The Mongol Objective [Oct 2011] Read online

  Alexander woke to a feeling of his ears popping. He sat up in his tiny bunk, the sole cot in a room no bigger than the old downstairs bathroom in his house. The dream had returned, smashing at the inside of his skull like a nightmare trying to get out. The smell of burnt hair and flesh, sulfur and death. Mom . . . He leapt out of bed, wobbled unsteadily on his feet, then went for the door.

  Locked.

  After a moment, he remembered the submarine. Being herded down the tight stairwell, his battered Nikes thumping along behind the shoes and boots of the other men ushering Xavier Montross down into the sub’s metal belly. Two men had locked him in this room, after first giving him “something.” Alexander didn’t even consider that they might have drugged the glass of water they left for him, but within ten minutes of submerging, feeling queasy enough from the descent, he fell onto the cot and was fast asleep.

  It felt like the craft was surfacing. He wished he had a porthole window, or access to the periscope, to see where he was. He got up, fought a dizzy spell, then tried the door. Still locked.

  Again he thought of the Incredibles. If only he could be like Dash.

  Just as he was thinking about creating a diversion to get the door open, like setting something on fire and tripping the alarms, then running out in a blaze of speed, something clicked and the door pulled outward.

  A pretty, dark-skinned woman in a black suit stood there. She crossed her arms. Looked him up and down. “I guess you look like your father. Come on.” She moved aside and motioned him out. “I’ve been sent to collect you.”

  Alexander blinked at her as if she were some kind of mirage. “Where are we?”

  “Where we need to be. Now, move it.”

  #

  Alexander stepped out into the night and immediately felt the difference: the humidity and the glare of the city streets, the boats twinkling in the bay, the lit-up stucco and red-tiled houses on the hills, and the blaring, techno-beat music from a nearby disco. But the imposing sight straight over his shoulder that made him turn and gasp was something out of a fairy tale book.

  A castle.

  Huge reinforced walls were lit with multi-colored lights that made it look like a model on a movie set. Three square towers were visible, equally bright, presiding over the rocky shore and the small armada of boats tethered to the piers.

  Impressed with the sight of the medieval castle, Alexander almost didn’t see Montross at the prow, a pack over his shoulder. He was dressed all in black, blending into the night, except for his exposed head of red hair.

  “Ah,” he said, “Nina and our little guest. How did you sleep, kid?”

  Alexander felt his attention wavering back to the castle. “Bad dreams.” Then he had a thought, a flicker of a memory that grew into something bigger. Something he remembered all of a sudden about his dreams. “A nightmare, about my mom dying. But you know all about what that’s like, don’t you?”

  Montross flinched, and suddenly Nina’s hand shot out and spun Alexander around by the shoulder. She was kneeling now, her eyes swallowing his vision as if they were miniature black holes. “What did you see?”

  Grimacing, trying to be strong and not cry out, Alexander wriggled in her grasp. Bad idea, he thought. Should have kept that to myself. “Just a wreck, a car crash.” His eyes glazed over and suddenly he was there. “A woman . . .”

  . . . reaching for the man at the wheel, the man holding his chest and staring at her as if she had just wounded him.

  “How did you keep this from me? You bitch. You little lying bitch.”

  And then he turns the wheel—hard—toward an oncoming truck, just as his eyes lose all emotion and the woman screams . . .

  Alexander rocked back to the moment, and now Xavier loomed over him. Scooped him up by the front of his shirt so he was dangling in the air.

  “What did you see?” he screamed.

  “Nothing.” He cringed, biting his lip, withering under the intensity of Montross’s stare.

  Alexander dropped, fell back into Nina’s grasp as Xavier lowered his hands, breathed deeply and continued staring. “Bring him.”

  “Are we going inside the castle?” Alexander asked, with a dose of hope.

  Montross ignored him, turning to Nina. “Is everything set inside? Did you find what we need?”

  She nodded, a smile curling at her lips.

  Montross turned back to Alexander. “We’ve left a present in there for your father—that is, if he’s heading here as I expect.”

  “We aren’t going inside?” Alexander asked.

  Montross straightened. “I’m sorry, we’ll be going somewhere else. Somewhere far less hospitable.”

  9.

  Inside the government jet, Phoebe, Caleb and Orlando sat with Renée and two other agents, both working their laptops. Orlando eyed them occasionally, with more than a hint of interest. Earlier, he had probed Renée’s past and questioned her involvement here. The hits were vague, but the visions and impressions concrete enough. Definitely she was legit, but there was something else. Something murky at the corners of his sight. Something of interest and, perhaps, something she was hiding. He needed more time, and some peace and quiet.

