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The Gutenberg Rubric

Nineteen

KEITH DID NOT RETURN directly to the hotel. They had several hours before departure and he didn’t want to risk giving away too much before it was time. He headed back to the lab, but before descending he called Maddie.

“Are you OK?” she asked immediately. “Are you on your way here?”

“I’m fine. And thank you for leaving sandwiches for me in the lab. I just came up to make flight arrangements and call to tell you we’re leaving. I’ll be there in about two hours.”

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Back to where it all started,” he said. “The Library of Alexandria. I’ll let Granddad know. He’s going, too.”

“Keith, you can’t imagine how much I miss you. Please hurry, darling,” Maddie said to him.

“I’ll be there soon,” he assured her. As much as it pained him to deceive Maddie, the call to his grandfather was even more stressful.

“The newspapers are full of this rubbish. Has Madeline seen it?”

“No, and fortunately she doesn’t read German,” Keith answered.

“Even in German she would recognize her own name. And there are English language newspapers here.”

“Right now she’s in her room waiting for me. I need to finish getting our tickets and then I’ll meet you at the hotel,” Keith said. “You’ll finally get to see the Library of Alexandria! I’m sorry Maddie and I will be headed a different direction.”

“Keith, you can’t just run off looking for buried treasure,” Frank said. “That’s what happened to Errol fifty years ago. He came up out of that chamber and left. He never came back to us.”

“Granddad, Errol didn’t have all the pieces,” Keith assured his grandfather. “I do. I have to put an end to this.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing, son,” Frank said.

“It will be okay, Granddad,” Keith said.

Maddie and Frank were waiting in the hotel lobby when he arrived and Günther was parked at the curb to take them to the airport. Keith gave Frank his ticket, but took Maddie’s passport to hand to the guard at security who waved the two through quickly. They were in a small wing of the terminal and Maddie could see flights posted to all parts of the Arab world: Dubai, Lebanon, Istanbul, Cairo and Kuwait. They sat down in a waiting area and Keith commented that they had a few minutes.

“Maddie, there is one other thing that we have to do. I’m sorry about this.”

“What?” she asked, looking terrified. “You aren’t leaving me.”

“No, but we are leaving our phones.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Someone has been tracking us. The most likely means is through our phones. Please give Frank your cell phone. He’ll dispose of it.” Keith reached in his pocket and pulled out the phone he had carried from the U.S. and gave it to his grandfather. Maddie shrugged and pulled her phone out as well. Frank smiled at her.

Keith embraced his grandfather and whispered in the old man’s ear. “Do you have it?”

“Just like you asked for,” Frank answered. He handed his grandson a small brown envelope.

“You approve?”

“Of course! Now go in peace, Son,” the old man said. He quickly embraced Maddie and then turned to board the plane.

Keith grabbed a confused Maddie’s hand and dragged her away from the gate.

“Hurry, we’ll miss our flight,” he said as he led her toward the flight boarding for Istanbul.

“I thought we were going to Egypt,” Maddie said following Keith and glancing back toward Frank as he disappeared down the jetway for the flight to Cairo.

“Granddad is going to Egypt,” Keith said. “We’re going to Turkey. I’m sorry I couldn’t say anything earlier, but it’s necessary that the two of us do this alone. I couldn’t bring Granddad along. It would be too strenuous for him. Besies, he’s always wanted to visit Alexandria.”

When they were seated and the plane was taxiing onto the runway, Maddie turned and glared at Keith.

“Tell me what is going on,” she demanded. “You said the Library of Alexandria…”

“…is no longer in Egypt,” Keith finished. “Or at least what remains of it. Granddad is going to visit the new library in Alexandria, Egypt. But according to the details in the rubric and the rest of the Gutenberg letter, principal pieces of the library were removed before the time of Caesar and ultimately made their way to Southeastern Turkey. We’re on our way to find the remnants of the original Library.”

“Keith, that’s incredible!” Maddie exclaimed, quickly forgetting that she was angry with him. “It was a map?”

“In a manner of speaking. It wasn’t a drawing, but a set of instructions on how to find the manuscripts and how to recover them.”

“Why Turkey?” she asked. “And how would Gutenberg have known about it?”

“According to the letter in Gutenberg’s chest,” Keith said, “in the years before he came to Mainz to start his printing operation, he was guided by a monk on a pilgrimage to a secret location. It was just before the fall of Constantinople to the Saracens. He was shown secrets of alchemy and received an initiation into arts of transmutation that he had never dreamed possible. It was on that trip that he discovered how to make lead type. When he returned to Germany, he set up his print shop in Mainz and sought out investment to print the Bible. He lost the print shop because of his continued experiments in alchemy and dedicated his life to preserving the location of this remnant of Alexandria so that one day a descendant of the Guild would be able to find what he had found.”

“So are you telling me that Gutenberg discovered the Philosopher’s Stone or something? That’s very Harry Potter of him,” Maddie joked. “Is he supposed to still be living somewhere in Turkey?”

“Maddie,” he said seriously, “the manuscript he refers to is called ‘The Secret Wisdom of Ptolemy Soter.’ It’s the same book listed in the catalogue of manuscripts at St. Luke’s. Gutenberg was told that it was written in Ptolemy’s own hand.”

“The Ptolemy who founded the Library of Alexandria? It must be sealed in an airtight container or have been copied multiple times if it still exists. Even for Gutenberg to have read it 500 years ago would have jeopardized its integrity.”

“That may be why it was brought to the monastery for copying. And to preserve the secrecy, why the ink was laced with cyanide.”

“They killed the monks?”

