, ‘Only the golden ones may pass through.’”

“‘Golden ones’?” Helen stepped past Caleb and shone her light across the lettering. Caleb’s beam joined hers, and he saw a peculiar symbol at the end of the Greek inscription.

I’ve seen that before, he thought, recalling treatises on alchemy, illustrations and symbols in his father’s study. Reluctantly, as if its importance demanded he figure this out now, he lowered the flashlight beam from that character down to the caduceus and made a slow clockwise circle around it, highlighting one symbol after another. “Seven symbols,” he said.

“So?” Victor asked.

Caleb shrugged. “Mystical number and all. But I think… looking at those signs, they’re representations of the planets. Some double as symbols for elements. I see the sun and the moon, then… Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Mercury.”

Helen frowned, scrunching up her face as she tried to look closer. “How does that help us?”

“Alchemy,” Caleb said, thinking back on bits and pieces of things he’d read, ideas tying back to Ancient Egyptian magic, methods of controlling the material world and preparing for the afterlife.

“Alchemy? Turning lead into gold?”

“Something like that.”

“So what are the golden ones?” someone asked as Caleb tried to see into the gloom. It might have been the heavier one, Dennis.

Waxman tapped his flashlight against the wall and listened to the echoes.

Caleb cleared his throat. “It could just mean, ‘those who are pure, those who are worthy.’ In its earliest form, alchemy was the study of spiritual transition. Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, and all their predecessors, when they discussed turning things into gold, they weren’t necessarily talking about a physical, elemental transformation, but about obtaining spiritual perfection.”

“Hokey, kid,” said Waxman. “Even for you.” He regarded the door again, and then Nina said something inaudible, to which Waxman nodded, and then said, louder, “No, I’m thinking this is just another typical Egyptian curse, the usual scare with no teeth. They loved to put curses all over their tombs, especially the valuable ones. Threaten looters with a curse, and maybe you’ll get to rest in peace.”

He aimed his light at one symbol, about knee-high on his left, and Caleb had the sudden certainty that this was the one he had been searching for, the one Nina had pointed out. Jupiter. The planet associated with Water.

Nina tentatively backed away, but Waxman told her to keep the light still, to illuminate the symbol while he tucked away his own flashlight. He reached out, grasping the outer edges of the sign.

“What are you doing?” Caleb asked. “Nina, George, wait! You’re not seriously going to try this.”

When Waxman glared over his shoulder his face was a mask of annoyance and anger — such anger that Caleb took an involuntary step back.

Waxman grunted and started to turn the symbol clockwise.

“I don’t know about this,” Helen said. “Maybe we should wait.”

Retreating another step and bumping into Dennis, Caleb said, “Egyptians were known to back up their curses with actual defenses.”

Waxman laughed. “No one else saw any traps in their visions.”

“You didn’t see the way in, either,” Caleb countered. “Which only means you weren’t asking the right questions — again.” A blinding light stabbed into his eyes as Nina turned the beam on him.

Waxman hissed through his teeth. “Enough, Caleb. You can go back up.”

The light pulled away, leaving painful flashes in Caleb’s vision. He couldn’t make anything out. He heard a scraping of the small wheel within its granite setting. Rubbing his eyes, he took another step back and completely lost his bearings. “Nina?” He started to call to her, but a heavy clang drowned out his voice. Fuzzy shapes appeared out of the glare. He looked up and saw two giants looming over him. One appeared compassionate and sad; the other’s bird-like expression had darkened into something like rage.

Caleb turned away from the stairs, back to the chamber, and there was his mother, to the right of Waxman, and Nina, standing directly in front of the caduceus.

Another clang, and Caleb blinked. Then, in an unfocused haze, he saw five figures gathering around the seal. The crack down the middle expanded into a dark, widening line the width of a pillar.

“We did it!” Waxman shouted.

Nina stopped and looked back, but her look of triumph melted when she saw Caleb’s face. He seemed to want to say something witty, something to make them all pause and regroup. But he couldn’t find his voice. He squinted and tried to see beyond the parting doors, but so much shifting sand and dust were drizzling down on the intruders. Then a horrible grating reverberated off the walls of the chamber. The walls, the floor, the ceiling, groaned as though the harbor was pressing down upon them — millions of gallons of water compressing their little chamber all at once.

