The Pharos Objective mi-1

by David Sakmyster

  The man breathed in. Wheezing. The darkness at his head shifted and Caleb froze. He knew the man was looking right at him. A mumbling sound reached him from the darkness, and Caleb smelled something-iodine and alcohol.

  “Caleb,” came the word, grating, guttural. “Go… home.”

  Caleb sat up and looked closer. The darkness wasn’t quite as dark as he had first thought. He could see the grimy wall, the blood and vomit stains beside the urinal.

  The room was empty.

  Caleb slid back onto the cot and reached for his pad of paper.

  He had more images to draw.

  A government lawyer stopped in one day. He was polite and smart-looking in a tailored white suit, but he acted disinterested. Looking around Caleb’s cell at the piles of discarded sheets of paper, he asked what he liked to draw. Caleb only smiled and replied, “Whatever comes to me.”

  The lawyer left, and Caleb took up the nub of his pencil and went back to work.

  Another month passed. At least, he thought it was a month, having given up keeping track of time long ago in this Alexandrian jail while the world outside went on. He had thought about Phoebe a lot. But he knew, somehow, that she was okay. His mother too. They were both fine, though unfulfilled and desperate. Still driven for answers beyond their grasp.

  He knew it. He saw it all, and more.

  Knowing that it might prove fatal to look upon the dead, he attempted to remote view Lydia anyway. He fasted for almost a week, and even the normally callous guards were getting uneasy about his health. They didn’t want someone dying of their own volition.

  In Caleb’s haze of detachment, his body yielded to his soul, merging, coagulating; and deeper visions came. It was as if he had immersed himself in something of the transcendent, like he had gone skinny-dipping in the cosmic pool of consciousness.

  He thought of the mystic Balinas and he laughed. A long beard hung down Caleb’s chest. His hair was matted and in stringy clumps. His skin was full of sores, lice and ticks. If I only had a mirror… maybe we’d look like twins.

  But he didn’t care.

  His consciousness existed elsewhere. Caleb Crowe was gone. In his place emerged someone new. Someone focused, dedicated. And he saw things-some he wanted to see, and others he never asked for.

  When he thought of Lydia, when he really thought of her-the scent of jasmine, the touch of her silken skin, the way the ankh had dangled on her chest-he saw a rush of images: the Great Pyramids lit up at night; a congregation of people in gray cloaks, mumbling to themselves about keys and doorways, about lost secrets and betrayal; a massive, fanciful construction project along a familiar shoreline-an upward-sloping structure that looked like a sheared-off dome with thousands of windows and dedications from every modern language on its walls, with hundreds of workmen, cranes and hoists assailing it from all angles. In the distance, a dozen men and women in dark gray suits stood atop a ridge, watching in silent appreciation.

  One of those figures, a blond-haired woman, turned away from the others. Her face was hidden in shadow, the sun burning at her back. But it seemed she looked in Caleb’s direction, and she gave a secret, almost unnoticed nod of her head.

  He saw Phoebe next, seated alone in a specially designed chair, peering into a microscope in a dimly lit lab. She wrote with her left hand and moved an ancient fragment delicately with her right.

  Then he saw his mother standing outside the family’s lighthouse, looking out over Sodus Bay. She held an apple in both hands and rolled it gently back and forth as if willing from its skin memories that were long lost, but definitely not forgotten. Down the hill, the rusted lightship had received a facelift. People were walking across a remodeled pier, snapping pictures of the old boat, but Helen paid them no heed. She glanced up once at the lighthouse beacon, and in her eyes flashed a distant recollection, as though she expected to see Caleb’s father waving back at her.

  Then Caleb saw Waxman. Saw him again and again, like a recording slowed down on a VCR. Unbidden visions swirled around in a choppy soup, pictures of Waxman’s childhood, tormented dreams of his mother. She had inflicted her wrath on everything he did. Interfering in all aspects of his life, turning him into a loner. Waxman had studied all the time. He’d trained by himself, pulled away from friends, from strangers, from life.

  Then Caleb saw him enter a familiar white building beside a winding river.

