Chapter 19

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.