The Pharos Objective

1

In the four weeks following the revelation about Waxman, Caleb and Phoebe had very little time to think about what it all meant. Every minute was spent caring for their mother and arranging plans to get her safely back home. Working out the finances, transferring money, setting up home care.

While still in Alexandria, they slept in shifts in Helen’s room at first, until Caleb finally convinced Phoebe to get a room at a nearby hotel. She was exhausted, weaker than he’d ever seen her. Every day she seemed on the verge of a total collapse.

“I know what you’re feeling,” Caleb told her at last, after he recognized the look in her eyes. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“What do you mean?” They were at their usual table in the hospital café, subsisting on a diet of lamb gyros and falafel. Relatives of patients came in and out, some glassy-eyed after being up all night crying.

“Believe me,” Caleb said. “I felt the same after… after that tomb took your legs.”

“Let’s be clear about something,” Phoebe whispered through her teeth. “That tomb didn’t do anything but serve its function. Waxman was the one who did this to me. And he’s done it again, this time to Mom.”

She was right. It was Waxman.

“I want him to suffer,” she said, and stared down at her plate, her food untouched.

“I think he does suffer,” Caleb said. “But I know what you mean. The question is, what do we do about him?”

“CIA,” Phoebe said, her eyes darting around suspiciously, as if she were suddenly convinced they were being surveilled. For all they knew, they probably were. It was something Waxman would have done. She picked at her cucumber salad. “What did Dad have to do with them?”

“I don’t know that he had anything to do with them.”

“But the symbol — the eagle and the sun — you saw it all the time when you viewed Dad at that Iraqi prison.” She took a breath and continued. “And I saw the same thing, plus that other sign, the star surrounded by a fence.”

Caleb had been thinking the same thoughts, but for days now. “I saw something in that room Waxman went into at CIA headquarters.”

Phoebe stared at him. “What?”

“A name,” he said. “Stargate.”

“Like the movie?”

“No, like the project.” He leaned in close. “After the Freedom of Information Act opened up a lot of government files, some early CIA projects were declassified.”

“And one of them was called Stargate?”

Caleb nodded. “In the early seventies the CIA began experimenting with parapsychology, after the Russians tried something similar. You know the military; they can’t let the other guy get the leg up, especially in the Cold War.” He took a sip of Coke. “I only know about it because of Lydia. She mentioned it once.” Caleb paused. “As if she knew…”

“What?”

He almost choked on the fizzing liquid. “I wonder if she did know.”

“About Waxman?”

“Think about it. Why does he want the treasure so much? Could he be a Keeper? A descendent of the one that split from the others? And was Lydia trying to warn me?”

“Or were they both using you?” Phoebe sighed, and they sat in silence.

“So what about this Stargate thing?” she took up again. “And why was I seeing visions of it? Crude visions, but then again, I was just a kid. Maybe that was all I could understand.”

“Or maybe you were meant to understand it later, when you were older.” And for an instant he had it: someone wanted them both to know. Wanted them to know what the truth was, even though they would be suffering in confusion for years. Caleb was close to figuring it out, but still there were too many jumbled pieces of the puzzle rattling around in his mind.

He thought aloud: “Stargate attempted to use psychics the same way we use satellite imagery now. Remote viewing. The CIA gave the subjects certain targets — a Russian nuclear plant, Castro’s palace, a downed US airplane — and then the psychics drew what they could see. They worked with maps and landmarks, and in some cases, the results seemed accurate.”

“So what happened?”

“Apparently, the hits were not specific or conclusive enough. Or the government just didn’t want to be seen as kooky. In any case, the funding was cut after the Cold War ended, and the program disbanded.”

“Or it was just buried?” Phoebe asked.

“Waxman had something to do with it, and he still does. He took the program offline, continued it secretly.”

“He seems to still have the financial backing and the political connections.”

“But why the Pharos?”

Phoebe shook her head. “Again, it comes back to the Keepers. Could he be the Renegade?”

“I don’t know,” Caleb said. “I can’t believe he’s one of them. It doesn’t feel right. It seems more personal with him.”

Phoebe adjusted the handles of her chair and polished a spot so her reflection squinted back at her. “Let’s be careful. We know what the Pharos does to obsessions, and we know Waxman. He’ll try again.”

Caleb met his sister’s eyes.

“He’ll be back for us.”

That night they moved her. In a special care unit, Helen flew back to New York City, then to Rochester. An ambulance was waiting to take her to Sodus, where a hospital-appointed nurse named Elsa met them at the door. They got Helen situated in her bed, hooked up the fluids and monitoring equipment and set up a refrigerator to stock her IVs. They filled a drawer with sheets, washcloths and linen. Finally, Caleb took Phoebe to her room, where he helped her out of her chair and onto the bed. She collapsed, letting out a huge sigh.

“At least Mom’s home.”

Caleb didn’t want to complete the thought… so she could now die with dignity, surrounded by the familiar elements of her life.

“I don’t want to give up,” Phoebe said, as if reading Caleb’s mind.

“I know.”

“There’s a chance, you know.”

“Of course,” he said. “The doctors even said it happens. These kinds of comas are not the most severe. She can still move, and might talk, even though what she says might not make sense.”

“No, I mean there’s a chance we can cure her.”

Caleb stared at her. He knew what she meant. “The books. The treasure.”

“Didn’t you write about all the medical marvels that were catalogued in those days? The scientific advances that we’re only beginning to rediscover?”

He nodded. “There were rumors of alternative medical practices and healing techniques that united body and mind to facilitate recovery.”

Phoebe rolled to her side, closing her eyes. “Like I said, there’s a chance.” She sighed. “Sorry, big brother. I need to sleep. It’s been a long day.”

“A long month,” he replied, taking a blanket and smoothing it over her body. “Sweet dreams.”

“Be careful,” she whispered.

“What?” Caleb asked, but she was asleep. He backed out of the room, turned off the light, and tiptoed past Helen’s room, where he peeked in on her. Elsa sat in a chair beside the bed, nodding off while holding a copy of Time Magazine.

Back in the kitchen, Caleb sat alone at the empty table. His vision started to blur, and he felt a tingle of energy move up his spine, circling around and around like a snake, rising to the base of his skull.

He gasped and let the feeling run its course, knowing what was coming. The kitchen lost focus. Water took the place of the floor…

… and great heaving waves undulate where the cabinets used to be. The table has changed to a wooden railing. He hears the call of gulls following overhead, and when he looks, a great white sail bisected with a crimson stripe blocks out the churning clouds and darkening skies.

“Father,” comes a voice at his side, and he glances down to see a boy, no more than ten, huddled in a blanket as if he just woke up and stumbled out from the quarters below. “When will we land again?”

“Not soon. It is not yet safe.”

“Will it ever be safe?” The boy’s face falls, but his eyes shimmer. A lone gull screeches overhead, and a raindrop falls on his cheek as the boat rolls from side to side.

“We will take on supplies in a month. But then it is back to sea.”

The child frowns. “We must keep moving?”

“We must.”

“Why?”

“You will know. In time.”

“Will it be soon?”

“Perhaps.” He feels such pain in his heart when he looks at his son, and he’s only too aware of the wheezing in his lungs. He does not have much time. He curses the intervening years since he left Alexandria. He curses time and fate. But still, he accepts that this is the will of the One. It is true he waited too long to father an heir. But now it is done, and the boy is almost ready.

His son looks out to sea again. He stares at the formless gray horizon where a distant rainstorm connects the sea to the sky, the above to the below. It draws on his imagination.

It is a good sign.

He is almost ready.

Something jarred Caleb into the present, and the railing was replaced by the wooden edge of the kitchen table. The cold room took focus again. A hundred small, bright objects were swirling about the kitchen, dancing and fluttering, and at first Caleb thought someone had let in a horde of moths that were swarming about, searching for heat and light.

Then he saw that they were snowflakes. And he saw the open door. Two men in black coats were standing on either side of the table. Through the open door Caleb saw a black limousine waiting in the driveway.

“Mr. Crowe,” said one of the men, “Mr. Waxman is waiting for you to join him.”

Caleb stood up, as if rising from a dream and stepping toward the next chapter in a book he’d written long ago. He knew all the characters, understood the plot and accepted his role.

Caleb smiled. “Let’s not keep him waiting.”

The half-hour drive to the small airstrip outside of Oswego proceeded in silence. Seeing that Waxman, who sat across from him in the dark, was fit only to stare and to wait, Caleb closed his eyes and pretended to sleep. At the airport, they boarded a black helicopter, and mercifully the background noise was too great to allow for conversation. Caleb avoided eye contact with Waxman and used the time to meditate, to think on the past, to think about his father and what he might have been trying to tell him in all those childhood visions.

