The Alexander Cipher dk-1

by Will Adams

  "No."

  "It was your man Napoleon," Knox explained. "He had his people scour Egypt for treasures. Anyway, they found this huge breccia sarcophagus covered in hieroglyphics, which no one could decipher back then but which the locals swore blind had been Alexander's. Alexander was Napoleon's hero, so he decided to be buried in it himself and ordered it back to France. But it got diverted to the British Museum instead, where it's now on show near the Rosetta Stone."

  "I'll look out for it."

  The man was still the same distance behind, talking earnestly on his cell phone. Knox felt his anxiety increase. He steered Gaille down a narrow side road to see if that would dislodge him. "Of course," he said, "when hieroglyphics were finally cracked, it turned out that it wasn't Alexander's sarcophagus at all, but Nectanebo the Second's."

  "Ah."

  He glanced around once more, but the road was clear. "Exactly," he said, allowing himself to relax a little. "Nothing annoys a Brit more than being sold a pup by the natives. And no one even considered that there might be a glimmer of truth to the story. After all, Ptolemy would surely never have put Alexander the Great in the cast-off sarcophagus of some fugitive pharaoh like Nectanebo, would he?"

  "It does seem unlikely."

  "Exactly. Do you know much about Nectanebo?"

  Gaille shrugged. "A little."

  "The last native Egyptian pharaoh. He defeated the Persians in battle and commissioned lots of new buildings, including a temple in Saqqara, city of the dead for Memphis, Egypt's capital at the time."

  "I'm not completely ignorant, you know. I do know Saqqara."

  "He also commissioned this sarcophagus," grinned Knox, "though he never got to use it. The Persians came back, and Nectanebo had to flee. So, when Ptolemy took Egypt twenty years later and needed somewhere to keep Alexander's body while he built him a proper mausoleum in Alexandria, Nectanebo's temple and sarcophagus were both lying empty."

  "You're suggesting he used them as a stopgap?"

  The man who had been following them earlier suddenly appeared ahead of them, still talking quietly but earnestly on his phone. He glanced their way and immediately dropped his eyes. Knox steered Gaille down a side alley, prompting her to frown at him. He quickly regretted his choice. The alley was deserted and dark, and their footsteps rang and echoed on the pavement, emphasizing just how alone they were. And when he glanced around, he saw the man entering the alley behind them.

  "What is it?" asked Gaille. "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing," said Knox, taking her arm and hurrying her along. "Just hungry, that's all."

  She frowned, unconvinced, but let it go. "You were telling me about the sarcophagus," she prompted.

  "Yes." He glanced back and was relieved to see that they had put some distance between themselves and their tail. "Ptolemy certainly needed a stopgap. I mean, it was several decades before he transferred Alexander to Alexandria. And it would explain how the sarcophagus came to be here. I mean, you should see this thing. It's a beast. But perfect for protecting Alexander's body in transit."

  "It makes sense from an Egyptian point of view, too," agreed Gaille. "You know they believed Alexander to be the son of Nectanebo the Second?"

  Knox frowned. "You don't mean that old Alexander Romance story?" The Alexander Romance had been a runaway best-seller of ancient times, a book of half-truths, exaggerations, and lies about Alexander, including a story that Nectanebo II had visited the Macedonian court, where he seduced Philip's wife, Olympias, and fathered Alexander.

  "It's more than that. When Alexander beat the Persians at Issus, he didn't just make himself de facto ruler of Egypt. To Egyptian eyes, it proved he was Nectanebo's legitimate successor. Did you know that one of his Egyptian throne names was 'he who drives out the foreigners,' just like Nectanebo?"

  "Hey!" protested Knox. "I thought you said you didn't know anything about Nectanebo?"

  "I said I knew a little," smiled Gaille.

  "So you think the Alexander Romance story is credible, then?" he asked, steering her to the right, taking another look back as he did so. Their tail was still there-closer, if anything. And then two men walked around the corner ahead. Knox readied himself to run. But the two men kept on walking, paying no attention to Knox or their tail.

