They approached the wall. Four more flashlight beams appeared, heavy with collected dust, and darted over the floor, the walls, the ceiling. The team members gave the rectangular pit in the center a wide berth. From its depths Caleb thought he could hear plunks of tiny stones hitting water. He looked closer and saw that the pit had a set of stairs coming up from the watery gloom.
There was a tug at his arm and he moved the beam back in front of them. Before he knew it they were right in front of the wall, staring up at the great caduceus, with those snakes now appearing to eye him with quiet indignation. Caleb took a deep breath, and when he exhaled, his breath sparkled in the dusty air. He counted seven symbols surrounding the staff, each carved deeply into the limestone and bounded by a raised circle.
He figured someone could grip the symbols by their outside edges and turn them one way or the other, like wheels. “Should have brought floodlights,” he whispered, fumbling in his bag. “Hold the flashlights steady.”
“Why?” Waxman asked.
Caleb took out his camera, aimed and pressed the button. The room lit up. His eyes dazzled, and he suddenly remembered a night years ago on the hill overlooking Sodus Bay as the first bright fireworks rocked the night. He snapped another picture, then a third. Each time moving the aim a little more to the right until he was sure he had captured the whole wall. Strange symbols and images filled his vision until he could barely see even with the pitiful flashlight beams.
Waxman looked over his shoulder, and with the light blinding off the limestone wall, his face was draped in shadow, but pinpoints glittered in his pupils. He looked like an Egyptian demon ready to plunder the ancient treasures of the gods. “Guess we should have consulted Caleb from the beginning. Apples don’t fall far from the tree, do they, Helen?”
Caleb swallowed and glanced at the two of them as Waxman reached out and traced the path of the snakes on the wall. He had found a crack in the wall, a vertical split right down the center of the staff.
Nina moved closer to whisper something in Waxman’s ear and pointed at one of the signs on the wall. More footsteps approached, and more beams of light roamed the wall. The others gathered in a semicircle behind Waxman. “Give me a minute,” he said, after whispering something back to Nina. He traced some of the symbols.
Again Caleb was struck with the certainty that Sostratus had designed this tower and its antecedent, the “below” extension, according to the matching principle. If the visible and familiar were above, then this was the occult—the hidden and mysterious. Yet, according to the mystical tradition, it should still consist of the same basic elements. He would then expect this door to lead to the second level, the octagon-shaped section, and once inside, another stairwell would take the visitor down to the final level, ending in a small pillared chamber.
As Waxman viewed the symbols, Caleb had the notion that he was looking for one in particular; and once more, he sensed that George hadn’t been completely honest with his mother, or with the rest of the group—with anyone except for Nina Osseni. Seeing them talk, whispering together, hit him with a feeling of something stronger than mere jealousy.
Waxman pointed to the inscription ten feet up, above the caduceus. “It says, in Ancient Greek, something like, ‘Only the golden ones may pass through.’”
“‘Golden ones’?” Helen stepped past Caleb and shone her light across the lettering. Caleb’s beam joined hers, and he saw a peculiar symbol at the end of the Greek inscription.
I’ve seen that before, he thought, recalling treatises on alchemy, illustrations and symbols in his father’s study. Reluctantly, as if its importance demanded he figure this out now, he lowered the flashlight beam from that character down to the caduceus and made a slow clockwise circle around it, highlighting one symbol after another. “Seven symbols,” he said.
“So?” Victor asked.
Caleb shrugged. “Mystical number and all. But I think . . . looking at those signs, they’re representations of the planets. Some double as symbols for elements. I see the sun and the moon, then . . . Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Mercury.”
Helen frowned, scrunching up her face as she tried to look closer. “How does that help us?”
“Alchemy,” Caleb said, thinking back on bits and pieces of things he’d read, ideas tying back to Ancient Egyptian magic, methods of controlling the material world and preparing for the afterlife.
“Alchemy? Turning lead into gold?”