And he thought about the eighth sign. The final key.

He thought of Sostratus and Demetrius, of Alexander, Caesar and Marc Antony. Theodosius and Ptolemy, Hypatia, King Michael and Qaitbey. A hundred names and images drifted in and out of his mind’s eye and brought a smile to his face, as if familiar friends were dropping by. He felt the tug of the other world several times, felt the ripple in the veil, but left it alone. Now was not the time. He breathed deeply and calmly, preserving his focus, waiting and saving his strength.

They landed at Rochester International Airport, and then boarded a private jet to Langley. Again, at first they didn’t speak a single word to each other, sitting in chairs facing one another. Caleb merely smiled at him and stared at a point over his shoulder. Finally, Waxman broke. “How’s my wife?”

“My mother is resting comfortably.”

“That’s good.”

Caleb nodded.

Waxman tapped his fingers together. “Do you know where we’re going?”

Caleb nodded again.

“How long have you known?”

Caleb shrugged. “Not long enough. I never trusted you, but I never asked—”

“—the right questions. I know.” Waxman chuckled to himself smugly. “Don’t worry, for what it’s worth, you’re still the best psychic I’ve ever come across. And I’ve seen a lot of them.”

The plane tilted slightly and Caleb’s stomach compensated. The plane had just cleared a mass of churning clouds and emerged into the stark, cool blue of the heavens, with slanting rays of sunlight dazzling off the wing.

Caleb smiled. “Was Stargate yours?”

Waxman reached for a glass of scotch and ice, looked down, then back up and composed himself again. “It was. It is.”

“I see.” Caleb folded his arms. “Then rumors of its demise were exaggerated?”

“Stargate was far too important to close. And the fools in the Senate didn’t know what they had. They only wanted to cover their re-election chances. They couldn’t fund this kind of research openly, so we had to go underground. You understand.”

“Of course.” Caleb watched him carefully. He saw the way he stole furtive glances, trying to size Caleb up.

I’ve surprised him twice today.

Waxman was probably hoping Caleb didn’t know anything else, but he wasn’t sure. Maybe Caleb had probed deeper into his past. What else had he intruded upon?

“Stargate continues,” Waxman said, “with a smaller scope, a limited budget, and much less interference. They only ask for one summary report a year on my progress, which I purposely keep vague and conflicting so as not to attract any undue attention.” He drained his glass. “You and I both know the phenomenon is real, and we know what it’s capable of. I have bigger concerns than proving its validity to anyone.”

“Bigger even than national security?” Caleb gave a little chuckle. “You could have been using us to see into North Korea or Iran, to find bin Laden or predict the next terrorist bombings.”

“True, but I actually find such distractions useful. Again, political attention is directed elsewhere while I address the true security issues of our world. There is so much more at stake, and I am the one who will preserve us.”

“Really? You’re to be our savior?”

He glared at Caleb. “Imagine if the contents of that vault fell into the wrong hands. Men are basically evil, Caleb. You know this. Your precious alchemy books say as much. Why do you think the old high priests kept the sacred texts away from the masses? Why did they write in hieroglyphics that could only be read by the most educated and privileged? Knowledge must be guarded. Why, later on, was it punishable by death to even own a copy of the Bible?”

“Priests wanted to consolidate their power. Knowledge is power.”

“Yes, but knowledge is also dangerous. Didn’t Pope Gregory the Great say ‘ignorance is the mother of devotion’?” Waxman shook his glass around and the ice chinked as it melted. He had returned the favor and was now surprising Caleb. “Tell me something. If you found your way into that vault, and the treasure was everything you believe it to be — the power of life and death, the power of creation, the power for men to become gods — what would you do with it?”

His eyes locked on Caleb’s, and for the first time in his presence, Caleb felt like a little boy again, afraid to speak. The truth was, he didn’t know what he would do.

Waxman grinned. “I’ll tell you what the Keepers would do. What your lovely Lydia and her father would have done. They were going to keep the books for themselves. Create a new order of the elite. They were going to rule. Talk about the corruption of absolute power…”

So Waxman wasn’t one of them.

“And you?” Caleb asked. “What will you do with it?”

Waxman smiled and sat back, stretching out his feet. “The only thing that’s appropriate. The only way to protect the balance of life on this planet. The only way to ensure peace and security.” His eyes blazed. “The only way to protect the billions of souls from undergoing the hell you and I experience every day.”

And then Caleb understood.

Waxman made two fists, and his glass shattered. “Those books open the gates of hell, Caleb. Just a glimpse, thousands of years ago, partially restored the connection between spirit and material, between life and death—”

“—above and below.”

“Exactly.” He calmed down and gently picked a glass shard out of his left palm. “The door only opened a fraction, and for two millennia afterwards, the Church and the armies of man have valiantly done their best to slam that door shut again. But once opened, the stubborn influences are hard to put back.”

He kept talking, eyes glazing over and seeing beyond Caleb and the plane itself. “I believe a few intelligent men, kings and priests, understood the threat and tried their best to destroy these elements, or at least alter them so the rest of us wouldn’t be tempted. Witchcraft, demonism, occultism — these were the names given to any study of the esoteric, any attempt to link the two realms and travel from ours to theirs or vice versa. We punished these crimes by torture, death and enslavement, but still the sickness remained, refusing to be eradicated. Secret societies continued the forbidden practices, and kept the fragile link operating, only barely.” He gave a look of disgust. “In time the defenses were weakened, and now we have Ouija boards, séances, crystals, psychic hotlines and palm readings, New Age movements. And people are moving back towards such beliefs.”

Caleb shook his head. “And the sacred texts under the Pharos…”

“If released, they will only lead people to eternalmisery and damnation.”

“So what will you do?” Caleb asked, already fearing he knew the answer.

Waxman leaned forward, with unblinking eyes boring right into Caleb’s soul. “Destroy them all. Every tablet, every scroll. Every single letter of every word.”

Caleb couldn’t breathe.

“Do you see? Do you, Caleb? What’s a single terrorist hiding out in the hills? What’s another bombing compared to the widespread, wholesale change in consciousness that will come if these books are released? Our entire way of life will be torn apart. There will be no privacy, no place to hide. And good, honest people will be eternally plagued by the shades of the other world, every day, every hour… every minute. Their pasts will be their present, and their sins can never be left behind.”

Caleb found his voice, and decided now was the time to play his trump card. A glimpse he had seen, a flash of something, more like a peek behind a stage curtain just before the change of a set. “What is it you see, George?” He forced himself to smile. “Weren’t you a good child? Mama’s little boy?”

What happened next happened too fast. There was a primal scream, a flash of white hot light as Waxman rocked out of the chair, and suddenly Caleb tasted blood and felt a rush of flaring pain up the side of his face.

Then his world went dark.

2

When Caleb awoke, he was lying in something that looked like a dentist’s chair, all stainless steel, with leather straps cinched around his arms and legs and neck. Four silver lamps on coiled stands surrounded the chair. They looked like the mechanical eyes from The War of the Worlds, and just as menacing. He struggled briefly and then relaxed.

“Welcome back,” said a voice from the glare. Caleb squinted, but could only see a pair of black shoes pacing on a white floor. He smelled cigarettes. Menthols.

“Thanks,” he muttered. “Did I miss the in-flight movie?”

“Cute. Listen, Caleb. You know where you are?”

“Not really. It’s a little too bright to see.”

“Don’t give me that. You have other eyes.”

“Yes, but they don’t always work.”

“Lucky for you.” He paced some more. “You’re in my lab at Langley. The only remaining office of the Stargate program. You and I are going to get to work very shortly. I don’t expect this will take long.”

“It’s good to have realistic goals,” Caleb whispered, straining his neck muscles. His head throbbed and he felt sick to his stomach.

“It’s a simple goal,” Waxman said. “An easy target.”

“The last door,” he said.

“It had that crazy symbol on it, and what looked like a keyhole. Nothing else in the room. Nothing on the walls, ceiling or floor.” Waxman paused. “But then again, I’m guessing you already saw it. Am I right?”

“Yes.” He thought now wasn’t the time to be difficult. Not yet. He had to think, to see a way out of this. Unfortunately every scenario he imagined came up with him dead and Waxman entering that vault as a bringer of destruction. Caleb imagined the firemen of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 coming with flamethrowers to incinerate all the forbidden knowledge of the ages.

