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eyes closed and suddenly, just for a moment, he had a jolting vision of crushing ice, of an enormous head with sad, regal eyes looking on protectively. He heard helicopter blades, and what sounded like his Aunt Phoebe’s voice.
    “I saw this too.” Montross gazed at the walls to his left and right, nodding to himself as if in vindication of his drawings. Then he looked above Alexander’s head, over the door.
    Blinking away the vision, and the certainty that his father and the others were in big trouble, Alexander stood up straight, spreading his feet to cover something on the ground, hoping—
    “Don’t bother,” Montross said. “I know what’s there. Oh, your dad’s a clever guy, I give him that. Taking elements of the Pharos’s vault design and incorporating them here. Thinking he’s following in Sostratus’s footsteps, right? But I wonder, Alexander, have you figured it out yet?”
    “I don’t know what you mean.”
    “Sure you do, kid. You’re the sole child, the son of two Keepers. No choice really, you’re their chosen replacement. You’re being groomed, just as Keepers have done for over two thousand years. But your dad, being such an admirer of Sostratus and a stickler for the Egyptian mystery school’s technique of learning by experience, he would have you discover the truth first-hand. To prove yourself worthy and to fully understand the concepts, you must solve the puzzle and find the treasure on your own.” Montross stepped closer, carefully. “So, have you done it?”
    Alexander slowly shook his head.
    “Not lying to me, are you, boy? Worried that I’d threaten you, or your mom, to force you to let me in?”
    “Not lying. I don’t know the way in, not yet.”
    “I believe you.” Montross closed the sketchpad, tossed it aside casually, then pointed to the door. “Move aside, please.”
    “No.”
    “Just a step to your left, that’s all. I’m not stupid enough to try to open the door yet, but I need to confirm what letters lie under your feet.”
    Alexander glared at him for another long moment, then shuffled sideways to let Montross lean in and look.
    “Ah, as I thought.”
     
     
    He studied the letters on the floor, and then again over the door. “So, in the Above we have the Greek letters: Theta, Omega, and Delta. And Below by your feet, reading again left to right, we have Omega, Delta, Theta.”
    “You won’t figure it out,” Alexander said.
    Montross only smiled, then walked to the shelves running the whole twenty-foot length of the left side of the room. He glanced over his shoulder at the opposite wall, and the three identical shelves. “I’ve already figured it out, kid.”
    He touched the mahogany tracks, more like frames around a series of peg holes bored into the wall. “Three to a side. Each one with eleven peg holes. And there’s a rounded wooden pin inserted, randomly it appears, in one of the holes on each shelf.”
    Alexander made a sound like a laugh.
    “What?” Montross glared at him.
    “Get it wrong and there are no second chances.”
    “Really? Your dad would be that ruthless? Kill his own son if he made the wrong choice?”
    Alexander shivered again. “He said I would know when I figured it out. And if I didn’t know for sure, I should never try it. No hunches or guesses.”
    “I see. Well, then,”—Montross smiled—“I’d better get this right, for both our sakes.” He touched the peg on the top row, grasped it, and pulled it out sharply. Alexander winced, then they both looked at each other and smiled.
    “Nothing’s going to happen yet, right?” Montross asked. “Not until I set everything in position. Put all the pegs where I want them, and then try the door. At that point, either it opens . . .”
    “Or,” said Alexander, “we both get squished.”
    “Squished?” He looked up at the ceiling, then the cracks along the walls. He cocked his head. “What’s he got up there? A trap ceiling? Something to crush the hapless