Caleb shook his head. “Despite our treasure-hunting exploits, we really don’t have that much in the way of money. No, the only true item of value I had Montross just stole. I can’t imagine what else he wants from me. What did you turn up?”
She clicked a few keys, then read aloud: “Xavier Montross, Born in New Orleans, 1978. Parents killed in a car accident when he was six. Raised by a succession of foster parents.” She looked up. “Seems he frequently wore out his welcome.”
“Maybe,” said Phoebe, “something he did, or drew, freaked them out.”
“We can find out. Interview some of the foster parents. But it might take some time. Anyway, he joined the Marines in 1997. Served with Special Ops, decorated in Iraq, then was discharged after refusing direct orders — orders which, ironically, got the rest of his unit killed in a helicopter training accident.”
Caleb scratched his head. “So, he dodged another bullet there. He might have had a premonition of his death.”
“Seems to be his specialty,” Phoebe said.
“Then,” continued Renée, “he was hand-picked to join The Morpheus Initiative in 2002 by—”
“George Waxman,” Caleb said. “Who must have been alerted to his talents by his unusual behavior in the Corps. And then we know the rest, up until he disappeared in Alexandria.”
Renée nodded. “That’s all we’ve got. Except for his travel visas. Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, Iran, Mexico. Don’t know what he did or why he went to those places. And”—she shuffled some papers—“this is interesting. His image was just flagged as a possible match to an unresolved case of a break-in and murder at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington ten years ago.”
Caleb perked up. “What did he get?”
Renée shook her head. “No details of a theft. At least, nothing the officials cared to elaborate on. Can you use your remote viewing, clairvoyance or whatever to find out?”
“Possibly, but it works best if we focus our efforts. We need to know what to look for, and it helps to ask ourselves the right questions.”
“Then what are the right questions?”
“Well, let’s think like Montross, get inside his head. What do we know?”
“That he swiped our tablet,” Phoebe pointed out.
Killed my wife and kidnapped my son, Caleb thought. “Right, but why?”
“What is this tablet thing? What does it do?” Renée asked. Her voice cracked a little, and when Caleb’s eyes darted to her she glanced away. Hm. Again, he wondered whether she was hiding something.
He shook away the thought. Too much paranoia lately, after the elaborate trick in the Antarctic. He was leaping at shadows, certain they all contained monsters. But still, his impotence at being able to RV her past was frustrating.
The others waited for Caleb to decide whether or not to tell her. “You won’t believe it,” he said finally, “but you’ll have to trust me that mere rumors of its powers were enough to inspire great quests and conquests to seek it throughout the ages. And a dedicated brotherhood was created to hide it so it wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands.”
“What powers are we talking here?”
“Thoth, the Egyptian god, or enhanced man — the jury’s still out on that one — was believed to have created the tablet, and inscribed on it certain spells. Ancient knowledge. We’re not entirely sure what that knowledge was, but by simply reading it initiates could gain access to powers and abilities.”
Orlando looked up, grinning. “Abilities that would make what we’re doing here look like the difference between the Space Invaders and Halo 3.”
Phoebe rolled her eyes.
“There are all kinds of stories,” Caleb continued, “about how the early master magicians, people around the time of Noah and the great Pharaohs, had such powers. The ability to live for centuries, cure diseases, be in many places at once. And they could foretell the future, like the coming of the Great Flood.”
“My Bible’s a little rusty,” Renée said, “but even my four-year-old niece knows that God warned Noah directly, before He wiped out everybody else on the planet.”
Phoebe cleared her throat, eager to get in on the discussion. “Well, the theory here goes that the language used by Noah to speak to God was more indirect. Noah was using these kinds of powers, abilities like prophecy, clairvoyance. These were the same as ‘talking to God.’”
Renée nodded. “So, Noah saw what was coming.”
“And,” said Caleb, “these learned men, people with abilities, wrote down their knowledge and stored it away in safe locations.”
“But you found this tablet,” Renée said, staring at Phoebe, Orlando and Caleb in turn, as if half-expecting them to pull off their outer garments to reveal superhero costumes underneath. “Have you used it?”
“Nope,” said Phoebe, glancing first at her brother for approval. “But not from lack of effort. Actually, we haven’t quite been able to read it.”
“The language,” Caleb admitted, “is a little mind-blowing. It’s not like anything ever seen before. I’ve tried cross-referencing it for years, sent partial scripts to etymologists, but so far, nothing.”
Phoebe smiled. “It also hurts to look at the letters. They’re somehow multi-dimensional. It’s the only word I can use. It’s kind of like watching a 3D movie without the glasses, and in Chinese subtitles. After you’ve been drinking.”
“Or smoking weed,” Orlando said, then wiped the silly grim from his face, glancing at the agents.
Renée frowned at him. “So you can’t translate it, but Montross believes he can?”
Caleb clasped his hands together, held them in front of his face. “There’s a theory. Yes, I know, another one. One we’ve been pursuing during our RV sessions.”
“The Books of Thoth,” Phoebe said. “Other writings. We’re not sure if they’re scrolls or tablets, pillars, or what, but supposedly after Thoth created the Emerald Tablet, his followers deciphered it and wrote the translation of all that knowledge.”
“Theoretically,” Orlando said, “we only need to find one of those to get what we need.”
“A Rosetta Stone,” Caleb finished. “A translation of just a part of the Emerald Tablet, in any language, and we can use that as a cipher to decode the rest.”
Renée rubbed her eyes. “So, these books or whatever, where are they supposed to be?”
“Lots of theories there too,” said Caleb. “The most common being that they’re kept together in a sealed, unbreakable box in the Hall of Records.”
“In Washington?” Renée asked, hopeful.
“No, the Hall of Records referred to was a mythical storehouse of ancient wisdom, much like the library of Alexandria. Legends relate several possible locations, the most credible being that it’s under the Giza Plateau, beneath the Great Pyramid or the Sphinx.”
“Ah,” said Renée, shaking her head. “Of course.”
Caleb felt sorry for her, knowing the agent must be way out of her element now. “There have been studies of the ground in that area, sonar and satellite radar images showing potential pockets, caverns and tunnels under both the Sphinx and the Pyramid complex. The psychic Edgar Cayce predicted a chamber would be found below the Sphinx, and Herodotus relates tales about a staircase leading down between the paws, down to a great door that led into a labyrinth of serpentine passages and chambers. And somewhere down there is this lockbox containing the books. But,” Caleb pointed out, “that’s not what concerns us now. Because now, what I think Xavier Montross might be after, are the keys to that box.”