Once, late at night, she had seen West staring at those words, tapping his pencil against his teeth, lost in thought.
Whenever West worked in his study, his falcon always sat loyally on his shoulder—alerting him with a squawk when anyone approached.
Lily was intrigued by Horus.
She was an absolutely stunning bird, proud in her bearing and laserlike in her intensity. She didn't play with Lily—despite Lily's continued efforts to coax her.
Bouncing balls, fake mice, nothing Lily used could draw the falcon out into play. No, whatever silly thing Lily did to get her attention, Horus would just stare back at her with total disdain.
Horus, it seemed, cared for only one person.
Jack West.
This was a fact Lily would confirm through experimentation. One day, when once again Horus would not be drawn from West's shoulder, Lily threw her rubber mouse at West.
The falcon moved with striking speed.
She intercepted the tossed mouse easily—in mid-air halfway between Lily and West—her talons clutching the toy rodent in twin vice-like grips.
Dead mouse.
Lesson learned.
But research was not the only thing West did.
It didn't escape Lily's notice that while she was busy studying in her classroom, Huntsman would often disappear into the old abandoned mine in the hills beyond the western paddock, not far from the aeroplane hangar. Strangely, he would wear an odd uniform: a fireman's helmet and his canvas jacket. And Horus always went with him.
Lily was strictly forbidden from going into those caves.
Apparently, Wizard had built a series of traps in the mine
tunnels—traps based on those in the ancient books that he and West studied—and Huntsman would go in there to test himself against the traps.
Lily found Jack West Jr to be a bit of a mystery.
And she wondered at times, as children do, if he even liked her at all.
But one thing Lily didn't know was just how closely she herself was being observed.
Her progress with languages was being carefully monitored.
'She continues to excel,' Wizard reported, just after she turned nine. 'Her transliteration skills are like nothing I have ever seen. And she doesn't even know how good she is. She plays with languages the way Serena Williams plays with spin on a tennis ball—she can do things with it, twist it this way and that, in ways you or I can't even begin to imagine.'
Big Ears reported, 'She's physically fit, good endurance. If it ever becomes necessary, she can run six miles without breaking a sweat.'
'And she knows every inch of my study,' West said. 'She sneaks in there once a week.'
Zoe said, 'I know it isn't mission-related, but she's actually becoming quite good at something else: ballet. Watches it on cable. Now I know lots of little girls dream of becoming prima ballerinas, but Lily is actually very good at it, especially considering she's self-taught. She can hold a toe-pose unaided for close to twenty seconds—which is exceptional. The kid just loves ballet, can't get enough of it. It's a girl thing. Think you can get some ballet DVDs the next time you go to Nairobi, Wizard?'
'Certainly.'
'Ballet, you say . . .' West said.
It came as a surprise to Lily when she arrived at breakfast one day—again ignoring the sheet on the fridge—and found West
waiting for her in the kitchen, alone, dressed and ready to go somewhere.
'Hey, kiddo. Want to go out for a surprise?'
'Sure.'
The surprise was a private plane trip to Cape Town and a visit to a performance of The Nutcracker Suite by the South African
Royal Ballet.
Lily sat through the entire performance with her mouth agape, her eyes wide with wonder, entranced.
West just looked at her the whole time—and maybe once, just once, he even smiled.
In 2001, she saw the first Lord of the Rings movie. That Christmas, Sky Monster, proud of the New Zealand-born team behind the film, gave her the three books by Tolkien and read them with her. By the time the third film had come and gone in 2003, Lily and Sky Monster had re-read the books to within an inch of their
lives.
And from those readings of The Lord of the Rings, Lily got her
own callsign.
Sky Monster bestowed it on her, naming her after her favourite
character in the epic.
Eowyn.
The feisty shieldmaiden from Rohan who kills the Witch-King of Angmar, the Ringwraith whom no man can kill.
Lily loved her callsign.
And still, every day, she would enter the kitchen and get her juice— and see the sheet of paper with the strange writing on it stuck to the fridge door.
Then one morning, a few days before her tenth birthday, she looked at the uppermost box on it and said, 'Huh. I get it now. I know what that says.'
