The other divers’ gear was still on the stairs, providing a convenient means of escape from the subterranean chambers. Caleb told Phoebe to practice breathing slowly through one of the mouthpieces while he fitted her with a suit, mask and vest.
They exited through the vent and ascended through the water gracefully, sharing one tank between them. Phoebe clung to Caleb’s neck and he held her with one arm while passing the regulator back and forth. He let more air into the vest at a grudgingly slow pace, careful to ascend very slowly.
They stared at each other through their masks. They looked down now and then at the distant entrance port, at the breakwater stones and the hundreds of limestone blocks, the fallen reminders of the once-great Pharos. Here and there they saw a marble statue, limbs broken off, eyes dreaming as colorful fish darted about.
They rose together through the water into the rays of sunlight. The light seemed to gather and then scatter the bubbles before their ascent. Two feet from the surface, Caleb slowed and waited, not wanting this glorious feeling to end. But then a wave came along and nudged them upward and they were through, their vests fully inflated, and bobbed at the surface. He had purposely swum around to the other side of the fort to the beach for an easier exit. He kicked and swam and let the tide pull them in. About fifty feet from the shore, he became concerned.
“Who are they?” Phoebe asked in his ear.
Six white jeeps had pulled up onto the beach. They were arranged in a semicircle. The rest of the beach was nearly empty, and those few people that remained were being told to move away by men in gray suits.
“CIA?” Phoebe whispered. “How-?”
“Not CIA,” Caleb answered, seeing more men and women emerge from the jeeps, a few of them with binoculars to their eyes.
“Then who?”
Caleb spit out a mouthful of water. He found his footing. A few more steps in the rocky sand and he could stand, wobbling, holding Phoebe in his tired arms.
Seventeen men and women stood patiently. Some with dark glasses, others shielding their eyes.
“I think,” Caleb said, “this is going to be a reunion.”
“After nearly five hundred years, we are joined again.” The man who spoke was in his late thirties, strong and imposing, with broad shoulders, blond hair, blue eyes and thick, tanned skin.
Caleb held Phoebe in two feet of water, feeling the surf caress his calves. He scanned the crowd of faces. “Keepers,” Caleb said, and bowed his head in greeting.
Someone made a motion and another man stepped through, wheeling an empty wheelchair. “We thought you might need this,” he said, “after we realized you weren’t coming out the way you went in.”
Caleb put Phoebe down and got her positioned in the chair. “Thanks, I was getting a little tired there.”
“Congratulations,” said the first man as the others crowded around. “Are we to assume, due to your apparent health, that you have succeeded?”
Caleb stared at him. “Maybe we gave up.”
The man shook his head. “After the first door is bypassed, I don’t believe giving up is an option. The trap would have sprung, as it did with your mother.”
“Then there’s no point denying it.”
“Good. Again, congratulations. You have succeeded where we have failed for more than fifteen centuries. But now we are together again. The Keepers are reunited.”
“What are you planning to do?” Phoebe asked, looking at all the excited faces. She eyed Caleb carefully, to see if he showed any sign of flight.
The Keeper smiled. “We would like to show you something. Assuming of course, that you wish to join us.”
“We’ll see,” Phoebe said, crossing her arms.
“The seal is still open?” the man asked. “From the instructions we were given, if you succeeded, there is no reset program. You have to manually close the doors to reset the traps.”
“We didn’t close the doors,” Caleb said. “Wouldn’t want to go through all those trials again when we go back for the books.”
“So you didn’t take any?”
Caleb shook his head, feeling the dryness in his throat and trying to calm his pounding heart, hoping they would believe him. “Didn’t think to bring any waterproof containers on this trip, plus there are so many scrolls down there.”
“Good. We will bring them up.” He nodded to a woman next to him, who turned and left, taking a dozen of the group. They stepped into four jeeps and drove off toward the causeway, where a large black truck was waiting.
Two jeeps remained, and Caleb only now noticed someone sitting in the passenger seat of the closest one. A shadowy figure, watching them.
The Keeper who had first spoken noticed Caleb’s attention. He stepped forward, into his line of sight. “I understand you were with my father when he died.”
