The Pharaoh Key

Epilogue

THE SUN WAS hanging low in the sky when Gideon drove along the rutted road to his cabin, pulled up beside the shabby lean-to stacked with firewood, and killed the engine. He glanced out briefly at the surrounding scenery, gauging it with an appraising eye: summer would be early this year. Then he got out, whistling tunelessly under his breath and pulling a sheaf of mail and a small sack of groceries from the passenger seat as he did so. A long, narrow pain d’epi stuck up from the sack like a flagpole; while he considered himself a gourmet chef, the art of bread baking was a skill that had always eluded him. Besides, there was a place in Santa Fe that made the best French bread he’d tasted this side of the Rive Gauche.

He stepped up onto the porch, kicked open the screen door—this far up in the mountains and away from civilization, he never bothered to lock anything—and walked through the timbered living room into the kitchen alcove, where he dumped everything on the counter. Still whistling—the tuneless ditty had now morphed into Charlie Parker’s “Confirmation”—he pushed the mail aside and plucked the groceries out of the bag: bread, cheese, arugula, half a pound of Culatello di Zibello, and a few other delicacies, which he stored in their proper places. He rinsed his hands in the sink, dried them on a dish towel, then looked around. Was there anything he’d forgotten to do?

No. There was nothing.

The cabin was very quiet, with only the sigh of a breeze in the great ponderosa pines outside. As he listened to the whispering of the trees he realized what a strange feeling it was: to have done everything necessary. Not just paid his property taxes or finished that E. M. Forster novel on the bedside table or patched that elusive leak in the roof—but everything. He glanced around the cabin, his gaze falling on one treasured possession after another. It had taken him years to find them, collect them, even steal them—but he had taken only days to determine their ultimate fates. The paintings he owned would all go to the New Mexico Museum of Art. His treasured cookware—the copper pans and French rolling pins and the lovingly cured iron skillet he’d inherited from his grandmother—would go to a friend and fellow chef he knew in Los Alamos. And his pride and joy—an antique third-phase Red Mesa Navajo blanket that lay across his bed—would go to Alida Blaine…if she’d accept it. As for the rest, cabin included—it would remain unlocked and available to anyone who wanted to use it…until it was reclaimed by time and decay, which eventually took everything.

Gideon was well aware that, in the two weeks since he’d returned from Egypt, these periods of reflection had grown more persistent. While on the expedition, and especially while living with—and escaping from—the tribe, he’d been too busy to think much about his terminal situation. Now that he was home, however, and having—thankfully—heard nothing from Eli Glinn, the quietness and solitude had allowed him to dwell on just how short a time he had left.

The strange thing was, he felt fine. His health seemed to be excellent. The various ordeals in southern Egypt had left him physically unscarred. If anything, he was as fit now as he’d ever been in his life. What a supreme irony, then, that Glinn’s words—words the man had uttered the very first time Gideon met him—came to mind now: The end typically comes very fast, with little or no warning. You will live a normal life for about a year—and then you will die very, very quickly.

About a year. There was a chance, small but definitely quantifiable, that he might last longer. The future was inherently unknowable, and miracles did happen. And who knew if the strange “lotus” he had ingested on the Lost Island, which had so benefited Glinn’s own health, might somehow mitigate his condition? But it seemed unlikely, given what the neurosurgeon had said when he’d examined Gideon’s latest cranial MRI: The progress of the AVM has been textbook, unfortunately. So yes, I would say two months is a likely time frame.

And that had been just over two months ago.

Gideon’s whistling died away. Pulling his phone out of his pocket, he paired it with a Bose portable speaker, dialed up Spotify, and selected one of his jazz playlists: Charlie Parker could do a much better job with “Confirmation” than he could. The sounds of a tenor saxophone filled the cabin, and Gideon put down the phone; he marveled that gigabit broadband Internet could now reach even so remote an outpost as this. Even in his relatively short lifetime, the world had changed—and so fast.

Moving more purposefully now, energized by Bird’s bebop riffs, he placed the pain d’epi on his Boos cutting board, pulled off two of its crusty ends and, cutting each in half lengthwise, quickly fashioned sandwiches from the cured ham, arugula, and ripe Camembert, topping the ingredients with a smear of the truffle aioli he’d whipped up the day before. A thin drizzle of DOP balsamic vinegar was the finishing touch. He moved the two small sandwiches from the cutting board to a plate, tucked the mail under one arm, grabbed a bottle of Lagavulin and an empty glass, and then—balancing everything precariously—kicked the screen door open again, walked out onto the porch, and took a seat in one of two weather-beaten Adirondack chairs that were placed there.

Leaning back, he surveyed his surroundings. The Jemez Mountains rose up protectively around the bowl-like valley that cradled his house, their flanks studded with majestic ponderosa pines. Straight ahead, between the mountainsides, the valley fell away into distant foothills that graded into the stark red deserts of New Mexico. The sky was a pale blue, touched here and there by Japanese brushstrokes of cirrus clouds. Gideon poured himself a generous splash of scotch, closed his eyes, and took a long, reverent sip. He let the heavy, peaty single-malt linger in his mouth for a moment, then swallowed, opened his eyes again, and turned his attention to the mail.

