opened about an inch. He bent over, gasping as he peered at a faint symbol and a few visible letters.”
“What symbol?” Caleb asked, although he could guess. Exalted Mercury…
Phoebe shrugged. “I didn’t get a clear enough glimpse of it. But anyway, he sent everyone from the room, then carefully removed the scroll from the machine, boxed it up and hid it under his robes. He took a random scroll from the hundreds on a nearby table and set it up on the machine. He began to clumsily unroll the first inch when a group of priests walked in, ushered by one of the papyri officials. Discovered in the act, he ran. Fled the library and disappeared into the shadows of the palace corridors.
“My next vision was of Cagliostro in shackles being led up an uneven rock path beside a sheer cliff to a fortress overlooking a valley. The castle, with its turrets and walls, stood against the rough winds and made me think of Qaitbey.”
She let out a deep breath and rubbed her palms together. “And that was it. I did some research and found that Cagliostro had been imprisoned at a castle, the same one I’d seen, jailed on charges of heresy.”
“He was tricked,” Caleb said, “into performing an ancient Egyptian rite of initiation on two Vatican Inquisition spies, who then arrested him. Classic entrapment.”
“So you know.”
Caleb nodded. “He was first imprisoned in Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome, but after trying to escape, he was moved to the fortress you saw.”
“San Leo,” she said, pouting. “I spent days looking through Italian guidebooks trying to find a picture that matched, and you knew it all along!”
“Sorry, but at least you found it. The question is, what does that vision tell us about the scroll?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out,” Helen said. “If you’ll join us, we’ve got a flight already booked. It leaves in the morning for Venice.”
“But-”
“I saw one more thing after that vision.” Phoebe wheeled closer, almost running over Caleb’s foot. “A church with Roman-style arches and a bell tower. I found it quickly, in the same guidebook, fifteen miles from San Leo Fortress, in the town of Rimini.”
“The Tempio Malatestiano,” Waxman said, pronouncing the Italian very slowly.
“What does that have to do with it?” Caleb asked.
Waxman sighed. “We think Cagliostro may have had a connection to that church. And since he knew the authorities were after him, he might have stashed the scroll somewhere inside.”
Caleb suddenly felt exhausted from it all, and actually missed the solitude of his prison cell. “What do you want from me?”
“Caleb, you have to take my place,” Phoebe pleaded, thumping her chair’s wheels. She leaned forward. “They need a good psychic to go along, one that’s more mobile than I am.”
A refusal formed, but then Caleb let out his breath. He imagined her down in that tomb, her hand reaching up, begging him not to let go. He remembered the feel of her fingers slipping away, and the dwindling of her scream before she hit the bottom.
He could not deny her this. He took a breath and glanced from her to his mother. In his mind flashed a vision of excavators in Herculaneum, chipping away at the volcanic rock and sediment, retrieving scroll after scroll. The possibility that they’d found just the one they were looking for and that it might hold the secrets of the Pharos-and the answer to Lydia’s death-proved an irresistible temptation. He saw Julius Caesar again, bathed in torchlight, standing before the defiant caduceus, the scroll in his hand.
This was a chance to discover what Caesar could not, to pass beyond, into the one place he had failed to conquer. To reveal the secrets of Alexander the Great. And perhaps to reveal the truth about ourselves. Why my family has these powers, these visions.
Despite his transition, or perhaps because of it, his path was clear. He wanted the same things: to see whether the Pharos hid merely a treasure of gold and silver, or whether, beyond the door, lay all the secrets of the human race. The mysteries of the spirit and the soul, secrets that had survived a brutal two-thousand-year war waged upon them by the twin armies of ignorance and evil.
His mind calmed and his pulse settled. “And you’ve already booked our flight?”
Waxman smiled. “I may not be as good a psychic as any of the Crowes, but I did foresee you’d be coming with us. We leave in the morning.”
So they had one night to rest, but unfortunately there was little time for it. A deep breath of stale hotel air filled his lungs as Caleb rejoined the others in the main suite. They were discussing the scroll.
“If we can get our hands on it,” Helen said, “and unroll the remainder… there’s a new technique out of BYU that has been successful in restoring damaged ancient scrolls. And our University of Rochester is getting in on the act, with Xerox and Kodak contributing equipment and funds for analysis of the Dead Sea Scrolls.”
“The cameras are there if we need them,” Phoebe said. “We can photograph the scrolls at various wavelengths-say, ultraviolet at 200 nanometers or infrared at 1100-to see which will best differentiate the ink from the background.”
“That’s all assuming you can still manage to open the scroll.”
“True.”
“After we return from Italy, why not come back with us?” Helen asked. “Everything’s ready back home. We’ve got the house set up for research, a quiet room for introspection and drawing. The Morpheus team comes over twice a week, so we can use their skills as well.”
Caleb groaned. “I thought the Initiative was disbanded.”
“New members,” Waxman said, puffing on his cigarette.
“Come on,” Phoebe urged. “You can get the pleasure of joining me aboard Old Rusty. The museum is closed again, but you can still see the exhibit.”
He blinked at her. “It was turned into a museum?”
“Didn’t you read my letters?”
“I was a little busy. Anyway, no, I’m not going back there with you.”
Still that voice from his dreams… Go home…
“I told you,” Waxman said under his breath. “Useless as ever.”
“No,” both his mother and sister said at once. Helen moved over and looked into Caleb’s eyes. She scrutinized his face, every line and crevice, and he started to turn away when he noticed her eyes were filling with tears.
“You look like him,” she said, and brought her hand to Caleb’s chin. Her eyes held his, and her lips moved, just barely. “I miss your father,” she whispered so only Caleb could hear. “And I’m sorry.”
“What do you mean?” The room dimmed slightly, as if the lights flickered, and the air shimmered and everything seemed less tangible, less real.
“You know. I-” Suddenly she stopped and frowned, and her face took on the look of a hunted animal. Her eyes darted around and finally settled on a corner, near the television.
Caleb followed her gaze, and for just an instant Caleb saw him, the tall man in the green jacket, matted hair over his face. Just standing there, trembling in the shadows. And then, he was gone.
“Did you-?”
Helen snapped her head back and stared wide-eyed at Caleb.
Waxman moved in between them, pulling her aside. “Listen, kid. We need to show you something, something about your late wife. After that, if you still want to bail on us, that’s your call. Just see what we’ve discovered.”
Phoebe wheeled herself to one side of a rectangular oak table where Waxman sat in front of a black laptop. Helen leaned in over his shoulder and turned the screen in Caleb’s direction. On the monitor was a blurry black and white image, a photograph taken of a group of people standing between the forepaws of the Great Sphinx.
“This picture,” Waxman said, “came from an unpublished book called Keepers of Nothing. It was written by a man named Alex Prout, an author known for his paranoid, disjointed and unconvincing beliefs in all manner of nutty ideas.”
Phoebe cleared her throat. “His first book was titled George Bush and How America Collaborated in the Upcoming Alien Conquest.”
Helen smiled at Caleb. “Anyway, you get the drift. In this latest book, however, Prout seems to have hit on some actual facts.”
