The Pharos Objective mi-1

by David Sakmyster

  Lights spring on, and a great war room is illuminated. Dozens of screens and monitors line three walls. The fourth wall is occupied by file cabinets. There is a map in the center of the long table, with a red dot over northern Egypt.

  Waxman slumps into a chair and lowers his head. “Shut up, mother,” he hisses. “I’ll still win. I’ll find it.”

  Then he begins to sob, of all things. He pounds the table. Again and again. And with each slam of his hand, Caleb’s vision crumbles, tiny pieces falling away like leaves from a great branch, swirling around before his eyes, until…

  It was gone. Caleb was sitting in front of Phoebe.

  They opened their eyes at the same time. “Caleb…” she whispered.

  How could he have not realized it before now? That letterhead in Waxman’s case, the images in those dreams of his father. Remote viewing. Together they had received the sights they’d needed, and found the answers they’d sought. Caleb had drawn so many pictures of this same emblem, never putting it all together.

  But it added up now. Waxman’s ability to hack Phoebe’s computer. His connections with local governments. The money to bribe officials. But what did it mean? Why has he been using us? Why?

  They continued to stare at each other until Phoebe said what they were both thinking. “We never asked the right questions.”

  Then they both whispered it at once, as if fearing that to voice it any louder would give it power.

  “CIA.”

  BOOK THREE

  THE KEEPERS

  For the malice of Ignorance surroundeth all the Earth, and corrupteth the Soul, shut up in the Body, not suffering it to arrive at the Havens of Salvation.

  — Book of Pymander

  1

  Sodus Bay — December 15

  In the four weeks following the revelation about Waxman, Caleb and Phoebe had very little time to think about what it all meant. Every minute was spent caring for their mother and arranging plans to get her safely back home. Working out the finances, transferring money, setting up home care.

  While still in Alexandria, they slept in shifts in Helen’s room at first, until Caleb finally convinced Phoebe to get a room at a nearby hotel. She was exhausted, weaker than he’d ever seen her. Every day she seemed on the verge of a total collapse.

  “I know what you’re feeling,” Caleb told her at last, after he recognized the look in her eyes. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “What do you mean?” They were at their usual table in the hospital cafe, subsisting on a diet of lamb gyros and falafel. Relatives of patients came in and out, some glassy-eyed after being up all night crying.

  “Believe me,” Caleb said. “I felt the same after… after that tomb took your legs.”

  “Let’s be clear about something,” Phoebe whispered through her teeth. “That tomb didn’t do anything but serve its function. Waxman was the one who did this to me. And he’s done it again, this time to Mom.”

  She was right. It was Waxman.

  “I want him to suffer,” she said, and stared down at her plate, her food untouched.

  “I think he does suffer,” Caleb said. “But I know what you mean. The question is, what do we do about him?”

  “CIA,” Phoebe said, her eyes darting around suspiciously, as if she were suddenly convinced they were being surveilled. For all they knew, they probably were. It was something Waxman would have done. She picked at her cucumber salad. “What did Dad have to do with them?”

  “I don’t know that he had anything to do with them.”

  “But the symbol-the eagle and the sun-you saw it all the time when you viewed Dad at that Iraqi prison.” She took a breath and continued. “And I saw the same thing, plus that other sign, the star surrounded by a fence.”

  Caleb had been thinking the same thoughts, but for days now. “I saw something in that room Waxman went into at CIA headquarters.”

  Phoebe stared at him. “What?”

  “A name,” he said. “Stargate.”

  “Like the movie?”

  “No, like the project.” He leaned in close. “After the Freedom of Information Act opened up a lot of government files, some early CIA projects were declassified.”

  “And one of them was called Stargate?”

  Caleb nodded. “In the early seventies the CIA began experimenting with parapsychology, after the Russians tried something similar. You know the military; they can’t let the other guy get the leg up, especially in the Cold War.” He took a sip of Coke. “I only know about it because of Lydia. She mentioned it once.” Caleb paused. “As if she knew…”

  “What?”

  He almost choked on the fizzing liquid. “I wonder if she did know.”

  “About Waxman?”

  “Think about it. Why does he want the treasure so much? Could he be a Keeper? A descendent of the one that split from the others? And was Lydia trying to warn me?”

  “Or were they both using you?” Phoebe sighed, and they sat in silence.

  “So what about this Stargate thing?” she took up again. “And why was I seeing visions of it? Crude visions, but then again, I was just a kid. Maybe that was all I could understand.”

  “Or maybe you were meant to understand it later, when you were older.” And for an instant he had it: someone wanted them both to know. Wanted them to know what the truth was, even though they would be suffering in confusion for years. Caleb was close to figuring it out, but still there were too many jumbled pieces of the puzzle rattling around in his mind.

  He thought aloud: “Stargate attempted to use psychics the same way we use satellite imagery now. Remote viewing. The CIA gave the subjects certain targets-a Russian nuclear plant, Castro’s palace, a downed US airplane-and then the psychics drew what they could see. They worked with maps and landmarks, and in some cases, the results seemed accurate.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Apparently, the hits were not specific or conclusive enough. Or the government just didn’t want to be seen as kooky. In any case, the funding was cut after the Cold War ended, and the program disbanded.”