“Something like that.”
“So what are the golden ones?” someone asked as Caleb tried to see into the gloom. It might have been the heavier one, Dennis.
Waxman tapped his flashlight against the wall and listened to the echoes.
Caleb cleared his throat. “It could just mean, ‘those who are pure, those who are worthy.’ In its earliest form, alchemy was the study of spiritual transition. Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, and all their predecessors, when they discussed turning things into gold, they weren’t necessarily talking about a physical, elemental transformation, but about obtaining spiritual perfection.”
“Hokey, kid,” said Waxman. “Even for you.” He regarded the door again, and then Nina said something inaudible, to which Waxman nodded, and then said, louder, “No, I’m thinking this is just another typical Egyptian curse, the usual scare with no teeth. They loved to put curses all over their tombs, especially the valuable ones. Threaten looters with a curse, and maybe you’ll get to rest in peace.”
He aimed his light at one symbol, about knee-high on his left, and Caleb had the sudden certainty that this was the one he had been searching for, the one Nina had pointed out. Jupiter. The planet associated with Water.
Nina tentatively backed away, but Waxman told her to keep the light still, to illuminate the symbol while he tucked away his own flashlight. He reached out, grasping the outer edges of the sign.
“What are you doing?” Caleb asked. “Nina, George, wait! You’re not seriously going to try this.”
When Waxman glared over his shoulder his face was a mask of annoyance and anger—such anger that Caleb took an involuntary step back.
Waxman grunted and started to turn the symbol clockwise.
“I don’t know about this,” Helen said. “Maybe we should wait.”
Retreating another step and bumping into Dennis, Caleb said, “Egyptians were known to back up their curses with actual defenses.”
Waxman laughed. “No one else saw any traps in their visions.”
“You didn’t see the way in, either,” Caleb countered. “Which only means you weren’t asking the right questions—again.” A blinding light stabbed into his eyes as Nina turned the beam on him.
Waxman hissed through his teeth. “Enough, Caleb. You can go back up.”
The light pulled away, leaving painful flashes in Caleb’s vision. He couldn’t make anything out. He heard a scraping of the small wheel within its granite setting. Rubbing his eyes, he took another step back and completely lost his bearings. “Nina?” He started to call to her, but a heavy clang drowned out his voice. Fuzzy shapes appeared out of the glare. He looked up and saw two giants looming over him. One appeared compassionate and sad; the other’s bird-like expression had darkened into something like rage.
Caleb turned away from the stairs, back to the chamber, and there was his mother, to the right of Waxman, and Nina, standing directly in front of the caduceus.
Another clang, and Caleb blinked. Then, in an unfocused haze, he saw five figures gathering around the seal. The crack down the middle expanded into a dark, widening line the width of a pillar.
“We did it!” Waxman shouted.
Nina stopped and looked back, but her look of triumph melted when she saw Caleb’s face. He seemed to want to say something witty, something to make them all pause and regroup. But he couldn’t find his voice. He squinted and tried to see beyond the parting doors, but so much shifting sand and dust were drizzling down on the intruders. Then a horrible grating reverberated off the walls of
the chamber. The walls, the floor, the ceiling, groaned as though the harbor was pressing down upon them—millions of gallons of water compressing their little chamber all at once.
“Nina!”
She turned to him, reaching out—
—just as a torrential wave of blackness erupted from the gap in the door, exploding into the room.
Caleb had a glimpse of five figures consumed and swept backward like ants in a flood. Helen and Waxman, just off to the side, out of the rushing water’s path, turned and ran toward the safety of the stairs.
The flood took Nina head-on, lifting her in the air in a watery death-grip, and then drove her into the granite floor. Another surging wave rushed in and flung her toward Caleb. He grunted as she slammed into him and they both hurtled back into the colossal leg of Thoth. Caleb struggled to hold her wrist as he gripped the statue’s staff.