Everyone in the kitchen at the time—Doris, Wizard, Zoe and Pooh Bear—whirled around instantly.
'What does it say, Lily?' Wizard said, gulping, trying not to show his excitement.
'It's a funny language, uses letters and pictures to create sounds. It says,
Colossus.
Two entrances, one plain, one not,
Carved by the fifth Great Architect,
Out of Great Soter's tenth mine.
The easier route lies below the old mouth. Yet
In the Nubian swamp to the south of Soter's mine,
Among Sobek's minions,
Find the four symbols of the Lower Kingdom.
Therein lies the portal to the harder route.'
The next day, the entire team left Victoria Station on board the Halicarnassus, bound for the Sudan.
That same day the Sun rotated on its axis and the small sunspot that the Egyptians called Ra's Prophet appeared on its surface. In seven days, on March 20, the Tartarus Rotation would occur.
THE PHAROS
As a Wonder of the World, the Lighthouse at Alexandria has always been, terribly unfairly, the perennial runner-up.
It is second in height to the Great Pyramid at Giza—by a mere 29 metres.
It stood, intact and functioning, for 1,600 years, until it was hit by a pair of devastating earthquakes in 1300 AD. Only the Great Pyramid survived for longer.
But ultimately it would defeat the Pyramid on one important count: it was useful.
And because it survived for so long, we have many descriptions of it: Greek, Roman, Islamic.
By today's standards, it was a skyscraper.
Built on three colossal levels, it stood 117 metres high, the equivalent of a 40-storey building.
The first level was square—broad, solid and powerful. The foundation level.
The second level was octagonal and hollow.
The third and uppermost level was cylindrical and also hollow— to allow for the raising of fuel to the peak.
At the summit of the tower stood its crowning glory, Sostratus's masterpiece: the mirror.
Ten feet high and shaped like a modern satellite dish, the mirror was mounted on a sturdy base and could rotate 360 degrees. Its
concave bronze shape reflected the rays of the Sun to warn approaching ships of the dangerous shoals and submerged rocks just off Alexandria.
By night, a huge bonfire was lit in front of the mirror, allowing the great lighthouse to send its beam twenty kilometres out into the
darkened sea.
Interestingly, like the Colossus of Rhodes a few years later, it was built at the request of Ptolemy I of Egypt—Alexander the Great's close friend and general.
AIRSPACE OVER AFRICA
15 MARCH, 2006, 0200 HOURS
5 DAYS BEFORE THE ARRIVAL OF TARTARUS
The Halicarnassus roared toward Kenya.
The huge black 747, with its bristling array of missiles and gun turrets, cut a mean figure in the sky. It looked like a gigantic bird of prey—death on wings.
Inside it, West's multinational team was still r
ecovering from their disastrous mission in the Sudan.
In the main cabin of the jumbo, West, Wizard, Lily and Pooh Bear all sat in contemplative silence. The cabin was fitted with couches, some tables, and wall-consoles for radio and communications gear.
Wizard stood. 'I'd better call the Spanish Army attache. Tell them about Noddy . . .'
He went to a nearby wall-console, grabbed the secure sat-phone there, started dialling.
West just stared into space, replaying in his mind everything that had gone wrong in the Sudan.
Lily sat with Pooh Bear, gazing at the team's original copy of the Callimachus Text.
As for the others, Fuzzy and Big Ears were in the infirmary in the rear of the plane, being treated by Zoe; and Sky Monster was up in the cockpit, flying the plane, with Stretch keeping him company.
In the main cabin, Lily scanned another entry of the Callimachus Text. The symbols on the page were ancient, alien.
Then suddenly she squealed, 'Hey!'
West snapped up. Wizard also spun.
'This entry here. I couldn't understand it before, but for some reason, I can now. It's more complex than the last one. Uses new symbols. But I can read it now.'
'What's it say?' West leapt to her side.
Lily read it aloud:
'The Pharos.
