David Sakmyster - The Pharos Objective

She shot him a glance of surprise. “I don’t… I don’t think so.”

“You’re not already married, are you?”

She walked over, bent down and gave him a long, lingering kiss. “Yes, that’s it. I’m actually married to the prince of Monaco, and when his royal soldiers find out what you’ve done, your death will be unspeakably cruel.” She smiled and tousled his hair. “Of course I’m not married. You know I’ve been waiting for you.” Her eyes, like emerald pebbles, searched his face, his eyes, his tangled hair. “I don’t remember what I said last night, honey. But I do remember you saying something about consummating our marriage?”

He grinned and pulled her back onto the bed.

Inside St. Mark’s Cathedral they jostled in and out of crowds, shuffling from the gorgeous statues of one saint to another, from one sprawling mosaic to the next, only to find themselves standing before a wall-length image depicting, of all things, a lighthouse.

“Didn’t you know about this?” Lydia asked, and for a moment Caleb had the suspicion that she had directed him to this spot on purpose, maybe to get him thinking about the past again.

“I did, but I forgot. I remember something in my father’s research about one of the earliest surviving depictions of the Pharos being found here.” Caleb traced the tiny facets making up the image. “Not quite to scale, and smaller than I’ve seen, but that’s it.”

“Why is it here?” she asked.

“St. Mark was thought to be martyred in Alexandria. And later, in 829 AD, Christians made a daring raid into Alexandria, stole his body out from under the Arabs and buried him here, under the main altar. Along with his body may have come the legacy of the Pharos, and one of few surviving pictures of what it really looked like.”

Lydia raised her eyebrows. She poked Caleb in the side and hugged his arm. “Sorry for bringing it up, but I just thought… well, I had an idea about our next book.”

“No.” He looked her in the eyes, and his smile faded. “I’m not digging up those memories. I’m not going to-”

“-continue your father’s work?”

That was it. She had a knack for knowing how to hit him where it counted. He pulled her aside and they made their way through a tour group snapping pictures. They walked past somber statues of the saints and elaborate woodcarvings, up a flight of stairs and finally exited back at the piazza. The pigeons whirled and flitted around the crowds, the picture-takers, the musicians, the souvenir peddlers. The flapping of their wings seemed to create a breeze that stung at Caleb’s eyes.

“Sorry,” he said. “But, even despite my recent visions of Sostratus and the lighthouse… I’m just not ready for this discussion.”

“But we’re married,” Lydia said, smiling devilishly. “Good times and bad and all that. Don’t you want to keep your wife happy? I need a new project. And in case you didn’t read your contract, Doubleday needs another book out of you within two years.”

“Doubleday can wait,” he said, putting on a cheap pair of black sunglasses he had bought in Cairo. “They can wait forever if it means going back to my mother’s obsession.”

“It doesn’t have to involve her,” she said. “You have your own notes, we have all the research we need. We can go to Alexandria next week and start.”

Caleb kicked at a pigeon that came too close, missing by several feet. “Why the lighthouse, Lydia?”

“Because,” she said, barely above a whisper, “you’re dreaming about it. And not just that, I think it fits with our research. And I think you know this.”

“What do you mean?” His throat tightened up. His heart started pounding.

“You know…” she whispered. “You haven’t admitted it, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.”

His vision was getting blurry. Across the plaza, something tugged at his vision, the only clear image in the tide of activity. Beneath the Campanile clock tower, standing just at its base, was that man, the figure in green khakis with long hair over his face.

“Caleb?” A blurry Lydia tugged at his sleeve. She was still talking, trying to convince him of something. He heard her speaking about impregnable strongholds, great seals, and something else.

He blinked and wrenched his attention away from the figure, the first time he was ever able to do so, and stared at Lydia. “What did you say?”

“Aren’t you listening? I was talking about what you saw through Manetho’s eyes. The legendary writings of Thoth, said to contain the mysteries of creation, power over life and death, and knowledge of heaven and earth. Fragments of its message may have found their way into alchemy and the Arcanum, and formed the backbone of the Rosicrucian and Freemason movements.”

Caleb licked his lips, glanced back to the clock tower, but couldn’t find that enigmatic figure anymore.

“Caleb, honey…”

Blinking Lydia back into focus, he sighed and said, “The Emerald Tablet.”

“Along with the collection from Sais. Transported and hidden away-”

“-in the Alexandrian library. I already-”

“Didn’t you hear me before?” Lydia moved her face to within inches from his, her full lips lustrous in the sunlight, tempting. “I don’t think the tablet was brought to the library. I’m betting that to find it you have to look to the other architectural wonder of Alexandria.”

Caleb’s mouth opened, and suddenly, everything shifted. The world sparkled and everyone was surrounded by a floating nimbus, but only for a moment, then it was gone, like a flash of insight.

The seal, the great door, the traps. Could it be-?

“What do you think?” Lydia asked. “Worth writing about, at least? It’s a novel theory: the Pharos not only served as a beacon and an architectural wonder, it was a vault.”

Caleb looked at her as if she had just stepped out of a lamp and had offered him three wishes. How could I have not seen it before? The implications were staggering. Everything they had witnessed and perceived had to be viewed again under this chrysalis. “The treasure-”

“-isn’t what you thought.”

“It’s something even more valuable,” Caleb said, and in that instant, a flash from beyond ripped through his core, revealing…

… a dark convoy of camels, covered wagons, dozens of slaves lifting great bronze chests. The three dark pyramids dwindle at the horizon, black against the tapestry of night,…

“A caravan,” he told her, slipping back to the present, “heading away from Giza.” The bright sunlight streamed onto his face as Lydia touched it and brushed back his sweaty hair. He sat on the rim of a fountain, a bubbling, dribbling marble facade. The choking smell of fish and dirty water entered his nostrils. He blinked and saw them..

… carrying a secret cargo under cover of night, tracking the Nile, a man in black robes supervising the operation.

“Do you know what year it was?” asked Lydia.

The flow of the Nile, the passing of hills, trees and great stretches of desert. Then, through a marvelous gate into a sprawling city full of wondrous temples and obelisks, a stadium and so many people, the caravan takes back routes through the darkened alleys and emerges onto a stretch of streets and warehouses in a harbor. And there, across the water, a dark shape rises from an island. Half-assembled, it stands and waits for morning, for the hundreds to resume work on its construction.

“Had to be around 300 BC,” he said, still watching the images flashing through his mind. “The Pharos isn’t completed yet.”

“What else?” Lydia prodded. Her grip on his thigh was fierce.

Caleb shook his head, resisting the onslaught of the present, the pigeons, the tourists, the accordion and singers in the distance, the tolling of the great clock tower all pulling at his consciousness. “They led the caravan past the Palace District, past the Temple of the Muses. Across the Heptastadion, to the Pharos.” He held his head in his hands and took great gulps of air. Another flash and he saw that figure again, the leader of the caravan, dressed in black robes and a deep hooded cloak…