  “Or it was just buried?” Phoebe asked.

  “Waxman had something to do with it, and he still does. He took the program offline, continued it secretly.”

  “He seems to still have the financial backing and the political connections.”

  “But why the Pharos?”

  Phoebe shook her head. “Again, it comes back to the Keepers. Could he be the Renegade?”

  “I don’t know,” Caleb said. “I can’t believe he’s one of them. It doesn’t feel right. It seems more personal with him.”

  Phoebe adjusted the handles of her chair and polished a spot so her reflection squinted back at her. “Let’s be careful. We know what the Pharos does to obsessions, and we know Waxman. He’ll try again.”

  Caleb met his sister’s eyes.

  “He’ll be back for us.”

  That night they moved her. In a special care unit, Helen flew back to New York City, then to Rochester. An ambulance was waiting to take her to Sodus, where a hospital-appointed nurse named Elsa met them at the door. They got Helen situated in her bed, hooked up the fluids and monitoring equipment and set up a refrigerator to stock her IVs. They filled a drawer with sheets, washcloths and linen. Finally, Caleb took Phoebe to her room, where he helped her out of her chair and onto the bed. She collapsed, letting out a huge sigh.

  “At least Mom’s home.”

  Caleb didn’t want to complete the thought… so she could now die with dignity, surrounded by the familiar elements of her life.

  “I don’t want to give up,” Phoebe said, as if reading Caleb’s mind.

  “I know.”

  “There’s a chance, you know.”

  “Of course,” he said. “The doctors even said it happens. These kinds of comas are not the most severe. She can still move, and might talk, even though what she says might not make sense.”

  “No, I mean there’s a chance we can cure h
er.”

  Caleb stared at her. He knew what she meant. “The books. The treasure.”

  “Didn’t you write about all the medical marvels that were catalogued in those days? The scientific advances that we’re only beginning to rediscover?”

  He nodded. “There were rumors of alternative medical practices and healing techniques that united body and mind to facilitate recovery.”

  Phoebe rolled to her side, closing her eyes. “Like I said, there’s a chance.” She sighed. “Sorry, big brother. I need to sleep. It’s been a long day.”

  “A long month,” he replied, taking a blanket and smoothing it over her body. “Sweet dreams.”

  “Be careful,” she whispered.

  “What?” Caleb asked, but she was asleep. He backed out of the room, turned off the light, and tiptoed past Helen’s room, where he peeked in on her. Elsa sat in a chair beside the bed, nodding off while holding a copy of Time Magazine.

  Back in the kitchen, Caleb sat alone at the empty table. His vision started to blur, and he felt a tingle of energy move up his spine, circling around and around like a snake, rising to the base of his skull.

  He gasped and let the feeling run its course, knowing what was coming. The kitchen lost focus. Water took the place of the floor..

  … and great heaving waves undulate where the cabinets used to be. The table has changed to a wooden railing. He hears the call of gulls following overhead, and when he looks, a great white sail bisected with a crimson stripe blocks out the churning clouds and darkening skies.

  “Father,” comes a voice at his side, and he glances down to see a boy, no more than ten, huddled in a blanket as if he just woke up and stumbled out from the quarters below. “When will we land again?”

  “Not soon. It is not yet safe.”

  “Will it ever be safe?” The boy’s face falls, but his eyes shimmer. A lone gull screeches overhead, and a raindrop falls on his cheek as the boat rolls from side to side.

  “We will take on supplies in a month. But then it is back to sea.”

  The child frowns. “We must keep moving?”

  “We must.”

  “Why?”

  “You will know. In time.”

  “Will it be soon?”

  “Perhaps.” He feels such pain in his heart when he looks at his son, and he’s only too aware of the wheezing in his lungs. He does not have much time. He curses the intervening years since he left Alexandria. He curses time and fate. But still, he accepts that this is the will of the One. It is true he waited too long to father an heir. But now it is done, and the boy is almost ready.

  His son looks out to sea again. He stares at the formless gray horizon where a distant rainstorm connects the sea to the sky, the above to the below. It draws on his imagination.

  It is a good sign.

  He is almost ready.

  Something jarred Caleb into the present, and the railing was replaced by the wooden edge of the kitchen table. The cold room took focus again. A hundred small, bright objects were swirling about the kitchen, dancing and fluttering, and at first Caleb thought someone had let in a horde of moths that were swarming about, searching for heat and light.

  Then he saw that they were snowflakes. And he saw the open door. Two men in black coats were standing on either side of the table. Through the open door Caleb saw a black limousine waiting in the driveway.

  “Mr. Crowe,” said one of the men, “Mr. Waxman is waiting for you to join him.”

  Caleb stood up, as if rising from a dream and stepping toward the next chapter in a book he’d written long ago. He knew all the characters, understood the plot and accepted his role.

  Caleb smiled. “Let’s not keep him waiting.”

