Shapes appeared in the water. Small, irregular forms that never really surfaced. Divers without their diving gear. The water stained red, a spreading, inky pallor, and the men kept floating up. Five, six, seven, eight… nine…
Then more.
A woman with binoculars screamed. The floating bodies were in pieces: a head here, a torso there, legs and arms jumbled together with severed chunks of flesh. The helicopters dipped, rolled and scattered. The ambulances’ engines sparked to life, followed by their sirens.
And more screams shattered the morning air.
Eighteen Keepers, each wearing black Ray-Bans, moved through the crowd of spectators like a tide of gray death, each member keyed in on a target that, as soon as they had come into Alexandria, arriving ahead of George Waxman as his personal contingent, had been identified and secretly tagged with a chalk mark on the upper shoulder, visible only to those wearing the specially tinted sunglasses.
The Keepers moved quickly, efficiently, and with a determination borne out of not just duty, but revenge. Each of them had a metal cap on their index finger with a tiny needle that had been dipped in concentrated tarantula venom. One jab would paralyze and induce convulsions, and sometimes — if it happened, it happened — death.
Simple pinpricks. Eighteen Keepers struck with subtlety and swiftness, poisoning and then moving on, disappearing into the crowd. Only one Keeper stayed a bit longer over her victim.
The bald man dropped to his knees, his hand at his neck where something had just “bitten” him. Victor Kowalski felt strange; a numb sensation, bitterly cold, almost ecstatic, cascaded through his veins. Suddenly, he couldn’t move, and felt inertia pulling him sideways. People were screaming, rushing past him, pushing, trampling. He fell. Rapped his head on the flagstones, but felt no pain, just cold. So cold. Someone stomped on his arm, and still he felt nothing but a frigid arctic gale sweeping through his body, chilling his very core. His vision was stuck, looking straight up at a familiar face, someone wearing a baseball cap and gray sweatsuit, someone lording over him with a smile of retribution.
The exquisite rush sped to his heart, encasing it in ice, and the world drowned in bitter darkness.
“What do we do now?” Phoebe asked. Emergency units roared to the water’s edge as the police herded the spectators away.
“We wait,” Caleb said, backing away. “I think a few days, maybe more. The Egyptian authorities and the Council of Antiquities will place another ban on investigating the harbor. They’ll declare that there’s nothing down there but dangerous old tunnels. And the story will rest.”
He exhaled slowly. “You can go back to Mom, if you like.”
“No,” Phoebe said. “I want to see this through. I can’t help her there, anyway.”
“Okay, then we’ll wait for this circus to die down. We’ll wait for Qaitbey to be alone again, sneak inside, and do this our way.”
6
In the end, they couldn’t wait for the causeway to empty, and the area around Qaitbey’s fort was always either too crowded or guarded late at night. So they did the next best thing, taking a lesson from Waxman, and bribed the guard to allow them inside. Caleb made up a story about this site’s importance to them. He said that he and Phoebe had been married here years ago, and they wished to recapture that feeling by spending a night inside. Maybe the guard took pity on them because of Phoebe’s condition, but for two hundred dollars he agreed that it was quite romantic. He left them alone, locked up inside, and promised to let them out in the morning. Of course, Caleb knew they wouldn’t be coming out the same way.
Beside a glowing battery-powered lantern, Phoebe waited on the stairs and looked wistfully after her brother.
“Wish you were here?” Caleb asked after the water subsided and he coughed up mouthfuls of brine.
“No thanks!” she yelled back. “Comfy right here. You go on and get all dirty.”
“It’s going to be gold, not dirt!”
“Whatever, just hurry up. These statues are creeping me out.” She stared at the spot under Thoth, where Nina had fallen years ago.
“Trying,” Caleb said, removing the chains. He quickly splashed to the next symbol, then hooked himself to the ceiling, climbed and hung suspended, waiting for the ground to fall away. After it reset he took off the harness, dropped and stepped onto the next block. Immediately it sank, leaving him in a tunnel where the earth closed in and sticky mud clung to his skin. When the block rose again, the earth had hardened and he felt as if he wore a powerful suit of armor, a joining of all the elements into one, able to ward off any physical assault.
He stepped forward onto Mercury. He opened a zip-lock bag from his pocket, sprinkled the powdered sulfur onto the lines, lit it, and waited. A noxious gas rose from cracks in the boulder, mixed with the smoke from the sulfur, and swirled around his body. The earthly coating he had taken on began to bubble and crack. Tiny sprouts of green emerged from his arms, his chest, his face. Then these fell off, dropping with huge chunks of mud.
Fermentation over, he took the next step to Distillation, to Silver and the Moon. He withdrew the 200-watt water-resistant flashlight and switched it on. After a deep breath, he shone the light forward onto the heads of the snakes on the great door. Apparently made of quartz, their eyes glowed with an eerie orange hue. They sparkled and glittered. Caleb felt lightheaded, disconnected. It must have been the gas from the previous stone; maybe it contained some kind of hallucinogenic powder. Whatever it was, Caleb saw the snakes uncoil and lift off the wall, hover in the air, rear back and open their great jaws before slithering forward and wrapping around his legs, circling up his body.
He stayed perfectly still, recognizing that this was a test. It was an illusion, of that he was almost completely sure. An unbelievably realistic illusion. He felt their scales, heard their hissing. His breath shortened as they coiled around his ribcage, then continued winding around his neck, encircling his head, where they met at his crown. And still, he remained motionless, breathless, waiting.
Ten heartbeats passed. His head swam, the room spun and a strange, numinous aura ignited around his vision and bathed his mind in understanding. Here I am, the living caduceus, the embodiment of opposing energies: male and female, above and below, heaven and hell, black and white, good and evil… all of it. From these conflicting elements come oneness. Ultimate knowledge of everything from all perspectives.
The only thing left was to make this state of awareness permanent, to become like a stone, the Philosopher’s Stone.
Caleb stepped forward, the snakes greedily hanging on, but losing materiality as he accepted their presence no longer as a hindrance, but a strength. At the final block he dropped to both knees and spread out his arms. It had never occurred to Caleb that he needed to be in that position, and he surely hadn’t gotten any hint from the scroll or any vision. It was just something that seemed right.
He knelt and waited. The snakes hissed gently in his ears, and he imagined words in their breath, whispered greetings, welcoming praises to one who had made a long journey and had arrived home.
Gold dust began to fall from the ceiling, a light coat clinging to his glistening skin, sticking to the residue of fermentation and distillation. It coated his head, his upturned face, neck, shoulders, arms and hands. It fell like a blissful spring rain. He even smelled flowers and fresh mountain air. The scent of jasmine floated by, and he thought of Lydia, then he smelled the bay back home in Sodus, and the trace of old books permeating his little bedroom.