The Mongol Objective [Oct 2011] Read online

  Caleb forced his eyes to focus. “FBI?”

  She nodded curtly. “The police chief called us as soon as it was clear that in addition to arson and murder, this involves a kidnapping, with evidence that the perpetrators have fled to international waters. I’m so sorry for your loss, but time is of the essence. We really have to—”

  “You know,” Caleb said softly, looking at the brittle book at his feet, “there’s a theory beloved by bibliophiles everywhere, one that suggests that the way to keep alive, to stave off death itself, is to constantly read. If you’re reading many books at once, perpetually awaiting the resolution of cliffhanger moments, you’ll be unable to rest until you know it all works out. All the mysteries, plot twists and turns, everything that keeps you guessing—and turning pages—all of that will keep you striving to live another day.”

  “That’s interesting,” Renée said, frowning. “But we really need to start a workup on who did this and what they want. We’ve got agents canvassing the vicinity, checking satellite photos, police logs, all concentrated on finding your son and his abductor.”

  Caleb looked away from her, toward the sea and the missing boat. “I’m pretty sure I know how we can find them.”

  Renée followed his line of sight. “Ah yes, the lightship. Sorry, but the Coast Guard found it deserted about thirty miles out. Seems they jumped ship. Any other ideas?”

  Caleb shook his head. “No, I just need some time.”

  “Any idea who did this?” Renée looked around. “Or who the two other bodies we’re still trying to identify are?”

  He nodded. “Robert Gregory is one of them. My wife’s brother.”

  She glanced at him suspiciously. “How do you know that?”

  “I just do.”

  “I see. So, you’re involved with parapsychology, research and remote viewing.”

  Caleb stared at her.

  “Unusual line of work, Mr. Crowe, but I understand your group has had some successes. Located sunken wrecks. Salvage, treasure—”

  “I know what you’re getting at,” he said. “Wondering if we had enemies.”

  “Or just jealous followers.”

  “Look, Agent Wagner—”

  “Renée.”

  “—I’ll help in any way I can, but please, give me and my sister some time. An hour maybe, at one of our neighbors’ homes. We need to sort things out.”

  She looked at him steadily, and Caleb had the sense that red lights were lighting up inside her skeptical brain. Facts and figures, percentages. Wasn’t the husband the perp in something like seventy percent of these cases? Right now she was probably running scenarios and creating a follow-up checklist: see how he and Lydia got along, whether he’d wanted full custody, what unsavory friends he might have contracted for arson and murder . . .

  “All right,” she said at last. “I’ll continue working the scene here, and I’ll call on you in an hour.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But Mr. Crowe.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Whatever you find out, promise you’ll share with me.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  She smiled. “Let’s just say, Caleb, that I’m open-minded about what you do here, and in what you’re about to do.”

  He considered her for a long time. “I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but would you like to watch?”

  #

  Phoebe and Orlando were off to the side, sitting on a bench overlooking the lake.

  “I’m sorry about Lydia,” Orlando said. His hand hovered around her shoulder uselessly, not sure whether to touch her or not. He had felt something close to a connection with Phoebe ever since interning for her class four years ago. Although only a few years older than he, she had a way of making him feel like an awkward teenager. “I know you were close.”

  She gave an attempt at a shrug, trying to appear stoic despite her tears. “Sometimes, she could be like a sister to me. When she wasn’t being all Keeperly.” Her voice cracked. “And Robert . . . Are they sure it’s him in there?”

  “Two other men with Lydia. Everyone was so burned up, though. Still have to do the dental records.”

  “You really think he teamed up with Montross?”

  “I gotta believe he never trusted Caleb, or me. Obsessed with the tablet twenty-four-seven.”

  Orlando scratched the back of his neck, then stood up. “So, the FBI. What’s Caleb going to say to her?”

  “Probably going to try to get rid of her,” Phoebe said. “So we can track Alexander without all the dead weight. We should probably start. Come on, we can go to the Hurleys’ house, use their basement. Kids down there have hundreds of pencils, markers and paper. We’ll find him.”