“Nina!”

She turned to him, reaching out—

— just as a torrential wave of blackness erupted from the gap in the door, exploding into the room.

Caleb had a glimpse of five figures consumed and swept backward like ants in a flood. Helen and Waxman, just off to the side, out of the rushing water’s path, turned and ran toward the safety of the stairs.

The flood took Nina head-on, lifting her in the air in a watery death-grip, and then drove her into the granite floor. Another surging wave rushed in and flung her toward Caleb. He grunted as she slammed into him and they both hurtled back into the colossal leg of Thoth. Caleb struggled to hold her wrist as he gripped the statue’s staff.

Nina coughed and tried to force out a watery scream. She was nearly ripped free by the freezing water crashing over them again and again, swirling and pulling as it rose. Caleb choked on wretched-tasting seawater mixed with the dust of ages, but he could feel the statue’s contours below his feet. He pushed off its midsection and hauled himself up, only to be hit by another angry wave. With a burst of strength, he pulled Nina higher as he fought to work his way up the statue to stay ahead of the rising flood.

Finally he locked his arm between the staff and the statue’s upraised hand and could go no higher, his head hard against the cold ceiling, when the room plunged into darkness, the final flashlight beams swirling under the dark tide. He thought of his mother and the others and could only imagine the worst, their bodies tossed about, dashed against the stones, consigned to this, their final resting place hundreds of feet beneath the surface.

His lips were almost pressed against the ceiling — the last inch of air left. He took another gasp and then his head was completely below water. In seconds his lungs began to scream, his heart thundered and he almost gave in to panic.

Then suddenly, it was as if someone had pulled the stopper out of a giant bathtub. The water started receding with a huge sucking sound, a swirling in the darkness. Caleb could breathe again. The water descended quickly, very quickly, and soon he could make out the dimmed, submerged flashlights before they disappeared altogether, flowing out through the tunnel. Sucked out, Caleb thought, with sudden dread, along with his mother, Waxman and the others.

“Caleb!” Nina gurgled, coughing up pints of water. Her wrist started to slip through his weakening grasp, now high above the chamber floor and without the buoyancy of the water to support her weight. Her voice was weak when she said, “Don’t — don’t let me go!”

“Hang on!” The blackness around them seeped into his skull, blanketing his consciousness. He heard a buzzing, and he was back there — in the jungles of Belize, in that tomb, holding onto his sister.

His grip on Nina slipped another inch and she screamed. Her feet dangled in mid-air, kicking absently. She clutched wildly at his body, and in her frenzy grabbed his arm, tearing it from its grip on the statue. But in sheer reflex, he shook her off to free his hand and regain his broken hold. The following scream was an echo of Phoebe’s familiar cry from years ago. Then there came a wet thud and a sickening snap that resounded over and over, drowning out the grating of the closing door.

“Nina!”

He fought the cold and fatigue and struggled to stay conscious. He made his way down the statue, sliding, scrambling, then dropping the final few feet. He landed knee-deep in the swirling water and reached down to feel around for anything but the stone floor. The currents pulled at his legs, and if it had been any higher, he might have been swept toward the pit. But he was able to stand firm.

“Nina!” His hands fumbled about. He dropped to his knees, splashing, reaching in the darkness. The water was down to only five or six inches, but rushing quickly and powerfully toward the drain. “Nina!” He crawled, rolled, swung his arms wide in a frenetic effort to find her.

Lights appeared — two of them — streaming down from high up the stairs, falling on Caleb, and then flicking around the room, scoping out every niche, every square foot of the water-cleansed chamber.

“Find Nina!” he screamed, as the streaming floods exiting through the gap in the floor and the great door sealed shut again, the caduceus once again whole. “Where is she?”

“Caleb.” His mother’s footsteps, splashing in the last few inches of draining water.

“Nina!”

“Caleb…” Helen knelt next to him, placed her hands gently on his shoulders. Her touch calmed him, even as he realized there was nothing left to do.

He whimpered, and rested his forehead against the cold, wet floor.

He never remembered much about the next few minutes. He didn’t know if he had blacked out or just stumbled about in a daze. There were only vague recollections of a kind-eyed, bird-faced goddess blinking at him in the darkness and shifting ever so slightly, the noise of her motions keeping him conscious.

