by Layton Green
She stepped behind a pair of potted dwarf palms as he passed, disguising her presence as she watched for signs of anyone following him. It had not escaped her that Zawadi had appeared soon after Andie had revealed her presence to Cal.
Then again, they had found her in London even more quickly. And if Cal had wanted her harmed, she asked herself for the thousandth time, why help her escape? Why supply her with a passport?
You’ve been through this already, Andie. You’ve made your decision. Own it. You have to trust someone, despite Dr. Corwin’s warning.
After ten minutes passed with no sign of trouble, she walked down to the silversmith, found Cal examining an engraved plate, and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Hi, Doc.”
Startled, he turned and took her in, seeking out her eyes inside the hijab. “Aloha, Mercuri. I thought you’d bailed.”
She curled a finger. “Come on.”
“Where to?” he asked, but she had already slipped back into the crowd.
Once they reached the alcove signaling the entrance to the tea shop, she turned and said, “Care for some refreshments?”
“I was going to insist on some caffeine. I tried to catch a catnap on my flight but couldn’t fall asleep.”
“Jet-lagged?”
“Confused, a little afraid, stiff from squeezing into a pillbox for eighteen hours. And, yeah, jet-lagged.”
The tea shop was built into the vestibule of an old high-ceilinged arcade. If restored, the scuffed tile floor and ivory marble walls would have been stunning. Another two archways, each supported by cerulean pillars decorated with gold-leaf edging, connected to hallways leading to different parts of the souk. Escape routes that Andie had sourced ahead of time.
They both ordered coffee served in tiny glass cups, set on saucers with a sugar cookie on the side. Groups of people were crowded around small round tables spaced throughout the café. As they took a seat near the middle, Andie took a better look at her companion. She had seen photos of him online, but he was older and better-looking in person. Not her speed at all: she didn’t go for the glib, life-is-basically-easy, former-jock type that his first impression exuded. Yet at least she could relate to the cynicism lurking behind his approachable blue eyes, and the way he canvassed the crowd with suspicion. Time would tell whether those traits belonged to him or to the situation.
“Well,” he said, after a greedy sip of coffee, “this is a bit awkward. I’ve met sources under strange conditions before, but this is a first.”
“I’d hope so.”
“I don’t know where to start. Maybe with ‘Congratulations on staying alive’?”
Andie looked him in the eye. “You should know that yesterday, soon after we talked, I saw one of the people who’s after me. A woman who . . . killed someone in London.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Here in Alexandria?”
“That’s right.”
“Killed who?”
“Another professor. A friend of Dr. Corwin’s. I wanted to see if he knew anything useful, and—” She expelled a long breath and looked down.
“You’re afraid it got him murdered.”
She nodded.
“You can’t let yourself go there.”
“Why not?” she said, eyes flashing. “I made the choice to put him in danger.” And then, more quietly: “Though I think he might have already been involved in some way.”
“What do you mean?”
Instead of answering, she pressed her lips together and gave him a long stare. “I think I’d like you to go first.”
He cocked his head. “Still don’t trust me?”
“I just met you.”
“Hey, it’s fine. I don’t trust people either. Though I gotta tell you, if I had nefarious intentions, I would have taken a better flight.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Tough crowd,” he said, and hovered over his coffee for a moment. When he looked up, he said, “You said this person arrived just after we talked. You’re wondering if I had anything to do with that, aren’t you?”
“Trust me when I say I’m not taking anything for granted.”
“Hey, unbridled suspicion is a trait near and dear to my heart.” He tapped his fingers on the table. “Have you changed hotel rooms in the city?”
“No.”
“Then they didn’t trace our call or they’d have you already. What about your phone? Same one as in London?”
“I bought a new one at the airport when I landed.”
“Good. So it’s probably not a trace on your end . . . Have you made any other calls? Or contacted anyone besides me?”
She hesitated. “Just once.”
“Who?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It might, if it’s someone you know well.”
After a moment, she said quietly, “It was.”
“Were you in your hotel?”
“I was on the street.”
“That’s a relief.” He leaned back. “I’m guessing they didn’t track you, they tracked someone else. They’ve probably got ears or eyes on everyone you know. Family, close friends, boyfriend.”
She swore softly and didn’t bother correcting him, horrified and enraged at the thought they might be tapping her father’s phone or even watching his house. Thank God she hadn’t told him anything useful.
Or had she?
“No more calls to whoever it was, okay?” he said. “Not unless they’re secure.”
After a hard swallow, Andie looked down at her hands. “Is this really happening? God, I hate these bastards.”
“Believe me, I know. Listen, Andie . . . if this is going to work, we’re going to have to trust each other. Quickly. I appreciate this meeting spot you scouted, but I’m starving and could use something a little stronger to drink. Have you eaten?”
“Not since breakfast.”
“What do you say to finding someplace a little more private and talking over dinner? I mean really talking. I’ll start, and I promise I won’t hold back. To be honest, I’ve got nothing left to lose.”
“Except your life.”
