On the way to the elevators, his pack slung over his shoulder, Caleb stopped. Room 612. The door was open a crack, and someone was peering through the gap, watching. The door opened a little wider, and a patch of red hair emerged from the shadows, then bloodshot blue eyes darted up and down the hallway. “Danger.”
Caleb took a step to the door. “Xavier?”
“Danger,” he repeated. “I’m not going with them.” Shirtless, still in his striped pajama bottoms, Xavier Montross looked like he had been through a four-night bender. His hair disheveled, eyes dark, bits of food stuck in his teeth.
“Did you see something?” Caleb asked. “Is that why you’re not going?”
Xavier gave an almost imperceptible nod, retreating back into the shadows.
“Wait.” Caleb reached out as the door closed. “What was it? What did you see?”
The latch clicked and a bolt slammed home. The eye view on the door flickered. Caleb imagined Xavier pressed close, breathing the sour breath of an anxious man. “Xavier!”
From under the door, his voice, like a desiccated whisper came, “Climb, Caleb.”
“What?”
“I’ll see you again… at the…”
“What?”
“… mausoleum.”
Caleb knocked on the door. “Xavier?”
Down the hall, the elevator doors opened and Helen stuck her head around the corner. “There you are!”
Caleb shuffled away from the door, shaking his head. The mausoleum?
“Come on, lazybones!” said his mother, holding open the doors. “This treasure isn’t going to find itself!”
“How did George arrange this?” Caleb asked Nina as they stepped out of the jeep before the deserted lot around Qaitbey’s fortress.
Normally, the promontory was crawling with tourists and peddlers, couples enjoying the view and sitting in a revitalized courtyard, sipping cool drinks by transplanted palm trees. Some waited for their chance to tour the empty fortress, now a museum, although there were no artifacts inside and nothing to look at but the empty hallways. Normally, they would have had to sneak in during the early hours after midnight or attempt a brazen break-in. Now, apparently, they had other means.
Nina smoothed back an unruly wave of hair, gave Caleb a knowing grin and said, “It pays to have connections.”
“But this…” He looked around, amazed. Armed Egyptian soldiers stood guard outside, beyond the perimeter of the jeeps, keeping onlookers away.
Helen overheard them. She gave Nina a frowning look and said, “It’s what I’ve been working on, Caleb, building relationships with the Council of Antiquities. And George’s monetary influence helps.”
“Of course.”
“Let’s move, people!” Waxman spread his arms and turned in a full circle in the breeze. Seagulls took off behind him, circled and alighted on the castle’s ramparts. “Today is an historic day! For archaeology, for history, and for the new trail we’re blazing in paranormal research. Follow me, if you please.”
The members of the Morpheus Initiative followed through the outer gate, one by one, Waxman and Helen in the lead. They crossed the deserted courtyard to the inner citadel and mosque. Once, from these windows, arrows had rained down upon Turkish ships.
Inside, the fort was cool and refreshing. Caleb let his fingertips dance along a granite wall and took a moment to consider that they were possibly touching a remnant of the great Pharos Lighthouse. “This archway looks older,” he noted, catching his breath. “And those pillars-they have to be part of the Pharos.”
“I think you’re right,” Helen said, up ahead, her voice breathless.
Out the open window, three seagulls had followed them and were circling, screeching. Caleb had the sudden fear they were sounding an alarm, protesting an unwarranted intrusion. He looked past them into the harbor where a fleet of boats, dinghies and random vessels of all colors and types were moored, pointing toward Alexandria, waiting for some great pronouncement from Cleopatra, perhaps, or Caesar himself.
“Ready, Caleb?” Nina pinched playfully at the back of his thigh, then took off down a plain corridor that narrowed like the inside of a tomb. Waxman, Helen, Victor, Elliot, Mary, Amelia, Tom and Dennis waited, expectantly. Helen nodded, smiling.
“Your show, kid,” said Waxman. “You saved us from going in through the water vents and braving the currents, so this is your vision, go with her. Lead the way.”
Helen paused, counting. “Aren’t we missing one?”
“Xavier?” Waxman said, glancing around.
“Got the kid’s stomach bug?” Elliot asked.
“Or he’s hung over,” said Victor.
Or, thought Caleb, he’s the only smart one in this bunch.
“Well, we’re not waiting for him,” Waxman said, a little ruefully.
After adjusting his knapsack to the other shoulder, Caleb followed Nina, moving through the first hallway. “Wait up! Do you even know where you’re going?”
