David Sakmyster - The Mongol Objective

“Copycat,” Orlando said with a smirk.

Renee looked over from the other side of the table. “So, is this what it’s like?”

“More or less,” said Orlando. “Though usually we have a few more people here, and we can cross-reference details and see what elements get the most hits.”

Renee turned her pad around. “See, I don’t have any talent. I drew some kind of horse and buggy thing.” On her pad was a crude sketch of two horses pulling a cart with two people inside. “Guess my mind was just wandering, but that’s all I saw.”

“Interesting,” Phoebe noted. “You drew crowns on their heads.”

“I knew it.”

Phoebe looked up. Her brother’s eyes were open, with failure written over his face. But he managed a smile as he looked over Renee’s drawing. “She does have some talent.”

Renee stood up, backing away, still looking at her horses. “What are you talking about? I-”

Suddenly her cell phone rang. “Hang on, just a second.”

She put her ear to the iPhone. “Yeah, what do you got? Okay, I see. Hang on, I’ll call you back, we may have something here that can confirm that.”

She hung up. “NSA traced a coded satellite phone call from Antarctica shortly after the explosion at Fort Erickson. They couldn’t get much after decoding the call, but they confirmed a man’s voice-that of your very own Xavier Montross.”

“Did they get anything else?” Phoebe asked.

“Only a name. He was telling someone where to meet.” Renee looked at them steadily. “‘St. Peter’s’ was all they got.”

Caleb thought for a moment, nodding to himself. Then he pointed to Orlando. “We could do an online photo search match in various databases, comparing those drawings with other pictures, but it would take far too long. Adding the detail of the ‘horse and cart’ would help, but again, we don’t have the time. Orlando, just go to good old Wikipedia.”

“Cop-out,” Orlando said as he opened the tablet and used the keyboard.

“Look up ‘Mausoleum.’”

“Where is this going?” Renee asked, her face showing complete confusion.

Phoebe chuckled, shaking her head. “Don’t worry, you get used to Caleb’s roundabout way of getting us all to confirm what he already knows.” She moved back, then whispered to Caleb, “What’s wrong? Didn’t you get anything?”

Keeping his voice low, he said, “I couldn’t even bring about the start of anything. Something’s wrong.” His eyes were bloodshot, his face pale. Lowering his voice still further, he added, “I tried to see Xavier, went at it a couple different ways, with different questions, all focused. I should have seen something, but not a damn thing came up. Just a flickering green haze around a center of darkness.”

Phoebe frowned. “Do you think you’re being blocked? Maybe by the tablet?”

“Maybe, but I fear it’s something worse.”

“What’s worse?”

“Remember when we were kids? Remember Dad? What happened after he was gone, after I thought maybe it was my fault we couldn’t save him?”

“Yeah,” Phoebe said. “Your visions, they didn’t come again for years.”

Caleb sighed. “I need to try again. With a different target, something besides Xavier. Something I should be able to see. If I can’t,”-he met her stare, and she nearly cried seeing the loss, the guilt, so familiar, bubbling inside of his expression-“if I still can’t, then it’s her. It’s Lydia. I killed her, and this is my penance.”

“No, Caleb.”

Orlando cleared his throat, interrupting and bringing them back to the moment. “Ah, this is what he’s talking about.” He turned the screen so the others could all crowd around and see it. “ Mausoleum. The word derives from the tomb of King Mausolus, the Persian satrap of Caria, whose large tomb, completed in 350 BCE, was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. And there’s a picture.”

Renee bent forward to stare at it. “It’s almost the same as what you’ve both drawn.”

They looked at the photo Orlando just enlarged: a huge structure set on a hill overlooking a bayside city, with it had a pyramidal step structure on top of a larger base and two more tiers surrounded by immense white columns and statues.

“And,” said Caleb, “check out the roof.”

“A chariot,” Renee whispered. “Four horses. Two people inside, wearing crowns.”

“Mausolus and his queen, Artemesia,” Caleb said. “He died early into his reign. And Artemesia, so in love and desperate to immortalize her husband, spared no expense for his tomb, bringing in the greatest architects and sculptors in all the world. It was a tourist attraction for centuries, but unfortunately, by the twelfth century, the tomb was destroyed, like the Pharos, in a series of earthquakes.”

“Wonderfully tragic,” said Phoebe. “So we’ve all drawn a tomb that no longer exists. Why? What does this have to do with some castle in Rome?”

“It’s not in Italy,” Caleb answered.

“Turkey,” Orlando said, cutting him off, scrolling down the text. “Come on, let me do something useful here. It says here nothing’s left of it except the foundation, in the town of Bodrum, Turkey, but-”

“-but there’s a castle nearby,” said Caleb, letting a smile form. “Built by the Knights Hospitaller in the fifteenth century.”

“Construction started during the Crusades in 1402,” Orlando clarified. “Knights from four different countries helped build this castle, using many of the blocks and pillars from our friend Mausolus’s tomb. It wasn’t finished until around 1480. And they called it the Petroneum.” He looked up, eyes shining. “Or the Castle of St. Peter.”

Caleb steeled his jaw, closed his eyes, and felt a tingle-a familiar stirring at the base of his spine, one that would often shoot upwards, triggering a flood of visions. But this time, it fizzled, leaving greenish sunspots in the corner of his eyes. He had to focus, had to keep trying, but not now. Now, he would have to rely on his sister and Orlando, and on the skills of the FBI. They had to find Alexander.

“That,” he said, pointing to the castle on the screen, “is where he’s taken my son.”

Bodrum, Turkey, 11 PM

Alexander woke to a feeling of his ears popping. He sat up in his tiny bunk, the sole cot in a room no bigger than the old downstairs bathroom in his house. The dream had returned, smashing at the inside of his skull like a nightmare trying to get out. The smell of burnt hair and flesh, sulfur and death. Mom… He leapt out of bed, wobbled unsteadily on his feet, then went for the door.

Locked.

After a moment, he remembered the submarine. Being herded down the tight stairwell, his battered Nikes thumping along behind the shoes and boots of the other men ushering Xavier Montross down into the sub’s metal belly. Two men had locked him in this room, after first giving him “something.” Alexander didn’t even consider that they might have drugged the glass of water they left for him, but within ten minutes of submerging, feeling queasy enough from the descent, he fell onto the cot and was fast asleep.

It felt like the craft was surfacing. He wished he had a porthole window, or access to the periscope, to see where he was. He got up, fought a dizzy spell, then tried the door. Still locked.

Again he thought of the Incredibles. If only he could be like Dash.

Just as he was thinking about creating a diversion to get the door open, like setting something on fire and tripping the alarms, then running out in a blaze of speed, something clicked and the door pulled outward.

A pretty, dark-skinned woman in a black suit stood there. She crossed her arms. Looked him up and down. “I guess you look like your father. Come on.” She moved aside and motioned him out. “I’ve been sent to collect you.”