The Pharos Objective (5 page)

“Didn’t your mother tell you? We’ve been using your home on Sodus Bay as our new headquarters.”

“She must’ve left that out,” Caleb said with some bitterness. “But then again, we don’t talk much.” And Caleb didn’t want to ask,
So where do you sleep?

“Pity. You’d be proud of your sister. Even from her wheelchair, she’s become quite an asset. Her access to the University of Rochester archives and labs has proven invaluable, and the way she manages the sessions, catalogs the drawings, comes up with the targets and tests the group members . . . she’s really something.”

“Good for her.” Caleb wanted it to come out sarcastically, but he also meant it. He had known about her success at her first year in the university, but had limited his correspondence with her. The past was too much, the guilt too intense. He wouldn’t even pick up the phone when she called—at first, several times a week, then after his lack of response, once a month. Her messages piled up in the voicemail cache until he would be forced to delete them to free up space.

Waxman tapped on the door. “And something about being there, in your childhood home, with its tiny lighthouse overlooking the bay, I don’t know . . .”—he grinned and stepped back so only the streaky window remained visible—“it helps focus the visions, directs the team toward the proper mind frame for its mission.”

“And what exactly is the mission this time, George?” Caleb always called him George to his face. Maybe he was being unfair, but the man had inserted himself into their lives, into his family, like a splinter under a fingernail, and so soon after Dad had been lost. At the time, even at such a young age, Caleb had known the story of Odysseus. Enamored by his father’s bedtime tales of Greek tragedies and classical literature, Caleb imagined Waxman as one of Penelope’s suitors to his father’s Odysseus; and he kept alive a fantasy that his father would one day return with vengeance in his heart and rout anyone foolish enough to have tried to take his place.

Waxman’s face returned to the window, and his voice crackled over the knocking sounds. “Our project—our objective, this time—is the search for the perfect testable scenario; an archaeological enigma that, if solved, could once and for all, scientifically prove the validity of remote viewing.” He paused, taking another drag on the cigarette. Caleb could almost smell the menthol through the door. Waxman’s favorite brand, it was the smell he always associated with George’s presence, and with his father’s absence.

Waxman continued. “The Pharos Lighthouse! If we can locate it through psychic means, just think what that will prove. Imagine it: a documented success case, a melding of archaeology and parapsychology. It would open up so many avenues of research, generating interest and—”

“Grants . . . Money . . .”

“Yes, of course. But I’m not in it for wealth, Caleb.”

“No? Then what was the Bimini dive all about back in 2003? I seem to recall that Mom and your other psychic crackpots happened to pinpoint the exact location of three sunken ships and quite a bit of salvage.”

“That was different.”

“And what about Belize, George? Why did we go there, if not for the promise of the treasure Elliot drew in one of his trances? Why did we enter Tomb Fifteen?”

George remained silent for a long while. “Caleb, believe me, this is different.”

“Is it?” Caleb stood up, wobbly, biting his lip against the pain surging through his muscles due to the nitrogen narcosis, microscopic bubbles warring in his veins. He staggered and leaned against the wall. “Let me see if I can explain how it’s different. You’re here not to locate one of the lost Seven Wonders of the World or to prove the validity of something we already know is real, but to locate only one thing.”

Waxman was silent.

Caleb inched closer, sliding along the wall until his face was in front of the glass, his eyes locked on Waxman’s. “You know the legends. You’ve studied the same stories I have, the same rumors my mom was always on about, the same stories my dad told me as a kid.” He swallowed, his mouth dry. “You want the treasure. You want the lost treasure of Alexander the Great.”

“I’d be lying,” Waxman said, “if I said that thought hadn’t crossed my mind.”

Caleb sat back down, holding his throbbing head. “Good, finally you’ve said something I can believe.”

“But Caleb, think about it. We can do it! We’re better suited than anyone else. Why? Because we can
see
, truly see. The other archaeologists, they’re blind, just going on old words, faded texts or ancient relics, some of them two thousand years old. While they’re struggling with government officials and museum curators, we’re seeing beyond it all, far into the past, hoping to glimpse exactly where and how to get to it.”

“If it exists.”

“Caleb, like you said, you’ve read the same texts I have. And you’ve read your father’s notes. I know you have.”

Caleb lifted his head. Yes, his father’s notes. For a moment, he had a flash to a night seventeen years ago, his father in a room surrounded by stacks of old books, newspapers and magazines. And drawings—hundreds of drawings. Some of them Helen’s, some his father’s. . .

. . . and there he stands in his military uniform a week before shipping off, looking over his shoulder at five-year-old Caleb standing in the doorway, holding up one sheet of paper—a drawing of the Pharos, at night, besieged by an armada of Roman ships.

Caleb blinked, and he was back in the recompression chamber, listening to Waxman drone on about his father’s research.

“. . . his obsession, which became your mother’s. I thought it quaint that your father, the son of a lighthouse keeper in Upstate New York, should adopt as his life’s passion the very first lighthouse, researching and learning everything about it.”

“Yeah,” Caleb said, “quaint. Like it was ‘quaint’ that his children should follow you around the world, risking their lives in the pursuit of whatever treasure you thought you could get your hands on.”

“Your mother—”

“—should have known better. We lost our father, and then, as if that wasn’t enough, we lost our childhood, tramping around through bug-infested jungles and submerged wrecks, all for your cause.”

“I won’t apologize for that. A better education you couldn’t have asked for.”