Caleb lowered his eyes. “Your… father? Nolan Gregory? Yes I was with him. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” the Keeper said. “It was his time.” He reached out his hand. “You are my brother-in-law. My name is Robert Gregory.”
Caleb numbly shook his hand, still eyeing the figure in the car.
“In my family’s case,” Robert continued, “my father couldn’t decide between his two children, so he shared the secret with both of us.”
Caleb continued staring at the silhouette.
“She wants to see you,” Robert said. “But we needed to talk first, before your reaction might have spoiled things.”
“She?” A lump formed in Caleb’s throat. He couldn’t breathe.
The jeep’s door opened.
Phoebe gasped.
And Caleb’s breath fled in a rush as Lydia strode toward him.
She stopped and took her brother’s place as he stepped away. Her hands were folded before her waist. Her green eyes were radiant, her golden hair whipping about in the winds. Caleb smelled jasmine, strong, intoxicating.
“Caleb. I knew you would do it.” He reached out his hand and she took it, squeezing it tight. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“I know,” Caleb said. “I think I’ve always known, somehow. As much as I admired your sacrifice, I secretly hoped you had tricked me. In the darkness you dove into the pit, then scrambled out the vent shaft.”
“Where I had stashed an air tank and regulator the night before. You were stubborn, Caleb. You were trapped in a place that held you back.”
“But we could have worked at it. Why the rush, why not give me more time?”
She glanced back at Phoebe, then her eyes met Caleb’s again. “There was another reason. Someone else was going to come into your life, someone who would have sidetracked your true mission.”
“Who?”
Phoebe gasped, fingers to her lips. “My dream… where Lydia was suffocating you. I heard-”
“A baby?” he asked.
And Lydia, with her eyes welling with tears, nodded. “You have a son.”
Phoebe and Caleb sat in the back seat with Lydia as they drove to the new library. They had brought a change of clothes, thinking of everything. Phoebe wore a yellow and black sundress, and Caleb had put on khaki shorts, sandals and a white button-down polo.
As they navigated the crowded market streets, Phoebe and Caleb looked through the photo album Lydia had brought of the first years of young Alexander’s life. Caleb saw his son grow from a puny little cub to a brown-haired hellion covered with grape jelly and Saltine crackers. He seemed to love the beach and water and listening to Lydia read to him in his crib.
“He loves books,” Lydia said. “Like his father.”
“Then he’ll love where we’re going,” Phoebe said. “How long has the library been open?”
“Officially, for ten years,” Robert said. “Unofficially, in the subterranean levels, much longer. But it is still being stocked. All the works are backed up, digitized and stored in fireproof servers.”
“What about earthquakes?” Caleb asked.
“Reinforced concrete girders across the structure. And deep in the earth we built the lower levels inside an immense vault on a series of rafters and posts to resist quakes and shore erosion. The angle of the windows overlooking the top six floors limit the amount of sunlight entering the library, further aiding in the preservation of the books. And, as I said, everything’s duplicated and stored on servers at several locations across Egypt.”
“And what about-?”
“We have it covered,” Lydia said. “Armed guards, heavy security. Many benefactors, funding…”
“I’m sure they were equally confident about the previous library.”
“So pessimistic,” Lydia said, then glanced at Phoebe. “Was he like this as a child?”
“Worse.”
Caleb groaned. “I’m just trying to gauge how sturdy this place will be, if, as I assume, you’re going to use it to store what they’re bringing up from the Pharos.”
“We are,” she said. “That has been our purpose all along. Keepers have been on the board here at the new library, securing funding through UNESCO and ensuring that the construction exceeds specifications. We knew, very soon, someone would find the way in. We had stepped up our efforts to find the Renegade. And your father, with his thesis, made it easy for us.”
“Unfortunately,” said Robert, “the CIA got to him first. A bad streak of luck, that. A little unfair, with Waxman’s psychic help. They took your father away, and we were forced to wait. We had hoped, years ago, that maybe your mother had been given the Key, but instead we had to be patient.”
“And prod you along,” Lydia said.
“So it was all just for this?” Caleb asked her ruefully. He looked at his lap, reflecting, before he spoke again. “Any love in there?”
