by Layton Green
The next mention—perhaps apocryphal—related to an incident in the fifth century AD, after the surviving works were said to have moved to the Serapeum, a Greco-Egyptian temple dedicated to a deity manufactured by the ruling dynasty to appease both factions. Religious zealots razed the temple to the ground and dragged Hypatia, the last true keeper of the library, outside the city walls. It was said they scraped off her skin with oyster shells, tore her limb from limb, and burned her remains as a penalty for participating in the work of the devil.
From this point forward, the library disappeared from the historical record. A rather insane thought entered Andie’s mind: What if some remnant of the actual library had survived?
What if it was still here, and what if she was supposed to find it?
A nervous chuckle escaped her. Don’t be ridiculous.
Yet she couldn’t shake the thought, and she turned her research in a different direction, toward any and all theories that a piece of the ancient library might have endured.
Unsurprisingly, the new direction opened a Pandora’s box of speculation. There were alien conspiracy theories, Freemason theories, Cleopatra theories, Atlantis theories. She became overwhelmed by the storm of nonsense and was about to give it up when something caught her eye: a reference to a place called the Hall of Records.
According to legend, an ancient library—even older than the one at Alexandria—had once been kept in a secret underground chamber beneath the Great Sphinx of Giza. The persistence of the legend had spurred the Egyptian government, a little over twenty years ago, to excavate. To everyone’s astonishment, they discovered a set of tunnels leading to a cave system hidden beneath the sphinx. Though no artifacts were ever found, there were signs of previous excavations, and even an underground river.
Even more recently, a British explorer claimed to have discovered a separate complex of caves, tunnels, and chambers beneath the Giza pyramid field. Beset by venomous spiders and colonies of bats—something straight out of Indiana Jones—the explorer was convinced the subterranean complex was tens of thousands of years old, or even older, and harbored secrets of an ancient civilization that might have inspired or communicated with the builders of the pyramids.
Inexplicably, the Egyptian government blocked further investigation, driving conspiracy theorists into a frenzy.
Andie did not like unconfirmed finds or baseless theories. No serious archaeologist gave any credence to the Hall of Records or an antediluvian city hidden below the pyramids. Yet the Star Phone had led her to the library, and twice revealed a sphinx. Could the myth possibly relate to the puzzle in some way? While intriguing, she was about to move on when a realization caused a sharp intake of breath.
The second sphinx the Star Phone had revealed was located above the entrance to a hallway that led to the city archives room.
Archives, of course, was synonymous with records.
A hall of records.
A little thrill passed through her. Surely this meant something.
Yet a feverish bout of research on the mythical hall only muddied the waters. She learned nothing useful and felt as if she were falling down a rabbit hole. Perhaps, she thought, she needed a suitably irrational guide.
When she checked the time, she couldn’t believe her eyes. It was almost 7 p.m. The library was about to close.
She had spent the entire day inside.
Outside, Andie felt lost in the vastness of the city. She had some decisions to make, but she was starving and needed food to think clearly.
After considering a walk along the Corniche, the waterfront promenade that ran the length of the Eastern Harbour, she decided she would feel more secure in a less exposed neighborhood. As the sun dipped beneath the horizon, softening the decay and urban grime, she headed for the warren of streets southwest of the library, the core of the old city. While keeping an eye out for a place to eat, she used her SIM card to make a call on her burner phone.
It was a call she didn’t want to make but knew she could no longer avoid. Word of her disappearance must have spread by now, and she had to let her father know she was okay.
He answered with the usual alcohol-induced slur to his speech. She couldn’t remember the last time he had answered the phone sober.
“Andie! Thank God you’re all right! I’ve tried to call, email . . . Where are you?”
“Rio,” she said, in case anyone was listening.
“Brazil?”
“I needed to get away, Dad. Just for a few nights.”
“Okay, I guess . . . Listen, dear, I heard about James. I just can’t believe it.”
“It still doesn’t seem real.”
“You must be torn-up. I know how much he meant to you. Andie, I . . . I’d love to see you. When you get back from Rio, I mean.”
“You know where I live. You haven’t visited since I moved to Durham.”
“I’m sorry, but you know how it is, with the writing and the money . . .”
“Yeah,” she said, not even trying to hide the bitterness. “I know.”
“Now Andie, let’s not—”
“I don’t want to talk about that.”
Despite her father’s inebriation, hearing a familiar voice while on the run in a foreign city felt more comforting than she had thought it would. Still, she wasn’t about to let her emotional state change the past. That ship had sailed long ago. She loved her father, she always would—and that was all she could say.
“I can’t help if the books aren’t selling, Andie. I’m a writer. It’s who I am.”
But did you ever think about who I am? And how your choices affect me? “Don’t worry, Dad. I know exactly who you are.”
“You didn’t have to leave, you know. Go so far away.”
“And what should I have done? Stay at home and wait tables to pay your bills?” Calm down, Andie. Deep breaths. You do this every time. “Listen, I called to tell you I’m okay, but there’s something I need to ask you. And I don’t want you to get all emotional or start an argument.”
After a long pause, he said, “Okay.”