  A minute later, when Caleb was alone again, they approached him. Phoebe gave him a hug, then backed away, searching his eyes. “You going to be all right? I can’t believe she’s gone.”

  “Not now,” Caleb said, clenching his eyes shut, drawing Phoebe back into a crushing hug, not wanting to let go. “I’ve got to focus on Alexander. Nothing else until he’s safe.”

  Sniffling, Phoebe nodded. “You told that agent about Xavier, didn’t you?”

  He nodded. “Thought I’d give them something to work on. Maybe they’ll dig up a clue from another angle while we try it our way. She’s got her people checking on Montross, but she wants to be in on our session.”

  “What!” Phoebe asked at once. “Are you nuts?”

  “Well,” Orlando said, “she is cute”. He craned his neck to watch the agent as Phoebe glared at him.

  Caleb cleared his throat. “We’re going to need federal assistance with this. Travel arrangements, security, weapons. We’re lucky we drew an agent with an open mind.”

  “Yeah,” said Phoebe. “Lucky, or something else.”

  “We are talking about the government here,” Orlando said in a suddenly refrained voice. “They screwed you over last time.”

  “We won’t make the same mistake again,” Caleb voiced.

  “No we won’t.” Phoebe crossed her arms. “I’ll RV her while you guys focus on Alexander.”

  “No,” Orlando said. “You’re closer to your nephew, you’ll get a better hit. I’ll spy on the FBI chick.”

  Phoebe glowered at him. “Perv.”

  “Anyway, I’m surprised that we haven’t gotten a call.”

  “Oh crap.” Caleb dug into his jacket pocket. “My phone battery was dying, so I turned it off.”

  “I’ll call your voicemail,” Orlando said, grabbing his phone before Phoebe got hers.

  In a moment, Orlando handed over the phone and Caleb entered his code.

  Caleb held up a hand, signaling to Agent Wagner. “It’s him.”

  Renée walked over, and Caleb gave her the phone after he listened to the message. “You may want to have your people run that through their analytics. See if they can pinpoint a location.”

  “What did Xavier say?” Phoebe asked.

  “He said I’d know where to meet him. But to come alone.”

  “Or he kills Alexander.”

  “Of course,” said Orlando. “Got to be dramatic.”

  “Come where?” Renée asked.

  “He said I’d remember, the place where he last told me I’d see him again.”

  “When was this?”

  “In Alexandria. Twelve years ago. He backed out of a project we were working on. Then said he’d see me again.” Caleb closed his eyes, remembering. “At the mausoleum.”

  “Mausoleum?” Renée asked. “In a cemetery somewhere?”

  “I’m not sure,” Caleb answered. “But I have a thought.”

  “Care to share?”

  “After,” he said, pointing to the neighbors’ house. “Now we need to get to work.”

  #

  The Hurleys brought coffee for Renée, green tea for Phoebe and Caleb, and located a can of Red Bull for Orlando. “Drink of champions and psychics everywhere,” he proclaimed, grinning at René
e who just frowned and sipped at her coffee.

  They were all seated around a ping pong table. The basement was furnished with a circular rug over the concrete floor, a dusty basketball game in the corner next to an equally dusty stair machine and a 20-inch TV.

  “Now I’m not so sure about this,” Renée said. She held up a pad of blank white paper and a pencil. “Really, I can just observe and check on my colleagues, see how the search is going for this Xavier Montross.”

  “They won’t find him,” Caleb said.

  “We’ll have a dossier on the guy in an hour, everything from his favorite TV shows to how often he wet the bed as a kid. We’ve got his picture at all the airports, borders, etc. Anything he does, down to the color of socks he wears, we’ll know.”

  “That’ll help,” Orlando said, “if we ever get our laundry mixed up with this nut, but my guess is that if he doesn’t want to be found, then the only chance of finding him is our way.”

  “And,” said Phoebe, “we tried to find him for years after he left our group. And sorry, but we had better tools than you, and we couldn’t even get a glimpse. It’s like he was a ghost.”

  “Or he had some help,” said Caleb.