“It seems more likely that it was a mass suicide. Those monks called themselves The Guardians of the Word.”

Maddie quickly shifted her thinking toward document preservation, listing the things they would need in order to recover the document and protect it if they should find it. The more Keith talked to her, the more excited he became. This was his Maddie and they were in love—with each other and with books.

When the plane touched down, Maddie immediately wanted to locate the specialized equipment they would need before they started out again, but after they had cleared customs, Keith guided her straight through the narrow passage from the International Terminal to the Domestic Terminal.

“Where to now?” Maddie asked.

“Adana,” Keith said. “It would take us a couple of days to drive all the way across Turkey, and it’s not particularly safe.”

“Where is this place?” she asked.

“In the cradle of civilization.”

Their flight was boarding when they reached the gate and it was after midnight when the plane was finally airborne. Keith and Maddie collapsed together in their seats, too tense to sleep. It was only an hour and a half flight from Istanbul to Adana and the plane bounced roughly on landing, feeling like it was running over a rutted cow path as they taxied near the terminal. They walked down the stairs that had been wheeled out on the tarmac and were jolted by the brisk wind that blew across them. Maddie pulled her coat closely around her and Keith pulled the collar of his sports jacket up around his ears. He would have to do something about this. If he made the trip out into the desert with no better protection than what he had on he would freeze before he uncovered the clues he needed. And he was reminded that he had not yet replaced his shoelace when he tripped and slipped out of the shoe on the tarmac.

Inside the terminal, people scattered rapidly through a limited barrier between secure and non-secure areas. As they passed through the turnstile, Keith spotted a man standing nearby with a sign that said “Herr Drucker.”

“What? No Doktor?” Maddie smirked as Keith waved to the man.

“I didn’t have time for formalities when I made reservations,” Keith said. “Guten Morgen,” Keith said to the man with the sign. “Do you speak English? Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”

“Parlate Italiano?” Maddie added helpfully.

“Thank you, I speak English,” the man said. “May I take you to your hotel, Herr Drucker?”

“Yes, that would be great,” Keith said. “We could use some more sleep and then we have shopping to do before we can leave tomorrow.”

“We have many very good shopping in Adana,” the driver said as he led them to his car. Whatever Keith had expected, it was not the beat up Land Rover that they climbed into. “What Hotel?”

“Seyhan Hotel,” Keith answered.

“It is too bad you will not be staying longer, then,” the driver answered as he sped away from the airport.

They understood the response half an hour later when they arrived at the luxury hotel in the heart of the city. They were escorted to a suite on an upper floor overlooking the River Seyhan. Keith flopped down on the sofa, almost too exhausted to move, but quickly shifted his position to ease the pressure on the fresh tattoo. He had let his eyes drift closed when Maddie called from the bathroom.

“Darling, you simply must come in here and see this view,” she called. He could hear water running and assumed she was in the shower. Well, that was a view he could stir himself to see.

When he walked into the spacious bathroom, however, the sight was even better than he had anticipated. The room was marble with elegant fixtures. Three steps led up to a huge tub into which steaming hot water was running. Behind the tub windows stretched across the entire wall from floor to ceiling, giving one the impression of being outdoors overlooking the lights of the city. Against this panorama, Maddie was silhouetted. She stepped away from the window into the light as she ascended the steps to the tub. Keith wanted his other eye now more desperately than he had in the chamber in Mainz and pulled the bandage away from his face as he approached the tub.

“You should take your clothes off before you join me in the water,” Maddie said smiling at him. Keith was mesmerized and shed his clothes as he approached the tub, leaving them strewn on the floor. He pulled the glove and gauze from his hand as well and stepped into the steamy water with his lover. Both of them winced slightly as their fresh tattoos submerged.

“I feel like we haven’t really been together since the damn explosion at the library,” Maddie said. “I mean the first one. I missed you last night.”

“I missed you, too,” Keith said. The feeling of having her pour hot water over his aching body was heavenly. He allowed himself to succumb to her ministrations as she washed him and examined his wounds. Then he returned the service, abandoning the wash cloth and using just his hands as he stroked and explored her skin.

“If you start counting, I’ll drown you,” Maddie said laughing.

“I was just checking to make sure Granddad connected the right dots,” Keith said softly. “He is really an incredible artist.”

“I looked in the mirror,” Maddie said, “but it’s hard to see.”

“They aren’t intended for you to see. That’s why they are on our backs. They are intended for you to feel. I’ve seen a couple that were pretty ghastly. Rolf’s master had palsy when he was initiated and you can hardly tell what the tattoo was supposed to be. But Rolf can describe it in every detail as if it were Rembrandt masterpiece.”

“And you?” Maddie asked.

“I have the shields of Schoeffer and Fust, the oldest printer’s mark in existence,” Keith said.

“And now you have this as well,” she said lifting the key. “It’s beautiful. If you get tired of turning lead into gold you could always go into making jewelry.”

“Now we both have jewelry around our necks,” he said, touching the photo locket of her parents that she always wore. “And we both have tattoos. We could be Keitheline.” Maddie giggled and lay back against Keith in the luxurious bath.

“I could feel the anchor taking shape. I started thinking that anyone who saw it would think I was a sailor. Then the way the dolphin sweeps around it… I could see the image burst in front of my eyes. I just wanted to look to see if it was as beautiful as I imagined.”

“It is,” Keith said softly, kissing her neck. “And you are more beautiful than I ever imagined.” He kissed her and stroked her skin, then looked her in the eyes. “This water is so comfortable and relaxing that I may go to sleep and drown. Let’s get out and go to bed.”

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