There wasn’t much of it: he’d always managed to stay off mailing lists. The day before he and Garza had departed for Egypt, he paid all his bills three months in advance. There was a letter from the HR department of Los Alamos National Laboratory; he chucked it away like he might a Frisbee. There was an invitation from the Yazzie Gallery in Albuquerque, admitting two persons to a special preview of their forthcoming exhibition of Georgia O’Keeffe’s early Precisionist-style work. Ten years before, such an invitation might have aroused a strong interest in him—of a predatory and not entirely licit nature. But he’d given that kind of thing up. Besides, the preview was still over a month away.

Putting this aside, he arrived at the final piece of mail: a battered postcard depicting the Great Sphinx of Giza. He held it up, curious. It looked as if it must have traveled around the world a dozen times. Not only was it creased and soiled, but his address had been scrawled in almost indecipherable letters, abraded by travel. The postmark was from Cairo, dated a week earlier. Curiously, there was no message or note on the card. Instead, there was only a symbol, evidently scribbled in a hurry:

Gideon stared at it for a moment. It couldn’t be. But then again, it must: the postcard could only be from one person: Garza. And it could only mean one thing—he’d survived.

Gideon felt a swelling of indescribable emotion. Garza had promised to let him know if, should they get separated during the expedition, he had managed to survive…and this was his fulfillment of that promise. It was incredible. Somehow, Garza had saved him and Imogen, allowed them to escape—and then on top of that he’d managed to survive Blackbeard and his vengeful horde, as well. How was it possible?

Gideon took another sip of scotch and stared at the dusty postcard, shaking his head, his emotions finally boiling over into a peal of laughter. He turned the card over in his hands. The man was resourcefulness personified, the ultimate survivor. It was just like the ferry sinking, with him showing up out of the blue, against all odds. No wonder Eli Glinn had selected him as his lieutenant. Garza was truly a cat with nine lives.

Had he somehow recovered the treasure? But no—that was too much to hope for. Just his surviving was more than enough. Besides, Garza would have used the postcard to let him know.

At the thought of that vast treasure, Gideon stirred. He reached into the pocket of his faded jeans and pulled out a precious stone: a flawless diamond, perhaps five carats, of a deep saffron color. He held it up to the sun, now falling behind the fringe of pine trees, marveling at the way the light turned the jewel to liquid fire. This was the one—the only one—that had made it all the way home, unbeknownst to him, in the inner pocket of his filthy robe. He was, in fact, unpacking his stuff and getting ready to toss the shabby garment away when the stone dropped out.

He carefully placed the diamond on the wide red cedar arm of the chair, then raised the sandwich and took a bite. Munching contentedly, he began planning what he would do tomorrow. There was a particular hole about a mile up Chihuahueños Creek, which he had been saving for a long time, where a large rock had snagged a deadfall. In the deep scoop of water behind that obstruction, he knew in his bones there lurked a wily old battle-scarred cutthroat trout. He’d left that trout alone, waiting for something special. And now that something had arrived—in the form of a postcard. Tomorrow, truite amandine paired with a flinty Graves would do very nicely for his daily meal.

Finishing the sandwich, he glanced back at the small but exquisite diamond. Only one—but it was enough.

You know how much time is allotted you, the neurologist had told him. Do something worthwhile with the time you have left. And as he reflected on the events of the last two months—the triumphs, the letdowns, the surprises, the moments of beauty and fear and greed and compassion that had together made up their unraveling of the mystery of the Phaistos Disk—he realized that it was, in its own way, a microcosm of how he’d lived his entire adult life. That it had, in fact, been an adventure most eminently worthwhile.

And then there was the shock of its conclusion, and what they had found in the treasure chamber. Imogen had refused to tell him what it meant; what that last commandment—if it was a commandment at all—had been. When the world is ready, she had said, the chamber will be opened. And the truth—if we choose to believe it—will be known.

Gideon took another sip of scotch. He stretched, then settled himself more comfortably in the chair. That day, and that truth, he reflected, could wait until after he was gone. And with that, his thoughts dissolved into memories: of avenging the death and disgrace of his father; of grappling with a trained assassin atop a crumbling smokestack; of stealing a page from perhaps the world’s most valuable manuscript, and getting away with it; of discovering a living, breathing creature the world had always consigned to myth and fable. He shook these and other memories away with a smile. He had tricked, talked, and fought his way through enough adventures to last a dozen lifetimes. Now the ultimate adventure was approaching. When that happened—tomorrow, the week after, the month after—it was a mystery he felt prepared for.

But right now, he had a more immediate concern: a certain fat trout, sleeping in the creek that sparkled along its course out of sight over the rise of land.

He stretched once more, then winked at the setting sun. And it was without surprise that he noticed it winked back at him.