  “What do you mean?” Renée asked.

  “Never mind. It’s just a thought. There may be things, or people, who are able to block what we can do, where we can see. I’ve heard anecdotal evidence about it, but I thought that it was more like an excuse for failure. But maybe there’s something to it.”

  “Anyway,” Phoebe cut in, “come on, Agent Wagner. Try it. You might have a knack for it. We’ve had successes with the most skeptical of volunteers.”

  Renée sipped her coffee. “I don’t think I’ll have any—”

  “That’s okay,” Caleb said, his voice wracked with suffering and pain just below the surface. “It’s fine if nothing happens. We normally work as a team, but our team, well, I’m sure you know all about what happened in Antarctica.”

  “I know what was on the report, but as far as exactly what the hell happened down there I have no idea. Forgive me for asking this bluntly, but what are you people caught up in?”

  “Just research,” Orlando said, hands raised defensively.

  Caleb started to answer, but Renée was quicker. “And does ‘just research’ involve globe-trotting adventures into booby-trapped tombs, underwater shipwrecks and other Indiana-Jones-type shenanigans?”

  Phoebe and Orlando grinned in spite of themselves and said at almost the same time: “Sometimes.”

  #

  Twenty minutes later they were drawing. Caleb had given them instructions, what he felt were vague enough so as not to lead anybody, but also give enough direction to focus them on where he thought Xavier might be.

  I hope I’m wrong, he thought, after having them visualize Alexander, where he was now, and where he was headed. To focus on the destination, a place with a tomb.

  That was all. To say any more might influence the process too much. What he had given them was enough.

  He trusted Orlando and Phoebe, the best of the Morpheus Initiative members, to come up with the right answer, to remote view their destination and confirm his thinking. But for himself, he would attempt a different visionary destination. If he could, if it was at all possible. He was going to focus on Xavier himself. On Montross, the man, the psychic. The FBI might have their methods, but Caleb needed something more direct.

  He needed a first-hand experience, a psychic get-to-know-you of his adversary. His wife’s murderer, his child’s abductor.

  He wanted to see the man he was going to kill.

  #

  Phoebe finished her sketch first, then stared at it before turning her attention to her brother. Caleb was in a meditative pose, hands on his knees, eyes closed, brow furrowed in frustration. Orlando was drawing on his iPad, shading in what looked like a pillared structure on a hill.

  “I still get weirded out,” she said, turning her sketch pad his way, “when we have the same damn visions.”

  “Copycat,” Orlando said with a smirk.

  Renée looked over from the other side of the table. “So, is this what it’s like?”

  “More or less,” said Orlando. “Though usually we have a few more people here, and we can cross-reference details and see what elements get the most hits.”

  Renée turned her pad around. “See, I don’t have any talent. I drew some kind of horse and buggy thing.” On her pad was a crude sketch of two horses pulling a cart with two people inside. “Guess my mind was just wandering, but that’s all I saw.”

  “Interesting,” Phoebe noted. “You drew crowns on their heads.”

  “I knew it.”

  Phoebe looked up. Her brother’s eyes were open, with failure written over his face. But he managed a smile as he looked over Renée’s drawing. “She does have some talent.”

  Renée stood up, backing away, still looking at her horses. “What are you talking about? I—”

  Suddenly her cell phone rang. “Hang on, just a second.”

  She put her ear to the iPhone. “Yeah, what do you got? Okay, I see. Hang on, I’ll call you back, we may have something here that can confirm that.”

  She hung up. “NSA traced a coded satellite phone call from Antarctica shortly after the explosion at Fort Erickson. They couldn’t get much after decoding the call, but they confirmed a man’s voice—that of your very own Xavier Montross.”

  “Did they get anything else?” Phoebe asked.

  “Only a name. He was telling someone where to meet.” Renée looked at them steadily. “‘St. Peter’s’ was all they got.”

  Caleb thought for a moment, nodding to himself. Then he pointed to Orlando. “We could do an online photo search match in various databases, comparing those drawings with other pictures, but it would take far too long. Adding the detail of the ‘horse and cart’ would help, but again, we don’t have the time. Orlando, just go to good old Wikipedia.”