His mother helped him up while Waxman continued searching for Nina. Then someone was helping him, carrying him up the stairs, stumbling every few steps. Except in his delirium he wasn’t under the sea in Alexandria, he was in Belize, climbing the broken stairs, carrying his sister’s broken, unconscious body, and praying that Phoebe — if she was still alive — wouldn’t wake up, wouldn’t wake to the agony. Wouldn’t come back to a world where she might never walk again.

They dragged Caleb out to freedom and, taking deep gulps of the cool Mediterranean air flowing through Qaitbey’s vacant stone hallways, he slipped away from his mother’s arms and rolled over to gaze at the dome high above, at that one lone dove, still circling, singing out its cry of loneliness.

17

The next few days were lost in alternating surges of pain and guilt, sleepless fits and frantic attempts to see his mother. Every time Caleb slipped back into consciousness, prodded by a succession of stern doctors and narrow-faced nurses, he saw Waxman speaking with Egyptian authorities, reporters, and other men in dark suits.

Finally, he had some time alone with his mother. Red-eyed and sullen, she spoke without making eye contact, and only once, briefly, she set her hand on Caleb’s. Her other arm was in a cast and she had green and blue bruises all over her face. Caleb learned soon enough that his mother, Waxman and Victor were the only ones to make it out alive, the only ones luckily carried toward the stairs, where they managed to climb out ahead of the rising water. The others’ bodies, mangled and deformed, with shattered skulls and broken bones, were found later that night after a six-hour rescue mission by the Egyptian Coast Guard.

But Nina… Nina’s body hadn’t been found yet. Caleb couldn’t think about her, not now. All he could think about were the others, and he kept dreaming that it was up to him to tell their families how they had died, and for what.

He was alive. His mother was alive. On one level he was relieved that she had survived. On another, he couldn’t get past his fury at another treasure hunt gone horribly wrong. Just like Belize, except this time it wasn’t his fault. Or was it? His visions — and Nina’s — had brought them to this fate. Never mind that it was Waxman’s impatience and bludgeoning optimism that had gotten most of the Morpheus team killed.

“Well, that’s one thing anyway,” Waxman said, slipping into Caleb’s room behind Helen. He was little worse for wear. A couple bandages on his forehead and his wrist in a cast. “The Egyptian government just thinks we all went for a dive after visiting the fort. And since the tide is so treacherous around that area, well, we were unlucky. They’re convinced enough of the danger that they’ve decided to drop breakwater stones in that section.”

Helen spun around. “What? They can’t do that. What if—?”

“Easy,” he said, hands out in a settling gesture. “This will just discourage other treasure seekers. We can still get to the tunnel. They didn’t find that, fortunately. I didn’t tell them about the entrance we’d found, and while the rescue operation was under way I went back and closed the door, resetting the lever. It’s there for when we need it again.”

Caleb blinked. “‘For when we need it again’? Are you serious? After what happened?”

Waxman was about to say something when Helen pushed him out of the room. “Later,” she said, shutting the door before turning to her son. “Caleb. This is a tragedy, the worst outcome possible, but we can’t just run from it.”

“Yes we can!” His lungs groaned with the effort.

“Then their deaths will have been for nothing.” She bit her lip and looked down. She sat in the chair beside the bed and slumped forward. And then, finally, Caleb realized she was still dealing with the guilt too, still trying to succeed at something, to make it up to her husband, to prove his life hadn’t been a waste.

“It won’t be soon, Caleb. But someday, someday we’ll try again. We’ll work at it, work at deciphering those images on the wall. There have to be clues to the way in, and—”

“Take my camera,” Caleb said with disgust. “For all the good it will do you. It’s supposedly waterproof, so maybe the film survived.” He sighed. “Take it. Hopefully it’ll prove that you can’t get in. Face it, Sostratus was too good.”

Helen was about to say something, but whatever it was, a nurse interrupted her as she came in to draw blood. When she pricked Caleb’s arm he immediately felt woozy, and he fell into an ascending tide of death.

When Caleb awoke it was night, the curtains drawn. An IV was still stuck in his arm, the entry point throbbing in counterpoint to the pulse in his head. And a man was looking down on him.

