for help.”
“A warning?”
Caleb nodded and sat back, looking into her eyes. “I don’t understand it all yet. I was close, in that prison. My consciousness opened, my spirit traveled to places I couldn’t imagine. I don’t really remember it all, but I saw my whole life differently.”
She gave Caleb a sideways look as she wiped her eyes. “Were you brainwashed by the Krishnas over there?”
“No.” He laughed. “But I feel like I underwent some kind of spiritual jump-start. And I saw the fool I’d been when we first set out on this quest.” He lowered his head, and the image of a Tarot card fluttered in his mind’s eye-a vagabond character, full of unwarranted confidence and illusionary dreams, cocky and selfish. “I’ve been many things since, only now I hope you’ll forgive me.”
Helen reached for him. “Thank you.”
It was a comfortable embrace, but all the same, Caleb had the unnerving certainty that it would be the last time he would hold her before another tragedy befell them. Before the Pharos would claim another victim from among the loves in his life.
“So what’s keeping George, anyway? Is he that tired?”
Helen looked down at the crumbs on her plate. “Caleb…”
Just then a cab wheeled around the piazza and came to a squealing stop. The front passenger door flew open. Waxman reached around and opened the back door. “Get in!”
Helen stood and dropped a handful of bills on the table. “Don’t say anything,” she warned when she saw Caleb’s eyes widen.
“He didn’t-”
“Don’t,” she repeated.
Waxman patted the breast pocket of his jacket, squeezing a lumpy-shaped item, and all Caleb could think of was a shattered work of art back in the church, a desecrated tomb.
“They won’t miss it,” he said after Caleb shut the door and slid in beside his mother.
“How did you get in?”
“Bribed the guard to take the night off,” he whispered so the driver wouldn’t hear. “I won’t tell you any more until we’re back in the States.”
“Assuming we get through Customs.”
“We’ll make it,” he said giddily, smiling as he fixed his hair in the mirror and then reached for a cigarette.
Caleb hung his head and slumped away from his mother as she tried to move closer. Closing his eyes, Caleb searched his feelings about his role in this theft and discovered that, surprisingly, his excitement for the discovery outweighed his sense of guilt.
They were closing in on the truth.
13
Alexandria
Nolan Gregory stood in the darkened vault, with just the running floor lights to see by. He preferred it this way. The stars were just visible, backlit in the deep blue of the dome, and he could almost believe he was outside, standing on a desolate beach without the dust and haze and noise of Alexandria.
Seven flights above the dome, the library was closing. They were turning off the lights on the inside while lighting up the exterior glass panes. He sighed and sat quietly, listening to the hum of the generators and the battery of IBM servers running below the floor.
I’m getting old. Too old for this international cloak and dagger shit.
Soon he would have to go to New York. His informant in Italy had indicated that the San Francesco church had been vandalized, and Nolan could only take that to mean that they had been successful.
They had found the scroll.
Caleb’s focus was returning. Lydia’s death and his incarceration must have triggered his abilities, just as she had believed it would. Gregory shook his head ruefully. For so long, the Keepers had thought the scroll was still in the collection at Naples, and needed to keep a man inside looking for it, when all that time, Cagliostro…
Interesting, but it didn’t change things. He bit his lip and turned away from the scornful sight of the constellations.
It won’t be long now.
He wondered which would come first-the scroll’s translation or Caleb’s revelation? Nolan wasn’t sure exactly what was on the scroll, other than that it at least explained the seven codes and how to pass them. But that much they already knew. Was there more? What did it say of the Key? The two-thousand-year-old question.
Right now, he had no choice. No other Keeper could be spared. He was the oldest, the most expendable. And God knows it’s going to be dangerous.
He would have to stay close, to be there the instant they had a translation or any other breakthrough. And then it would be a race against Waxman and his considerable resources. He had debated for months whether to reveal himself to Caleb, but in the end he had come back to the original premise that like an initiate of the Egyptian mystery school, Caleb would only achieve enlightenment through self-discovery and direct experience. Without that progression, the Key might be forever lost.
It was time.
Nolan buttoned his jacket and straightened his sleeves. When he next returned, if he came back at all, this chamber would all be different. Full, thriving, alive with wonders. An accomplishment to honor, if not rival, the genius of Sostratus.
14
After waking from a fitful nap, Waxman unbuckled his seat belt, stepped into the aisle and made his way toward the back of the plane. Caleb was sitting in the row behind him with Phoebe, whose wheelchair was stored up front. He had his eyes closed and headphones on, listening to one of the in-flight music stations.
Cocky kid, Waxman thought. It’s about time he contributed. And now it’s Phoebe’s turn. Time for the cripple to pull her weight. Their last hope was that this damned scroll could be opened, and that it had something useful on it. But he had to be careful; lately it felt like he was on shaky ground with Helen. Every day, everywhere he went, it seemed he trod in Philip’s shadow. Several times he had caught Helen staring at the photographs in her room, the ones she would never remove, the ones he would never again make the mistake of asking her to take down.
All in all, it could be worse. She was still a beautiful woman, and she let him have his hobbies, tolerated his absences and asked no questions. In many ways, she was the perfect wife. And what better way to keep an eye on the project? To fan the flames of Helen’s obsession with the Pharos Code, and to be ready to pounce at the moment of revelation. In one fell swoop, by marrying Helen, he had ensured himself access to vital information before the Keepers could ever learn of it.
And that was all that mattered-that, and finding the treasure. Soon. Whenever he felt like they were losing ground and would never succeed, he closed his eyes, imagined the vault opening for him.
In the lavatory, after squeezing through the narrow door and sliding the occupied slot over, he took a deep breath and stared in the mirror, right next to the No Smoking sign and its vapid threat of fines and jail time.
He reached into his shirt pocket for his pack of menthols, turned on the water, took out his lighter and pulled one cigarette from the pack with his teeth. When he looked up, the mirror had fogged over, thick puffs of steam exhaling out of the sink. Odd that the water could be so hot…
Waxman was about to wipe the mirror clean when lines started appearing on the glass. Smears and curves formed as if a finger slid along the surface.
