The Pharos Objective (36 page)

3

Sodus Bay
—
December 17

Hide the secret in plain sight.

Caleb stood on the hill overlooking the bay at dawn. The small farmhouse lay covered in a thin layer of snow, and icicles hung from the lighthouse railing, forty feet up. Phoebe sat in her chair in the kitchen, and Caleb could see her through the open door, watching carefully. Two men stood at her sides, wearing dark glasses. Caleb got the message, loud and clear.

“Your dad never spoke of a ship,” Waxman said, squinting through his own dark glasses down the hill to the ice-covered bay glinting with sunlight, sparkling in the frosty air.

“Maybe,” Caleb said, his lips curling up, “you never asked him the right questions.”

Waxman turned his head and glowered. “Well? Are we going?”

Old Rusty creaked and groaned as Caleb set foot upon her deck, treading carefully on the icy surface, with Waxman following. His breath cascaded around his face, and his hands shivered in his coat pockets. But his soul was soaring despite the threat to Phoebe. And he smiled.

At last Caleb arrived, standing on his legacy. He couldn’t help laughing, and wanted to spin and leap about like a young boy. He longed for those days chasing Phoebe around the deck, hiding behind the red-and-white-striped masts, ducking into the wooden deckhouse. So many memories
. And then Dad, urging us to play here. He knew it would stick in our minds.
He had talked this ship up as their property, a member of the family, even though it had been decommissioned and docked for good. Its red hull was streaked with barnacles and muck, the paint chipped, the steel rusted. The masts were bent and covered with seagull excrement. Old Rusty had sat here all this time, waiting patiently.

“What’s its name?” Waxman asked, and for a moment Caleb shuddered.

“Don’t know,” he said truthfully. “Old Rusty is all we ever called her. And boats are feminine, George. She’s not an ‘it.’”

“Shut up and take me to the key.”

Caleb bowed and swept his arms toward the door to the deckhouse. “After you.”

Following Waxman, Caleb glanced up the hill, and could see the tiny figures in the kitchen. Phoebe watched nervously. He waved to her.

She’ll understand,
he hoped.

“There it is,” Caleb said, pointing to the large gold-plated key, about six inches long, hanging over the cast-iron stove. The deckhouse interior was a mess. After they had closed down the museum, the items in here just collected dust. The windows were grimy, caked with dirt and sand, and now ice. The compass over the steering wheel was shattered, the tiny bunk bed cots brown and molded.

I used to nap there
, he thought with disgust.
Phoebe on the top.
After playing all morning, they would make hot chocolate and sip their drinks and tell each other grand stories about their naval conquests in the East Indies or some exotic port, and then they would snooze for an hour before running back up the hill for dinner.

Waxman warily pulled the key from the wall, as if expecting a booby trap, some vicious metal contraption to slice off his hands. Caleb was surprised he didn’t make him take it down.

Waxman slipped the key into his pocket, after first looking it over. “Doesn’t look that old,” he said.

“Probably re-cast several times,” Caleb said. “Although I wouldn’t know. I only just figured this out. Thanks to you.”

Waxman frowned, unsure if Caleb was complimenting him or still hiding something.

Go on
, Caleb thought.
Take your prize and go
.

“Phoebe dies if you’re lying to me,” he promised.

“I know.”

Waxman eyed Caleb carefully. “I still don’t trust you.”

“Sorry. What more can I do? This ship is the legacy Dad left me. There’s the key.”

“We’ll see.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” he said, tapping the gun in his other pocket, “you and your sister are coming with me.”

Before they left
, Caleb said goodbye to his mother. Elsa sat cowering in the corner, but he convinced her everything would be fine. They would be back soon, and if she could just continue to care for Mom, he would be grateful.

So he knelt by his mother’s bed and he kissed her forehead, ignoring Waxman clearing his throat in the doorway. “We’ll be home soon,” Caleb whispered. “I love you.”

When he stood, he thought he saw a flicker of awareness. But her hands didn’t move, and her chest barely rose.

Caleb turned and walked out, but stopped and looked first at a picture of his grandfather and his Dad, shaking hands while Old Rusty lay in pristine condition, sparkling in the background.

4

Alexandria

Phoebe and Caleb stood on the pier outside the entrance to Qaitbey and watched the frenzy of activity in the water and all around the causeway. Helicopters circled overhead, news trucks stood idling with camera crews filming scenes of the fort and the shoreline, running their pre-segments. They pointed out the new Alexandrian library, its brilliant steel-reinforced glass rooftop blazing in the sun. They spoke of its predecessor and lamented the loss of knowledge, but hoped this new building could regain some of that former glory. Emergency vehicles stood off to the side, ready if necessary. Four police cars and two ambulances were in position.

“It’s all a sham,” Phoebe said, wrapped in a black shawl and trembling in the morning winds. “Waxman has it all planned out.”

Caleb nodded and recalled Waxman’s words from an hour earlier, just before he’d gone into the sea with his team of six divers. They had chosen the underwater route, going in through the ascending passage so as not to give away the Qaitbey entrance and encourage future investigations. Waxman had announced to the public that his team of archaeologists had reached a breakthrough and discovered an entrance point that seemed to fit with the legends.

“This is going to end the controversy before it even begins,” Waxman had told Caleb, with his mask hanging around his neck. “There won’t be any more Alex Prouts running around claiming conspiracies.” And there it was, confirmation of Caleb’s suspicion that it hadn’t been the Keepers who had killed Prout.