  The half-hour drive to the small airstrip outside of Oswego proceeded in silence. Seeing that Waxman, who sat across from him in the dark, was fit only to stare and to wait, Caleb closed his eyes and pretended to sleep. At the airport, they boarded a black helicopter, and mercifully the background noise was too great to allow for conversation. Caleb avoided eye contact with Waxman and used the time to meditate, to think on the past, to think about his father and what he might have been trying to tell him in all those childhood visions.

  And he thought about the eighth sign. The final key.

  He thought of Sostratus and Demetrius, of Alexander, Caesar and Marc Antony. Theodosius and Ptolemy, Hypatia, King Michael and Qaitbey. A hundred names and images drifted in and out of his mind’s eye and brought a smile to his face, as if familiar friends were dropping by. He felt the tug of the other world several times, felt the ripple in the veil, but left it alone. Now was not the time. He breathed deeply and calmly, preserving his focus, waiting and saving his strength.

  They landed at Rochester International Airport, and then boarded a private jet to Langley. Again, at first they didn’t speak a single word to each other, sitting in chairs facing one another. Caleb merely smiled at him and stared at a point over his shoulder. Finally, Waxman broke. “How’s my wife?”

  “My mother is resting comfortably.”

  “That’s good.”

  Caleb nodded.

  Waxman tapped his fingers together. “Do you know where we’re going?”

  Caleb nodded again.

  “How long have you known?”

  Caleb shrugged. “Not long enough. I never trusted you, but I never asked-”

  “-the right questions. I know.” Waxman chuckled to himself smugly. “Don’t worry, for what it’s worth, you’re still the best psychic I’ve ever come across. And I’ve seen a lot of them.”

  The plane tilted slightly and Caleb’s stomach compensated. The plane had just cleared a mass of churning clouds and emerged into the stark, cool blue of the heavens, with slanting rays of sunlight dazzling off the wing.

  Caleb smiled. “Was Stargate yours?”

  Waxman reached for a glass of scotch and ice, looked down, then back up and composed himself again. “It was. It is.”

  “I see.” Caleb folded his arms. “Then rumors of its demise were exaggerated?”

  “Stargate was far too important to close. And the fools in the Senate didn’t know what they had. They only wanted to cover their re-election chances. They couldn’t fund this kind of research openly, so we had to go underground. You understand.”

  “Of course.” Caleb watched him carefully. He saw the way he stole furtive glances, trying to size Caleb up.

  I’ve surprised him twice today.

  Waxman was probably hoping Caleb didn’t know anything else, but he wasn’t sure. Maybe Caleb had probed deeper into his past. What else had he intruded upon?

  “Stargate continues,” Waxman said, “with a smaller scope, a limited budget, and much less interference. They only ask for one summary report a year on my progress, which I purposely keep vague and conflicting so as not to attract any undue attention.” He drained his glass. “You and I both know the phenomenon is real, and we know what it’s capable of. I have bigger concerns than proving its validity to anyone.”

  “Bigger even than national security?” Caleb gave a little chuckle. “You could have been using us to see into North Korea or Iran, to find bin Laden or predict the next terrorist bombings.”

  “True, but I actually find such distractions useful. Again, political attention is directed elsewhere while I address the true security issues of our world. There is so much more at stake, and I am the one who will preserve us.”

  “Really? You’re to be our savior?”

  He glared at Caleb. “Imagine if the contents of that vault fell into the wrong hands. Men are basically evil, Caleb. You know this. Your precious alchemy books say as much. Why do you think the old high priests kept the sacred texts away from the masses? Why did they write in hieroglyphics that could only be read by the most educated and privileged? Knowledge must be guarded. Why, later on, was it punishable by death to even own a copy of the Bible?”

  “Priests wanted to consolidate their power. Knowledge is power.”
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  “Yes, but knowledge is also dangerous. Didn’t Pope Gregory the Great say ‘ignorance is the mother of devotion’?” Waxman shook his glass around and the ice chinked as it melted. He had returned the favor and was now surprising Caleb. “Tell me something. If you found your way into that vault, and the treasure was everything you believe it to be-the power of life and death, the power of creation, the power for men to become gods-what would you do with it?”

  His eyes locked on Caleb’s, and for the first time in his presence, Caleb felt like a little boy again, afraid to speak. The truth was, he didn’t know what he would do.

  Waxman grinned. “I’ll tell you what the Keepers would do. What your lovely Lydia and her father would have done. They were going to keep the books for themselves. Create a new order of the elite. They were going to rule. Talk about the corruption of absolute power…”

  So Waxman wasn’t one of them.

  “And you?” Caleb asked. “What will you do with it?”

  Waxman smiled and sat back, stretching out his feet. “The only thing that’s appropriate. The only way to protect the balance of life on this planet. The only way to ensure peace and security.” His eyes blazed. “The only way to protect the billions of souls from undergoing the hell you and I experience every day.”

  And then Caleb understood.

  Waxman made two fists, and his glass shattered. “Those books open the gates of hell, Caleb. Just a glimpse, thousands of years ago, partially restored the connection between spirit and material, between life and death-”