“I
didn’t
ask for this. Phoebe didn’t—”

“Caleb, enough. Listen. We’ll have to clear out of this area soon, so let’s get to the point. What did you see down there?”

Caleb hung his head.

“Draw it, if you like,” Waxman ordered, pointing to the paper and pencils.

“Don’t need to,” Caleb whispered.

“What?”

“I don’t need to draw it. And it’s nothing. It was nothing.”

“So, ‘nothing’ almost got you killed?”

Caleb looked up. “Nothing that will help you. All I saw was the lighthouse. The Pharos. The day before its dedication.” Waxman was silent—a breathless silence. “And   . . .”

“And nothing. Sostratus, the architect, was there, and I was, I don’t know, somehow I was seeing through the eyes of Demetrius—”

“The librarian?”

“Yes, I suppose.”

“Fascinating.”

“Yeah, whatever. So Sostratus showed Demetrius around. It was . . . beautiful, majestic, soaring. But, I saw no treasure. I—”

“But it was here, the lighthouse?”

Caleb nodded. There had been enough speculation through the ages, since the remnants of the tower, long-wracked by earthquakes and disuse, had at last been shaken loose and crashed into the sea, as to where exactly it had stood. But Caleb’s vision had made it clear. “Yes, the view I had from the top—the orientation of the coast, the landmarks—yes, it was here, at the tip of the peninsula.”

“Where Qaitbey’s fortress stands?”

Caleb nodded.

“Anything else?”

“No. Yes. I saw the inscription. Sostratus signed the monument, then plastered over it.”

“Ah,” Waxman grinned. “I read about that, one of the anecdotes in Heinrich Thielman’s study. So it’s true.”

“If you believe my visions.”

“Why should I doubt them?”

Caleb shrugged, thinking of his father, of countless drawings of a man, possibly still alive, held captive in the mountains of Iraq. “Others have.”

“Well, Caleb, consider me your number-one fan, then. I’m in your corner, I believe you. And I confess, now that I’ve got you here, locked in my vault for the next six hours. I don’t want to let you go, not without something in return.”

“How about a kick in nuts when I get out of here?”

“Really, is that all the thanks I get?”

“Thanks,” Caleb said, turning and limping back to the cot. He lay down. “I’m going to try to sleep it off, and when this is done, I’d like to get back to my hotel. I have a plane to catch in the morning.”

“No you don’t.” Waxman’s face disappeared. “I, uh, took the liberty of calling the university and explained the situation, explained your near-death experience—”

“You what?”

“—and the fact that you have nitrogen narcosis, a life-threatening condition. Air transportation is out of the question. Besides, you need rest. A minimum of two weeks. And your colleagues, they quite agreed.”

“No, no, no.”

“Yes, Caleb, it’s for your own good. And your mother, she’ll be here in a few hours to take care of you.”

“Great.” Caleb sat back, fuming, but he knew Waxman was right. He’d never be able to fly in this condition. He should, by rights, be in a hospital.

As if reading his mind, Waxman said, “The offer still stands, I can drop you off at the local infirmary and you can take your chances.”

“All right, what the hell do you want?”

“I want two weeks, Caleb, just two weeks.”

“Of what?”

“Your time.” His face at the window again, beaming. “Your talents. The paper, the pencil . . . your visions. That’s all. Join the Morpheus Initiative again, just on a temporary basis.”

Caleb shook his head. “I’d be a waste. This is the first vision I’ve had since . . . since Belize.”

“It’s like riding a bike, I hear.” Waxman grinned. “You never really lose it.”

“What makes you think I can help?”

“Call it a hunch. Come on, kid. Spend some time with your mom, live in luxury on my yacht or at the five-star hotel in the city, not that dump you’ve been staying at. Just come to the sessions, try to remote view the targets, and let’s see if together we can’t solve one of the greatest mysteries of the ancient world.”

Caleb held his head as the knocking sounds intensified and his temples throbbed in time to the pulsing of the boat’s engines. Again he thought of his father, surrounded by all those dusty texts; he thought of the two-story lighthouse above his childhood home, the long shadow it threw over the grass on summer days when he and Phoebe would chase each other on the hill over the bay.

“All right, I’ll help,” he whispered.

“Fantastic—”

“But not for you.”

“Fine,” Waxman said.

“And not for Mom, or even for Phoebe.” He looked up. “I’m doing this for my father. If I find it, if I help locate the entrance, the passageway or whatever it is you’re all looking for, I’ll have done it for him. For his memory.”

Waxman nodded, grinning. “Whatever works. Glad to have you back, kid.”

5

“Where’s Helen?” George called out when he returned to the yacht’s lounge. The motors were running, with Elliot at the wheel, turning the ship back toward the harbor as the sun started its long descent over the spires and mosques, over the scintillating glass dome of the newly completed Alexandrian library. In the lounge he found Victor and Mary watching the LCD screen, catching up on CNN. Behind the bar sat the dark-skinned Italian, Nina Osseni, with short curly hair and piercing green eyes. She wore a tank top that exposed her shoulder tattoos: Egyptian symbols, the two eyes of Horus, left and right. She leaned over in a pose at once seductive and restrained.

She was young but perfectly suited to Waxman’s needs. He had recruited her right out of Annapolis, where she had been planning for a career at the FBI. She knew seven languages besides her native Italian, including Egyptian and Saudi; she was skilled in hand-to-hand combat; proficient in most firearms, with a specialty in handguns; and to top it all, her psychic scores were off the charts.