Chapter 1: The Blind Man
     Dr. Elizabeth Peyton slowly extracted the strange disc from the silt on the seafloor.  She was currently leading a salvage crew excavating the wreck of a 2000-year-old Roman trade ship in Alexandria Harbor on the north coast of Egypt.  Most of the artifacts they had found in the last week were just the usual iron or brass fittings and coins, but this disc was nothing of the sort.  It was about six inches in diameter, and it was inscribed with a series of odd symbols, but that wasn’t the unusual part.  It didn’t appear to be made of gold, or any other precious metal, but it hadn’t deteriorated or corroded at all, not even in the salt water of the Mediterranean.  She placed the artifact in the cargo buoy, and she signaled to her assistant to send the buoy to the surface.
     When she reached the boat, she hung up her scuba gear and went to a shower to wash the salt off as she waited for the buoy to ascend.  When it finally reached the surface, she went to the side of the salvage ship and immediately extracted the disc from the hopper.  She gave instructions to her assistants to take the other artifacts to be cleaned and labeled as she took the disc to her office.  As she sat at her workbench examining the disc, one of her assistants knocked on the door.
     “Come in.”  The door opened, and one of the assistants walked into the office.
     “Do you want me to take care of that for you, Dr. Peyton?”
     “No thanks, Jim.  I need to keep this one separate from the others.”
     “What’s so special about that one?”
     “Take a good look at this,” she said as she held the disc up for him to see.  “How long would you say this has been underwater?”
     Jim looked at the disc with surprise.  “Wow.  It looks brand new, like it hasn’t even been underwater for a month.”
     “Exactly.  And I found it down on the wreck with everything else.  Furthermore, these symbols don’t look like any language I’ve ever seen before.”  Dr. Peyton was fluent in hieroglyphic, demotic, Coptic, and ancient Greek, and she knew Arabic when she saw it.  There weren’t any other languages ever spoken in Egypt.  “I need to keep this one in the office safe so I can give it my personal attention.”  She opened the small fireproof safe that she kept in a desk drawer and set the disc inside, closing the door with a click.  “But right now, I need a good meal, and not something from the freezer.  Tell the captain I’m taking the skiff to shore.”
     At the pier in Alexandria Harbor, she tied up the skiff and looked around for her favorite restaurant.  She remembered a good place to have dinner she had found the other day, and after a short search, she found the restaurant and got herself a table.  As she sat perusing the menu, a blind man in a trench coat sat down at her table.  He removed the cane’s elastic band from his wrist and leaned the cane against his shoulder.  
     “Dr. Peyton, do you mind if I speak with you for a moment?”
     “Who are you?  And how do you know who I am?”
     “Please.  I will explain everything later.  I believe at the moment you are excavating a wrecked ship in the harbor?”
     “Yes, but how the hell did…”
     “By chance, have you found a small disc among the wreckage about this big?”  He formed a circle with his hands about the size of the disc.
     “Yes, I just found it today.”
He bent his head down for a moment before speaking again.  He leaned forward and spoke in a whisper.  “Dr. Peyton, that disc is a part of an ancient, magical amulet.  A criminal organization has been searching for the four components of the amulet, and we believe that they have already found one piece, maybe even two.  As soon as they learned that you had uncovered the disc, they sent men to follow     you so that they could recover it.”
     Dr. Peyton was flabbergasted.  “How could they possibly have found out about that disc?  I only excavated it less than an hour ago!  The only people who know about it are my assistants, and they’re still back on the boat!”
     The blind man remained calm, but focused.  “They found out about it the same way we did.  Magic.”
     “Oh, please.  I’m a scientist.  There’s no such thing.”
     The blind man turned to face her and arched his eyebrows.  “Your name is Elizabeth Peyton.  You were born in 1962 in California, and…”
     She was unimpressed.  “So, you magically uncovered my birth certificate.”
     “Hold out a number of fingers beneath the table.”
     She stuck her hands under the lip of the table and made fists with both hands.
     “Okay, now extend some of your fingers.”
     She raised one eyebrow and extended three fingers.  “Three.”  She quickly retracted one.  “Two.”  She extended two fingers on the other hand.  “Four.  Could you make up your mind?”
     Her mouth dropped open as she stared at the blind man.  “Okay, I’ll have some questions for you later.”
     “Yeah, that was pretty much inevitable.”
     “Now, what was this about being followed?”
     “Ah, yes.  The table across the street.  Don’t turn your head, just look out of the corner of your eye.”
     She looked to the side out the front window of the restaurant.  Across the street, at a canopied table, she saw two men drinking iced tea.
     “Are you sure?”
     “Yeah, I’m sure.  Now, if they see you leaving this building, they will trail you back to your ship and force you to give them the disc.  We cannot allow the disc to fall into their hands.  Therefore, they must not see you leave.”
     “So, do I need to leave through the kitchen?”
     “No, I checked.  The front door is the only way in or out.”
     “So what do I do?”
     “Follow me.  I’ll show you.”  He led Dr. Peyton back to a private dining room.  As      they entered the room, he closed and blocked the door behind them.  
     “Okay,” Dr. Peyton said, “so how am I getting out of here?”
     “In here,” the man said, opening his trench coat to reveal a series of pockets and straps sewn into the lining.
     “I’m hiding under your coat?  Well, that’s not creepy at all.”
     “You’re hiding in my coat.  More specifically, in here.”  He indicated the pockets.
     She just stared for a few seconds.  “I’m confused.”
     He took a deep breath and stroked his chin.  “You ever seen a magician perform before?”
     “Yeah, I saw one of those magic specials on TV once.”
     “You familiar with the Sawing a Lady in Half trick?”
     “Well, I’ve seen it done, but…”  The light bulb went on.  “No way.  No damn way.  It’s not possible.”
     “Come on now, Doctor.  You’ve already seen me read your mind, not to mention that I found you without any trouble.  I don’t think it would be asking too much to ask you to keep an open mind.”
     “Well, I don’t see any boxes or anything.  How do you propose to do this?”
     “Oh, the boxes are only necessary if you don’t actually have magical abilities.  As has been established, I do.”
     “I don’t suppose you’ve got a big saw hidden in that coat?”
     He slowly raised the tip of his cane up to eye level.  As he pulled back the safety catch on the cane, his finger drifted towards one of the two hidden buttons on the handle.  When the cane had reached the samurai katana position, he pressed the button, and two long blades sprung out of the sides of the cane, transforming it into a double-edged sword with a four-foot blade that could split a hair.  Dr. Peyton’s eyes became like platters.
     The blind man could sense Dr. Peyton’s anxiety.  “Please, Doctor, this could mean life or death for you.  It’s completely harmless, and it won’t hurt a bit.  All you’ll feel is some slight disorientation.  Please, you have to trust me.”
     “Trust you?  A blind psychic offering to cut me in half?  I don’t even know your name.”
     The man smiled.  “My name is Sam.”
     She smiled back at him.  She knew that it might not even matter what face she made at him, but she had a feeling that he could tell.  “I’m Elizabeth.”
     “I know.”
     “Oh, yeah, right.”

To be continued…