His success, my failure, will be the final triumph of darkness over light, of ignorance squashing truth, he thought. It would be the last surrender of a noble plan designed to protect the one great secret, the answer to every aspect of our suffering and all our earthly yearning.

“So what’s it going to be?” Waxman asked. “Help me willingly, or do I do what I’m best at?”

Caleb swallowed, and for an instant, a drawing popped into his thoughts: one of his earlier ones, of his dad in a cage, poked at with blood-red spears, while that symbol hung overhead.

And then he got it.

Finally. Completely. He understood.

With an agonized cry, twenty years of emotion erupted at once. His chest heaved, his muscles strained. He kicked and struggled and screamed and howled into the void.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Waxman shouted. “I haven’t even touched you yet.”

“Dad,” Caleb whispered, choking on the sobs. “Dad. You were here.”

And the room fell silent. The pacing stopped. Even the humming of the electric lights seemed to fade into a soundless abyss.

Finally, Waxman spoke. “I thought I had that covered. He had no idea.”

Caleb forced himself to breathe, to calm down, to concentrate, to go with the clue Waxman had just left him. “Dad never went to Iraq!” Caleb knew he was right. “You brought him here, but tried to convince him — what, that he had been shot down?”

After a full minute of silence, Waxman let out a deep sigh, like it contained a painful secret he had been dying to tell for years. “One of my many subjects in the early years was a man named Howard Platt. Worthless as a seer, he never followed directions and never located a single target. But one time, when I asked him about the greatest threat to our security, he spoke of the Pharos Lighthouse, something I hadn’t even known about at the time. His ramblings were strange, but just a little too detailed to pass over. I had to follow up on it.”

Waxman lit up another smoke and puffed out a thick cloud that filtered into the bright light. “My team of analysts rounded up all the information on the subject, and what came back as a possible hit was a certain thesis written by one Philip Crowe.”

Caleb could only watch and listen.

“And that is how I came into your life, Caleb. At first, I had no idea of your father’s psychic talents. I only wanted his knowledge of the lighthouse. Then I learned what he could do, and how he could be used. But first, he spilled his guts. He told me of Sostratus, of the library. Of the Keepers, and most importantly, the existence of the traps.”

“But not how to bypass them.” Caleb said, already admiring his father and thinking of ways he might be able to follow his lead, ways to give Waxman only enough rope to hang himself. Certainly Dad hadn’t revealed the right order of the first seven traps. Or maybe he had deliberately misled him and said Water was first, hoping Waxman would try it and be killed in the process. If Dad had managed to keep that secret, then surely he hadn’t mentioned the eighth puzzle, the final key.

Waxman grunted. “Philip was tough, I give him that. But he broke when I needed him to. He gave me the purpose I had been looking for, the way out of my personal hell. And he showed me the way to redemption — the redemption of the whole human race. Platt’s ramblings led me to your father, and your father led me to the Pharos. And by God, I will destroy those books and save us all.”

Caleb had to laugh. “I pity you.”

“Pity, hatred, fear — whatever you feel about me — I don’t care, so long as you give me what I need.”

Caleb struggled again, then gave up and looked around. “So he was here for how long?”

Waxman made a dismissive motion with his hand. “Seven, eight years? And he was convinced he was in Iraq. We had film on the walls, sand everywhere, we pumped in the sounds of the desert, battle. Brought in Middle Eastern men to perform the beatings and torture, it was all perfect.”

“But he was my dad,” Caleb whispered, and a smile formed out of his rage. “He knew, and he tried to tell me, but I was too young to understand.” I wasn’t ready. Caleb thought again of his last vision of the sea and the waves, and a boat forever on the move. And suddenly, with a chill, he understood. “So, you knew all along. Knew it wasn’t Alexander’s gold.”

“Of course.”

“Then, my father knew…” Again Caleb saw that boat from his most recent vision and the father talking to his son. In a flash, he saw another boat, then a ship, then a galley, then a swift clipper — a succession of maritime vessels down through the centuries, all with some form of white and red coloring, at different ports, on different seas. Sometimes at night, with burning lanterns on their masts, lighting the way, always moving, always afloat.

“You’re sure slow, kid.”

Caleb’s heart was thundering, his flesh crawling. He was slow. How had he missed it? With all the focus on his mother, and caring for Phoebe, he didn’t realize what the visions were showing him.

“It’s me,” Caleb said at last. “You wanted me, after Dad died.”

Waxman’s voice shifted lower. “Unfortunate that he couldn’t survive… the stresses.”

“Or did he make you mad?” Caleb asked. “Maybe give you the wrong sequence for the codes?”

Waxman ignored him, and by his refusal to respond, Caleb knew he was right.

Good for you, Dad!

Finally, Waxman spoke. “For a time I’d hoped your father had chosen Phoebe. She would have been much easier to deal with, and just as capable—”

“—of keeping the secret,” Caleb finished. I can’t believe it. Dad left me all his work, all those documents, maps and drawings. And the stories, all those stories. “It’s us,” he said at last. “We’re the Keepers. The true Keepers. The descendents of Metreisse.”

“Your grandfather was one,” Waxman said. “Then he passed the secret on to your Dad, and he should have given it to you.”

“But he didn’t.” Caleb tried to glare through the light. “You took him too soon, and he didn’t have time.”

“Sorry about that, but I wasn’t getting any younger, and your Dad resisted too much. Something I hope you won’t do, for your sake, and for your sister’s.”

There it was. The threat he had been anticipating, but dreading. His time in the Alexandrian prison had been sufficient preparation for anything, he thought, and he was confident he could coax his consciousness from his body to escape whatever physical agony Waxman could inflict for as long as necessary. But he couldn’t protect Phoebe. And he had to. He couldn’t let her be hurt again.

“So, kid. What’s it going to be?”

Caleb made up his mind. Dad’s shown me the way. He would trust in fate. He would trust in the lighthouse. Smiling, he told Waxman he knew where the eighth key was, and he would take him to it. All the while, he kept repeating to himself the one mantra he could now call his own.

The Pharos protects itself.

3

Hide the secret in plain sight.

Caleb stood on the hill overlooking the bay at dawn. The small farmhouse lay covered in a thin layer of snow, and icicles hung from the lighthouse railing, forty feet up. Phoebe sat in her chair in the kitchen, and Caleb could see her through the open door, watching carefully. Two men stood at her sides, wearing dark glasses. Caleb got the message, loud and clear.

“Your dad never spoke of a ship,” Waxman said, squinting through his own dark glasses down the hill to the ice-covered bay glinting with sunlight, sparkling in the frosty air.

“Maybe,” Caleb said, his lips curling up, “you never asked him the right questions.”

Waxman turned his head and glowered. “Well? Are we going?”

Old Rusty creaked and groaned as Caleb set foot upon her deck, treading carefully on the icy surface, with Waxman following. His breath cascaded around his face, and his hands shivered in his coat pockets. But his soul was soaring despite the threat to Phoebe. And he smiled.

At last Caleb arrived, standing on his legacy. He couldn’t help laughing, and wanted to spin and leap about like a young boy. He longed for those days chasing Phoebe around the deck, hiding behind the red-and-white-striped masts, ducking into the wooden deckhouse. So many memories. And then Dad, urging us to play here. He knew it would stick in our minds. He had talked this ship up as their property, a member of the family, even though it had been decommissioned and docked for good. Its red hull was streaked with barnacles and muck, the paint chipped, the steel rusted. The masts were bent and covered with seagull excrement. Old Rusty had sat here all this time, waiting patiently.

“What’s its name?” Waxman asked, and for a moment Caleb shuddered.

“Don’t know,” he said truthfully. “Old Rusty is all we ever called her. And boats are feminine, George. She’s not an ‘it.’”

“Shut up and take me to the key.”

Caleb bowed and swept his arms toward the door to the deckhouse. “After you.”

Following Waxman, Caleb glanced up the hill, and could see the tiny figures in the kitchen. Phoebe watched nervously. He waved to her.

She’ll understand, he hoped.

“There it is,” Caleb said, pointing to the large gold-plated key, about six inches long, hanging over the cast-iron stove. The deckhouse interior was a mess. After they had closed down the museum, the items in here just collected dust. The windows were grimy, caked with dirt and sand, and now ice. The compass over the steering wheel was shattered, the tiny bunk bed cots brown and molded.

I used to nap there, he thought with disgust. Phoebe on the top. After playing all morning, they would make hot chocolate and sip their drinks and tell each other grand stories about their naval conquests in the East Indies or some exotic port, and then they would snooze for an hour before running back up the hill for dinner.

