The Pharos Objective

by David Sakmyster

  “I don’t hate Mom.”

  “Yes you do.”

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

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

  “Maybe, but—”

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

  Another spring.

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

  He reaches for her—

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

  “Don’t let go!” she shrieks.

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

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

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

  “Phoebe!”

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

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

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

  “NO!”

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

  “Big brother!”

  Caleb clenches his eyes . . .

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

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

  Only two hours to go.

  7

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

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

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

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

  The Pharos protects itself.

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

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

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

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

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

  He lowered his hands and flicked his right wrist.

  Choices.

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

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

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

  Deadly.

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

  Footsteps.

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

  And smiling.

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

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

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

  Sh
e cleared her throat and tapped the dime-sized microphone.

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

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

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

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

  “Perhaps, but be quick.”

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

  “Yes.”

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

  “Two for two. Now, my turn.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I have a message from my employer.”

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

  Nina froze.

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

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

  “And that’s supposed to scare us?”

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

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

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

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

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

  Nina reached for her Beretta.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  8

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  9

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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