Contents

The Gutenberg Rubric

Thirty-One

A MOMENT’S SHOCK was followed by a blur of action. Agent Fry pushed Maddie and Keith aside as he swept Keith’s ice axe off the floor and swung at Derek. A shot rang out and the agent spun against the wall with blood from his arm splattering the door behind them. The agent grasped his wounded arm.

“Damn! Why did you do that?” Derek said leveling the gun at the agent again. But instead of firing a second bullet he swung toward Keith. “Why did you do that?” he demanded.

Keith ignored the question and turned his back on Derek. He and Maddie knelt beside Agent Fry to tend to his wound.

“It’s not that bad,” Fry said.

“There’s salve and bandages in my pack,” Keith said. Maddie scrambled to get them as Derek kicked the ice axe farther away and continued to rant to no one in particular as they bound the wound.

“Of all the stupid things to do! Idiots!”

“I think it went through the muscle, but it doesn’t feel like the bone is broken,” Keith said as Fry grimaced under his touch.

“What?” Derek said. “Do you think I want to kill people? Hasn’t all this meant anything to you? I’m not a terrorist. Nobody hurt at the libraries. No death threats. You just push until I have to do something and look what happens.”

“That sounds like what you said when we were married: ‘See what yo made me do?’ Well look what you did to Keith,” Maddie said.

“And my driver lying dead in Adana,” Fry affirmed.

“Those weren’t my fault,” Derek said. “No one was supposed to be hurt.”

“So you let people like Sophie and Najat do the dirty work,” Maddie said. “I’m glad Keith broke the key. Now we’ll have to just leave and you can surrender to the agents.”

“Why did you do it?” Derek asked, turning again to Keith. “You’ve waited all your life to see what was behind that door. And you ruin the key just to keep me from seeing it?”

“I guess it was the wrong key,” Keith said blandly. He and Maddie got Fry back to his feet and stood facing Derek.

“It’s a good thing we have another then, isn’t it?” said another voice from the tunnel. Yousef stepped out into the light of the room from the shadows where he had been watching with a rifle pointed at Derek. Derek did not lower his gun, but shifted his aim slightly toward Maddie.

“Yousef,” he said. “I thought you were lost again.”

“Drop your gun, Derek,” Yousef said. “I will kill you.”

“Do you think you can kill me before I kill your sister?”

“You killed Sophie,” Yousef said.

“Sophie?” Derek exclaimed. “Don’t be ridiculous. You know as well as I do that no one made Sophie do anything. Sophie chose what she wanted to do.”

“I loved her.”

“She was crazy. We’re all better off without her,” Derek said. Keith was certain Derek was making matters worse by denigrating Sophie. If Derek had been talking about Maddie that way, Keith would be furious. Yousef was becoming more agitated.

“She loved me! We were going to get married and get away from you once and for all.”

“Sophie was using you.”

“You are going to die like she did,” Yousef yelled. His voice echoed in the chamber. Derek seemed to figure out that he was making things worse, but his aim on Maddie didn’t waver. Keith was trying unsuccessfully to move in front of her, but was afraid any sudden move would cause one of the men to lose control.

“Yousef, I’m sorry old friend. I didn’t know. Really,” Derek said. “You know I’ve always tried to do right by you. Look what we’ve accomplished. We’re here. We’ve found your father’s hidden treasure. Let’s look at what’s behind door number one before we do something crazy. You have a key, don’t you?” Derek asked.

“It takes a third degree master to forge a key,” Keith said.

“Yes,” said Maddie’s brother. “Like my grandfather.” He pulled a key on a leather thong from around his neck. Even from across the chamber, Keith could see that it was a match for his own broken key.

“Joey,” Maddie said, taking a step toward the center of the chamber. Derek’s gun did not waver from her, nor Yousef’s from Derek. “Please don’t do this. We don’t need what’s behind the door. Don’t give it to Derek.”

“You thought Gramps was just crazy. But when you went to college, I spent all my time listening to him. I knew all about the Guild by the time I was 17. I knew Gramps had stolen something and he was so ashamed that he couldn’t go back there. He kept saying over and over that he’d give me the key if I’d take the map back to the Guild. But he never showed me either one until I was in college. Then I had to promise that I would take them back. It’s all he could talk about.”