She stared back with a wounded look. “I hope you know better.”
“I don’t,” he said, but then he looked at the album again, at his little son nestled in her arms. “But maybe I’ll come to learn that, in time. If you’re willing.”
She reached back her left hand, where he saw her wedding ring, still glittering. “I am.”
In the library, they walked down a massive ramp as Caleb wheeled Phoebe along. He marveled at the architecture, the perfect columns, the lustrous balconies on each of the six floors; the great windowed dome, the tracks of lights crisscrossing overhead; the rich mahogany shelves, tables and chairs.
He felt a burning need to linger here for days, weeks, months. As he turned around in a great circle, his heart thundered and he couldn’t help but feel like Demetrius Phalereus stepping into his library for the first time, looking over the thousands of works from every subject on the planet.
Lydia gently took his arm and pulled him along, toward a waiting elevator. She used a special key to gain access to a floor below the other four sub-sea levels. After nearly a minute of silent descent, they stepped into a long tunnel made of all white marble. Caleb felt like they were deep in a secret military installation. At the end of the corridor, a set of gold-plated double doors opened at their approach. Inside, the room was set up much as the chamber under the Pharos, except larger, and with twenty desks and polished wood chairs. Empty alcoves everywhere, flat screen monitors, computers, scanners, and a bank of servers. A similar vaulted ceiling arched overhead with beautiful cosmic murals.
“Here it is,” Lydia announced. “We will keep the recovered texts here and invite certain scholars to have access to a portion at a time. A scroll here and there. And carefully, and only after great analysis, we will dole out the information as appropriate.”
“Dole it out to whom?” Phoebe asked, leaning forward in her chair and looking around the room.
Lydia sighed. “To those who seek it. I expect we’ll differ on this, but you must realize that such knowledge, with the power it brings, cannot just be made available to everyone, at once.”
“Why not?” Phoebe asked, cutting Caleb off. She pointed to the servers. “You have everything you need. Scan all the texts, post them on the Internet, and let the world have at them!”
Lydia laughed, and Robert, who had gone down the stairs to sit at a table beside an empty alcove, snickered. “You can’t be serious. No, we will decide when to release certain information. We’ll catalog the sources based on their inflammatory potential, and release the knowledge in small doses gradually, but surely releasing it all.”
“Over how long?” Caleb wondered.
Lydia shrugged. “We’ll see how the early releases are received. Decades certainly, maybe centuries.”
Caleb shook his head. “So we’ll just have to trust your judgment?”
“ Our judgment. Caleb, you’re one of us now. Again.”
He nodded, looking around. It was so tempting to have access to this, to everything coming along. The ancient treasure reunited with its library.
A cell phone rang, and everyone looked at Robert. “Hold on,” he said, digging out his phone. Caleb was amazed it worked down here, but apparently they had set up additional receivers and transmitters for wireless connectivity to the outside.
“Yes?” he said, “we are. What do you mean? Look again.” He frowned, gave Caleb a curious stare, and then glanced at Lydia. He hung up, stood and moved in close to her. “It’s not there,” he whispered.
Lydia’s shoulders sagged. She turned to Caleb. “The tablet isn’t there.”
He stared back at her impassively. “I didn’t think it would be.”
“What?”
“Didn’t the legends claim it was moved before Alexandria fell to the Muslims? Moved back to Giza? I’m thinking it’s under the Sphinx now.”
“But your vision of Manetho…”
“Maybe I wasn’t asking the right questions,” he said. “I wanted to be shown how the wisdom left the Temple of Isis, not where it ultimately wound up.”
Lydia continued staring at him, then looked to Phoebe, considering whether they were lying. Finally, she said, “We’ll keep looking. It has to be there.”
Caleb shrugged. “There were a lot of alcoves, it could have been hidden. Or maybe there’s a secret wall or something.”
She nodded. “We’ll find it, wherever it is. But for now, we have enough to work with.” She came over to Caleb, hesitated, then put her arms around his neck.
“Can I see my son?” he asked.
“My nephew!” Phoebe chimed in.
“Of course,” Lydia said. “He’s waiting upstairs.”