  Overhead, an eagle soared, circling, then rising above the sparkling sun.

  At the doorway, Waxman turned as if aware of someone’s snooping gaze. “ You’re asking the wrong questions,” he whispered, and Caleb snapped out of his vision, jerked awake, gasping for air. His mouth was a desiccated old prune, his limbs too weary to lift.

  Two armed guards stood in the doorway. “You’re free to go,” one of them said, and handed Caleb his knapsack.

  “Get a shower,” said the other, “and something to eat on your way out.”

  Caleb didn’t know it at the time, but he should have figured it out. It was too easy. He’d had help. Probably a simple phone call had sprung his release.

  He didn’t ask any questions. He just went with the flow and tide of Fate, accepting this sudden transition in his life and hoping that the long months of confinement had somehow prepared him for something meaningful.

  So, after several weeks of recuperation, after cleaning up, after eating and nursing himself back to health, he prepared to leave Alexandria.

  “Caleb, go home. ”

  While he waited for the porter to get his single bag, he looked out the hotel window at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, nestled impressively between the beachfront and the mass of white hotels and offices. He held out his palm to block the glare from the sun glinting off the windows of the dome, and in the spots dancing his vision, he imagined the ancient structure after which it was patterned. And it filled him with hope.

  A knock came at the door. Somehow, when Caleb opened it, he wasn’t surprised by who had come to find him.

  11

  A year ago, Caleb’s first inclination would have been to run. But now he stood firm, calm and settled. He focused on what was important. He saw Phoebe’s face light up, that big grin and her teeth biting her bottom lip. A touch of her handrest controls and her wheelchair shot forward, zipping around Helen and rolling right up to Caleb. She threw her arms around his waist.

  “Missed you, big brother.”

  Caleb held her, squeezed her with an emotional intensity that surprised him. “Do I have you guys to thank for my release?”

  “George,” Phoebe said, nodding back to the threshold of the door. “He worked for months with the authorities, finally pulling enough strings.”

  Waxman offered a weak smile. “You can thank me later.”

  Phoebe squeezed Caleb’s arm. “By the way, where was my invite to my own brother’s wedding?”

  “Sorry,” Caleb gulped. “It all happened so fast.”

  “Even after my warning,” Phoebe said, shaking her head. “Was it her, the girl with the green eyes?”

  Caleb nodded.

  “I tried to tell you-”

  “Shhh. Later, okay? Now’s not the time.”

  She took his hand and looked at her brother with new eyes. “Come on, we have a lot to tell you. You’re going to be amazed.”

  Caleb held his ground, and the wheels on her chair spun. “No, I don’t want to go with them.”

  “Caleb,” Helen walked into the room. She was thin and pale, her hair cut short and dyed a California blond to cover her gray. Her eyes were lined with crow’s-feet, hooded but no less crystalline. The blue shook Caleb, and he felt an electric current spark when she touched his arm. “Jail! My poor boy. We were so worried. And they wouldn’t let me see you.”

  “Hello, Mother.” He gave her a peck on the cheek. “Why are you here?”

  “You shouldn’t have gone down there without us,” she scolded. Waxman sauntered over, his hands in the front pockets of his suit pants. He wore a black turt
leneck under his navy blue jacket, and his hair seemed just as wild as Caleb remembered, only now flecked with gray. A lit cigarette was trapped like a worm dangling from his lips.

  “Listen, I just want to go back to New York and sleep for a month.”

  “You’ll want to hear this,” Waxman said.

  Caleb stared at the gold band around his ring finger as he lifted his cigarette, then he looked blankly at Helen. “Speaking of not being invited to weddings…”

  “Caleb,” Phoebe pinched his arm.

  Waxman turned his head to watch a pair of hotel maids walk past in the hall. He put his arm around Helen’s shoulders. “I told you he hasn’t changed.”

  Caleb slung his bag over his shoulder. “I’m going. Thanks for the jailbreak.”

  “Caleb,”-Phoebe wheeled into his path-“we know where it is.”

  “Where what is?”

  Helen smiled. “Don’t be modest, Phoebe. Tell him how you found it.”

