The Mongol Objective [Oct 2011] Read online

  So the latest Morpheus Initiative effort focused on just this problem: if there was an advanced civilization, one that had been eradicated in some tragic cataclysm, where could they find evidence of its existence? Where was the Emerald Tablet created? And what, really, did it do?

  A number of hits popped up through the intervening years of searching through the Morpheus Initiative’s efforts, through hundreds of trances and thousands of drawings. But the most consistent and similar image perceived among its members was this vision of an enormous half-concealed statue head, lying in this very position.

  And then, almost coincidentally, came the call from Nelson Point in the South Pole. A two-time veteran, Colonel Hiltmeyer had known of the CIA’s Stargate Program, which utilized remote-viewing psychics during the Cold War (and secretly beyond). But while unaware of its previous leader’s extracurricular activities, Hiltmeyer had known enough about the Morpheus Initiative to seek its services when his research team stumbled across this potentially ancient discovery.

  Now, Caleb knelt in the ice and crossed his legs.

  “What are you doing?” Tarn asked. He had a shovel out and was carefully digging around the eye area.

  “Just give me a minute,” Caleb said. “Bellows and Tillman, if you want to give it a try too, maybe just by being in the vicinity, we’ll get clearer visions.” He held out his hands, palms outward toward the statue, then closed his eyes.

  Phoebe’s voice came through his speaker. “Orlando and I will try to RV it too. Just keep still so I can focus on the statue.”

  “This is nuts,” said Tarn.

  “Tell that guy to zip it,” Orlando said over the earpiece. “He’s getting annoying.”

  “Hang on,” Caleb whispered, feeling suddenly dizzy. “I’m getting something. I’m in . . .

  . . . a warehouse. Leaded windows. Dusty floor. Scaffolding around a partial spherical construction, still with lattice-grillwork on half of it, while heavy metal plates are fitted into position.

  Looking down from the ceiling, then descending and circling around the structure, seeing teams of workers toiling with the frame, hoisting the sheets and hollowing out the eyes. Workers wearing blue jumpsuits, dust-masks and goggles. A rumbling sound and suddenly a forklift drives forward, preparing to lift the partial head onto a waiting flatbed truck.

  Caleb staggered to his feet, scrambling and slipping on the ice. He tried to back up, then toppled forward, clutching one of the protruding sun-ray spikes to break his fall.

  “It’s—”

  . . . a partial head, the exterior sealed now, set in the back of a truck as the door slams shut, and the vision wheels around to see the back of a tall, lanky man in a black silk suit, nodding and talking on a cell phone.

  “It’s ready. Just as you specified. We’ll ship it to the research station tomorrow and have it transported to the cave by Thursday night. Hiltmeyer’s team is ready for it?”

  The man listens, nods, then turns. His face—his too familiar face—pulls from the shadows . . .

  “—a FAKE!” Pushing away from the statue with disgust, Caleb turned to the anthropologist.

  But it was already too late.

  “Damn psychics,” Henrik Tarn spat, as he pulled off a mitten and with a thin glove underneath fished out a gun from inside his coat. Aiming at Caleb, Tarn tugged at his collar and spoke into his own microphone. “We’ve got to move up the timetable.”

  “What!” Caleb began, but then there came a shriek from Phoebe in his earpiece before the microphone shorted out, just as Tarn, sensing Ben Tillman foolishly rushing him, swiveled and shot him point-blank in the chest.

  2.

  Phoebe screamed as Colonel Hiltmeyer and another one of his staff pulled out strange-looking guns, and as soon as Tarn finished speaking, they fired.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me” was all Orlando could say before the red dart thunked into his chest, the toxin spread, and he immediately slumped over. Phoebe ducked below one shot from the colonel, then dodged around a desk. No point in hiding, she rose and raced for the back room when the dart struck her leg and she hit the floor.

  The red dart, embedded in her thigh, would have brought her down, if not for her artificial hip, thigh and a portion of her calf—all fitted and retro-purposed with a prosthesis after that tragic fall during the Belize expedition.

  A quick thought, a plan forming: Fake it!