Waxman warily pulled the key from the wall, as if expecting a booby trap, some vicious metal contraption to slice off his hands. Caleb was surprised he didn’t make him take it down.

Waxman slipped the key into his pocket, after first looking it over. “Doesn’t look that old,” he said.

“Probably re-cast several times,” Caleb said. “Although I wouldn’t know. I only just figured this out. Thanks to you.”

Waxman frowned, unsure if Caleb was complimenting him or still hiding something.

Go on, Caleb thought. Take your prize and go.

“Phoebe dies if you’re lying to me,” he promised.

“I know.”

Waxman eyed Caleb carefully. “I still don’t trust you.”

“Sorry. What more can I do? This ship is the legacy Dad left me. There’s the key.”

“We’ll see.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” he said, tapping the gun in his other pocket, “you and your sister are coming with me.”

Before they left, Caleb said goodbye to his mother. Elsa sat cowering in the corner, but he convinced her everything would be fine. They would be back soon, and if she could just continue to care for Mom, he would be grateful.

So he knelt by his mother’s bed and he kissed her forehead, ignoring Waxman clearing his throat in the doorway. “We’ll be home soon,” Caleb whispered. “I love you.”

When he stood, he thought he saw a flicker of awareness. But her hands didn’t move, and her chest barely rose.

Caleb turned and walked out, but stopped and looked first at a picture of his grandfather and his Dad, shaking hands while Old Rusty lay in pristine condition, sparkling in the background.

4

Phoebe and Caleb stood on the pier outside the entrance to Qaitbey and watched the frenzy of activity in the water and all around the causeway. Helicopters circled overhead, news trucks stood idling with camera crews filming scenes of the fort and the shoreline, running their pre-segments. They pointed out the new Alexandrian library, its brilliant steel-reinforced glass rooftop blazing in the sun. They spoke of its predecessor and lamented the loss of knowledge, but hoped this new building could regain some of that former glory. Emergency vehicles stood off to the side, ready if necessary. Four police cars and two ambulances were in position.

“It’s all a sham,” Phoebe said, wrapped in a black shawl and trembling in the morning winds. “Waxman has it all planned out.”

Caleb nodded and recalled Waxman’s words from an hour earlier, just before he’d gone into the sea with his team of six divers. They had chosen the underwater route, going in through the ascending passage so as not to give away the Qaitbey entrance and encourage future investigations. Waxman had announced to the public that his team of archaeologists had reached a breakthrough and discovered an entrance point that seemed to fit with the legends.

“This is going to end the controversy before it even begins,” Waxman had told Caleb, with his mask hanging around his neck. “There won’t be any more Alex Prouts running around claiming conspiracies.” And there it was, confirmation of Caleb’s suspicion that it hadn’t been the Keepers who had killed Prout.

“We’ll film our dive, and then we’ll document the dramatic descent to the final door, and inside…” Waxman made a grinning, devilish face. “Just like Capone’s vault, that televised fiasco back in the eighties? I’m going to take the fall on this one. I’ll be the laughing stock,” he said, thumping his chest like a primitive. “There will, of course, be nothing inside.”

“Because you will have already removed and destroyed everything.”

“Precisely. And that will effectively put an end to all future searches. Nothing spurs on the spirit like a little mystery. Take that mystery away, and people are left with only what they can see and hear and touch. And life will go on as it always has, as it should.”

“If you say so.”

He scanned Caleb’s face. “Just so you know, you and your sister are going to be watched by my best men. A lot of them. They will be in the crowd, disguised as spectators. I would suggest keeping quiet and staying put. I don’t trust you anywhere else.”

“And after?”

Waxman spit into his diving mask and rubbed it around to coat the plastic. “After? I haven’t decided. You’re free to go, of course. But I would strongly suggest you get out of the publishing business for good. Or maybe turn to children’s books. A word of this in any public forum, even a Web blog, and all bets are off. I’ll start with your sister.”

Caleb nodded. “Just so we understand each other.”

“I think we do.”

“Oh, and George?” Caleb called after him as he was getting into the motorboat with his diving team, their cameras and equipment.

“What is it now?”

“Good luck!”

Waxman patted the gold key secured with a chain around his waist. “Got it right here.”

“I think I can feel her here with us,” Phoebe said.

“Me too.” Caleb held a hand to his eyes and looked up, imagining the great Pharos Lighthouse taking shape, a shimmering mirage, glowing and superimposed over the existing fort, rising in all its initial splendor. And he imagined his mother at the observation balcony, with her big red sunglasses and her hair tied in a kerchief, waving down at him.

“Don’t worry,” he said to Phoebe, and to his mother, if she could hear. “The Pharos protects itself.”

5

“Caleb Crowe,”—Phoebe turned her chair sideways and looked up at her brother—“that key was made in 1954 to fit the lock on the steering column.”

“And it was just what I needed.”

“So where does that leave us?”

Caleb crossed his arms over his chest and stared over the choppy waves. The divers had been under for close to an hour. His guess was that they were in the main chamber by now, at least exiting the water tunnel and approaching the first sign.

“We wait,” Caleb said.

“What are they going to find?” Phoebe asked.

“You know what they’ll find. Do you want to watch?”

She looked down at her hands. “In a minute. First, tell me what you know. If they don’t have the right key, then where is it? Or did Dad move it?”

“He didn’t move it,” Caleb said calmly, and he breathed in the crisp air and watched the gulls circling over the spot where the divers had entered the harbor. Overhead, cirrus clouds streaked across the sky. “It’s still there.”

“It is? Then, we’ll have to go back and get it!”

“No, we won’t. We have what we need.”

Phoebe looked around. She looked at Caleb, at her chair, her feet.

“Actually, Phoebe, you have it.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. You were its part-time curator. You know Old Rusty’s history.”

“Of course, but what does that have to do with anything? Is the key on the boat or not? If it is, what could it be? There’s nothing that old. Whatever that Keeper Metreisse stole and passed down in his family from generation to generation, from boat to boat, all those lightships can’t be anything I’m familiar with. Maybe there’s something in the hull, or stored in a hollow mast?”

“Nope.”

“Big brother, you’re really pissing me off. Okay, I give up. Tell me.”

“You’ll kick yourself.”

“If my legs worked, I’d kick you. Tell me!”

“Thoth was intimately associated with the number eight, as we know. But also with music, with the octave. It is said he set creation going by the sound of his voice, by a single uttered word.”

“Yeah, yeah. Get on with it. What about the key?”

“The key, Phoebe. The key isn’t on the boat.”

“But you just said—”

“It is the boat.” Caleb took a deep breath and scanned the crowd, making sure no one had gotten too close, that no one could overhear. “It’s all the boats we’ve seen in our dreams, all those red and white sails, all those dinghies, lightships, galleys and frigates. Metreisse figured it out. We know he had the talent as well. He experienced a psychic trance and went back, visited that last chamber, and he heard them speak the word. A single word. Then he planned, so his descendents would pass it on, ship to ship, as each one wore out. Generation to generation, every vessel—”

“—With the same name!” Phoebe shouted. “Oh, I do want to kick myself! Rusty’s real name—”

“Let me guess,” Caleb said. “Something Greek, or Egyptian?”

She smiled and folded her hands together. “Only the symbol for the rebirth of the land, the flooding of the Nile. The rising of the star, Sirius, also called—”

“Isis.”

Phoebe nodded. “Wife of Osiris, mother of Horus.”

“Thoth helped her reunite with her murdered husband, and brought magic to her kingdom. Isis. Just one word, spoken properly, and I believe the door will open.”

“But can you say it properly?” she asked. “Egyptian phonetics were tricky, right? And that language hasn’t been spoken in thousands of years.”

“I’ll find out,” Caleb said. “I’ll peer back to when Sostratus last entered the vault. I’ll listen for myself.”

“You can do that?”

“It’ll be easy, now that I know to ask the right question.” Isis, he thought, and had to smile, thinking back on the marble head he had first plucked out of the harbor’s muck, the artifact that had started it all.

Together, he and Phoebe gazed out over the waves and listened to the roving helicopters. Cameras were flashing at their backs, video feeds running. The whole world, it seemed, held its breath. Caleb glanced back and thought he saw a face in the crowd he recognized. A man in a dark green coat, scruffy pants and black boots. Hair falling in unkempt strings over his eyes. But he looked… happy.

The crowd moved, surged, and the man was gone. And for a second Caleb caught a glimpse of another face he knew, a man with a bald head and dark glasses. Watching from a short distance away.

Victor Kowalski.