Look for the base that was once the peak of the Great Tower
In the deepest crypt of Iskender's Highest Temple,
Soter's illustrious House to the Muses,
Among the works of Eratosthenes the measurer, Hipparchus the
stargazer,
And Archimedes and Heron the machine makers, There you will find it EUCLID'S INSTRUCTIONS Surrounded by Death.'
Lily frowned. 'The word "it" has been crossed out and replaced with "Euclid's instructions". I don't know what they are.'
'I do,' Wizard said, reaching for a high-tech stainless-steel trunk behind him. It opened with a vacuum-sealed hiss. The trunk was fitted with many pigeonholes, each pigeonhole containing an ancient scroll. Wizard's collection was huge—there were at least 200 tightly rolled scrolls.
'Now where is that index? Ah, here it is.' Wizard pulled a computer printout from a sleeve in the trunk's lid. On it was a very long typewritten list. 'Now, Euclid's Instructions . . . Euclid's Instructions. I'm sure I saw that title once before. Ah, good, there we are. Just a moment.'
Wizard proceeded to rummage through his scrolls. As he did so, West typed out Lily's translation of the Text.
Stretch entered the main cabin, noticed the activity immediately.
'What's going on?'
'We may have had a development,' West said. He read one line
from the translation. '"Soter's illustrious House to the Muses". A House to the Muses is a "museion" or "museum". Soter was Ptolemy I. Soter's House to the Muses is the Library at Alexandria, otherwise known as the Museion.'
'So,' Pooh Bear said, 'in the deepest crypt of the Alexandria Library, among those works mentioned, we'll find "the base that was once the peak of the Lighthouse", whatever that is. I thought the Library was destroyed in antiquity.'
'It was,' Zoe said, coming into the main cabin. 'By the Romans in 48 BC. The Biblioteca Alexandrina was the centre of all learning in the ancient world, possessed of over 700,000 scrolls and the writings of some of the greatest thinkers in human history, and the Romans razed it to the ground.'
She saw West's translation. 'God. Look at those names. It's like a Who's Who of history's greatest minds. Eratosthenes: he calculated the circumference of the Earth. Hipparchus mapped the constellations. Archimedes figured out volume and was a prolific inventor. And Heron. Well. Heron invented geared cogwheels and a primitive steam engine 2,000 years before James Watt was even born.'
Pooh Bear asked, 'And now?'
Zoe sighed. 'The Library is gone. Long since buried underneath modern-day Alexandria. They know where it stood—and the Egyptian Government recently built a new library not far from the old site—but the Romans did their work well. Just as they had done with Carthage a hundred years previously, the Library was removed from existence. Not a single brick, text or crypt remains.'
'So all its scrolls were destroyed, then?'
'Many were, but a large portion of them was spirited away from the Library in the days before the Roman invasion. The scrolls were reputedly taken to a secret location, deep in the Atlas Mountains— and to date, have never been officially found.'
When Zoe said this last sentence, she threw West and Wizard a sideways look.
'Not everyone announces it to the world when they find something important,' West said.
'What—?' Pooh Bear said, whirling to face the scrolls Wizard was rummaging through. 'Are you telling me that those scrolls
are—'
'Ah-ha! Here it is!' Wizard exclaimed.
He extracted an ancient scroll from a pigeonhole. It was beautifully made, with ornate rollers at each end and thick cream-coloured parchment.
Wizard unrolled it, read it.
'Hmmm. Greek text. Handwriting matches that of other known Euclidian texts. One of the greatest mathematicians in history, Euclid. He created plane geometry, you know, a grid with an x and y axis, which we now call Euclidian Geometry. This scroll is undoubtedly written by him, and its title is simply "Instructions". Which makes it Euclid's Instructions, I suppose.'
'What does it say?' Pooh Bear asked.
Wizard scanned the scroll. 'It just seems to restate some of Euclid's more mundane discoveries. No reference to any ancient wonder or Golden Capstone.'
'Damn,' West said.
'Bugger,' Zoe said.
'Wait a second . . .' Wizard held up his hand. 'Look at this.'
He had unfurled the scroll to its edges, revealing a small handwritten notation at the extreme bottom of the parchment, right where it met the lower roller.