“Sure, I’ve seen it, remember? The stairs should be just past the mosque.” The hallway suddenly opened into a large chamber. They both peered at the beautiful dome three levels up. A single dove flew around the red brick ceiling, circling gracefully. “There it is,” she said, pointing to a faint outline in the far wall. “That’s where the door will open when you pull the lever.”
“When I pull the lever?” Caleb put his hands on his hips.
“I’m not a glory hound, you get the honors,” Nina said, sliding up to him, giving his leg a squeeze. “After all, you did all the hard work last night, you deserve it.”
Blushing, Caleb looked up the stairs. “If it’s even still there.” They went up to the next level and walked side by side through the slanting shafts of sunlight down the narrow sandstone corridors. When Caleb realized their strides were matching, step for step, he almost burst out laughing. He felt like they were the fort’s defenders, marching on patrol.
At a shadowy recessed area in the western corner beyond a chain with an “Off Limits” sign preventing public access, Caleb dug out his flashlight, switched it on and cut through the darkness. The beam continued inside an alcove about the size of a supply cabinet and illuminated three fist-sized rectangular slabs of rock, all about waist high, protruding from the wall. He had a moment’s hesitation. He had not seen three. He had not even seen this arrangement.
“Come on, slowpoke. It’s the middle one,” Nina said, leaning forward. She gripped the lever with both hands, pulled it up, then to the left and down. A grating noise echoed below, and Nina smiled into the flashlight beam. “You didn’t see them do that?”
Caleb slowly shook his head.
She patted his shoulder as she walked by and said, condescendingly, “Now, now, it’s okay. Just keep practicing.”
They squeezed into the narrow opening beyond the massive, three-foot-wide door. It had opened just far enough to let one person through, and they inched forward in the darkness, letting their eyes adjust. Caleb wondered how someone could bring any kind of significant treasure out this way.
The flashlight beam played off a narrow space and a wall just ahead of them. Caleb aimed it down. The shaft of light, alive with the thick dust stirred by opening the door, illuminated the steeply descending stairs.
“Ready?” Waxman’s voice dwindled and was quickly swallowed up by the dust and gloom. “Go on, Caleb.”
“How did I get into the lead role, here? I’m not even a member of this team.”
“You’ve always been a member, Caleb.” His mother’s hand on his shoulder. “But if you don’t want to go first-”
“Fine, I’ll do it.”
“I’ll understand,” Helen said. “Belize, and-”
Nina gripped his arm from the other side, digging her fingers into his flesh. “Don’t listen to her,” she whispered. “This is your time, make it up to Phoebe now.”
He started down.
“Should have brought sweaters,” Helen said, and Caleb cursed his stupidity. A cold, stale breath rose from the depths, chilling them to the bone. “How deep do you think it goes?”
An image materialized in Caleb’s mind. It was like an architect’s diagram-the tower, hollow and inscribed with its ramps and statues and fuel transport hoists and the same thing projected beneath it, as if a mirror were held under the design.
“As above, so below.”
Waxman looked up. “Huh?”
“Just a feeling.” Caleb took the first tentative step. “Sostratus might have built this according to the Hermetic tradition, representing below what is above.”
“So you’re saying we might be going four hundred feet down?”
“Maybe.” Or maybe the door he had seen was almost two hundred feet down, then there would be another stairwell or shaft to take the visitor to the “beacon,” the light-the treasure at the bottom.
Or maybe he was way off.
They descended toward the mystery slowly, one long step after another. Nina walked behind Caleb, clutching his t-shirt with one hand and steadying herself against the cold wall with the other. The subterranean gloom did its best to resist the feeble light cast by the flashlight, but they could see well enough to continue.
Around and around. Caleb counted seventy-two steps before the wall disappeared and the last step ended. They stood before a great darkness and had the sense of an overwhelming space ahead. The flashlight pointed down at their feet, at the dust and pebbles. The beam trembled, and Caleb realized his arm was shaking.
He felt Nina’s hand on his, and together they raised the light. It stretched across the floor, dipped into a rectangular pit, then came up the other side and struck the far wall. He moved the light higher, and his jaw dropped. There were the carvings-signs and stars, circles and moons. Shadows played among the shapes, danced around symbols, letters and images too far away to see clearly. Then he found the center and traced up the length of a painted vertical staff that had two brilliant, green-scaled snakes wound about it. He followed their coils around until they converged. Great fangs and eyes locked onto each other.
“Wow,” Dennis whispered, and pushed through the group to the front.