“Why did Mom leave?”
This time, he took even longer to respond. She imagined he was taking a long drink from whatever bottle was at hand. “You know why she left. To join the ashram.”
“Was that the real reason? Or did something else happen?”
“I don’t know what you mean. Listen, I thought we promised never to discuss—”
“Please, Dad. It’s really important right now. I can’t tell you why. You’ll just have to trust me. Were you and Mom just not getting along, or was there an affair, or . . . something else?”
“We hadn’t been getting along for some time,” he said quietly, more sober than he had seemed before.
“Why not?”
“Your mother had . . . different ambitions in life.”
“Like what?”
“To tell you the truth, I never really knew. I just knew I couldn’t satisfy them. She wanted something more, Andie. She wanted to travel the globe. Study every subject and try every food, have every experience, drink in everything the world has to offer. I mean, who doesn’t? But more than things, I wanted a family and stability. The success of my first book was great and kept us together. I was able to give her some of what she wanted. But when the success went away . . . she did too. I loved her anyway, though. I really did. I never even blamed her—we can’t change who we are. If she wasn’t happy, then she wasn’t happy.”
Andie flinched at the sting in her father’s voice, the pain of rejection after all these years. I know the feeling. But I sure as hell blame her.
“So that was it? You two just weren’t right for each other? There wasn’t anything between . . . her and Dr. Corwin?”
Her father seemed genuinely surprised. “That’s what you—No, not that I know of. They were very close, but I don’t . . . I would have noticed, don’t you think?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“She took a number of tr
ips with him, for research, but I never got the sense there was anything romantic. He was just a professor, not yet well-known . . . Even if it was a Machiavellian choice, it’s hardly an upgrade from a best-selling writer. At least at the time,” he muttered.
I’m not so sure about that. I’m beginning to think we don’t know very much about Dr. Corwin at all.
The question is: How much did my mother know?
“So she went to the ashram,” Andie said, “and just never came back?”
The silence stretched for so long that Andie knew something was wrong. She had entered a commercial sector of town, and the noise from sidewalk merchants and the hordes of pedestrians grew so loud she was forced to duck down a well-lit side street.
“Dad?”
“She never joined an ashram,” he said quietly.
Andie stopped walking. “What do you mean? You’ve told me she went off to India to join an ashram my entire life.”
“I’m sorry, honey. Samantha came up with the story and made me agree to it. She liked the thought of you believing she went somewhere to better herself. I suppose I agreed with her.”
“Better herself.”
“She loved you very much, Andie.”
“So much that I never heard from her again?”
“I can’t explain that. But the way she looked at you from the moment you were born, held you, read to you . . . that love was real. I’d bet my life on it.”
“Then why did she leave?” Andie said, almost in a whisper.
“Everything else I’ve told you is true. She was looking for something in life I couldn’t give her. A few months before she left for the ashram—I mean, you know what I mean—she took a trip to Asia.”
“I remember. To a university in Tokyo for research.”
“It wasn’t for research, and it wasn’t in Japan. We told you that so you wouldn’t worry. It was over the summer—school was out—and she left for a month. She called me twice—once from Vietnam and once from India—to check in on you.”
“What was she doing, if it had nothing to do with school?”
“She said she needed to see a few places for herself, packed her bags, and left. I know. It’s strange. What’s even stranger was her behavior when she returned.”
Andie swallowed. “What do you mean?”
“She was never the same. What was once a restless and vague ambition seemed more focused. From the moment she got back until she left for good, she was distant, as if we barely knew each other. Judging from her behavior, I had to assume she’d met someone overseas and left me for him.”
“What did Dr. Corwin say about it?”
“He was quite upset. But he didn’t have any more insight than I did.”
You sure about that?
“Was he gone during any of that time?” she asked.
“I don’t think so.”
Andie tried to process this information. “Why tell me this now?”
“You’re asking these questions—really asking—for the first time. You’re an adult. I think you deserve to know.”
“So if it wasn’t the ashram, where did Mom go?”
“I have no clue.”
“What do you mean, you have no clue?”
Another pause. “Maybe she started a new life in Asia and left us for a new family. Maybe she wanted to leave but got in trouble. I just don’t know—and it wasn’t for lack of trying. I spent years, the last of our savings, hiring people to try to find out where she went.”
“Didn’t she tell you anything?”
His prolonged sigh was thick with emotion. “The day before she left, she said she was quitting her job and leaving the country to ‘connect with her true self.’ We had a huge argument, as you can imagine. The next night, she stayed by your side for a long time while you slept. At midnight she kissed your forehead, got in a taxi with her suitcase, and rode away. I never heard from her again.”
Copenhagen
1933
As the appointed hour approached, Ettore paced back and forth in the courtyard of his hotel, his breath fogging the air. Walled in by the surrounding apartment buildings, listening to shouts from the street as candles warmed the windows above him, he was tired of staring at the peeling yellow paint and the line of bicycles along the courtyard wall, alone with the sweet pungent smell of the city and the faint reek of spilled beer worn into the flagstones.
Will Stefan come for me? he wondered.