  "Well, obviously it's not true," said Gaille. "Nectanebo never went anywhere near Greece. But I can certainly believe that such a story gained currency among the Egyptians. Maybe Alexander even encouraged it. He was incredibly skilled at winning hearts and minds. I've always thought that was one reason he visited Siwa. I mean, everyone assumes that he went because the Oracle of Ammon was so revered by the Greeks. But the Egyptians revered it, too, and had for centuries. Did you know that all the Twenty-Eighth Dynasty pharaohs traveled to Siwa to be acknowledged, and that they were all depicted with rams' horns, too, just like Alexander?"

  They finally emerged onto the Corniche. A breaker crashed against the rocks, spraying spume over the high wall, leaving the road shining black. Knox glanced around again to see their tail put his phone away in his pocket then look anxiously all around him. "Is that right?" asked Knox.

  Gaille nodded vigorously. "The Egyptians were sticklers for legitimacy in their pharaohs. Alexander succeeded Nectanebo, so in a sense, of course he was his son. The story about Nectanebo sleeping with his mother was just a convenient way of explaining it." She smiled apologetically. "Anyway, enough shop. Where's this restaurant of yours?"

  "Just up here." He glanced around a final time. Their tail was advancing with a broad smile on a dark-haired woman and two young children, picking them up, laughing joyfully as he spun them around. Knox breathed a sigh of relief. Nothing but paranoia. Then he reminded himself sternly that just because it had proved benign this time didn't mean he could afford to relax.

  They reached the restaurant, a plush place overlooking the waterfront. Gaille looked at Knox in horror, then down at her shabby clothes. "But you told me it wasn't fancy!" she protested.

  "It isn't. And you look beautiful."

  She pursed her lips, as if she thought he was lying, even though he wasn't. She had the kind of looks he had always found irresistible, shining with gentleness and intelligence. She said, "I only put on these horrid things because I didn't want to give your friend Augustin any encouragement. If I'd known it'd be you…"

  A grin spread across Knox's face. "Are you saying you do want to give me encouragement?"

  "That's not what I meant at all." Gaille blushed furiously. "I only meant that I think I can trust you."

  "Oh," said Knox gloomily, opening the door for her, ushering her inside. "Trustworthy. That's almost as bad as being nice."

  "Worse," smiled Gaille. "Much worse."

  They climbed a flight of stairs to the dining area. "Avoid anything freshwater," he advised, helping her to a seat with a view out over the Eastern Harbor. "The lakes around here, it's a miracle anything survives in them. But the seafood will be good."

  "Duly noted."

  He flapped out a napkin as he sat. "So how's your photography going?"

  "Not bad. Better than I expected, if I'm honest." She leaned forward over the table, eager to confide. "I'm not actually a photographer at all, you know."

  "No?"

  "I'm a papyrologist, really. The camera just helps me reassemble fragments. You can do amazing things with the software these days."

  "So how did you get this job, then?"

  "My boss volunteered me."

  "Ah, Elena. Very kind of her. So you're working with her in the Delta, yes?"

  "Yes."

  "What on?"

  "An old settlement," she enthused. "We've found traces of city walls and dwellings and cemeteries. Everything from Old Kingdom up to Early Ptolemaic."

  "Wow. What's the place?"

  "Oh." She looked hesitant suddenly, aware she'd said too much. "We haven't made a definitive identification yet."

  "You must have some idea."

  "I can't talk about it," said
Gaille. "Elena made us all sign agreements."

  "Come on. I won't tell a soul, I swear. And you just said I was trust-worthy."

  "I can't. Honestly."

  "Give me a clue, then. Just one clue."

  "Please. I really can't."

  "Of course you can. You want to. You know you do."

  She pulled a face. "Have you ever heard the expression, 'putting your head in the wolf's mouth'? That's like crossing Elena. You don't do it twice, trust me."

  "Fine," grumbled Knox. "So how come you're working for her? I mean, it's a Greek excavation, isn't it? You don't strike me as particularly Greek."

  "Elena's expert fell ill and she needed a replacement. Someone gave her my name. You know what it's like."

  "Yes."

  "She just called up one afternoon. I was really flattered, and I had nothing I couldn't get out of. Besides, it's all very well reading about Egypt in books, but it's not the same, is it?"