“Well, big brother?” Phoebe tugged at his hand. “I bet they’re almost to the door. Want to take a peek?”

Caleb looked away from the crowd. “Should we?”

She squeezed Caleb’s hand. “Oh, yes.”

They strip off their tanks, fins and masks and bring their gear up the stairs, past the great statues of Thoth and Seshat, and place it out of harm’s way. “Wait on the stairs,” Waxman orders as he tests the chain and harness attached to the ceiling above the third trap. The seven men climb two flights and remain there, watching impassively.

Waxman strides to the great seal, steps over the chains that he and Helen had left for the second trap. He proceeds to turn the seven symbols in the proper order, and then calmly walks back to the first block, and waits. He passes through the realms of the Below: Calcination, Dissolution, Separation, Conjunction. He is relaxed, as if he has practiced this a hundred times. He ascends through the Above: Fermentation, Distillation, and finally Coagulation.

After the seventh test, he is covered with a fine gold dust that has drifted down from a sifting stone overhead. The scent of sulfur still hangs in the smoky air, and water is heard trickling below, down the stairs and out the vent.

And the great seal opens majestically at his touch, withdrawing and allowing him inside.

“Come!” he shouts, and his men follow, igniting their lamps and flashlights, bringing their torches and gas tanks. They leave the cameras behind. There will be time enough to film another arranged descent, once the room below has been emptied of everything but ashes.

Down the stairs, twisting through the octagon section. The tramping of their feet issue pounding echoes against walls unused to anything but the silence of the centuries. Dust follows at their heels, sparring with the brilliant shafts of light.

Then, the final room. The low-hanging ceiling. The non-descript door with the symbol for Exalted Mercury.

Waxman removes the key from his belt. “Here we go, men. What we do today we do for humanity’s future. We close Pandora’s Box for good.”

He extends the key toward the hole as someone shines a light for him. “Goodbye mother,” he whispers. He inserts the key partially, and it jams. “What…?” is all he can say. He frowns and withdraws it with a jerk, scraping the key against the inside of the hole. A tiny spark appears, nearly lost in the flashlight’s brilliance.

Waxman lets go as the key falls, and he steps back. A multitude of sounds arise at once: something hisses, like a flame has just ignited and is heating a small tank of water; sliding noises like thin metal flaps opening along the walls and on the ceiling.

Flashlight beams whirl around, stabbing at shadows, blinding his eyes. Waxman covers his face and tries to peek through his fingers when suddenly he is struck with something hot and wet, steaming. His fingers close around it, and over the hysterical screaming of the men around him, he realizes he holds someone’s guts.

Something whistles through the air. He ducks, and a great scythe rips through the man standing behind him, cutting his head lengthwise and spilling out his brains. Another scythe, rusted and serrated, gleaming in the spastic lights, whispers across the room sideways, and two more of his men fall to the floor, in pieces, twitching, their mouths open in silent screams.

Waxman runs toward the exit. Somehow the blades have missed him. He still has a chance. This tower hasn’t killed him the last two times. Surely, he has been saved for a reason. He thought he’d learned it, had understood that patience was needed. Patience and humility. He had proven both, and had come back this time prepared.

But it still wasn’t enough.

He sees the stairs and he runs, but slips in a rising pool of blood. His other hand catches at a protruding rib cage. He looks back and, there on the floor, his mother’s head is lying along with the other grisly remains. And she’s laughing, cackling and spewing out continuous insults.

He falls to his knees and faces the door, where that symbol stares at him, scolding, reinforcing his unworthiness.

Both blades emerge again, one after the other, and retreat into their resting places with barely a sound, their purpose served once more.

Quartered, Waxman makes a sound like a wet sigh, then slides apart.

A rumble vibrates from the walls, the stairs tremble, and a rush of sea water floods into the room from above, swirling, sifting, lifting, cleansing.

The Pharos protects itself.

“They’re coming up!” someone shouted, and the crowd surged.

Shapes appeared in the water. Small, irregular forms that never really surfaced. Divers without their diving gear. The water stained red, a spreading, inky pallor, and the men kept floating up. Five, six, seven, eight… nine…

Then more.

A woman with binoculars screamed. The floating bodies were in pieces: a head here, a torso there, legs and arms jumbled together with severed chunks of flesh. The helicopters dipped, rolled and scattered. The ambulances’ engines sparked to life, followed by their sirens.

And more screams shattered the morning air.

Eighteen Keepers, each wearing black Ray-Bans, moved through the crowd of spectators like a tide of gray death, each member keyed in on a target that, as soon as they had come into Alexandria, arriving ahead of George Waxman as his personal contingent, had been identified and secretly tagged with a chalk mark on the upper shoulder, visible only to those wearing the specially tinted sunglasses.

The Keepers moved quickly, efficiently, and with a determination borne out of not just duty, but revenge. Each of them had a metal cap on their index finger with a tiny needle that had been dipped in concentrated tarantula venom. One jab would paralyze and induce convulsions, and sometimes — if it happened, it happened — death.

Simple pinpricks. Eighteen Keepers struck with subtlety and swiftness, poisoning and then moving on, disappearing into the crowd. Only one Keeper stayed a bit longer over her victim.

The bald man dropped to his knees, his hand at his neck where something had just “bitten” him. Victor Kowalski felt strange; a numb sensation, bitterly cold, almost ecstatic, cascaded through his veins. Suddenly, he couldn’t move, and felt inertia pulling him sideways. People were screaming, rushing past him, pushing, trampling. He fell. Rapped his head on the flagstones, but felt no pain, just cold. So cold. Someone stomped on his arm, and still he felt nothing but a frigid arctic gale sweeping through his body, chilling his very core. His vision was stuck, looking straight up at a familiar face, someone wearing a baseball cap and gray sweatsuit, someone lording over him with a smile of retribution.

The exquisite rush sped to his heart, encasing it in ice, and the world drowned in bitter darkness.

“What do we do now?” Phoebe asked. Emergency units roared to the water’s edge as the police herded the spectators away.

“We wait,” Caleb said, backing away. “I think a few days, maybe more. The Egyptian authorities and the Council of Antiquities will place another ban on investigating the harbor. They’ll declare that there’s nothing down there but dangerous old tunnels. And the story will rest.”

He exhaled slowly. “You can go back to Mom, if you like.”

“No,” Phoebe said. “I want to see this through. I can’t help her there, anyway.”

“Okay, then we’ll wait for this circus to die down. We’ll wait for Qaitbey to be alone again, sneak inside, and do this our way.”

6

In the end, they couldn’t wait for the causeway to empty, and the area around Qaitbey’s fort was always either too crowded or guarded late at night. So they did the next best thing, taking a lesson from Waxman, and bribed the guard to allow them inside. Caleb made up a story about this site’s importance to them. He said that he and Phoebe had been married here years ago, and they wished to recapture that feeling by spending a night inside. Maybe the guard took pity on them because of Phoebe’s condition, but for two hundred dollars he agreed that it was quite romantic. He left them alone, locked up inside, and promised to let them out in the morning. Of course, Caleb knew they wouldn’t be coming out the same way.

Beside a glowing battery-powered lantern, Phoebe waited on the stairs and looked wistfully after her brother.

“Wish you were here?” Caleb asked after the water subsided and he coughed up mouthfuls of brine.

“No thanks!” she yelled back. “Comfy right here. You go on and get all dirty.”

“It’s going to be gold, not dirt!”

“Whatever, just hurry up. These statues are creeping me out.” She stared at the spot under Thoth, where Nina had fallen years ago.

“Trying,” Caleb said, removing the chains. He quickly splashed to the next symbol, then hooked himself to the ceiling, climbed and hung suspended, waiting for the ground to fall away. After it reset he took off the harness, dropped and stepped onto the next block. Immediately it sank, leaving him in a tunnel where the earth closed in and sticky mud clung to his skin. When the block rose again, the earth had hardened and he felt as if he wore a powerful suit of armor, a joining of all the elements into one, able to ward off any physical assault.

He stepped forward onto Mercury. He opened a zip-lock bag from his pocket, sprinkled the powdered sulfur onto the lines, lit it, and waited. A noxious gas rose from cracks in the boulder, mixed with the smoke from the sulfur, and swirled around his body. The earthly coating he had taken on began to bubble and crack. Tiny sprouts of green emerged from his arms, his chest, his face. Then these fell off, dropping with huge chunks of mud.