“Wait,” Caleb urged. He had a terrible premonition as a grating sound echoed in the chamber like something opening or sliding apart. He felt a shifting in the floor, and he quickly moved the light to his feet. One of the blocks had settled under their weight, but only a couple inches. A hissing and gurgling sound came from the pit ahead, and a whoosh like escaping steam whistled above. Dennis stumbled back as cries of fear and confusion rose.
Caleb whipped the light around in a frenzied sweep. He saw a crescent moon, then a bird-like face and a long sloping beak. Another pair of eyes peered at them knowingly, and huge arms clutched a giant book. Faces turned on great stone bodies that swiveled, expelling the dust of centuries.
“Statues!” Caleb shouted, taking another step back with Nina, overcoming his fright. “Only statues.” He remembered his vision of Caesar and how the immense statues of Thoth and his consort Seshat had flanked the entrance to this vault. But he wasn’t clear whether they posed any threat.
“How are they moving?” Waxman whispered, inching closer.
“Steam power?” Caleb replied, slowly panning the light from one to the other, willing his heart to settle down, his breathing to relax. “Just physics and hydraulics. Inventors back then were into making statues seem alive. It was a trick to thrill the worshippers-”
“Or scare the piss out of trespassers!” Victor offered.
“Did it work on anyone?” Elliot asked, stifling a chuckle.
Caleb tried to smile. “Okay guys, looks like the welcome is over. Let’s go in.” He played the light over the two statues one last time, then bowed his head as he passed between them. It might have been a trick of the light, but it almost seemed as if Seshat moved again as he passed, as though she bent at the knees and lowered her head in honor of his arrival.
They approached the wall. Four more flashlight beams appeared, heavy with collected dust, and darted over the floor, the walls, the ceiling. The team members gave the rectangular pit in the center a wide berth. From its depths Caleb thought he could hear plunks of tiny stones hitting water. He looked closer and saw that the pit had a set of stairs coming up from the watery gloom.
There was a tug at his arm and he moved the beam back in front of them. Before he knew it they were right in front of the wall, staring up at the great caduceus, with those snakes now appearing to eye him with quiet indignation. Caleb took a deep breath, and when he exhaled, his breath sparkled in the dusty air. He counted seven symbols surrounding the staff, each carved deeply into the limestone and bounded by a raised circle.
He figured someone could grip the symbols by their outside edges and turn them one way or the other, like wheels. “Should have brought floodlights,” he whispered, fumbling in his bag. “Hold the flashlights steady.”
“Why?” Waxman asked.
Caleb took out his camera, aimed and pressed the button. The room lit up. His eyes dazzled, and he suddenly remembered a night years ago on the hill overlooking Sodus Bay as the first bright fireworks rocked the night. He snapped another picture, then a third. Each time moving the aim a little more to the right until he was sure he had captured the whole wall. Strange symbols and images filled his vision until he could barely see even with the pitiful flashlight beams.
Waxman looked over his shoulder, and with the light blinding off the limestone wall, his face was draped in shadow, but pinpoints glittered in his pupils. He looked like an Egyptian demon ready to plunder the ancient treasures of the gods. “Guess we should have consulted Caleb from the beginning. Apples don’t fall far from the tree, do they, Helen?”
Caleb swallowed and glanced at the two of them as Waxman reached out and traced the path of the snakes on the wall. He had found a crack in the wall, a vertical split right down the center of the staff.
Nina moved closer to whisper something in Waxman’s ear and pointed at one of the signs on the wall. More footsteps approached, and more beams of light roamed the wall. The others gathered in a semicircle behind Waxman. “Give me a minute,” he said, after whispering something back to Nina. He traced some of the symbols.
Again Caleb was struck with the certainty that Sostratus had designed this tower and its antecedent, the “below” extension, according to the matching principle. If the visible and familiar were above, then this was the occult-the hidden and mysterious. Yet, according to the mystical tradition, it should still consist of the same basic elements. He would then expect this door to lead to the second level, the octagon-shaped section, and once inside, another stairwell would take the visitor down to the final level, ending in a small pillared chamber.
As Waxman viewed the symbols, Caleb had the notion that he was looking for one in particular; and once more, he sensed that George hadn’t been completely honest with his mother, or with the rest of the group-with anyone except for Nina Osseni. Seeing them talk, whispering together, hit him with a feeling of something stronger than mere jealousy.
Waxman pointed to the inscription ten feet up, above the caduceus. “It says, in Ancient Greek, something like, ‘Only the golden ones may pass through.’”
“‘Golden ones’?” Helen stepped past Caleb and shone her light across the lettering. Caleb’s beam joined hers, and he saw a peculiar symbol at the end of the Greek inscription.