  "No," agreed Knox. "So is this your first excavation?"

  She shook her head. "No, but I hate talking about myself. It's your turn. You're an underwater archaeologist, yes?"

  "An archaeologist who knows how to dive."

  "And an intellectual snob, too?"

  He laughed. "Raging."

  "Where did you study?"

  "Yale."

  "Oh!" She pulled a face.

  "You don't like Yale?" protested Knox. "How can you not like Yale?"

  "It's not Yale exactly. Just someone who used to study there."

  "An archaeologist?" he grinned. "Excellent! Who?"

  "Oh, I'm sure you won't know him," she said. "His name's Daniel Knox."

  Chapter Eleven

  Marvelous!" laughed Augustin, clapping his hands, when Knox reported back later that evening. "But that's just marvelous. What did you do?"

  "What the fuck could I do?" grumbled Knox. "I told her I'd never heard of him, and changed the subject."

  "And you've no idea why she dislikes you so much? You didn't perhaps fuck her one time, then never call?"

  "No."

  "You're sure? That's what it usually is with me."

  Knox scowled. "I'm certain."

  "Then what?"

  "I don't know," he shrugged helplessly. "I can't think. Unless…"

  "What?"

  "Oh, no," said Knox, his cheeks suddenly ablaze. He put his hand on his forehead. "Oh, Christ!"

  "What?"

  "Her name's not Gaille Dumas, you idiot. It's Gaille Bonnard."

  "Dumas, Bonnard." He shrugged indifferently. "I knew it was something to do with the arts. And who is she anyway, this Gaille Bonnard?"

  "She's Richard's daughter," answered Knox. "That's who she is." Then he added bleakly, "No wonder she hates me."

  It was sticky in Gaille's room, even with her balcony doors wide open. That flicker on Mark's face when she'd mentioned Daniel Knox, his hurried change of subject, the way he was so ill-at-ease afterward. She cursed herself for her big mouth; she had been having a really good time until then. Of course they would have known each other. Frankly, it would have been astonishing if two Yale-educated archaeologists of similar age hadn't been friends.

  Some hatreds were based on principle; others were personal. Whenever Gaille thought of Knox, though she'd never even met him, she felt a fusion of the two, snakes writhing in her chest. Her mother, a nightclub singer, had had a brief fling with her father and gotten pregnant, coercing him into a marriage that never stood a chance, not least because he finally realized that he preferred men. Gaille had been just four when her father finally gave up and fled to Egypt. Her mother, struggling to come to terms with a homosexual husband and a career on the skids, had taken it out on Gaille. She had also found solace in abusing every substance she could lay her hands on until, finally, on the eve of her fiftieth birthday, she had misjudged one of her periodic cries for help and taken her own life.

  As a child, Gaille had done what she could to cope with her mother's self-hatred, anger, and violence, but it had never been enough. She might have gone crazy from the strain of it, except that she had a safety-valve, a way to relieve the building pressure. It had been the one month every year when she joined her father on one of his excavations in North Africa or the Levant, and she'd loved every second.

  When she was seventeen, Gaille had been due to join his second season near Mallawi in Middle Egypt. For eleven months, she'd been studying Coptic, hieroglyphics, and Hieratic in a desperate effort to prove her value so conclusively that her father would take her on full-time. But three days before she was due to fly out, he had arrived unexpectedly at their Paris apartment. Mama had thrown one of her tantrums and refused to let him see Gaille. She'd had to kneel outside the cramped sitting room door and listen through its plywood panels. A nearby television had been loud with sporadic canned laughter, so she hadn't heard everything-but enough. He was postponing Mallawi to deal with an urgent personal situation. Now it wouldn't take place until after Gaille was back at school.

  That season had proved her father's crowning triumph. Just eight weeks later he had found a Ptolemaic archive so important that Yusuf Abbas, the future secretary general of the Supreme Council for Antiquities, had taken personal control. Gaille should have been there, but no. A precocious young Yale Egyptologist called Daniel Knox had been recruited in her place. That was her father's urgent personal situation! An itch in his pants. The betrayal had been so hurtful, Gaille had shunned him from that moment on. Though he had tried to contact her and apologize, she never gave him a chance. And though she was too committed to Egyptology to see merit in any other way of life, she had avoided Egypt until he was long dead and Elena's offer had taken her by surprise.

