Chapter 4: Finding Our Boy

Thursday, 17 March 1955, Greenwich, Connecticut

The desert sun beat down as Doc climbs one dune after another—dunes that were in different places hours ago. That was before the sandstorm buried him and his fellow archaeologists in the Sinai. He has to get help. Any relief from the burning heat. More miles of desert to cross.

In his Greenwich home, Doc snapped back to reality, staring at a carved wood panel in his library that replayed the event. Each of the eleven panels in the room showed a different expedition. His eye wandered back to the massive blank panel above the fireplace. This year, his visit to the City of the Gods, his crowning achievement, would be carved on that panel.

“Or,” he mused, “like Wilton, I will lose my credibility and be accused of an elaborate hoax. The capstone of my career will be an albatross around my neck and I will sink into oblivion.”

The very existence of the papers in front of him should be proof enough. But he found them in a dream. Can I trust my memories? It was all so unreal. Yet he found himself unable to doubt that it occurred.

He should have investigated further before returning to America, but time was of the essence. Scavengers masquerading as archaeologists still followed the steps of legitimate scholars, stealing from the digs to supply a booming black market in antiquities. At the docks in Athens, Doc excused his hasty departure to such a one with a plea of illness. Ryan McGuire. Doc was sure he would see that particular thorn in his side again. It just showed that sharing a common circle did not mean common ideals. Doc weighed the evidence in support of an expedition against the academic and physical risk involved. He had a week to think during the voyage back to New York. He had scarcely left his cabin on the entire crossing, so intent was he on reading Wilton’s journal. There were no mountains near enough to Metéora to have walked to in a day. Geologic maps showed no places within twenty miles that would match the terrain Doc had walked. The whole journey was impossible, yet he had been there.

Doc shuffled the notes and maps on his desk. He had been studying them ever since his return in October. Four months now. He was confident he could find the cluster of houses where his guide would await him, but where they had gone from there he simply could not tell. He was so absorbed in his study that he didn’t hear the bell ring and William had spoken twice at the library door before he responded.

“Doctor Jacobsen is here to see you,” the steward repeated.

“Oh, thank you, William. Send her in.” Doctor Margaret Jacobsen was a dear friend of Heinrich’s. Her caring for him extended far beyond his need for a research assistant years ago.

“Phillip, how are you?” she asked, coming into the room and reaching for his hands.

“I’m fine, my dear. What’s the news from the outside world? Did you get the references I asked for?” Doc was already reaching past her outstretched hand for the satchel she carried.

“Be patient, Phillip. It’s all here.”

“You’ve been telling me that for twenty years, Margaret.”

“And it has yet to sink in.”

“Well, come. Sit down. Would you like coffee or tea?” Doc asked. William materialized at the door. “Coffee please,” Doc said.

“Certainly,” William responded.

“Not for me,” Margaret said. “I want to show you what I’ve found.”

“A reference?” Doc slapped his hands together and cleared a spot on the desk between them.

“A whole book! But you aren’t going to like it.” She drew a thin and brightly colored book from the bag and set it in the middle of the desk facing Doc.

“The Last Gift? A children’s book?” he asked.

“Isn’t it beautiful?”

“A children’s book?” he repeated. “This is a serious scientific study. We don’t need children’s books.”

“Who led you on your journey, Phillip? Who told you the story? Look at the name. Ben Wills. I’ve discovered that Benjamin Wilton wrote fiction under that name.”

“Wilton? Writing children’s books?“

“Phillip. Please stop talking in italics. If he couldn’t get anyone to believe him with scientific research, why shouldn’t he put it down as a children’s story and hope some little believer would rise to take up the search?” Margaret calmly reached for the teapot William had brought and poured a cup for each of them.

“Once upon a time,” Doc read from the first page and then closed the book. “I can’t do this. Could you just give me a synopsis? Didn’t I ask for coffee?”

“You know how coffee keeps you awake if you drink it this late in the afternoon. Now drink your tea, dear,” Margaret said.

“I thought you weren’t having any.”

“I wouldn’t insult William by not sharing what he brought for us. That would be terrible.”

“The story?” Doc motioned at the book.

“The book was published about a year after he disappeared, according to your account, August of 1937. The publishers wouldn’t give much information. They said the manuscript was sent to them from overseas. They had a contract for Ben Wills’ works and had no reason to believe that it was not his. It came with a cover letter designating a college in Indiana as future recipient of all his royalties, which were apparently not much.”