Written across the bottom of the scroll were a few lines of text, not in classical Greek, but in another language: the cuneiform-like strokes of the Word of Thoth. It read:
'Lily?' Wizard said.
Lily scanned the ancient document for a moment, then read it aloud:
'Base removed before the Roman invasion, Taken to Hamilcar's Forgotten Refuge. Follow the Deadly Coast of the Phoenicians To the inlet of the two tridents, Where you will behold the easier entrance to The sixth Great Architect's masterwork. The Seventh has lain there ever since..'
'There's that word again,' Pooh Bear said, 'base. Why do they call it a base?'
But West wasn't listening. He turned to Wizard, his face alive with excitement. 'The Callimachus Text doesn't give the location of the Pharos Piece . . .'
'No,' Wizard said. 'This scroll does. And this is the only copy. Which means—'
'—neither the Europeans nor the Americans can possibly know where this Piece rests. Max, we've got a clear run at this one.'
They stared at each other in amazement.
'Holy shit,' West said, smiling. 'We might just have a chance in this race.'
The Halicarnassus zoomed through the dawn, arriving at the northern coast of Libya, soaring over the frothy white line where the waters of the Mediterranean met the shores of the North African desert.
Inside it, West, Wizard and Zoe were making swift progress on Euclid's Instructions.
'"The Phoenicians" was another name for the people of Carthage—the trading state annihilated by Rome in the Third and last Punic War. The state of Carthage approximated modern-day Tunisia, directly south of Italy, across the Mediterranean,' Wizard said.
'And Hamilcar is Hamilcar Barca,' West said, 'father of Hannibal and commander of the Carthaginian forces in the First Punic War. I didn't know he had a refuge, let alone a forgotten one.'
Zoe commented, 'Hamilcar died in Spain in 228 BC, between the First and Second Punic Wars. He must have ordered the construction of a faraway fortress and never lived to see it.'
Wizard was on his computer: 'I'm checking my database for any references to "Hamilcar's R
efuge". But I've already found this: the "Deadly Coast" was a name used by Alexandrian sailors to describe the coast of modern-day Tunisia. For 100 miles the shore is all cliffs—400 feet high and plunging vertically into the sea. Major shipwreck area even in the 20th century. Oh dear. If your ship goes down close to the shore, you can't climb out of the water because of the cliffs. People have been known to die within an arm's length of dry land. No wonder the ancient sailors feared it.'
West added, 'And the sixth Great Architect is Imhotep VI. He lived
about 100 years after Imhotep V. Clever trap-builder—fortified the island-temple of Philae near Aswan. Known for his predilection for concealed underwater entrances. There are six at Philae alone.'
Stretch said, 'Wait a moment. I thought the Egyptian civilisation was finished by the time of the Punic Wars.'
'A common misconception,' Wizard said. 'People tend to think that the ancient Greek, Roman and Egyptian civilisations existed separately, one after the other, but that's not true, not at all. They coexisted. While Rome was fighting Carthage in the Punic Wars, Egypt was still flourishing under the Ptolemies. In fact, an independent Egypt would continue to exist right up until Cleopatra VII, the famous one, was defeated by the Romans in 30 BC'
'So what are these two tridents?' Pooh Bear asked.
'My guess is they are rock formations just out from the coastal cliffs,' Wizard said. 'Markers. Triple-pointed rock formations that look like tridents, marking the location of the Refuge.'
'One hundred miles of sheer-cliffed coast,' Pooh Bear groaned. 'It could take days to patrol that kind of terrain by boat. And we don't have days.'
'No,' West said. 'We don't. But I'm not planning on using a boat to scan that coastline.'
An hour later, the Halicarnassus was soaring high above the Tunisian coast, travelling parallel to it, heading westward, when suddenly its rear loading ramp opened and a tiny winged figure leapt out of the plane and plummeted down through the sky.
It was a man.
West.
Shooming head-first down through the air, his face covered by a wickedly aerodynamic oxygen-supplying full-face helmet.
But it was the object on his back that demanded attention.
A pair of lightweight carbon composite wings.
They had a span of 2.6 metres, upturned wingtips, and in their bulky centre (which covered a parachute), they possessed six
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