  She had never met Knox, had never wanted to. But he had written her a letter of condolence that included a moving account of her father's last years. He claimed that her father had thought and spoken constantly of her, that when he fell to his death rock climbing in the Western Desert, there was nothing anyone could do to save him, and that his last thoughts had been of her, that his dying request had been of her, asking Knox to contact her himself and tell her so. She had found this, perversely, both deeply upsetting and immensely consoling. Then a parcel had arrived from Siwa Oasis, containing all her father's belongings and papers. It included the police report into the accident, and transcripts of statements made by the two guides who had been on that fateful climb. Both testified that Knox could have pulled her father to safety had he acted quickly enough, but that he had stood there watching instead. They both stated, too, that the fall had been instantly fatal, that his body was already cold by the time they or Knox or anyone reached him. That there was no way, therefore, that he could have communicated any last wishes. It had all been a lie.

  Before she received and read that report, she had hated Knox only on principle. Since then, it had become personal as well. Nessim had learned as a soldier to be aware of the physiology of fear. Knowing what was happening inside your body was a good way to control it. Your heart beat faster, making your breath hot in your mouth; that metallic tang in the back of your mouth was nothing but your glands flooding your system with adrenaline in preparation for fight or flight; the tingling in your fingers and toes and the looseness of your bladder and bowels was blood being reallocated to places that needed it more.

  He stood by his hotel window to dial Hassan's number, looking down at the river ten stories below. "Have you found him?" asked Hassan when he was put through.

  "Not yet, sir. But we're making progress."

  "Progress?" enquired Hassan acidly. "Is this the same progress you told me about yesterday?"

  "I've put together a strong team, sir."

  "Oh, good. A team."

  "Yes, sir." It was true, too, for all Hassan's scorn. Old comrades, keen for the work, who had proved themselves both reliable and discreet. He'd given them each Knox's name, his license plate, copies of his photograph, and the few other details he had, then he set some to watch the homes
of Knox's known associates, others to tour hotels and stations. He had arranged a trace on Knox's cell phone, too, so that if he ever turned it on, they'd be able to triangulate his position to within a hundred meters. He had put a trace on Knox's various bank accounts and credit cards, too. Anything was possible in Egypt if you had money.

  "Listen," said Hassan, who had no interest in such operational details. "I don't want progress. I want Knox."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Call tomorrow. Have good news for me."

  "Yes, sir." Nessim replaced the handset with a slightly trembling hand and sat down on his hotel bed, shoulders sagging. He wiped his forehead. His wrist came back with the hairs slicked with sweat. Another of the symptoms. A full house. For a moment, he contemplated pillaging his bank account and simply vanishing. But Hassan knew too much about him. He knew about his sister. He knew about Fatima and their son. Besides, Nessim's sense of honor balked at running from a professional duty just because it was difficult or dangerous. So instead he got out Knox's Secret Service file and stared at the old, blackened text some more. It hadn't been updated for years. Several of the people on it had moved or had left Egypt altogether. Others they couldn't track at all. But it was Nessim's best hope of success all the same.

  Chapter Twelve

  Augustin and Knox headed into the site first thing, eager to get started, hopeful that the pump would have won them enough headroom to explore. They both knew all too well that pumping out an antiquity in Alexandria wasn't easy. The limestone bedrock was extremely porous, holding water like a giant sponge. As soon as they started pumping, this sponge would start releasing its reservoir, replacing what they were taking out until equilibrium was restored. They couldn't hope to beat it, not with the resources they had available. They could only buy a little time.

  It was obvious from the moment they arrived on-site, however, that something was seriously wrong. The pump engine was wheezing like a chronic smoker chasing after a bus. They hurried down to find that a seal had evidently failed. Water spilled and sprayed down the camber of the rotunda floor into the Macedonian tomb, where lamps gleamed like pool lights beneath the murky water.