“And you thought Derek would help you,” Maddie said.

“He was the only choice I had. Our father lost his life looking for what is behind this door,” Yousef said, calm at last. “Our grandfather lost his mind. Now here we are at the door. We can’t pretend it isn’t there, Maddie.” Yousef threw the key to her. “You unlock it,” he said. “It’s your right as much as his.”

“Madeline,” said Derek as she picked up the key. “Rest assured that no matter if Yousef kills me or not, if you break that key like your boyfriend did his, I will kill you.” Maddie looked at Keith and he could see the tears in her eyes as she reached the door.

“Maddie,” he said softly. “For the next generation.” She straightened her back and nodded at Keith, understanding. Then she pressed the key to the lock.

“It’s the wrong key,” she said. “The keyhole is a completely different shape.” Keith nodded.

“It’s okay,” he said before Derek or Yousef could explode. “Take the cord off and use the other end of the key.” Maddie struggled with the knot and then Derek held out a knife blade on which she cut the cord. It took two tries to get the key in the slot correctly. The cypher 4 cross slid into the keyhole. There was a long hesitation as she gently slid the key back and forth trying to find the exact spot where it would engage with the mechanism inside. She felt it catch and turn and then move smoothly in the latch as if it were used every day. She pushed on the door, but nothing happened.

“Take the key out,” Keith instructed. He had to admit that now that he recognized the futility of his act of resistance, he was excited to see the great doors open. Maddie withdrew the key. Keith gripped the braided handle and twisted it to the left. It slid in a groove and they heard the whisper of air being sucked into the gap that gradually widened as the door swung silently inward.

Keith took a torch from beside the door on one side, and Agent Fry reached a torch from the other side. Together they held the lights aloft as they went into the dark chamber. With all eyes focused on the chamber, Yousef slipped up behind Derek and grabbed the gun out of his hand. Derek spun, but Yousef was already a step away pointing his rifle at him. The chamber was huge, with walls sloping in toward the back and from the sides. Keith and Fry made a circuit of the room, lighting torches as they went.

A marble obelisk near the center of the room rose up out of the floor. At the top, carved in relief on all four sides was a duplicate of the lion with stars and crescents that Keith and Maddie had seen on the terrace. The sides were filled with carved letters in Greek, Latin, Persian, and Egyptian. Keith shone his flashlight at the Greek side. He looked at the text in silence a moment, then translated. “I, Ptolemy Soter, decree the founding of a museum where all the knowledge of mankind will be gathered together,” he read.

Maddie, reading along on the Latin side of the obelisk stopped and looked at Keith and then both scanned the remaining text.

“Keith, does this mean what I think it means?” Maddie asked.

“Where’s the manuscript,” Derek asked. “It’s an impressive underground room, but I thought there was a book.”

“Not a book,” Keith said. “A library.” He continued to read and translate the obelisk. “Knowledge is its own nation. It has no… no… It needs no king, but it must be preserved. Within the walls of this museum, the Word will be preserved. I have commanded my keepers to build this museum where none will molest it. Not even I know where it is.”

“He had this place built to hide the Library of Alexandria!” Maddie exclaimed. “It must never have gotten here.”

“It’s not quite right,” Keith said. “The Library had between 500,000 and a million scrolls. This is a big room, but it wouldn’t hold that number of books. And why would Gutenberg be brought to an empty room?”

“It’s time for us to go now, Derek,” Yousef said softly, jabbing his gun into Derek’s ribs and dragging him backward by the collar toward the cave. “We can leave this in the hands of the scholars. Time to finish our business.” Keith, Maddie, and Fry turned to look at the two backing out of the chamber into the narrow opening of the cave. Then Derek twisted and knocked Yousef to the ground, his gun skittering away. Yousef’s jacket fell open when he hit the ground and everyone could clearly see the explosives strapped to his chest. For an instant everyone froze. Yousef smiled slightly as he looked up at Derek and held up the detonator so he could see it. “For Sophie.”

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