Nina coughed and tried to force out a watery scream. She was nearly ripped free by the freezing water crashing over them again and again, swirling and pulling as it rose. Caleb choked on wretched-tasting seawater mixed with the dust of ages, but he could feel the statue’s contours below his feet. He pushed off its midsection and hauled himself up, only to be hit by another angry wave. With a burst of strength, he pulled Nina higher as he fought to work his way up the statue to stay ahead of the rising flood.
Finally he locked his arm between the staff and the statue’s upraised hand and could go no higher, his head hard against the cold ceiling, when the room plunged into darkness, the final flashlight beams swirling under the dark tide. He thought of his mother and the others and could only imagine the worst, their bodies tossed about, dashed against the stones, consigned to this, their final resting place hundreds of feet beneath the surface.
His lips were almost pressed against the ceiling—the last inch of air left. He took another gasp and then his head was completely below water. In seconds his lungs began to scream, his heart thundered and he almost gave in to panic.
Then suddenly, it was as if someone had pulled the stopper out of a giant bathtub. The water started receding with a huge sucking sound, a swirling in the darkness. Caleb could breathe again. The water descended quickly, very quickly, and soon he could make out the dimmed, submerged flashlights before they disappeared altogether, flowing out through the tunnel. Sucked out, Caleb thought, with sudden dread, along with his mother, Waxman and the others.
“Caleb!” Nina gurgled, coughing up pints of water. Her wrist started to slip through his weakening grasp, now high above the chamber floor and without the buoyancy of the water to support her weight. Her voice was weak when she said, “Don’t—don’t let me go!”
“Hang on!” The blackness around them seeped into his skull, blanketing his consciousness. He heard a buzzing, and he was back there—in the jungles of Belize, in that tomb, holding onto his sister.
His grip on Nina slipped another inch and she screamed. Her feet dangled in mid-air, kicking absently. She clutched wildly at his body, and in her frenzy grabbed his arm, tearing it from its grip on the statue. But in sheer reflex, he shook her off to free his hand and regain his broken hold. The following scream was an echo of Phoebe’s familiar cry from years ago. Then there came a wet thud and a sickening snap that resounded over and over, drowning out the grating of the closing door.
“Nina!”
He fought the cold and fatigue and struggled to stay conscious. He made his way down the statue, sliding, scrambling, then dropping the final few feet. He landed knee-deep in the swirling water and reached down to feel around for anything but the stone floor. The currents pulled at his legs, and if it had been any higher, he might have been swept toward the pit. But he was able to stand firm.
“Nina!” His hands fumbled about. He dropped to his knees, splashing, reaching in the darkness. The water was down to only five or six inches, but rushing quickly and powerfully toward the drain. “Nina!” He crawled, rolled, swung his arms wide in a frenetic effort to find her.
Lights appeared—two of them—streaming down from high up the stairs, falling on Caleb, and then flicking around the room, scoping out every niche, every square foot of the water-cleansed chamber.
“Find Nina!” he screamed, as the streaming floods exiting through the gap in the floor and the great door sealed shut again, the caduceus once again whole. “Where is she?”
“Caleb.” His mother’s footsteps, splashing in the last few inches of draining water.
“Nina!”
“Caleb . . .” Helen knelt next to him, placed her hands gently on his shoulders. Her touch calmed him, even as he realized there was nothing left to do.
He whimpered, and rested his forehead against the cold, wet floor.
He never remembered much about the next few minutes. He didn’t know if he had blacked out or just stumbled about in a daze. There were only vague recollections of a kind-eyed, bird-faced goddess blinking at him in the darkness and shifting ever so slightly, the noise of her motions keeping him conscious.
His mother helped him up while Waxman continued searching for Nina. Then someone was helping him, carrying him up the stairs, stumbling every few steps. Except in his delirium he wasn’t under the sea in Alexandria, he was in Belize, climbing the broken stairs, carrying his sister’s broken, unconscious body, and praying that Phoebe—if she was still alive—wouldn’t wake up, wouldn’t wake to the agony. Wouldn’t come back to a world where she might never walk again.