  “Okay,” Phoebe said, beaming. “You were right, Caleb. We weren’t asking the right questions.”

  “About what?”

  “The scroll. Caesar’s scroll.”

  “I saw it,” Phoebe said, “by refining the question. Remember when I said I kept having visions of a castle on a steep hill, and a prisoner in red robes being led up to it? Well, I decided to follow that lead. I remembered that those ancient scrolls were coveted by aristocrats in the nineteenth century, and it was considered fashionable to have one among your personal treasures, even if you could never read it.”

  Caleb’s heart started to race. “Of course. But still, the possibility that just that one scroll, of all the thousands…”

  Phoebe continued. “I decided to work from the assumption that it had been removed from the collection. I asked to be shown how Caesar’s scroll was taken from Herculaneum, and then I saw it.”

  “Saw what?” Caleb asked. He started to feel faint.

  “That man again, in long red robes and fur-lined lapels. But this time, he was standing before a series of machines. Several blackened scrolls, coated with a silvery substance, were stretched out, hanging partially unrolled and glued together where they had started to rip.”

  “The Piaggio machines,” Caleb said, recognizing the description. Vatican scholar Antonio Piaggio had invented the device in an effort to stop the wanton destruction of the scrolls by other investigators. It was the only thing that worked until the 1970s, when the Norwegians came along with their gelatin solutions.

  Phoebe nodded, and her eyes glazed over, as if seeing the vision all over again. “Someone came up to this red-robed man and said, ‘Welcome, Count Cagliostro, what brings such an esteemed visitor to inspect our work?’”

  “Cagliostro,” Caleb whispered. “He was an alchemist, a magician of the old Egyptian mysteries. It fits. He would have been drawn to this scroll, but how did he-”

  “‘A dream,’ the Count said, walking from machine to machine, ten of them with scrolls in various stages of unrolling. ‘A dream told me there was something I needed to see here.’”

  Phoebe blinked, and quickly focused on Caleb. “Cagliostro stopped in front of one scroll that had only been opened about an inch. He bent over, gasping as he peered at a faint symbol and a few visible letters.”

  “What symbol?” Caleb asked, although he could guess. Exalted Mercury…

  Phoebe shrugged. “I didn’t get a clear enough glimpse of it. But anyway, he sent everyone from the room, then carefully removed the scroll from the machine, boxed it up and hid it under his robes. He took a random scroll from the hundreds on a nearby table and set it up on the machine. He began to clumsily unroll the first inch when a group of priests walked in, ushered by one of the papyri officials. Discovered in the act, he ran. Fled the library and disappeared into the shadows of the palace corridors.

  “My next vision was of Cagliostro in shackles being led up an uneven rock path beside a sheer cliff to a fortress overlooking a valley. The castle, with its turrets and walls, stood against the rough winds and made me think of Qaitbey.”

  She let out a deep breath and rubbed her palms together. “And that was it. I did some research and found that Cagliostro had been imprisoned at a castle, the same one I’d seen, jailed on charges of heresy.”

  “He was tricked,” Caleb said, “into performing an ancient Egyptian rite of initiation on two Vatican Inquisition spies, who then arrested him. Classic entrapment.”

  “So you know.”

  Caleb nodded. “He was first imprisoned in Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome, but after trying to escape, he was moved to the fortress you saw.”

  “San Leo,” she said, pouting. “I spent days looking through Italian guidebooks trying to find a picture that matched, and you knew it all along!”

  “Sorry, but at least you found it. The question is, what does that vision tell us about the scroll?”

  “That’s what we’re going to find out,” Helen said. “If you’ll join us, we’ve got a flight already booked. It leaves in the morning for Venice.”

  “But-”

  “I saw one more thing after that vision.” Phoebe wheeled closer, almost running over Caleb’s foot. “A church with Roman-style arches and a bell tower. I found it quickly, in the same guidebook, fifteen miles from San Leo Fortress, in the town of Rimini.”

  “The Tempio Malatestiano,” Waxman said, pronouncing the Italian very slowly.

  “What does that have to do with it?” Caleb asked.