Fermentation over, he took the next step to Distillation, to Silver and the Moon. He withdrew the 200-watt water-resistant flashlight and switched it on. After a deep breath, he shone the light forward onto the heads of the snakes on the great door. Apparently made of quartz, their eyes glowed with an eerie orange hue. They sparkled and glittered. Caleb felt lightheaded, disconnected. It must have been the gas from the previous stone; maybe it contained some kind of hallucinogenic powder. Whatever it was, Caleb saw the snakes uncoil and lift off the wall, hover in the air, rear back and open their great jaws before slithering forward and wrapping around his legs, circling up his body.

He stayed perfectly still, recognizing that this was a test. It was an illusion, of that he was almost completely sure. An unbelievably realistic illusion. He felt their scales, heard their hissing. His breath shortened as they coiled around his ribcage, then continued winding around his neck, encircling his head, where they met at his crown. And still, he remained motionless, breathless, waiting.

Ten heartbeats passed. His head swam, the room spun and a strange, numinous aura ignited around his vision and bathed his mind in understanding. Here I am, the living caduceus, the embodiment of opposing energies: male and female, above and below, heaven and hell, black and white, good and evil… all of it. From these conflicting elements come oneness. Ultimate knowledge of everything from all perspectives.

The only thing left was to make this state of awareness permanent, to become like a stone, the Philosopher’s Stone.

Caleb stepped forward, the snakes greedily hanging on, but losing materiality as he accepted their presence no longer as a hindrance, but a strength. At the final block he dropped to both knees and spread out his arms. It had never occurred to Caleb that he needed to be in that position, and he surely hadn’t gotten any hint from the scroll or any vision. It was just something that seemed right.

He knelt and waited. The snakes hissed gently in his ears, and he imagined words in their breath, whispered greetings, welcoming praises to one who had made a long journey and had arrived home.

Gold dust began to fall from the ceiling, a light coat clinging to his glistening skin, sticking to the residue of fermentation and distillation. It coated his head, his upturned face, neck, shoulders, arms and hands. It fell like a blissful spring rain. He even smelled flowers and fresh mountain air. The scent of jasmine floated by, and he thought of Lydia, then he smelled the bay back home in Sodus, and the trace of old books permeating his little bedroom.

When it stopped, all too soon, Caleb opened his eyes. Standing, afraid to move too quickly and shake free any dust, he took the one remaining step to the door. The snakes had returned to their rightful posts, looking on with passive interest.

Caleb reached out with fingers of glittering gold and touched the staff, then flattened his palm. In the haze of the shadow-play it seemed he had reached into the limestone and actually grasped a three-dimensional staff.

He tightened his grip. And pushed. The door opened, grinding, both halves separating, welcoming him inside. “Your turn, sis,” he called to Phoebe as he turned and jogged back for her.

“Not on your life!”

Over her protests, he lifted her up and carried her.

“You’re filthy,” she said, putting her arms around his neck. “And now it’s all over me.”

“Deal with it,” he said with a laugh. “I’m not letting you miss out on this.”

He took her over the inscribed blocks, through the open doors into the next high-walled chamber, and made for the flight of stairs leading down. Phoebe took one hand away from his neck and used it to wield the flashlight.

They descended slowly, carefully. He stopped once to set her down and catch his breath.

“Wimp,” she giggled, then screeched as he swept her up and threw her over his shoulder. He trotted the rest of the way down and placed her gently on the floor, where she propped herself up on her side. She scooted away from a groove on the red-stained floor.

Caleb held up a finger to his lips and she nodded, trying to stifle her giggles and calm her breathing. Lowering his head, Caleb closed his eyes and directed his thoughts to this room, to its shape, its smell, its feel. And he asked to be shown a date long ago. To be shown Sostratus opening the door.

After two minutes passed, he started to worry.

Nothing happened. No images, no flashes of light, no trembling of the veil.

Another minute and he seriously thought of just trying it, saying “Isis” and seeing what happened. But then Phoebe gasped.

Caleb jumped and spun the flashlight to her. Then aimed it away. Her eyes had rolled back, and she was trembling, lying on her side. He had seen her do this only a few times before, in the grip of powerful visions. She had accessed the talent now, not Caleb.

“I see them,” she whispered. “Don’t speak. Don’t say the name.”

“Why?” he asked, dry-mouthed and chilled.

“Sostratus… he’s brought someone else.”

“Who? Demetrius?”

She shook her head, eyes still closed. “No. A woman.”

“What?”

“A woman in a blue robe. Head covered with a hood. Hands at her side. She’s facing the door, and Sostratus is waiting, head bowed.”

Could it be, Caleb wondered, that the inflection had to be the right tone, had to be in the feminine voice? Yin and Yang. Male and female. Was this one last test? A final nod to the powers of the feminine, of intellect, feeling, compassion? The ultimate lesson? That true wisdom and power only comes from balance? Man and woman together before the great vault. Was this why Metreisse didn’t open the door that first time?

Phoebe blinked and sat up. She smiled. “Did you bring me here for this purpose?” Caleb shook his head. “Then it’s fate.” She motioned him aside and crawled closer to the door. Closing her eyes, she took a breath and spoke the name, just as she had heard it. And the door opened, not with a grinding, grating sound, or any kind of fanfare. It merely whisked open as if someone had been waiting patiently, ages, for them to come.

Inside, they saw only darkness at first. Caleb started to aim his flashlight beam, but then a flickering light caught his eye.

“Put it out,” Phoebe said, and he wondered if she still saw the past.

He switched off the beam, and watched as the room beyond started to glow. Four tiny lights about ten feet off the ground sprang to life. Small flames set in multi-prismed glass bulbs hung on the walls. He peered closer and could see narrow tubes attached to each, filling with oil from unseen reservoirs. They must have been triggered by the opening of the door, he thought. He started forward, then stopped and turned to retrieve his sister.

“Go on,” she said, tears in her eyes, her lips quivering. “I can see from here… so beautiful.”

And it was. A rounded ceiling, painted with vibrant colors, a mural of the heavens, the zodiac, the planets, lines of orbit crisscrossing with comets and nebulae and the overarching Milky Way. A golden border separated the heavenly loft from the four levels of alcoves, each stocked with scrolls and edged with gold and silver trim. A single desk, made of smooth black obsidian, occupied the center of a scarlet marble floor, and a lone chair, simple and plain, rested beside it.

Without any awareness of motion, Caleb walked forward and down the three steps into the chamber. The scent of jasmine and oil mixed with the ancient aroma of papyrus, preserved in this perfectly dry, moisture-free vault, evoked sweet memories of Lydia. Everything was in the same condition as when it had been brought here, over two thousand years ago.

He turned, making a complete visual sweep of the chamber and thousands of scrolls blurred in his sight, each of them nestled carefully, sleeping safely in their alcoves.

Sometime during the next minute or so, he remembered to breathe. He heard Phoebe laughing and sniffling. “We did it.”

Caleb couldn’t stop smiling. He went to alcove after alcove and peered into the deep recesses to see even more scrolls packed away beyond those in front. He gently touched one, then pulled his hand away, afraid to damage it.

It’s all here. All…

And then he saw it. On the desk. Sparkling. Emerald on black. The Tablet of Thoth, right there on the smooth surface, beckoning. It was thin, but proportional; flat yet somehow multidimensional. The writing went deep, and when he looked at the tablet from different angles, other layers became visible, with more writing, and even more beyond that. His mind swam, as if just seeing the cascading emerald layers was already affecting his consciousness.

There was something beside the tablet, something that shouldn’t be there.

A tape recorder. And a piece of white paper torn from a notebook with Hilton Hotel letterhead.

How can this be?

As he approached and saw the familiar handwriting, he knew. Caleb pulled up the chair, sat heavily, and took the paper in his trembling hands. He glanced at the clunky old tape recorder. He knew the batteries would be dead, but it didn’t matter. He had already guessed what was on the tape: just one word, a woman speaking the name of Isis.

Choking back a sob, Caleb held the paper up to the light, saw the date, and realized it had been during the last trip his father had taken alone to work on his research just a year before his enlistment in the Gulf War.

Barely able to control the trembling in his fingers, Caleb read the words in his father’s handwriting:

7

The other divers’ gear was still on the stairs, providing a convenient means of escape from the subterranean chambers. Caleb told Phoebe to practice breathing slowly through one of the mouthpieces while he fitted her with a suit, mask and vest.

They exited through the vent and ascended through the water gracefully, sharing one tank between them. Phoebe clung to Caleb’s neck and he held her with one arm while passing the regulator back and forth. He let more air into the vest at a grudgingly slow pace, careful to ascend very slowly.