  “Cop-out,” Orlando said as he opened the tablet and used the keyboard.

  “Look up ‘Mausoleum.’”

  “Where is this going?” Renée asked, her face showing complete confusion.

  Phoebe chuckled, shaking her head. “Don’t worry, you get used to Caleb’s roundabout way of getting us all to confirm what he already knows.” She moved back, then whispered to Caleb, “What’s wrong? Didn’t you get anything?”

  Keeping his voice low, he said, “I couldn’t even bring about the start of anything. Something’s wrong.” His eyes were bloodshot, his face pale. Lowering his voice still further, he added, “I tried to see Xavier, went at it a couple different ways, with different questions, all focused. I should have seen something, but not a damn thing came up. Just a flickering green haze around a center of darkness.”

  Phoebe frowned. “Do you think you’re being blocked? Maybe by the tablet?”

  “Maybe, but I fear it’s something worse.”

  “What’s worse?”

  “Remember when we were kids? Remember Dad? What happened after he was gone, after I thought maybe it was my fault we couldn’t save him?”

  “Yeah,” Phoebe said. “Your visions, they didn’t come again for years.”

  Caleb sighed. “I need to try again. With a different target, something besides Xavier. Something I should be able to see. If I can’t,”—he met her stare, and she nearly cried seeing the loss, the guilt, so familiar, bubbling inside of his expression—“if I still can’t, then it’s her. It’s Lydia. I killed her, and this is my penance.”

  “No, Caleb.”

  Orlando cleared his throat, interrupting and bringing them back to the moment. “Ah, this is what he’s talking about.” He turned the screen so the others could all crowd around and see it. “Mausoleum. The word derives from the tomb of King Mausolus, the Persian satrap of Caria, whose large tomb, completed in 350 BCE, was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. And there’s a picture.”

  Renée bent forward to stare at it. “It
’s almost the same as what you’ve both drawn.”

  They looked at the photo Orlando just enlarged: a huge structure set on a hill overlooking a bayside city, with it had a pyramidal step structure on top of a larger base and two more tiers surrounded by immense white columns and statues.

  “And,” said Caleb, “check out the roof.”

  “A chariot,” Renée whispered. “Four horses. Two people inside, wearing crowns.”

  “Mausolus and his queen, Artemesia,” Caleb said. “He died early into his reign. And Artemesia, so in love and desperate to immortalize her husband, spared no expense for his tomb, bringing in the greatest architects and sculptors in all the world. It was a tourist attraction for centuries, but unfortunately, by the twelfth century, the tomb was destroyed, like the Pharos, in a series of earthquakes.”

  “Wonderfully tragic,” said Phoebe. “So we’ve all drawn a tomb that no longer exists. Why? What does this have to do with some castle in Rome?”

  “It’s not in Italy,” Caleb answered.

  “Turkey,” Orlando said, cutting him off, scrolling down the text. “Come on, let me do something useful here. It says here nothing’s left of it except the foundation, in the town of Bodrum, Turkey, but—”

  “—but there’s a castle nearby,” said Caleb, letting a smile form. “Built by the Knights Hospitaller in the fifteenth century.”

  “Construction started during the Crusades in 1402,” Orlando clarified. “Knights from four different countries helped build this castle, using many of the blocks and pillars from our friend Mausolus’s tomb. It wasn’t finished until around 1480. And they called it the Petroneum.” He looked up, eyes shining. “Or the Castle of St. Peter.”

  Caleb steeled his jaw, closed his eyes, and felt a tingle—a familiar stirring at the base of his spine, one that would often shoot upwards, triggering a flood of visions. But this time, it fizzled, leaving greenish sunspots in the corner of his eyes. He had to focus, had to keep trying, but not now. Now, he would have to rely on his sister and Orlando, and on the skills of the FBI. They had to find Alexander.

  “That,” he said, pointing to the castle on the screen, “is where he’s taken my son.”

  8.

  Bodrum, Turkey, 11 PM