  She let her body go limp, flicked her eyelids, then closed them. She willed Hiltmeyer and his men to accept that she was now tranquilized like Orlando.

  But why did they turn on us? Who was behind this? Something so elaborately staged to bring them to this frozen pit of the world? And for what—not to kill them, or they would have done it already. Her thoughts raced as she heard the scrambling activity. Laptops unplugged and packed up. Coats zippered. The thudding of heavy boots.

  A door whisked open, bringing with it a blast of frigid air and a new voice, somehow familiar but not enough for Phoebe to place it.

  A woman’s voice. Controlled, confident. In charge, and with a note of satisfaction.

  “Set the charges for ten minutes, then head back to the chopper. Leave that laptop. I need to see what’s going on down there.”

  Colonel Hiltmeyer cleared his throat. “Tarn has it in hand.”

  “I heard a shot.”

  “Tillman, I think—dead.”

  “Fine. But still, Tarn blew it. He was to keep them from remote viewing until I was ready.”

  “Caleb didn’t even touch the thing, not from what I could see.”

  “Doesn’t matter. He’s too good.”

  Phoebe bit her lip and peeked with one eye but could only see the newcomer’s lean legs and chiseled calves, clad in tight white thermals, with shiny boots. Who are you?

  “Just go,” the woman snapped. “The chopper’s waiting. I’ll finish up here.”

  “Fine. So, the tranquilizer . . . it’ll keep them knocked out for about an hour.”

  “Your point?”

  “Well, the detonators . . . You’re really just going to leave these two here?”

  Silence.

  Phoebe could almost feel Hiltmeyer shrinking away from whatever look the woman was giving him. “You know our orders. If you have a problem with them, you can stay here as well.”

  “No problem, I just—”

  “Then go.”

  The door opened. The colonel followed his team out, and over the wind Phoebe could now hear the thrumming of the helicopter engine.

  The woman turned and leaned over the desk. Phoebe inched around the leg of the table so she could get a better view, but could only see a head of short dark hair over the woman’s face as she spoke into the microphone.

  #

  Caleb stared at the red puddle steaming on the ice under Ben Tillman—Ben, the man Caleb had recruited directly from a seminar in Virginia. He had shown great promise, scoring high marks on the remote-visualization card tests, and once during a linked video conference call from over two hundred miles away he had drawn the exact sequence of symbols that Caleb had placed in a sealed envelope.

  “Tarn! What are you doing?” He spread his arms, holding one hand out to Andy Bellows, warning him back. Andy was a hot-head, always impatient and full of Hollywood-like visions of tomb raiding and treasure hunting, never quite appreciating the hard work and finer points of the Morpheus Initiative’s process.

  “This whole time, you and Hiltmeyer buried this thing to get us down here. . . .” Caleb fumed. He closed his eyes, cursing his stupidity. I wasn’t asking the right questions. “You’ve got someone in our group. Or you’ve hacked our servers. Found what we were drawing, the exact image and specifications of the colossal head, and then you built it and buried it where you knew it would send us running in a hurry.”

  “Sorry,” said Andy Bellows, shrugging and then lowering his hands. He slid closer to Tarn, and in a forced Italian accent said, “But they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”


  Caleb stared weakly at Andy, then shook his head. “Damn it, kid. You don’t know what you’ve done. You don’t know who these people are.”

  Then his earpiece crackled. “Hello down there, and hello Caleb. It’s been a long time, but I wonder, did you miss me?”

  Under all his layers, Caleb broke out in a feverish sweat. He recalled a steamy night in Alexandria, entwined around a woman with olive skin and burning green eyes. “Nina?”

  “Hi, honey.”

  The air chilled, as if the wind and the cold had found a crack in the ice and rushed through to find him.

  “Caleb, Caleb. How is it that you never tried to RV me after the disaster under the Pharos Lighthouse? Not even a glimpse, after all we meant to each other? Surely, with your vast abilities you would have seen me in a coma suffering the worst dreams you could possibly imagine. All the while, a part of me hoping, praying, believing that maybe you’d be my prince, that you’d come to my rescue and wake me with love’s true kiss.”