Or would the German string Ettore along once again, forcing him to participate in another crazed, life-threatening situation?
No, not forced, Ettore had to admit. He was making his own choices, though he wasn’t entirely sure why.
He was set to return to Leipzig in two days. He made a vow that, if Stefan failed to introduce him to the Leap Year Society by then—in fact, on this very night—then he would never speak to the man again. Ettore was an important physicist. He did not need this . . . thing.
The cold was bracing as a light snow began to fall. Still Ettore paced. He did not feel like being holed up in his room, or at the hotel bar listening to the prattle of strangers.
To his surprise, just as a bell tower chimed the stroke of midnight, a bellhop stuck his head out of the door leading to the hotel and informed Ettore that a car had arrived for him. Ettore started to rush inside, then slowed, dusting the snow off his wool coat and trying to appear collected as he walked through the hotel and saw a familiar black car idling by the curb.
Stefan looked amused as Ettore opened the door and slid into the soft leather seat. “You look flustered, my friend.”
“I’m . . . I don’t know what you mean.”
Stefan’s mirth faded, and he leveled his intense stare at the younger man, peeling back the layers of self-protection. “Are you nervous perhaps?”
“Of course not.”
“Wary of what awaits? Terrified, even?”
“I’m quite fine, thank you,” Ettore said crossly.
After locking eyes, Stefan laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “My dear Ettore, the anticipation is written all over your face. Relax, my good man. With a little luck, you might even survive the night.”
Ettore could not tell if he was joking.
Expecting another jaunt into the countryside—Ettore would not have been surprised if Stefan had hustled him on a plane and flew him to Africa—he was relieved when, instead of veering toward the highway leading out of town, they took Vesterbrogade into the heart of the city. The snow continued to fall, softening the rough edges, transforming the stately old buildings and cobblestone streets into a wintry utopia.
Soon they pulled up to the gate of a neoclassical mansion on the edge of the city center, the most impressive residence in a neighborhood full of historic homes. Four soaring columns spanned the width of the mansion, and the entire facade was crafted from a pale-blue shade of marble. A spiked iron gate backed by a towering hedge shielded the rest of the property from view.
The gate came almost to the edge of the sidewalk, flanked by copper lampposts. A clock tower on the corner of the street, topped by a miniature version of the city’s distinctive green spires, added storybook charm. Both the street and the house appeared quiet, sedate. The entire scene was nothing like Ettore had imagined.
Where was everyone?
After the driver exchanged words with a pair of guards, the gate opened and they pulled inside, approaching a fountain at the end of the driveway. Greco-Roman statues graced the lawn, ethereal in the snow, as if the ivory-hued figures had coalesced from the flakes themselves.
The driver let them out. Instead of using the main entrance, Stefan hustled Ettore down a pebbled path beside the house. “We’ll enter from the rear,” he said.
“Why? Is that normal?”
“Nothing about your induction is normal.”
“What do you mean?” Ettore asked as Stefan guided them inside an old servants’ quarters attached to the house, now converted to a posh guest bedroom. Before they entered
, Ettore caught glimpses of sizeable rear grounds enclosed within the hedge: a labyrinth of topiary, greenhouses, and curious domed structures that resembled walled-in stone rotundas.
“As you may have surmised,” Stefan said as they passed into a shadowy vestibule inside the main house, “I’m the leader of our faction, and you were handpicked by me.”
“Faction? Of the Society?”
Inside, the mansion was still and hushed, exuding a solemn grace. Ettore grew more nervous as Stefan closed the door to the guest suite, leaving them in darkness.
“We are at a crossroads, Ettore. There has been unrest among the factions, irreconcilable differences, for some time.”
“I don’t understand. And where are the lights?”
“Nor should you understand. Not yet. I can only say that those who support me have a radically different view of what must be done. Humanity is in grave peril.”
“You’re talking about the Nazis?”
“They are the immediate threat. But who will come next? Look at the world around you. As humanity continues to transform itself, becoming something closer to a god than an animal, wielding the power to destroy the very world in which we live, then hard choices must be made.”
Stefan took him by the elbow and led him through the darkness like a lost lamb. Ettore’s shoulder brushed against a doorframe. He felt a carpet or rug beneath his feet, then caught a pleasant floral scent. Moments later, Stefan flicked on a light, and Ettore was ushered into an enormous hall, with oil paintings adorning walls that soared to a gilded ceiling. Oriental rugs accented the polished wood floors, and soft light emanated from a succession of diamond chandeliers interspersed along the hundred-foot gallery. Ettore had never seen a chandelier with electric lights before.
“Do you believe we live in the best of all possible worlds?” Stefan asked.
“Whatever do you mean?”
The German stopped to admire a painting of the Garden of Eden. Ettore would have sworn it was a Michelangelo. “As you know better than most,” Stefan continued, “the human race is on the cusp of creating technologies that men like Adolf Hitler, if given the chance, will use to enslave or consume the planet. Evil triumphs when good is silent, Ettore. Knowledge is power. These simple aphorisms possess great truth, but what is more complex is the philosophy that underpins them.”