David Sakmyster - The Pharos Objective

But he didn’t care.

His consciousness existed elsewhere. Caleb Crowe was gone. In his place emerged someone new. Someone focused, dedicated. And he saw things-some he wanted to see, and others he never asked for.

When he thought of Lydia, when he really thought of her-the scent of jasmine, the touch of her silken skin, the way the ankh had dangled on her chest-he saw a rush of images: the Great Pyramids lit up at night; a congregation of people in gray cloaks, mumbling to themselves about keys and doorways, about lost secrets and betrayal; a massive, fanciful construction project along a familiar shoreline-an upward-sloping structure that looked like a sheared-off dome with thousands of windows and dedications from every modern language on its walls, with hundreds of workmen, cranes and hoists assailing it from all angles. In the distance, a dozen men and women in dark gray suits stood atop a ridge, watching in silent appreciation.

One of those figures, a blond-haired woman, turned away from the others. Her face was hidden in shadow, the sun burning at her back. But it seemed she looked in Caleb’s direction, and she gave a secret, almost unnoticed nod of her head.

He saw Phoebe next, seated alone in a specially designed chair, peering into a microscope in a dimly lit lab. She wrote with her left hand and moved an ancient fragment delicately with her right.

Then he saw his mother standing outside the family’s lighthouse, looking out over Sodus Bay. She held an apple in both hands and rolled it gently back and forth as if willing from its skin memories that were long lost, but definitely not forgotten. Down the hill, the rusted lightship had received a facelift. People were walking across a remodeled pier, snapping pictures of the old boat, but Helen paid them no heed. She glanced up once at the lighthouse beacon, and in her eyes flashed a distant recollection, as though she expected to see Caleb’s father waving back at her.

Then Caleb saw Waxman. Saw him again and again, like a recording slowed down on a VCR. Unbidden visions swirled around in a choppy soup, pictures of Waxman’s childhood, tormented dreams of his mother. She had inflicted her wrath on everything he did. Interfering in all aspects of his life, turning him into a loner. Waxman had studied all the time. He’d trained by himself, pulled away from friends, from strangers, from life.

Then Caleb saw him enter a familiar white building beside a winding river.

Overhead, an eagle soared, circling, then rising above the sparkling sun.

At the doorway, Waxman turned as if aware of someone’s snooping gaze. “ You’re asking the wrong questions,” he whispered, and Caleb snapped out of his vision, jerked awake, gasping for air. His mouth was a desiccated old prune, his limbs too weary to lift.

Two armed guards stood in the doorway. “You’re free to go,” one of them said, and handed Caleb his knapsack.

“Get a shower,” said the other, “and something to eat on your way out.”

Caleb didn’t know it at the time, but he should have figured it out. It was too easy. He’d had help. Probably a simple phone call had sprung his release.

He didn’t ask any questions. He just went with the flow and tide of Fate, accepting this sudden transition in his life and hoping that the long months of confinement had somehow prepared him for something meaningful.

So, after several weeks of recuperation, after cleaning up, after eating and nursing himself back to health, he prepared to leave Alexandria.

“Caleb, go home. ”

While he waited for the porter to get his single bag, he looked out the hotel window at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, nestled impressively between the beachfront and the mass of white hotels and offices. He held out his palm to block the glare from the sun glinting off the windows of the dome, and in the spots dancing his vision, he imagined the ancient structure after which it was patterned. And it filled him with hope.

A knock came at the door. Somehow, when Caleb opened it, he wasn’t surprised by who had come to find him.

A year ago, Caleb’s first inclination would have been to run. But now he stood firm, calm and settled. He focused on what was important. He saw Phoebe’s face light up, that big grin and her teeth biting her bottom lip. A touch of her handrest controls and her wheelchair shot forward, zipping around Helen and rolling right up to Caleb. She threw her arms around his waist.

“Missed you, big brother.”

Caleb held her, squeezed her with an emotional intensity that surprised him. “Do I have you guys to thank for my release?”

“George,” Phoebe said, nodding back to the threshold of the door. “He worked for months with the authorities, finally pulling enough strings.”

Waxman offered a weak smile. “You can thank me later.”

Phoebe squeezed Caleb’s arm. “By the way, where was my invite to my own brother’s wedding?”

“Sorry,” Caleb gulped. “It all happened so fast.”

“Even after my warning,” Phoebe said, shaking her head. “Was it her, the girl with the green eyes?”

Caleb nodded.

“I tried to tell you-”

“Shhh. Later, okay? Now’s not the time.”

She took his hand and looked at her brother with new eyes. “Come on, we have a lot to tell you. You’re going to be amazed.”

Caleb held his ground, and the wheels on her chair spun. “No, I don’t want to go with them.”

“Caleb,” Helen walked into the room. She was thin and pale, her hair cut short and dyed a California blond to cover her gray. Her eyes were lined with crow’s-feet, hooded but no less crystalline. The blue shook Caleb, and he felt an electric current spark when she touched his arm. “Jail! My poor boy. We were so worried. And they wouldn’t let me see you.”

“Hello, Mother.” He gave her a peck on the cheek. “Why are you here?”

“You shouldn’t have gone down there without us,” she scolded. Waxman sauntered over, his hands in the front pockets of his suit pants. He wore a black turtleneck under his navy blue jacket, and his hair seemed just as wild as Caleb remembered, only now flecked with gray. A lit cigarette was trapped like a worm dangling from his lips.

“Listen, I just want to go back to New York and sleep for a month.”

“You’ll want to hear this,” Waxman said.

Caleb stared at the gold band around his ring finger as he lifted his cigarette, then he looked blankly at Helen. “Speaking of not being invited to weddings…”

“Caleb,” Phoebe pinched his arm.

Waxman turned his head to watch a pair of hotel maids walk past in the hall. He put his arm around Helen’s shoulders. “I told you he hasn’t changed.”

Caleb slung his bag over his shoulder. “I’m going. Thanks for the jailbreak.”

“Caleb,”-Phoebe wheeled into his path-“we know where it is.”

“Where what is?”

Helen smiled. “Don’t be modest, Phoebe. Tell him how you found it.”

“Okay,” Phoebe said, beaming. “You were right, Caleb. We weren’t asking the right questions.”

“About what?”

“The scroll. Caesar’s scroll.”

“I saw it,” Phoebe said, “by refining the question. Remember when I said I kept having visions of a castle on a steep hill, and a prisoner in red robes being led up to it? Well, I decided to follow that lead. I remembered that those ancient scrolls were coveted by aristocrats in the nineteenth century, and it was considered fashionable to have one among your personal treasures, even if you could never read it.”

Caleb’s heart started to race. “Of course. But still, the possibility that just that one scroll, of all the thousands…”

Phoebe continued. “I decided to work from the assumption that it had been removed from the collection. I asked to be shown how Caesar’s scroll was taken from Herculaneum, and then I saw it.”