I’ve seen that before, he thought, recalling treatises on alchemy, illustrations and symbols in his father’s study. Reluctantly, as if its importance demanded he figure this out now, he lowered the flashlight beam from that character down to the caduceus and made a slow clockwise circle around it, highlighting one symbol after another. “Seven symbols,” he said.
“So?” Victor asked.
Caleb shrugged. “Mystical number and all. But I think… looking at those signs, they’re representations of the planets. Some double as symbols for elements. I see the sun and the moon, then… Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Mercury.”
Helen frowned, scrunching up her face as she tried to look closer. “How does that help us?”
“Alchemy,” Caleb said, thinking back on bits and pieces of things he’d read, ideas tying back to Ancient Egyptian magic, methods of controlling the material world and preparing for the afterlife.
“Alchemy? Turning lead into gold?”
“Something like that.”
“So what are the golden ones?” someone asked as Caleb tried to see into the gloom. It might have been the heavier one, Dennis.
Waxman tapped his flashlight against the wall and listened to the echoes.
Caleb cleared his throat. “It could just mean, ‘those who are pure, those who are worthy.’ In its earliest form, alchemy was the study of spiritual transition. Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, and all their predecessors, when they discussed turning things into gold, they weren’t necessarily talking about a physical, elemental transformation, but about obtaining spiritual perfection.”
“Hokey, kid,” said Waxman. “Even for you.” He regarded the door again, and then Nina said something inaudible, to which Waxman nodded, and then said, louder, “No, I’m thinking this is just another typical Egyptian curse, the usual scare with no teeth. They loved to put curses all over their tombs, especially the valuable ones. Threaten looters with a curse, and maybe you’ll get to rest in peace.”
He aimed his light at one symbol, about knee-high on his left, and Caleb had the sudden certainty that this was the one he had been searching for, the one Nina had pointed out. Jupiter. The planet associated with Water.
Nina tentatively backed away, but Waxman told her to keep the light still, to illuminate the symbol while he tucked away his own flashlight. He reached out, grasping the outer edges of the sign.
“What are you doing?” Caleb asked. “Nina, George, wait! You’re not seriously going to try this.”
When Waxman glared over his shoulder his face was a mask of annoyance and anger-such anger that Caleb took an involuntary step back.
Waxman grunted and started to turn the symbol clockwise.
“I don’t know about this,” Helen said. “Maybe we should wait.”
Retreating another step and bumping into Dennis, Caleb said, “Egyptians were known to back up their curses with actual defenses.”
Waxman laughed. “No one else saw any traps in their visions.”
“You didn’t see the way in, either,” Caleb countered. “Which only means you weren’t asking the right questions-again.” A blinding light stabbed into his eyes as Nina turned the beam on him.
Waxman hissed through his teeth. “Enough, Caleb. You can go back up.”
The light pulled away, leaving painful flashes in Caleb’s vision. He couldn’t make anything out. He heard a scraping of the small wheel within its granite setting. Rubbing his eyes, he took another step back and completely lost his bearings. “Nina?” He started to call to her, but a heavy clang drowned out his voice. Fuzzy shapes appeared out of the glare. He looked up and saw two giants looming over him. One appeared compassionate and sad; the other’s bird-like expression had darkened into something like rage.
Caleb turned away from the stairs, back to the chamber, and there was his mother, to the right of Waxman, and Nina, standing directly in front of the caduceus.
Another clang, and Caleb blinked. Then, in an unfocused haze, he saw five figures gathering around the seal. The crack down the middle expanded into a dark, widening line the width of a pillar.
“We did it!” Waxman shouted.
Nina stopped and looked back, but her look of triumph melted when she saw Caleb’s face. He seemed to want to say something witty, something to make them all pause and regroup. But he couldn’t find his voice. He squinted and tried to see beyond the parting doors, but so much shifting sand and dust were drizzling down on the intruders. Then a horrible grating reverberated off the walls of the chamber. The walls, the floor, the ceiling, groaned as though the harbor was pressing down upon them-millions of gallons of water compressing their little chamber all at once.
“Nina!”
She turned to him, reaching out — just as a torrential wave of blackness erupted from the gap in the door, exploding into the room.
Caleb had a glimpse of five figures consumed and swept backward like ants in a flood. Helen and Waxman, just off to the side, out of the rushing water’s path, turned and ran toward the safety of the stairs.
