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After depriving the magicians of the keys to their vehicles, along with all weapons and mobile communications devices, the team of five plus one, piled into their rented Toyota Land Cruiser and began the four-hour-long drive back to Ankara. Aliyah offered no resistance and showed no overt signs of treacherous intent; she even went as far as to instruct her men to return to Plymouth and await further instructions, though whether that was a sincere request or part of a pre-arranged ruse was anyone’s guess. She seemed resigned to her situation, though Maddock wondered how much of that was due to the fact that she had at least two guns pointed at her the whole time.
An hour into the journey, while driving along the surprisingly modern D750 highway, which cut across the Anatolian Plateau and offered a spectacular view of the distant volcanic peak of Mount Hasan, Bones who was driving, glanced over his shoulder. “This seems as good a place as any. I’ll slow down a little if you want to toss her out.”
“Bones!” cried Rose from the shotgun seat. “That’s not funny.”
“I wasn’t joking,” Bones said, dead-pan. Then he reached up and tilted the rear-view mirror to adjust his view. “Or did you think I was talking about Jade?”
Jade, who had the middle row seats all to herself, pretended to scratch her nose with just her middle finger extended.
Ever the peacemaker, Rose unbuckled her seat belt and threaded her way back to the middle row. Kneeling on the seat next to Jade, she peered over the backrest at Aliyah, who sat in the rear seating area, bracketed by Maddock and Kismet. “You knew we weren’t going to find the Emerald Tablet at Tyana.”
Aliyah shrugged, not meeting Rose’s stare. “Many have looked for it. If it was there to find, someone would have. But I wonder if it was ever there at all.”
“You mean after Balinas originally found it?”
Aliyah now raised her head to look back at Rose, regarding her thoughtfully, as if trying to decide whether to trust her. “It may be that the story in the Kitāb sirr al-ḫalīqa is not a literal account of the discovery of the tablet.”
The Persian name seemed to flow naturally off her lips, a gift of her exotic ancestry.
“An allegory?”
Aliyah shifted in her seat, ignoring the guns held by Maddock and Kismet. “Or a riddle.”
Maddock now took an interest. “I like riddles.”
Aliyah glanced over at him, then looked forward again. “Balinas, is also known by the name Pseudo-Apollonius of Tyana. This is the first part of the riddle.”
Rose nodded. “The real Apollonius of Tyana lived in the First Century. He was a famous neo-Pythagorean philosopher and writer, though none of his original writings survive.”
“He was more than that,” Aliyah said firmly. “He was a magus. A semi-divine figure, traveling the world, teaching and performing miracles. Some believe his story was the inspiration for the Gospels.”
“The Gospels?” Bones called out. “The Bible stories about Jesus?”
“Yes. There are many similarities. In fact, in the Second Century, those who followed the teachings of Apollonius believed that Jesus was a pale imitation of the sage. In any event, Balinas lived many centuries later, and may have chosen that appellation to give his own writings more import and broaden his reach.
“That was a common practice among Classical philosophers, riding the coattails of more famous men.”
Bones nodded sagely. “Like all those guys who write novels and let James Patterson slap his name on the cover.”
Aliyah made a sour face. “No, nothing like that. In this instance, I believe Balinas’ alter-ego was offering a clue to the true origin of the Emerald Tablet.”
“The real Apollonius?”
“Let’s set that aside for a moment. Balinas claimed the true author of the Emerald Tablet was Hermes Trismegistus—Hermes the Thrice-Great.”
Maddock was becoming interested despite himself. “Rose told us about this. As Hellenistic culture spread across Egypt, the gods of both cultures blended together to form distinct new god-forms. Just as the Roman Jupiter is based on the Greek Zeus, Hermes Trismegistus was based on the Greek Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth, but some of the Egyptian deities might have been men who were deified after death. It is generally believed that Thoth might have originally been the priest Imhotep—”
“The bad guy in The Mummy,” Bones supplied.
“And the architect of the Step Pyramid,” Rose said, with a roll of her eyes. “Thoth might also have been based on Amenhotep, son of Hapu. Hermes Trismegistus might have been an Egyptian magician and priest. A real person, not an abstract god.”
Maddock snapped his fingers as inspiration dawned. “The Magus card!”
The Magus was the name assigned to a card in the Thoth Tarot deck designed by Aleister Crowley. Maddock and Kismet had found an early version of the card with the remains of Adam Garral, the occultist who had first discovered the Apex and an ancestor of Kismet’s adoptive father. The card was itself another riddle, and an anachronism, as Crowley’s Tarot deck had not been produced until more than thirty years after Garral’s disappearance and death in the frozen wilderness of Antarctica.