They stared at each other through their masks. They looked down now and then at the distant entrance port, at the breakwater stones and the hundreds of limestone blocks, the fallen reminders of the once-great Pharos. Here and there they saw a marble statue, limbs broken off, eyes dreaming as colorful fish darted about.

They rose together through the water into the rays of sunlight. The light seemed to gather and then scatter the bubbles before their ascent. Two feet from the surface, Caleb slowed and waited, not wanting this glorious feeling to end. But then a wave came along and nudged them upward and they were through, their vests fully inflated, and bobbed at the surface. He had purposely swum around to the other side of the fort to the beach for an easier exit. He kicked and swam and let the tide pull them in. About fifty feet from the shore, he became concerned.

“Who are they?” Phoebe asked in his ear.

Six white jeeps had pulled up onto the beach. They were arranged in a semicircle. The rest of the beach was nearly empty, and those few people that remained were being told to move away by men in gray suits.

“CIA?” Phoebe whispered. “How—?”

“Not CIA,” Caleb answered, seeing more men and women emerge from the jeeps, a few of them with binoculars to their eyes.

“Then who?”

Caleb spit out a mouthful of water. He found his footing. A few more steps in the rocky sand and he could stand, wobbling, holding Phoebe in his tired arms.

Seventeen men and women stood patiently. Some with dark glasses, others shielding their eyes.

“I think,” Caleb said, “this is going to be a reunion.”

“After nearly five hundred years, we are joined again.” The man who spoke was in his late thirties, strong and imposing, with broad shoulders, blond hair, blue eyes and thick, tanned skin.

Caleb held Phoebe in two feet of water, feeling the surf caress his calves. He scanned the crowd of faces. “Keepers,” Caleb said, and bowed his head in greeting.

Someone made a motion and another man stepped through, wheeling an empty wheelchair. “We thought you might need this,” he said, “after we realized you weren’t coming out the way you went in.”

Caleb put Phoebe down and got her positioned in the chair. “Thanks, I was getting a little tired there.”

“Congratulations,” said the first man as the others crowded around. “Are we to assume, due to your apparent health, that you have succeeded?”

Caleb stared at him. “Maybe we gave up.”

The man shook his head. “After the first door is bypassed, I don’t believe giving up is an option. The trap would have sprung, as it did with your mother.”

“Then there’s no point denying it.”

“Good. Again, congratulations. You have succeeded where we have failed for more than fifteen centuries. But now we are together again. The Keepers are reunited.”

“What are you planning to do?” Phoebe asked, looking at all the excited faces. She eyed Caleb carefully, to see if he showed any sign of flight.

The Keeper smiled. “We would like to show you something. Assuming of course, that you wish to join us.”

“We’ll see,” Phoebe said, crossing her arms.

“The seal is still open?” the man asked. “From the instructions we were given, if you succeeded, there is no reset program. You have to manually close the doors to reset the traps.”

“We didn’t close the doors,” Caleb said. “Wouldn’t want to go through all those trials again when we go back for the books.”

“So you didn’t take any?”

Caleb shook his head, feeling the dryness in his throat and trying to calm his pounding heart, hoping they would believe him. “Didn’t think to bring any waterproof containers on this trip, plus there are so many scrolls down there.”

“Good. We will bring them up.” He nodded to a woman next to him, who turned and left, taking a dozen of the group. They stepped into four jeeps and drove off toward the causeway, where a large black truck was waiting.

Two jeeps remained, and Caleb only now noticed someone sitting in the passenger seat of the closest one. A shadowy figure, watching them.

The Keeper who had first spoken noticed Caleb’s attention. He stepped forward, into his line of sight. “I understand you were with my father when he died.”

Caleb lowered his eyes. “Your… father? Nolan Gregory? Yes I was with him. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” the Keeper said. “It was his time.” He reached out his hand. “You are my brother-in-law. My name is Robert Gregory.”

Caleb numbly shook his hand, still eyeing the figure in the car.

“In my family’s case,” Robert continued, “my father couldn’t decide between his two children, so he shared the secret with both of us.”

Caleb continued staring at the silhouette.

“She wants to see you,” Robert said. “But we needed to talk first, before your reaction might have spoiled things.”

“She?” A lump formed in Caleb’s throat. He couldn’t breathe.

The jeep’s door opened.

Phoebe gasped.

And Caleb’s breath fled in a rush as Lydia strode toward him.

She stopped and took her brother’s place as he stepped away. Her hands were folded before her waist. Her green eyes were radiant, her golden hair whipping about in the winds. Caleb smelled jasmine, strong, intoxicating.

“Caleb. I knew you would do it.” He reached out his hand and she took it, squeezing it tight. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“I know,” Caleb said. “I think I’ve always known, somehow. As much as I admired your sacrifice, I secretly hoped you had tricked me. In the darkness you dove into the pit, then scrambled out the vent shaft.”

“Where I had stashed an air tank and regulator the night before. You were stubborn, Caleb. You were trapped in a place that held you back.”

“But we could have worked at it. Why the rush, why not give me more time?”

She glanced back at Phoebe, then her eyes met Caleb’s again. “There was another reason. Someone else was going to come into your life, someone who would have sidetracked your true mission.”

“Who?”

Phoebe gasped, fingers to her lips. “My dream… where Lydia was suffocating you. I heard—”

“A baby?” he asked.

And Lydia, with her eyes welling with tears, nodded. “You have a son.”

Phoebe and Caleb sat in the back seat with Lydia as they drove to the new library. They had brought a change of clothes, thinking of everything. Phoebe wore a yellow and black sundress, and Caleb had put on khaki shorts, sandals and a white button-down polo.

As they navigated the crowded market streets, Phoebe and Caleb looked through the photo album Lydia had brought of the first years of young Alexander’s life. Caleb saw his son grow from a puny little cub to a brown-haired hellion covered with grape jelly and Saltine crackers. He seemed to love the beach and water and listening to Lydia read to him in his crib.

“He loves books,” Lydia said. “Like his father.”

“Then he’ll love where we’re going,” Phoebe said. “How long has the library been open?”

“Officially, for ten years,” Robert said. “Unofficially, in the subterranean levels, much longer. But it is still being stocked. All the works are backed up, digitized and stored in fireproof servers.”

“What about earthquakes?” Caleb asked.

“Reinforced concrete girders across the structure. And deep in the earth we built the lower levels inside an immense vault on a series of rafters and posts to resist quakes and shore erosion. The angle of the windows overlooking the top six floors limit the amount of sunlight entering the library, further aiding in the preservation of the books. And, as I said, everything’s duplicated and stored on servers at several locations across Egypt.”

“And what about—?”

“We have it covered,” Lydia said. “Armed guards, heavy security. Many benefactors, funding…”

“I’m sure they were equally confident about the previous library.”

“So pessimistic,” Lydia said, then glanced at Phoebe. “Was he like this as a child?”

“Worse.”

Caleb groaned. “I’m just trying to gauge how sturdy this place will be, if, as I assume, you’re going to use it to store what they’re bringing up from the Pharos.”

“We are,” she said. “That has been our purpose all along. Keepers have been on the board here at the new library, securing funding through UNESCO and ensuring that the construction exceeds specifications. We knew, very soon, someone would find the way in. We had stepped up our efforts to find the Renegade. And your father, with his thesis, made it easy for us.”

“Unfortunately,” said Robert, “the CIA got to him first. A bad streak of luck, that. A little unfair, with Waxman’s psychic help. They took your father away, and we were forced to wait. We had hoped, years ago, that maybe your mother had been given the Key, but instead we had to be patient.”

“And prod you along,” Lydia said.

“So it was all just for this?” Caleb asked her ruefully. He looked at his lap, reflecting, before he spoke again. “Any love in there?”

She stared back with a wounded look. “I hope you know better.”

“I don’t,” he said, but then he looked at the album again, at his little son nestled in her arms. “But maybe I’ll come to learn that, in time. If you’re willing.”

She reached back her left hand, where he saw her wedding ring, still glittering. “I am.”

In the library, they walked down a massive ramp as Caleb wheeled Phoebe along. He marveled at the architecture, the perfect columns, the lustrous balconies on each of the six floors; the great windowed dome, the tracks of lights crisscrossing overhead; the rich mahogany shelves, tables and chairs.

He felt a burning need to linger here for days, weeks, months. As he turned around in a great circle, his heart thundered and he couldn’t help but feel like Demetrius Phalereus stepping into his library for the first time, looking over the thousands of works from every subject on the planet.