The flood took Nina head-on, lifting her in the air in a watery death-grip, and then drove her into the granite floor. Another surging wave rushed in and flung her toward Caleb. He grunted as she slammed into him and they both hurtled back into the colossal leg of Thoth. Caleb struggled to hold her wrist as he gripped the statue’s staff.
Nina coughed and tried to force out a watery scream. She was nearly ripped free by the freezing water crashing over them again and again, swirling and pulling as it rose. Caleb choked on wretched-tasting seawater mixed with the dust of ages, but he could feel the statue’s contours below his feet. He pushed off its midsection and hauled himself up, only to be hit by another angry wave. With a burst of strength, he pulled Nina higher as he fought to work his way up the statue to stay ahead of the rising flood.
Finally he locked his arm between the staff and the statue’s upraised hand and could go no higher, his head hard against the cold ceiling, when the room plunged into darkness, the final flashlight beams swirling under the dark tide. He thought of his mother and the others and could only imagine the worst, their bodies tossed about, dashed against the stones, consigned to this, their final resting place hundreds of feet beneath the surface.
His lips were almost pressed against the ceiling-the last inch of air left. He took another gasp and then his head was completely below water. In seconds his lungs began to scream, his heart thundered and he almost gave in to panic.
Then suddenly, it was as if someone had pulled the stopper out of a giant bathtub. The water started receding with a huge sucking sound, a swirling in the darkness. Caleb could breathe again. The water descended quickly, very quickly, and soon he could make out the dimmed, submerged flashlights before they disappeared altogether, flowing out through the tunnel. Sucked out, Caleb thought, with sudden dread, along with his mother, Waxman and the others.
“Caleb!” Nina gurgled, coughing up pints of water. Her wrist started to slip through his weakening grasp, now high above the chamber floor and without the buoyancy of the water to support her weight. Her voice was weak when she said, “Don’t-don’t let me go!”
“Hang on!” The blackness around them seeped into his skull, blanketing his consciousness. He heard a buzzing, and he was back there-in the jungles of Belize, in that tomb, holding onto his sister.
His grip on Nina slipped another inch and she screamed. Her feet dangled in mid-air, kicking absently. She clutched wildly at his body, and in her frenzy grabbed his arm, tearing it from its grip on the statue. But in sheer reflex, he shook her off to free his hand and regain his broken hold. The following scream was an echo of Phoebe’s familiar cry from years ago. Then there came a wet thud and a sickening snap that resounded over and over, drowning out the grating of the closing door.
“Nina!”
He fought the cold and fatigue and struggled to stay conscious. He made his way down the statue, sliding, scrambling, then dropping the final few feet. He landed knee-deep in the swirling water and reached down to feel around for anything but the stone floor. The currents pulled at his legs, and if it had been any higher, he might have been swept toward the pit. But he was able to stand firm.
“Nina!” His hands fumbled about. He dropped to his knees, splashing, reaching in the darkness. The water was down to only five or six inches, but rushing quickly and powerfully toward the drain. “Nina!” He crawled, rolled, swung his arms wide in a frenetic effort to find her.
Lights appeared-two of them-streaming down from high up the stairs, falling on Caleb, and then flicking around the room, scoping out every niche, every square foot of the water-cleansed chamber.
“Find Nina!” he screamed, as the streaming floods exiting through the gap in the floor and the great door sealed shut again, the caduceus once again whole. “Where is she?”
“Caleb.” His mother’s footsteps, splashing in the last few inches of draining water.
“Nina!”
“Caleb…” Helen knelt next to him, placed her hands gently on his shoulders. Her touch calmed him, even as he realized there was nothing left to do.
He whimpered, and rested his forehead against the cold, wet floor.
He never remembered much about the next few minutes. He didn’t know if he had blacked out or just stumbled about in a daze. There were only vague recollections of a kind-eyed, bird-faced goddess blinking at him in the darkness and shifting ever so slightly, the noise of her motions keeping him conscious.
His mother helped him up while Waxman continued searching for Nina. Then someone was helping him, carrying him up the stairs, stumbling every few steps. Except in his delirium he wasn’t under the sea in Alexandria, he was in Belize, climbing the broken stairs, carrying his sister’s broken, unconscious body, and praying that Phoebe-if she was still alive-wouldn’t wake up, wouldn’t wake to the agony. Wouldn’t come back to a world where she might never walk again.
They dragged Caleb out to freedom and, taking deep gulps of the cool Mediterranean air flowing through Qaitbey’s vacant stone hallways, he slipped away from his mother’s arms and rolled over to gaze at the dome high above, at that one lone dove, still circling, singing out its cry of loneliness.