“I don’t have much of one left. Oh, and you might have to pick up the tab, unless you want to wait for me to wash dishes. After the flight, I’m kinda flat broke.”
She finished her coffee and set down the empty cup, then searched his eyes and realized that while they might be two very different people who under normal circumstances would never have entered each other’s orbits, and who still might not turn out to be friends, there was an earnestness about him, as well as a quiet desperation beneath the self-assured surface, that made her want to trust him.
“Dinner sounds good,” she said. “My treat.”
They decided to walk over to the harbor and eat in one of the tourist restaurants so they would not stand out. Despite the kitschy sign and a lobby full of replica swordfish, the place they chose, a seafood joint on the ground floor of an art nouveau apartment building, had a classy vibe and a cozy interior invisible from the street. The waiter apologized as he led them to a booth wedged into the corner, half hidden by an aquarium, but they relished the privacy.
“Would you care for the beverage list? A carafe of wine?”
“Just a glass of house red,” Andie said, with a glance at Cal. “Unless you want to share a carafe?”
“My heart’s set on a cold beer.”
The waiter returned with their drinks and an icebox on wheels displaying the fresh catch. After they ordered, lingering over the drinks, Cal took her all the way back to his investigation into PanSphere’s black-site lab, the mysterious disappearance of his source, and his fall from grace. She listened in shock as he told her about finding the connection to the Leap Year Society and his own dossier on Elias Holt’s computer, and the attempted abduction at the planetarium.
“I’d call you crazy,” Andie said, “if my story wasn’t just as disturbing.”
Cal raised his glass. “Misery loves company.”
“It’s like trying to peer inside a black hole. The evidence tells me it’s there . . . but I’ve got no idea what’s inside. Who the hell are these people? How can anyone be so good at staying off the radar? Dane—my techie friend—thinks they have a team of people scouring the internet to remove any references that pop up. But there’s got to be a record somewhere in the world, in some kind of medium. If it’s old-school, hidden in some dusty crypt or an abandoned Soviet building, then even better. I’m an old-school kind of guy.”
“The Leap Year Society was mentioned in Dr. Corwin’s journal,” Andie said. “I’m sure it was their symbol I saw in the V&A, and it matches what you saw on Elias’s computer. What I can’t figure out is if Dr. Corwin was part of the club, then why was he murdered? Did he have a change of heart? Did he want to keep the Enneagon for himself? Was he trying to protect someone?”
“Whoa, there, Tonto. V&A? And what the hell is an Enneagon? You’re getting ahead of me.”
“Yeah. I suppose I should catch you up.”
“It’d be helpful.”
Over the delicious main course, a whole fish battered lightly in bran, Andie told him the entire incredible narrative, all the way up to her visit to the closed catacombs. Getting it off her chest made her feel less like she was going insane. The only things she held back were her visions and the photo of her mother. She did show him the ink drawings, and told him about her visit to the bookshop, because she knew they related to the puzzle in some way.
Cal’s eyes grew wider and wider. “And I thought I had a good story. If I hadn’t seen what I’ve seen . . . I guess my instincts were spot-on.”
“About what?”
“About using my last dollar to fly halfway across the world for someone I’ve never met.”
“Just chasing a lead, huh?”
He sat back.
“Are you going to be on my side,” she said, “or the story’s? Since lives are at stake, I’d rather know at the beginning.”
“Wow. I thought I wasn’t a trusting person.” After a long swallow of beer, he set his elbows on the table and leaned forward again. “Listen. I’ll admit I came here, first and foremost, to save my own skin. Not that I don’t want to help you—but like you said, we just met. I get the sense you value someone who’s a straight shooter, so I promise I will be. And if you’re asking me whether I’m an ends-justifies-the-means type of guy . . . well, no, I’m not. But do you want to hear me say that, or would you rather see it for yourself?”
“Fair enough. Though it does help to hear it.”
“Let me know, and I’ll shout it whenever you want.”
The waiter arrived to clear the plates. They passed on dessert but ordered coffee. Once they were alone again, Cal said, “So you think this Star Phone is some kind of puzzle that leads to the Enneagon? What kind of puzzle?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can I see it?”
With a glance around the restaurant, she took the device out of her pocket and handed it to him. He tapped and probed the hard shell, then turned it on and studied the image of the scroll and the alphanumeric code that had led Andie to Egypt.
“How very interesting,” he said. “I’d love to see the guts of this thing.”
“Me too.”
He rubbed the stubble on his chin as he handed it back. “It’s got that feel of importance to it. Who makes something like this? This thing and the Enneagon . . . what if it all connects back to my original story in some way?” He sat back, kneading his hands atop the table with a faraway, covetous look in his eyes. “What the hell have we stumbled into?”
“I don’t know, but my first priority is finding out whether Dr. Corwin is alive. I wish your friend could look at the Star Phone and try to trace the message.”
“He might be able to, but we’d have to go to him. And I don’t want to put him in danger.”