  Caleb clenched his eyes shut, shaking his head. “You were in league with him, with George Waxman, all along. You killed so many of the Keepers.”

  “Bygones, Caleb. Besides, I’ve watched you since then, you don’t trust your new friends either. None of the other Keepers. Even your wife.”

  That point chilled his blood. His eyes snapped open. Does she know about the tablet? She had to have RV’d him, and would have seen the vault where he’d hid it away.

  She knows, damn it, she knows!

  “I tried to see you.” He had to stall her, think of a way out of this. “But—”

  “You didn’t try, lover. Admit it. You forgot all about little old me. Let your gift languish, too wrapped up in guilt over the things it kept showing you. You let it wither until that Keeper tramp Lydia came along and fired you up again. Tell me, who was better at freeing your powers? Me, or the little missus?”

  Caleb tried not to look at the gun pointed at his heart. His mind reeled. How did she survive? The first trap under the Pharos Lighthouse had released a torrential wave of water that had smashed her against a pillar, and she fell and was sucked out into the Alexandrian harbor, her body never found.

  A sudden flash appeared in Caleb’s head, like the lifting of a veil, and he saw . . .

  . . . a recompression chamber, a familiar one, the same he had once spent a day in. On board Waxman’s boat, only in this vision Nina was inside, motionless.

  And then he was back in the icy cave with Tarn pointing the gun at him and Andy Bellows grinning. “Fine,” Caleb said. “You got me, Nina. Got us. The Morpheus Initiative. Played us, but for what? We’re here.”

  “That’s it, Caleb. That’s all there is. I just wanted you to know who it was, wanted you to know that back then you shouldn’t have dropped me.”

  “Nina,” he said, slumping over, “I couldn’t—”

  “Goodbye, Caleb. Mr. Tarn, Mr. Bellows, thank you for your service.”

  Andy looked up. “What?”

  Tarn lowered the gun, said, “NO!” and in a burst of surprising speed, ran for the cave’s exit just as an enormous explosion rocked the tunnel—followed by a series of detonations above them.

  Caleb looked up and didn’t even have time to cry out as the ceiling collapsed.

  #

  Phoebe held her breath. What just happened? She heard the name and remembered. Nina Osseni. A beautiful European, one of George Waxman’s first recruits for the Morpheus Initiative. She was exotic and cat-like, always seemed a little dark and mysterious around Phoebe, but she had never had much contact with the woman, especially since Phoebe was confined to that relic of a wheelchair and couldn’t go on any more globe-trotting expeditions with the team.

  But then the tragedy under the Pharos. Nina and Waxman going in too strong, believing they had decoded the symbols on the door, but having them all wrong, releasing the first trap, which killed everyone in their group except for Caleb, Waxman and their mother.

  And apparently, Nina.

  Somehow she had survived, and then what? She had tracked Caleb ever since, hoping for some misguided revenge? Maybe revenge for Waxman, or for Caleb’s inability to save her?

  After taunting Caleb and the others, Nina shut the laptop, unplugged the microphone, and pressed a button on a small device.

  A distant rumbling vibrated the station, overpowering even the chopper blades. Phoebe felt the trembling under her body and she realized what Nina had done.

  Nina turned and left through the door without so much as a look behind her.

  Then Phoebe sprang up and looked around frantically for the explosive charges. In another moment, she heard the chopper ascending and then it was quiet outside, except for the screeching wind.

  Thoughts of Caleb blown to bits—

  No, can’t think that yet.

  She continued looking around the room, then stuck her head under the desk. There was something there, a round device like a hockey puck, with a blinking red light. She took hold of it, but it was stuck. She was about to kick it free when she thought better of that idea.

  Could she move the whole table out? No, not without disassembling it. And there had to be at least one more of these things.

  Damn!

  She went back, judged Orlando’s weight, and then bent down. She lifted him, grunting. “Gotta get to the gym more often.” She dragged him toward the door, then stopped to grab two heavy parkas, and, from the table, the keys to the remaining Sno-Cat.

  At least we won’t freeze.

