The Pharos Objective mi-1

by David Sakmyster

  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 clos e: 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 gri
nned. “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.”