  Renée was analyzing the castle’s layout on her laptop screen. “We can post agents at all the exits, and we’ve got four snipers covering all the angles and any blind spots they can’t hit. Here, and on this chapel rooftop, on this hill, and at the minaret here.” She looked up, took a breath. “So what do you think this guy wants? Money?”

  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 awa
y. 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.”

  “The keys?” Renée frowned. “Plural? How many are there?”

  “Three, according to the legends. Spread out across the earth at ancient sites, or buried with the dead rulers who might have had the means to construct elaborately defended resting places. Hidden, some maintain, by men related to the ancient order of Thoth. Followers like Noah and Ziusudra and all the rest.”

  “Magicians and prophets?” Renée noted.

  “Psychics,” Phoebe whispered.

  Renée stood and started pacing, gripping her cell phone like a pointer. The plane dipped and she reached for a chair to steady herself. “So Montross broke into your lighthouse, stole this Emerald Tablet which, if I hear you right, is likely an Egyptian archaeological artifact, and its theft is a serious breach of international law, but never mind that now. Montross then kidnapped your son and is now off seeking three legendary keys, all of which he’ll need in order to gain access to a chamber under the Sphinx and open a box which contains a translation of the text?”

  Caleb shrugged. “Sounds about right. I know it’s less than convincing, but that’s the only rationale I’ve got right now.”

  “So why St. Peter’s?”

  “The Mausoleum,” Phoebe said. “He must’ve RV’d the keys, found that one might have been hidden there. Mausolus must have found one, recognized it as something special, and Artemesia had it entombed with him in his mausoleum.”

  “It fits,” Caleb said, “with the tenet of alchemy which maintains that secrets are best hidden ‘in plain sight.’ The Mausoleum was a huge, ostentatious structure. Alexander the Great would have been well aware of it, as Mausolus was a contemporary, and Alexander went on to conquer Halicarnassus a decade later. My guess is wherever the key was, Alexander couldn’t find it. But he posted guards to keep the mausoleum safe from trespassers before putting his best philosophers to work at analyzing its construction to find potential secret compartments.”

  Renée rubbed her eyes. “So what about the other locations?”

  Caleb sighed. “I didn’t know about Mausolus until now, but I believe one of the keys may have been at the tomb of another charismatic and powerful leader. Cyrus the Great, the first great conqueror. He was a Persian in the sixth century BCE who created the largest empire the world had ever seen, a feat unrivaled until Alexander came along. And what’s more, we know that two centuries after Cyrus’s death, Alexander invaded Persia, and in what is now modern-day Iran he found and entered Cyrus’s tomb, looking for something in particular.”

  “Did he find it?” Renée asked.

  “Well, we’re not entirely sure what he found.” Caleb took a sip of tea, blowing at the smoke first. “We tried to RV the event and got a lot of jumbled images, but nothing definitive came out of those sessions.” He thought back to the candle-lit room at home, the ten people madly scribbling on their pads, day after day, trying to see. What had become of Cyrus’s possessions? People had draw
n things ranging from snow-capped peaks to marvelous palaces to a remote desert landscape and a cavern underground, but nothing consistent.

  Phoebe leaned in. “We’ve been going on the theory that Alexander the Great found Cyrus’s key, and that maybe he himself discovered, or was handed, another key in the desert at Sais, at the Egyptian oracle where he was heralded as king, given the mandate of Heaven, and promised a marvelous destiny.”

  Caleb continued. “So Alexander had two of the three keys, at least, and was likely searching for the third. We believe he died before finding it and achieving that destiny, although history still reveres him as one of the greatest rulers of the world, and responsible for the spread of democracy and knowledge. He was most likely buried with those two keys, and we may need to focus our efforts to find his body to verify that, but more likely we weren’t asking the right questions to define our search. I’m starting to think that maybe someone took the keys from his tomb before it was hidden.”

  “But we doubt anyone has managed to collect all three,” Phoebe said, “since we’re pretty sure the lockbox is still unopened.”

  Caleb put down his cup. “It’s more likely that someone else, someone very powerful, must have found and dug up Alexander. And now those keys are hidden somewhere else. But as for the third key, we’ve tried remote viewing it before, but only came up with vague, unreferenced and uncorrelated images—which made us go all the way back and try to view the creation of the Emerald Tablet again. Who actually created it and where.”

  “And what did you see at those sessions?” Renée asked.

  “Not much.”

  “Except for the head,” Orlando pointed out. “The damn head.”

  “The what?” Renée asked.

  Caleb stretched out his legs. “It was just something else we’d been drawing a lot, the only consistent image our members came up with in connection to questions about the origin and meaning of the Emerald Tablet. Don’t know what it means yet, but because of a spy in our group, Montross knew about it, and used it to get us as far away as possible so he could steal the Emerald Tablet.”