The Pharos Objective
already know is real, but to locate only one thing.”
    Waxman was silent.
    Caleb inched closer, sliding along the wall until his face was in front of the glass, his eyes locked on Waxman’s. “You know the legends. You’ve studied the same stories I have, the same rumors my mom was always on about, the same stories my dad told me as a kid.” He swallowed, his mouth dry. “You want the treasure. You want the lost treasure of Alexander the Great.”
    “I’d be lying,” Waxman said, “if I said that thought hadn’t crossed my mind.”
    Caleb sat back down, holding his throbbing head. “Good, finally you’ve said something I can believe.”
    “But Caleb, think about it. We can do it! We’re better suited than anyone else. Why? Because we can
see
, truly see. The other archaeologists, they’re blind, just going on old words, faded texts or ancient relics, some of them two thousand years old. While they’re struggling with government officials and museum curators, we’re seeing beyond it all, far into the past, hoping to glimpse exactly where and how to get to it.”
    “If it exists.”
    “Caleb, like you said, you’ve read the same texts I have. And you’ve read your father’s notes. I know you have.”
    Caleb lifted his head. Yes, his father’s notes. For a moment, he had a flash to a night seventeen years ago, his father in a room surrounded by stacks of old books, newspapers and magazines. And drawings—hundreds of drawings. Some of them Helen’s, some his father’s. . .
    . . . and there he stands in his military uniform a week before shipping off, looking over his shoulder at five-year-old Caleb standing in the doorway, holding up one sheet of paper—a drawing of the Pharos, at night, besieged by an armada of Roman ships.
    Caleb blinked, and he was back in the recompression chamber, listening to Waxman drone on about his father’s research.
    “. . . his obsession, which became your mother’s. I thought it quaint that your father, the son of a lighthouse keeper in Upstate New York, should adopt as his life’s passion the very first lighthouse, researching and learning everything about it.”
    “Yeah,” Caleb said, “quaint. Like it was ‘quaint’ that his children should follow you around the world, risking their lives in the pursuit of whatever treasure you thought you could get your hands on.”
    “Your mother—”
    “—should have known better. We lost our father, and then, as if that wasn’t enough, we lost our childhood, tramping around through bug-infested jungles and submerged wrecks, all for your cause.”
    “I won’t apologize for that. A better education you couldn’t have asked for.”
    “I
didn’t
ask for this. Phoebe didn’t—”
    “Caleb, enough. Listen. We’ll have to clear out of this area soon, so let’s get to the point. What did you see down there?”
    Caleb hung his head.
    “Draw it, if you like,” Waxman ordered, pointing to the paper and pencils.
    “Don’t need to,” Caleb whispered.
    “What?”
    “I don’t need to draw it. And it’s nothing. It was nothing.”
    “So, ‘nothing’ almost got you killed?”
    Caleb looked up. “Nothing that will help you. All I saw was the lighthouse. The Pharos. The day before its dedication.” Waxman was silent—a breathless silence. “And   . . .”
    “And nothing. Sostratus, the architect, was there, and I was, I don’t know, somehow I was seeing through the eyes of Demetrius—”
    “The librarian?”
    “Yes, I suppose.”
    “Fascinating.”
    “Yeah, whatever. So Sostratus showed Demetrius around. It was . . . beautiful, majestic, soaring. But, I saw no treasure. I—”
    “But it was here, the lighthouse?”
    Caleb nodded. There had been enough speculation through the ages, since the remnants of the tower, long-wracked by earthquakes and disuse, had at last been shaken loose and crashed into the sea, as to where exactly it had stood. But Caleb’s vision had made it clear. “Yes, the view I had

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