They dragged Caleb out to freedom and, taking deep gulps of the cool Mediterranean air flowing through Qaitbey’s vacant stone hallways, he slipped away from his mother’s arms and rolled over to gaze at the dome high above, at that one lone dove, still circling, singing out its cry of loneliness.
17
The next few days were lost in alternating surges of pain and guilt, sleepless fits and frantic attempts to see his mother. Every time Caleb slipped back into consciousness, prodded by a succession of stern doctors and narrow-faced nurses, he saw Waxman speaking with Egyptian authorities, reporters, and other men in dark suits.
Finally, he had some time alone with his mother. Red-eyed and sullen, she spoke without making eye contact, and only once, briefly, she set her hand on Caleb’s. Her other arm was in a cast and she had green and blue bruises all over her face. Caleb learned soon enough that his mother, Waxman and Victor were the only ones to make it out alive, the only ones luckily carried toward the stairs, where they managed to climb out ahead of the rising water. The others’ bodies, mangled and deformed, with shattered skulls and broken bones, were found later that night after a six-hour rescue mission by the Egyptian Coast Guard.
But Nina . . . Nina’s body hadn’t been found yet. Caleb couldn’t think about her, not now. All he could think about were the others, and he kept dreaming that it was up to him to tell their families how they had died, and for what.
He was alive. His mother was alive. On one level he was relieved that she had survived. On another, he couldn’t get past his fury at another treasure hunt gone horribly wrong. Just like Belize, except this time it wasn’t his fault. Or was it? His visions—and Nina’s—had brought them to this fate. Never mind that it was Waxman’s impatience and bludgeoning optimism that had gotten most of the Morpheus team killed.
“Well, that’s one thing anyway,” Waxman said, slipping into Caleb’s room behind Helen. He was little worse for wear. A couple bandages on his forehead and his wrist in a cast. “The Egyptian government just thinks we all went for a dive after visiting the fort. And since the tide is so treacherous around that area, well, we were unlucky. They’re convinced enough of the danger that they’ve decided to drop breakwater stones in that section.”
Helen spun around. “What? They can’t do that. What if—?”
“Easy,” he said, hands out in a settling gesture. “This will just discourage other treasure seekers. We can still get to the tunnel. They didn’t find that, fortunately. I didn’t tell them about the entrance we’d found, and while the resc
ue operation was under way I went back and closed the door, resetting the lever. It’s there for when we need it again.”
Caleb blinked. “‘For when we need it again’? Are you serious? After what happened?”
Waxman was about to say something when Helen pushed him out of the room. “Later,” she said, shutting the door before turning to her son. “Caleb. This is a tragedy, the worst outcome possible, but we can’t just run from it.”
“Yes we can!” His lungs groaned with the effort.
“Then their deaths will have been for nothing.” She bit her lip and looked down. She sat in the chair beside the bed and slumped forward. And then, finally, Caleb realized she was still dealing with the guilt too, still trying to succeed at something, to make it up to her husband, to prove his life hadn’t been a waste.
“It won’t be soon, Caleb. But someday, someday we’ll try again. We’ll work at it, work at deciphering those images on the wall. There have to be clues to the way in, and—”
“Take my camera,” Caleb said with disgust. “For all the good it will do you. It’s supposedly waterproof, so maybe the film survived.” He sighed. “Take it. Hopefully it’ll prove that you can’t get in. Face it, Sostratus was too good.”
Helen was about to say something, but whatever it was, a nurse interrupted her as she came in to draw blood. When she pricked Caleb’s arm he immediately felt woozy, and he fell into an ascending tide of death.
When Caleb awoke it was night, the curtains drawn. An IV was still stuck in his arm, the entry point throbbing in counterpoint to the pulse in his head. And a man was looking down on him.
The Pharos Objective Page 11