“I don’t understand,” Doc said. “Wilton never had any connections in Indiana. He was strictly Ivy League.”

“How can you be so sure of that? Very little is known about his life in the U.S. Everything is about his travels and scholarly work.”

“No. I knew Wilton personally. I was with him the night he disappeared in 1937.”

“Oh, Phillip! Who were his parents? Did he have any family? Who else knew him?”

“He was my advisor on my thesis and I worked several digs with him in the early thirties. I know—or I think—he was involved in the gathering of intelligence in Central Europe as Hitler rose to power. Sending things to Indiana simply does not make sense.”

“And all I remember is you disciplining a student by shouting out ‘Thou shalt not quote Wilton in this class!’ We were all terrified.”

“In the forties, it could ruin your career to cite Wilton. So, tell me. Here we have his story in a children’s book. An unheard of Greek goddess who was left bound to old Olympus behind an ivory veil, abandoned by the gods as they take flight into the heavens. There she awaits a mortal savior.”

“Hmm. Sadly, it’s a different story,” broke in Margaret. “This is a little romance about a magician who falls in love with a gypsy princess. It’s set in one of those all-purpose romantic gypsy eras. A forbidden love. Different castes. But the magician frees the leader of the gypsies from a camp where he has been taken prisoner. He is adopted into the clan and marries the princess. They live happily ever after.”

Margaret noticed doc’s shattered look.

“Phillip!”

“No gods? No ancient myths? No prophecy? No function? No goddess?”

“Well, the story says the princess had found the magician when he was quite ill and tended him until he recovered. She wasn’t helpless.”

“We already have a goddess Health, and Asklepios is a healer. Heritage is usually important. The lyric muse and the healer and health. Her legitimacy depends on a function. Gaia and Uranus—earth and sky—are the parents of Hyperion or light and watchfulness. Hyperion and Theia, or brightness, become parents of Helios—the sun. Helios is the father of Phaeton of heat and danger. This one is a late parthenogenesis myth and not a common archetype by that time.”

“Music? All the spells in Ben Wills’ little book are sung. It’s a common contrivance in this type of story,” Margaret said. “Wait. Parthenogenesis?”

“Conceived in empathy with Health and born in the same hour as Hygeia.”

“Hmm. Try this. A goddess of empathy. Maybe one who can heal through her unique gifts of empathy and music. That would bring a wonderful gift to humanity—when we are ready for it.”

“Gift?”

“Like Prometheus giving fire to humans. The goddess behind the ivory veil brings the ability to heal ourselves—or each other. It’s the title of the book: The Last Gift. It has nothing to do with the rest of the story. Perhaps it’s the last gift of the gods to humanity.”

“Prometheus. He was one of Wilton’s contacts. I remember them meeting at a dig in ‘34. Never knew his real name. Younger than me. After the brief meeting, I never saw him again.”

“Perhaps Wilton passed on something besides information,” Margaret said.

Margaret’s voice was soothing to Doc and she let him drift in the fantasy she wove. For a moment, he forgot they were both pushing retirement—him a little harder than her—and saw her as they had been thirty years earlier, ready to dream and believe.

“Margaret, are you a believer?”

“You know better than that, Phillip. I’m a wisher. I wish it were all true. I wish the goddess was real. I wish we were twenty years younger. And I wish we were a few more steps ahead of Ryan McGuire.” Her last statement broke the spell. Ryan McGuire had been a problem for Doc ever since the young man had joined an expedition eight years ago and stole the most valuable artifacts. Of course, there was no proof of that. The artifacts simply disappeared at the same time McGuire did. They’d never been seen again. McGuire, when confronted, said he’d taken ill and had an emergency appendectomy. He had stitches to prove it. Still, the artifacts were gone.

“He was arriving in Greece when I was embarking. He seems always to be a few steps behind me no matter where I work. Or ahead. It’s the affinity.”

“Affinity to what?” Margaret asked.

“Oh. His nose is connected to buried treasure. He always seems to know where I am.” Doc knew that Margaret dabbled around the edges of the occult, but he had never shared the depth of his own involvement in all their twenty years as companions. Doc bore the Second Face of Carles—the staff of the Vagabond Poet that was said to control fire. Ryan McGuire, known as The Blade in the Great Cobhan Carles, bore the First Face, the Athamé. The tools knew each other. “I told him I was ill when he asked why I was leaving. Thought it might be my appendix.” Margaret chuckled at the veiled reference to McGuire’s excuse eight years ago.