“But how will you find the cavern that houses this Black Sphinx?” Yakov asked.
“I’ll find it,” Turcotte promised. “I’ll reverse the directions Burton gave.” He picked up the phone and talked to Major Quinn in the Cube, ordering him to get every bit of intelligence and imagery possible on the Giza Plateau and the nearby Nile, particularly hydro-graphic surveys of the river. He also told Quinn to begin working on the request for the support Turcotte thought he might need.
“But how will we open these doors Burton mentions?” Yakov asked.
“We have to get a Watcher’s ring,” Turcotte said. “We had one before; Harrison, the Watcher who died in South America, but Duncan took that with her to Giza. We need another one.”
“Then we need to find another Watcher,” Yakov said.
“They show up when you least expect them,” Turcotte said. “They’ve been—” He paused and turned to Mualama. “Why did you start following Burton’s path and studying him?”
“I found him a fascinating individual and—”
“How did you find the scepter so quickly?” Turcotte cut him off, angry with himself for not having suspected this before.
“I told you. There were drawings in the manuscript that—”
“But you told us at first you couldn’t read the manuscript,” Turcotte said. “And now you’ve been translating it. You lied to us.”
“And you kept the scepter secret for a while,” Yakov noted, picking up on Turcotte’s suspicion.
“Why did you let Duncan go to the Ark and not you?” Turcotte demanded.
“The robes would only fit her,” Mualama said.
“You’ve only done what you wanted, when you wanted,” Turcotte noted. He stepped closer to Mualama. “Who are you working for?”
“I work for no one,” Mualama said.
“I don’t believe you,” Turcotte said.
Che Lu came forward between the two men. “We need to work together, not against each other.”
Turcotte stabbed a finger at Mualama. “He’s the one that’s had his own agenda. It stops right now.” He turned to Quinn. “I don’t want him to have access to anything. The manuscript — anything. Put him under guard.”
A panicked look crossed Mualama’s face at the prospect of being cut off from the manuscript. “Wait!”
Turcotte turned back to him. “Yes?”
“I can tell you where you can find some Watchers.”
“And how can you tell us that?” Turcotte asked.
Mualama reached into his shirt and pulled out a medallion hanging on a chain. The Watcher’s symbol was etched onto the surface.
Turcotte’s hands balled into fists. “You’re a Watcher?”
“I was a Watcher,” Mualama corrected.
“What happened?” Yakov asked.
“Do you still have your ring?” Turcotte’s question was right on the heels of Yakov’s.
“I did not have a ring. Only those of the first order have rings. Those of the second order have these.” He held up the medallion once more.
“You said you are no longer a Watcher,” Che Lu said.
“I was searching for information, and the first order did not approve of that. They wanted me to watch my corner of the planet and keep my mouth shut and my mind closed.”
“Why did you turn on the Watchers?” Che Lu asked.
“I was tired of being a second-class citizen,” Mualama said. “My ancestors were recruited to be Watchers by the original Watchers, the wedjat. There is a hierarchy in the organization, a split between those who claim a lineage to the original wedjat and those who were recruited, the first and second orders. And I wanted to know the truth.”
“About?” Yakov asked.
“Who the Watchers were. Why we were watching.”
Turcotte leaned forward. “And did you learn the truth?”
Mualama nodded. “Quite a bit of it.”
“Tell us,” Che Lu said. “Who are the Watchers? How did they begin?”
“Will your information help us get a ring?” Turcotte demanded, his mind focused on the upcoming mission.
Mualama rubbed a hand through the stubble of his gray hair. “It began when my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. She went through it all — mastectomy, chemotherapy, experimental drugs. And none of it worked. When she died, I lost—” He spread his hands, searching for the right words. “I lost all my beliefs. My wife had been a Christian. To the moment she died, she believed she would be going to a better place. But I, who knew of the Airlia, did not know what to believe. I wanted the truth then.
“I had learned from another Watcher, one of the line of Kaji, about Burton visiting Giza. And I had found reports about Burton in Tanzania where I lived. So I began to study him. Then I began to follow his path all over the world, to the many places he had been, trying to discover what he had learned.” Mualama shook his head. “It is funny that he found the repository of the Watchers, scant miles from his own home, in his dear England.”
“Where?” Yakov wanted to know.
“Glastonbury Tor, near the Salisbury Plain, in southwest England,” Mualama said. “Burton traveled there in 1864 with John Speke, his companion from their search for the Nile. The Watchers had tried to kill Burton before, so I imagine he brought Speke for protection. Or, more likely, to make sure someone else knew the truth in case something happened to him.
“During Burton’s time as consul in West Africa, an attempt was made on his life after he mounted an expedition in search of the Mountains of the Moon, known to the natives as Ruwenzori, deep in the heart of my continent. It was not the first time such a thing occurred, and it would not be the last. When I learned that Burton and Speke had traveled to Glastonbury, I went there also. Especially given that Speke died the next day, supposedly of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, but I saw the long hand of the Watchers in that death. I assumed Burton and Speke had come close to something significant to evoke such a response.
“I approached the Tor at dusk, seeing the jagged, broken finger of the stone tower at the top. I climbed the long path when I knew there would be no others there, to see what was to be seen. I knew what to look for, and using a flashlight, I eventually found the smallest of indentations in one of the old stones on the side of the ruined tower. I pressed my medallion against it, but nothing happened.
“I continued my search and was about to despair of finding anything more when I heard the sound of stone moving on stone. A figure robed in brown came out of the pitch-black shadow of the tower. He looked like a monk, with a long white beard and pale skin that had seen little of the sun. I held up my hand, showing my medallion to him, and he in turn showed me his ring.”
“Where did the rings come from?” Turcotte wanted to know.
“Patience,” Mualama told him. “That will be clear shortly. The Watcher signaled for me to turn my light out. ‘What do you seek?’ he asked me.
“I had thought about what to say if I met another Watcher, and I had decided that the truth was best. I told him I had traveled far from my home and that I sought knowledge. It was the right answer, for he smiled at me. ‘I am the keeper of our knowledge,’ he told me.
“I asked him who he was and he told me his name was Brynn. I knew the roots of the name from my studies of Burton’s published writings — it was a derivative of the ancient Welsh name — it meant ‘from the hill.’ He asked me mine. I told him as well as where I was from. I was not yet considered a renegade — it was that night that would make me an enemy of the Watchers.
“Have any of you ever been to Glastonbury?” Mualama asked.
He was greeted with a unanimous negative. “It’s a very impressive place. We were over five hundred feet above the land on a mound of Earth that poked unnaturally toward the sky. How such an abrupt hill came into existence in the midst of a vast plain was a mystery that the locals referred to in terms of legend. I had learned to listen to such legends very closely.