Maddock leaned forward to look past Aliyah to Kismet. “The card has the figure of Mercury—the Roman version of Hermes. And Hermes is also Thoth. Three faces of Hermes—thrice-great—and all called the Magus, or Magician.”
“The point,” Aliyah said, her voice edged with irritation, “Is that Hermes and Hermes Trismegistus were never considered to be the same entity in the eyes of the Greeks, so it is unlikely that the Emerald Tablet written by one would have been concealed in a temple dedicated to the other.”
“So we should be looking for a temple to Thoth?”
Aliyah appraised Maddock again for a moment, then seemed to relax a little. She turned to look at Kismet. “Do you recall your vision of the Emerald Tablet? You first saw it as an Egyptian sword—a kopis—the sword of Alexander the Great—concealed within the tower of Babel.”
Kismet nodded. “It seemed that way.”
“Alexander the Great spread Hellenistic culture across the world of his day—here, in what was once called Asia Minor and across the Persian world, but this influence was felt most strongly in one place. Egypt. And particularly in the city that bears his name to this day.”
“Alexandria,” Rose said, almost breathless. “The Library!”
She turned to look at Maddock. “Hermes and Thoth were both patron gods of the written word. Thoth in particular was the god of wisdom. And libraries. And what better place to keep the Emerald Tablet than the Library of Alexandria.”
“Balinas lived in the Eighth Century,” Kismet countered. “The library was completely destroyed long before that.”
“Contrary to popular belief,” Rose said, slipping into history-professor mode, “the Library was not sacked and burned in a single event, but rather suffered numerous episodes of destruction, some intentional, others the result of accidents and natural disasters. Earthquakes and tsunamis did a lot of damage. Nobody knows exactly where the Library once stood. It was customary for ancient civilizations to salvage the stone and other material for use in other building projects, not to mention repurposing the real estate. There’s a modern city where ancient Alexandria once stood, and as you can imagine, the current Arab populace isn’t keen on having the streets of their city dug up for the sake of satisfying curiosity about the Western world.”
“So how are we going to find it?” Bones asked.
“Well, we do have a few clues from history. For one thing, most of the historical accounts of the Library indicate that it was part of the royal palace complex. Now, we don’t know exactly where that was either, but there have been a few hopeful discoveries. In 1992, a French archaeologist discovered the sunken remains of the royal quarters of Cleopatra VII—”
“Seven?” Bones interrupted. “There was more than one? Were they all babes?”
Rose laughed. “There were actually seven women named Cleopatra, but Cleo Seven was the famous one—the one that Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony were so enthralled with. I leave it to you to decide if the word ‘babe’ is accurate, but if the artwork from the time is any indication, she most definitely didn’t look anything like Elizabeth Taylor in her prime. Plutarch says she was beautiful, but not extraordinarily so, and then goes on to praise her wit and charm. And especially her voice.”
“Ah,” Bones said, sounding a little disappointed. “A great personality and a face for radio.”
Maddock tried to get the conversation back on track. “Her quarters would probably have been in the palace complex. You said its underwater?”
“About sixteen feet under,” Rose said. “In the harbor, a couple hundred yards offshore.”
“Well that’s no problem then,” Bones said, quickly getting over his disillusionment. “Underwater is where we do our best work.”
“The bay is toxic,” Aliyah said, calm and confident. “Poisoned with petroleum and industrial waste. But by all means, search underwater to your heart’s content.”
Maddock eyed her. “It’s not underwater?”
“If I told you where to look, you would have no further use for me.”
“Just knowing it’s in Alexandria may be enough, as long as we’ve got the relics to guide us.”
Aliyah shrugged. “I can tell you exactly where to look. Or you can take your chances. It’s your choice.”
“I say we take our chances,” Bones said.
“Hold on a second,” Jade said. “If you’ve known all along that it was there, why didn’t you get it yourself?”
Aliyah kept looking at Kismet. “Until you saw the vision of the four elementals, we did not know what we were looking for. If we had suspected, we would have brought the Magna of Illusion here and opened the vault ourselves. Perhaps if you had not killed him, my husband would have been the one to behold the vision.”
Anger had darkened her features as she spoke, but after a pause, her expression softened. “I told you in Plymouth, Nick Kismet. I believe you are meant to find it.”
Kismet just stared back, stone-faced.
Maddock understood his wariness. Aliyah had set a trap for them in Tyana. Was she now trying to lead them into another?