He was dressed in a gray suit. He had soft eyes and a head of thick gray hair, like snow, with straggly caterpillar-like eyebrows. His lips were moving, but Caleb didn’t hear any words — nothing but a sound like the rush of water.

The man raised a scolding finger, and for an instant the water gurgled away and the room quieted down. He leaned forward and whispered, “The Pharos protects itself.” Then he stood and made a curious bow.

Caleb blinked, and it was daytime. His arm was free, the IV gone. He sat up in bed, blinking again. His mouth felt like it was full of sand. Turning sideways, he slid out of the bed until a wave of nausea forced him back, and then he tried again. He stood up this time, made it to the window and looked down. Two stories below there was a small field with a soot-stained marble statue of some Egyptian patriot pointing toward the sea. Overhead, a lone dove circled, then landed on the statue’s head and stared up at Caleb’s window. Then Caleb noticed the man.

He stood in the field, looking down at a flat stone set in the grass. He was familiar, but not the one who had visited the previous night. This man wore a dirty green jacket and had long hair, stringy and unwashed, down to his shoulders. He knelt and set a single white flower upon the stone at his feet.

Caleb’s mouth opened. What had once been fear gave way to curiosity. But then the figure stood and turned around, looking up, right at Caleb. He raised a hand and pointed, first at Caleb, then down to the stone. Then he touched his chest.

Caleb rocked back, so startled that he didn’t even get a good look at his face, but he bumped into the bed, turned and saw his mother silhouetted in the doorway.

“What are you doing out of bed?”

Caleb pointed to the window, eyes wide, and speechless.

Helen limped past and set her good arm on the windowpane. She looked down. Caleb hesitantly peered over her shoulder, already sure of what he’d see.

The field was empty.

She turned, shrugging. “Phoebe’s on the phone, asking for you.”

Caleb had to sit again. “I can’t talk to her.”

“You’re her big brother. You saved her life back in Belize, no matter what else you think. Go, talk to her.”

“I’ll talk,” Caleb relented. “But then that’s it. This quest is over for me — once and for all. I’m done. Unless you enlist the help of a dozen military divisions and a thousand tons of TNT, I’m finished. I’m leaving.”

“You can’t—”

“I can. I have a job. Classes to teach. Books to publish.” Caleb stood and walked to the door. “It’s over, Mom. It’s over.”

“Dad wouldn’t have given up,” she whispered, and her words froze him to the spot.

Caleb hung his head. Out in the hall, the fresh air felt soothing on his skin. “Dad’s dead. Or don’t you remember?”

“Caleb—”

“He’s dead,” Caleb repeated. And now he finally believed it. He did, and he felt an utter vacancy in the place the hope of his father’s return used to occupy. It was always like Dad had been there waiting in the corner of Caleb’s mind. Waiting for me to find and rescue him.

But that chance had passed.

“Dead,” Caleb said again. “Like your obsession. Like the myth of this treasure. Like everyone who goes after it.”

He closed the door — on his mother, on the quest. On his lost youth. On hope. He put them all behind him and walked away, toward his future.

At dusk, as the other boats, schooners, trawlers and pleasure cruisers headed to the docks, and their passengers geared up for a night out at discos, bars and restaurants, George Waxman took the sleek four-seater speedboat in the opposite direction, to the center of the harbor and his waiting yacht.

Minutes later, he descended into the lower quarters, still fuming. “Get upstairs,” he barked to Victor, who he found standing before the recompression chamber window, peering inside. “Go up top and keep watch.”

Victor turned, a bruised cut on his forehead, still red and turning purplish around the stitches. “For who? Helen will be with her boy, right?”

“It’s not her I’m concerned about. How’s our patient?”

“Unresponsive. But alive.”

“Good.”

“She rose sixty feet in less than a minute, lungs half full of seawater, and… I don’t know, boss, shouldn’t we get her to a hospital?” Victor paused at the stairs, his voice cracking, betraying perhaps some newly kindled desire of his own.

“No,” Waxman snapped. “We need to leave soon, and I need to have her close. In case… in case her injuries, the blow to the head, made her forget her priorities. Or otherwise experience a lapse in judgment.”

“Understood.”

When the footsteps had retreated, and Waxman was alone with the sound of hissing gas and the vibrating echoes of the generator, he cupped his hands to the portal window and peered into the chamber.

“Sleep tight, Nina.”