  Waxman sighed. “We think Cagliostro may have had a connection to that church. And since he knew the authorities were after him, he might have stashed the scroll somewhere inside.”

  Caleb suddenly felt exhausted from it all, and actually missed the solitude of his prison cell. “What do you want from me?”

  “Caleb, you have to take my place,” Phoebe pleaded, thumping her chair’s wheels. She leaned forward. “They need a good psychic to go along, one that’s more mobile than I am.”

  A refusal formed, but then Caleb let out his breath. He imagined her down in that tomb, her hand reaching up, begging him not to let go. He remembered the feel of her fingers slipping away, and the dwindling of her scream before she hit the bottom.

  He could not deny her this. He took a breath and glanced from her to his mother. In his mind flashed a vision of excavators in Herculaneum, chipping away at the volcanic rock and sediment, retrieving scroll after scroll. The possibility that they’d found just the one they were looking for and that it might hold the secrets of the Pharos-and the answer to Lydia’s death-proved an irresistible temptation. He saw Julius Caesar again, bathed in torchlight, standing before the defiant caduceus, the scroll in his hand.

  This was a chance to discover what Caesar could not, to pass beyond, into the one place he had failed to conquer. To reveal the secrets of Alexander the Great. And perhaps to reveal the truth about ourselves. Why my family has these powers, these visions.

  Despite his transition, or perhaps because of it, his path was clear. He wanted the same things: to see whether the Pharos hid merely a treasure of gold and silver, or whether, beyond the door, lay all the secrets of the human race. The mysteries of the spirit and the soul, secrets that had survived a brutal two-thousand-year war waged upon them by the twin armies of ignorance and evil.

  His mind calmed and his pulse settled. “And you’ve already booked our flight?”

  Waxman smiled. “I may not be as good a psychic as any of the Crowes, but I did foresee you’d be coming with us. We leave in the morning.”

  So they had one night to rest, but unfortunately there was little time for it. A deep breath of stale hotel air filled his lungs as Caleb rejoined the others in the main suite. They were discussing the scroll.

  “If we can get our hands on it,” Helen said, “and unroll the remainder… there’s a new technique out of BYU that has been successful in restoring damaged ancient scrolls. And our University of Rochester is getting in on the act, with Xerox and Kodak contributing
equipment and funds for analysis of the Dead Sea Scrolls.”

  “The cameras are there if we need them,” Phoebe said. “We can photograph the scrolls at various wavelengths-say, ultraviolet at 200 nanometers or infrared at 1100-to see which will best differentiate the ink from the background.”

  “That’s all assuming you can still manage to open the scroll.”

  “True.”

  “After we return from Italy, why not come back with us?” Helen asked. “Everything’s ready back home. We’ve got the house set up for research, a quiet room for introspection and drawing. The Morpheus team comes over twice a week, so we can use their skills as well.”

  Caleb groaned. “I thought the Initiative was disbanded.”

  “New members,” Waxman said, puffing on his cigarette.

  “Come on,” Phoebe urged. “You can get the pleasure of joining me aboard Old Rusty. The museum is closed again, but you can still see the exhibit.”

  He blinked at her. “It was turned into a museum?”

  “Didn’t you read my letters?”

  “I was a little busy. Anyway, no, I’m not going back there with you.”

  Still that voice from his dreams… Go home…

  “I told you,” Waxman said under his breath. “Useless as ever.”

  “No,” both his mother and sister said at once. Helen moved over and looked into Caleb’s eyes. She scrutinized his face, every line and crevice, and he started to turn away when he noticed her eyes were filling with tears.

  “You look like him,” she said, and brought her hand to Caleb’s chin. Her eyes held his, and her lips moved, just barely. “I miss your father,” she whispered so only Caleb could hear. “And I’m sorry.”

  “What do you mean?” The room dimmed slightly, as if the lights flickered, and the air shimmered and everything seemed less tangible, less real.

  “You know. I-” Suddenly she stopped and frowned, and her face took on the look of a hunted animal. Her eyes darted around and finally settled on a corner, near the television.