Andie had thought about it before, searching out a similar expert. Time and opportunity, as well as trust, were the problems. She also doubted whether someone unfamiliar with the device, maybe anyone besides Dr. Corwin or Lars Friedman, could hack it.
“I need to tell you something else,” he said. “I looked into Quasar Labs.”
She sat up. “And?”
“The buck doesn’t stop there. After a hell of a lot of digging, I found a parent company. A holding shell. It started to remind me of the layers I waded through to find the black-site lab.”
“Who owns Quasar?”
“I haven’t gotten that far. But I found a sister company called Plasmek, located in Bangalore and connected to the same international tax haven.”
“And? What’d you find?”
“Plasmek’s focus is researching speculative phenomena in the electromagnetism realm, such as the Hutchison effect.”
“I’m sorry—the what?”
“There’s a Canadian inventor—this Hutchison guy—who claims to have discovered new properties of metals while trying to re-create Tesla’s experiments. Objects that spontaneously fracture, jellify, defy gravity, and float to the ceiling. Weird stuff to say the least.”
Andie frowned. “Is he still alive? Is there any truth to it?”
“Yes, and I don’t know. As far as I can tell, they’re not working with him, just co-opting his research. They’ve experimented with Tesla coils and a Van de Graaff generator—”
“Both real,” she interrupted.
“—to create some kind of special electromagnetic current, possibly tapping an unknown energy source that’s apparently causing these effects.”
Andie frowned. “There are far more states of exotic matter in existence than people realize, but I’d have to know more. It sounds pretty out-there.”
“I only mentioned that one because I didn’t understand the others. But quantum physics sounds pretty far-out-there too. Or how babies are made, for that matter.”
Andie waved a hand. “You’re dissembling. I could toss around all kinds of unbelievable facts about science. But they’d be proven ones, from reputable sources.”
“Reputable sources? Like, say, the Journal of Applied Physics?”
“Um, yeah, that would do.”
He leaned over, dug into his backpack, and removed a stack of paper bound with a metal clip. Curious, she took the stack of paper, which was an article from a recent edition of the Journal of Applied Physics. The title of the article was “Electromagnetic Properties of the Great Pyramid: First Multipole Resonances and Energy Concentration.”
“What’s this?” she said.
“Read for yourself.”
She took some time to browse the article, reading enough to glean that scientists had recently discovered that, for unknown reasons, the design of the Great Pyramid at Giza had the effect of scattering electromagnetic waves entering the structure and then collecting them inside the chambers hidden within, as well as in the region beneath the base.
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay? An international team of physicists have discovered that a pyramid built five thousand years ago hoards pockets of electromagnetic energy, and all you have to say is ‘okay’?”
“Nothing in here says or even suggests the collection of energy was intentional.”
Cal stared at her. “As we speak, scientists are trying to re-create these effects on smaller objects, including nanotech devices. We’re not talking about some extraordinary design in the natural world we’re trying to replicate. This is manmade.”
“You do understand that electromagnetic energy is everywhere, all around us, all the time? Sunlight is electromagnetic energy.”
“So, what—they got lucky?”
“I’m just saying don’t jump to conclusions. Strange things like that happen in science a lot more than you think. Sometimes it t
akes years or even centuries to understand it. But I grant you, it’s odd, especially given everything else going on.”
He said, “You’ve heard of the pyramid light theory?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“It so happens that, among the building materials available to the ancient Egyptians—including copper—they chose limestone to cover their pyramids. Limestone is an incredibly good conductor of light at higher frequencies. The ancient Egyptians could have learned this by trial and error, sure. But it’s highly curious that they built the Great Pyramids at the exact geographical center of the Earth, because—”
“Land mass increases the emission of electromagnetic radiation,” she said. “A fact known to antenna designers worldwide, and which an ancient Egyptian would have no way of knowing.”
“Exactly. So why build in that precise spot?”
“I can think of a number of symbolic reasons. Anyway, they would hardly need an entire planet to light up their pyramid.”
“Unless they wanted someone to see it from outer space.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I don’t understand all the science, but according to the theory, each of the chambers, shafts, and passages in the Great Pyramid plays an important role in conducting light. Something about emitting free electrons into the ionosphere. Look, I’m not saying aliens built the pyramids. I’m saying what if the designers knew far more about the properties of light and electromagnetism than we think? What if they were trying to light up the night sky and send a signal to the stars, or gather electromagnetic energy into those chambers just because they could, even if they didn’t understand it?”
Light up the night sky.
Cal’s words bore an eerie similarity to the conversation Andie remembered with her mother from all those years ago, sitting in the desert as they gazed in wonder at those monolithic structures.
“Why are we talking about this?” she asked.
“When you told me you were in Egypt, my research on Quasar and Plasmek made me think of all those theories I’ve heard on the pyramids. Granted, most are nonsense. But I did a little research and saw that article in the Journal of Applied Physics . . . Didn’t you say Professor Rickman speculated that Dr. Corwin might have been trying to connect his device to the body’s energy field?”