Lydia gently took his arm and pulled him along, toward a waiting elevator. She used a special key to gain access to a floor below the other four sub-sea levels. After nearly a minute of silent descent, they stepped into a long tunnel made of all white marble. Caleb felt like they were deep in a secret military installation. At the end of the corridor, a set of gold-plated double doors opened at their approach. Inside, the room was set up much as the chamber under the Pharos, except larger, and with twenty desks and polished wood chairs. Empty alcoves everywhere, flat screen monitors, computers, scanners, and a bank of servers. A similar vaulted ceiling arched overhead with beautiful cosmic murals.

“Here it is,” Lydia announced. “We will keep the recovered texts here and invite certain scholars to have access to a portion at a time. A scroll here and there. And carefully, and only after great analysis, we will dole out the information as appropriate.”

“Dole it out to whom?” Phoebe asked, leaning forward in her chair and looking around the room.

Lydia sighed. “To those who seek it. I expect we’ll differ on this, but you must realize that such knowledge, with the power it brings, cannot just be made available to everyone, at once.”

“Why not?” Phoebe asked, cutting Caleb off. She pointed to the servers. “You have everything you need. Scan all the texts, post them on the Internet, and let the world have at them!”

Lydia laughed, and Robert, who had gone down the stairs to sit at a table beside an empty alcove, snickered. “You can’t be serious. No, we will decide when to release certain information. We’ll catalog the sources based on their inflammatory potential, and release the knowledge in small doses gradually, but surely releasing it all.”

“Over how long?” Caleb wondered.

Lydia shrugged. “We’ll see how the early releases are received. Decades certainly, maybe centuries.”

Caleb shook his head. “So we’ll just have to trust your judgment?”

“Our judgment. Caleb, you’re one of us now. Again.”

He nodded, looking around. It was so tempting to have access to this, to everything coming along. The ancient treasure reunited with its library.

A cell phone rang, and everyone looked at Robert. “Hold on,” he said, digging out his phone. Caleb was amazed it worked down here, but apparently they had set up additional receivers and transmitters for wireless connectivity to the outside.

“Yes?” he said, “we are. What do you mean? Look again.” He frowned, gave Caleb a curious stare, and then glanced at Lydia. He hung up, stood and moved in close to her. “It’s not there,” he whispered.

Lydia’s shoulders sagged. She turned to Caleb. “The tablet isn’t there.”

He stared back at her impassively. “I didn’t think it would be.”

“What?”

“Didn’t the legends claim it was moved before Alexandria fell to the Muslims? Moved back to Giza? I’m thinking it’s under the Sphinx now.”

“But your vision of Manetho…”

“Maybe I wasn’t asking the right questions,” he said. “I wanted to be shown how the wisdom left the Temple of Isis, not where it ultimately wound up.”

Lydia continued staring at him, then looked to Phoebe, considering whether they were lying. Finally, she said, “We’ll keep looking. It has to be there.”

Caleb shrugged. “There were a lot of alcoves, it could have been hidden. Or maybe there’s a secret wall or something.”

She nodded. “We’ll find it, wherever it is. But for now, we have enough to work with.” She came over to Caleb, hesitated, then put her arms around his neck.

“Can I see my son?” he asked.

“My nephew!” Phoebe chimed in.

“Of course,” Lydia said. “He’s waiting upstairs.”

8

With a deep sigh, Caleb leaned all the way back in the chair, put his feet up on the edge of his mother’s bed, and turned to his side. He had been speaking to her for close to five hours, telling her everything, completing the story of their quest. Filling her in on the triumphant discovery.

Completely exhausted, he closed his eyes, just for a minute. Helen let out a sigh, and a soft murmur filled the darkened room. The lone candle had burned almost completely, the wick floating in a puddle of wax, and Caleb drifted toward sleep.

Then, he heard something. A rustling of the sheets, a creak in the floor. Wearily, with great effort, he opened his eyes. Someone stood over her bed.

The gaunt figure with the long, greasy hair and hunched shoulders. Green khakis. He bent over her. Words poured out from the darkness, whispers at once gentle and strange.

Caleb tried to rise, to lunge for him and drag him away. He’d plagued Caleb all his life, appearing, then disappearing. For so many years Caleb thought he was a manifestation of his own fears, or some subconscious guilt.

But to see him here, now… and to be unable to move!

Then the man did something that melted away Caleb’s fears. He took Helen’s dangling hand in his, and he gently caressed her skin. More whispers. His face right next to hers, he looked into her eyes. And then Caleb understood. Most times he’d seen this man, his mother had been around. And more than once, he knew she had sensed him too. But what visage, what presence would—?

“Dad…?”

The figure froze, as if he had been assuming Caleb was asleep. His head turned, ever so slightly—

— and the candle went out.

Another sigh, and the room suddenly chilled as the darkness dissipated. Finally finding his strength, Caleb fell out of the chair, turned and reached for the wall switch. The room sprang into light, and Caleb spun around, hoping to confront his father’s apparition at last, to touch him, to apologize for giving up on him, for everything. But there was no one there.

The pictures on the walls watched soberly, and all those faces seemed to turn away, to provide him with solitude, to allow this moment to be alone with his mother. Caleb stumbled toward the bed and took the outstretched hand and the fingers that were already uncoiling from their last grip. Her eyes were closed, her lips moist as if just kissed. Caleb knelt beside her and put his head on her chest, and listened a long, long time, while tears started to slide unimpeded down his face.

9

“Hello, Mom.” Caleb sat beside her stone and arranged the gardenias in a pattern matching those by his father’s. He had petitioned the right people at the State Department, and with an agreement to forgive and forget, and a tidy sum for his loss, they released Philip’s body from its unmarked grave behind Fort Meade. George Waxman’s name had been stricken from all records related to Stargate and the CIA, and they disavowed all knowledge of his service.

“Just stopping by,” Caleb told his parents as he squinted up through the eaves of a great willow in Forest Hills Cemetery. Here in the shade, and so close to the bay, it was a good ten degrees cooler than near the entrance road. He looked back and saw Phoebe chasing Alexander around.

“I hope you can see this,” he said. “I still can’t believe it, but the new treatments worked. They repaired Phoebe’s neural connections and reconstructed the lower vertebrate, all according to the instructions from the Hippocrates Manuscript. We introduced that one quickly to the medical association, claiming that a boy playing in the caves outside of Cairo had discovered it sealed away in a jar.”

Using the small shovel, Caleb piled more dirt around the flowers and sprinkled water from his bottle over the earth. Then he cleared the emotional block from his voice. “So much more will be coming out in the next year, you’d be amazed. I’m moving the others along as fast as I can, and it’s working. The potential for hydrogen energy and innovations in robotics will astound the world. Amazing that the early thinkers considered these things only for sport. Imagine if necessity had weighed on their imaginations.”

He touched Helen’s stone, laying his palm flat against it. “Rest well, Mom. Phoebe’s doing great, and your grandson… well, I have him for the next four months, and that will have to be enough time for him to experience some down-to-earth cooking and good old American culture. He’s got a lot of games to play, TV to watch and books to read until I have to send him back to Lydia in Alexandria.”

Caleb smiled. “Yes, I’ll keep an eye on him there, too. And, you’ll be happy to know, we might be heading that way again very soon. Me, Phoebe…” then, in a whisper, “… the Morpheus Initiative.”

He stood, stretched and watched the scene behind him, where Alexander chased after a Frisbee. “I’m reforming the group. Recruiting psychics, screening them myself this time. Waxman had the right idea, just the wrong motives. It’ll be a good team, dedicated, professional. Going after the biggest stakes. Important relics, things that will benefit mankind.”

Hands on her hips, gasping for breath, Phoebe laughed, saw Caleb and waved. Alexander shouted and Caleb thought he heard the words “Old Rusty.”

“Dad,” Caleb scolded, “he got that from you. Loves that damn rust bucket. Every chance he gets he’s chucking stones at it, climbing through it, pretending to be Captain Nemo.”

Dropping his voice a notch, Caleb leaned in toward his parents’ stones. Carefully, keeping the words from the jealous wind, he whispered, “Alexander will be ready sooner than I thought.” Caleb looked through the trees, across the narrowest part of the bay, to their little white lighthouse glittering in the sun. “It’s waiting for him, down in our basement, beyond the root cellar door. Locked away behind what, I must say, are some ingenious puzzles of my own. Alexander will figure them out in time. But before that, I’ll teach him what he needs to know.”

Bowing his head, Caleb walked back to his sister and his son, back to the sunlight and the warmth. He paused at the rise and glanced back to the monuments.

“I promise, Alexander will make an excellent Keeper.”