“We’ll film our dive, and then we’ll document the dramatic descent to the final door, and inside . . .” Waxman made a grinning, devilish face. “Just like Capone’s vault, that televised fiasco back in the eighties? I’m going to take the fall on this one. I’ll be the laughing stock,” he said, thumping his chest like a primitive. “There will, of course, be nothing inside.”

“Because you will have already removed and destroyed everything.”

“Precisely. And that will effectively put an end to all future searches. Nothing spurs on the spirit like a little mystery. Take that mystery away, and people are left with only what they can see and hear and touch. And life will go on as it always has, as it should.”

“If you say so.”

He scanned Caleb’s face. “Just so you know, you and your sister are going to be watched by my best men. A lot of them. They will be in the crowd, disguised as spectators. I would suggest keeping quiet and staying put. I don’t trust you anywhere else.”

“And after?”

Waxman spit into his diving mask and rubbed it around to coat the plastic. “After? I haven’t decided. You’re free to go, of course. But I would strongly suggest you get out of the publishing business for good. Or maybe turn to children’s books. A word of this in any public forum, even a Web blog, and all bets are off. I’ll start with your sister.”

Caleb nodded. “Just so we understand each other.”

“I think we do.”

“Oh, and George?” Caleb called after him as he was getting into the motorboat with his diving team, their cameras and equipment.

“What is it now?”

“Good luck!”

Waxman patted the gold key secured with a chain around his waist. “Got it right here.”

“I think I
can feel her here with us,” Phoebe said.

“Me too.” Caleb held a hand to his eyes and looked up, imagining the great Pharos Lighthouse taking shape, a shimmering mirage, glowing and superimposed over the existing fort, rising in all its initial splendor. And he imagined his mother at the observation balcony, with her big red sunglasses and her hair tied in a kerchief, waving down at him.

“Don’t worry,” he said to Phoebe, and to his mother, if she could hear. “The Pharos protects itself.”

5

“Caleb Crowe,”—Phoebe turned her chair sideways and looked up at her brother—“that key was made in 1954 to fit the lock on the steering column.”

“And it was just what I needed.”

“So where does that leave us?”

Caleb crossed his arms over his chest and stared over the choppy waves. The divers had been under for close to an hour. His guess was that they were in the main chamber by now, at least exiting the water tunnel and approaching the first sign.

“We wait,” Caleb said.

“What are they going to find?” Phoebe asked.

“You know what they’ll find. Do you want to watch?”

She looked down at her hands. “In a minute. First, tell me what you know. If they don’t have the right key, then where is it? Or did Dad move it?”

“He didn’t move it,” Caleb said calmly, and he breathed in the crisp air and watched the gulls circling over the spot where the divers had entered the harbor. Overhead, cirrus clouds streaked across the sky. “It’s still there.”

“It is? Then, we’ll have to go back and get it!”

“No, we won’t. We have what we need.”

Phoebe looked around. She looked at Caleb, at her chair, her feet.

“Actually, Phoebe,
you
have it.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. You were its part-time curator. You know Old Rusty’s history.”

“Of course, but what does that have to do with anything? Is the key on the boat or not? If it is, what could it be? There’s nothing that old. Whatever that Keeper Metreisse stole and passed down in his family from generation to generation, from boat to boat, all those lightships can’t be anything I’m familiar with. Maybe there’s something in the hull, or stored in a hollow mast?”

“Nope.”

“Big brother, you’re really pissing me off. Okay, I give up. Tell me.”

“You’ll kick yourself.”

“If my legs worked, I’d kick
you
. Tell me!”

“Thoth was intimately associated with the number eight, as we know. But also with music, with the octave. It is said he set creation going by the sound of his voice, by a single uttered word.”

“Yeah, yeah. Get on with it. What about the key?”

“The key, Phoebe. The key isn’t
on
the boat.”

“But you just said—”

“It
is
the boat
.
” Caleb took a deep breath and scanned the crowd, making sure no one had gotten too close, that no one could overhear. “It’s all the boats we’ve seen in our dreams, all those red and white sails, all those dinghies, lightships, galleys and frigates. Metreisse figured it out. We know he had the talent as well. He experienced a psychic trance and went back, visited that last chamber, and he heard them speak the word. A single word. Then he planned, so his descendents would pass it on, ship to ship, as each one wore out. Generation to generation, every vessel—”

“—With the same name!” Phoebe shouted. “Oh, I do want to kick myself! Rusty’s real name—”

“Let me guess,” Caleb said. “Something Greek, or Egyptian?”

She smiled and folded her hands together. “Only the symbol for the rebirth of the land, the flooding of the Nile. The rising of the star, Sirius, also called—”

“Isis.”

Phoebe nodded. “Wife of Osiris, mother of Horus.”

“Thoth helped her reunite with her murdered husband, and brought magic to her kingdom.
Isis
. Just one word, spoken properly, and I believe the door will open.”

“But can you say it properly?” she asked. “Egyptian phonetics were tricky, right? And that language hasn’t been spoken in thousands of years.”

“I’ll find out,” Caleb said. “I’ll peer back to when Sostratus last entered the vault. I’ll listen for myself.”

“You can do that?”

“It’ll be easy, now that I know to ask the right question.”
Isis
, he thought, and had to smile, thinking back on the marble head he had first plucked out of the harbor’s muck, the artifact that had started it all.