  Outside, assaulted at once by the icy wind, she hauled Orlando by the ankles, the job a little easier on the slick surface. She tugged him toward the isolated garage that was only ten yards away but seemed like a mile, fell, got up and stared into the stinging blizzard, into the night’s black swirling face, to see the flickering lights of the chopper angling toward a distant red light beyond the ice barrier on the sea.

  “Come on, Orlando!” She lugged his body over the threshold into the outbuilding. “Got to get—”

  Just then, the station exploded into a roaring fireball. The force of the blast tore Phoebe free of Orlando’s inert form and knocked her sprawling awkwardly to the floor.

  3.

  The lighthouse . . .

  Caleb could see it as if his mind circled the hill from a great height, focusing on the small tower rising out of the morning fog, glinting in the sunrise.

  My lighthouse, he thought. Sodus Point, looking out over the bay, the waves battering the rocky shore in the cold autumn wind. A narrow, rectangular-shaped tower, the 150-year-old lighthouse was anchored to the attached house, his house, where Alexander should be just waking up, Lydia in the kitchen in her terrycloth robe, making Armenian coffee and blueberry flapjacks.

  But why am I seeing this?

  As if in answer . . .

  . . . a black Hummer arrives, slowly pulling up the long drive. At once, the front doors open and two black-clad men burst out. Men with guns. Then the back doors open and two other men emerge.

  One, a shorter, lanky man with a full head of blond hair, wearing a long gray trench coat. The other, meticulously dressed in a blue silk suit with a power tie—crimson—matching the color of his hair, shining like fire in the sun .

  Caleb shuddered with recognition.

  . . . The red-haired man nods after the other man points to the lighthouse.

  He knew the other man too.

  Robert. Lydia’s brother. What is he—?

  #

  Caleb’s eyes flew open and a scream tried to explode through his nearly crushed lungs. The Emerald Tablet!

  He struggled, tried to kick free, to move his arms, even an inch, in this suffocating, dark and frozen tomb. He had seen the tunnel implode just as Henrik Tarn and Andy Bellows were racing for it, still shocked at being betrayed. They disappeared, gruesomely crushed under a massive slab of the collapsing ice shelf, and then Caleb jumped for the only bit of cover—beneath the statue’s head, where the protruding crown offered so
me degree of protection.

  But it wasn’t enough. He was still sealed up, buried alive. He couldn’t tell, with all the weight and pressure and numbness in his extremities, if anything was broken, but it seemed the statue had deflected the direct impact and left a small air pocket to save him from serious injury.

  So that he could die slowly of exposure.

  In spite of his predicament and the prospect of an unimaginably horrible death, all he could think of was Alexander and Lydia.

  Men are coming for the tablet.

  Was it a vision of the future or something happening right now? Was there anything he could do other than try to go back into the vision and see for himself?

  Robert’s presence there terrified him, even more than that somehow familiar red-haired man. Robert Gregory, Caleb’s brother-in-law, had been frustrated that the Emerald Tablet, the prize the Keepers had sought in the Alexandrian Library’s collection, had been missing when Caleb beat the Pharos’s defenses and found the way inside.

  Robert had never stopped looking for it, and Caleb was sure that his brother-in-law suspected the truth—that Caleb had stolen the tablet and lied about its absence. And lied again and again when Robert and Lydia had asked him and the Morpheus Initiative to remote view it, find where it might have been taken before the Pharos vault had been sealed up.

  Caleb hadn’t told Lydia, knowing her convictions belonged with her brother in this case, and while she spent the better part of each year back in the new Library at Alexandria, cataloguing and studying the collection of recovered scrolls, Caleb had fashioned his own secret vault below the Sodus lighthouse, modeled after the original architect’s design, the Pharos’s creator, Sostratus of Knidos. Caleb designed a similar set of traps that he hoped someday only his son Alexander could bypass. When he was ready to be a Keeper himself. When he had learned what he needed to know. Even Caleb hadn’t spent much time with it, afraid of its power, its ability to enhance his visions and stimulate other powers. Powers he didn’t need, or want, just yet.