The Alexander Cipher dk-1

by Will Adams

  Nicolas felt a resurgence of his anger, and an opportunity to vent it. His jaw tightened. He stooped to take the Walther from Elena's loose grip. He checked the clip: five gone, four left. He walked over to the four-by-four. "Get Knox out," he ordered.

  Bastiaan dragged Knox out by the arm and threw him on the sand. Nicolas aimed down at his chest. The girl cried out, pleading for mercy, but Bastiaan punched her in the temple, so that she fell sprawling unconscious across the rear seats. Nicolas stared down at Knox. "No one can say we didn't give you fair warning," he said.

  "Your father gave us his word he'd let us go if we helped you find Alexander."

  "My father is dead," said Nicolas.

  "Yes, but he-"

  He got no further, because Bastiaan slammed the butt of his gun into the back of his skull, and he collapsed facedown on the sand.

  "Thank you," said Nicolas. He smiled as he aimed at the back of Knox's head and tightened his finger on the trigger. Mohammed rubbed his left wrist where the hard steel handcuff chafed. He didn't recognize the man Nicolas was about to shoot, but he recognized Gaille, who had always been nice to him during the necropolis excavation, enquiring after Layla and wishing them all well. And he recognized murder, too, and that he was colluding in it.

  He had thought Layla's life worth any price. Now he realized he had been wrong.

  The cuff was too tight to slip his hand free. And though he was a strong man, he wasn't strong enough to rip the steering wheel from its mount. But the handcuff key was on a chain on Costis's belt. That, at least, gave him a fighting chance. He started up the digger, thrust it into gear, and accelerated forward. The suddenness of his charge caught the Greeks by surprise. Nicolas turned and fired twice, but Mohammed used the scoop as a shield, and the bullets pinged and whined away, and then he was upon Nicolas, so that he had to dive aside, rolling over and over. Bullets sprayed; Mohammed ducked as he worked his controls to scoop Costis up from the sand. Then he turned down the slope, the gradient helping him speed away, glancing over his shoulder to see the Greeks streaming down after him on foot and in the vehicles. The digger bucked and jolted, and Costis danced in the scoop but didn't fall. Mohammed reached flatter terrain and dumped Costis to the sand, then pulled up alongside him, placing the bulk of the digger between himself and the Greeks. He threw open the cab door and stretched down, but he couldn't quite reach Costis. He twisted the steering wheel as far as it would go, and tried again. Still no good-he could only brush him with his fingertips, however hard he strained. The Greeks were yelling as they hurtled down toward him, loosing wild shots, roaring their vehicles. He hooked his right boot beneath Costis's head, lifting him high enough to snatch a hank of hair. He grabbed his chin, collar, finally his belt, the chain, the key ring. Four keys. Two bore BMW insignia; the others were small, unmarked. He had to lift Costis bodily from the sand to get the first key up to the cuff. No good. He was trying the second when something exploded behind his ear, and his world went black.

  Nicolas arrived at the foot of the slope to find Mohammed unconscious, blood leaking from a cut in his scalp. "New plan," he said tightly. "Put the bodies in the flatbed. Dump it and the digger in the lake."

  Vasileios pulled up in the second SUV and nodded at the backseat. "And the girl?"

  Nicolas peered in. Gaille was sprawled unconscious across the backseats. It made him realize suddenly that he'd forgotten about Knox in the chaos, and he suffered a sudden lurch of premonition. He looked around. All his men were down here with him-every last one of them. Without Costis or his father to lead them, they had degenerated into an undisciplined rabble. "Where's Knox?" he demanded, even though in his heart he already knew the answer. "Who the fuck was looking after Knox?" No one spoke. Their eyes wouldn't meet his when he glared their way. He clenched his fists as he gazed up to where Knox had been. There was no sign of him except for the ropes that had bound him, now lying discarded on the sand. He closed his eyes for a moment to let the swell of fury pass. Sometimes it almost seemed as though God wasn't on their side. He jumped in the four-by-four with Vasileios and Bastiaan and drove back up. The place was a mess of footprints, impossible to track. Knox could have vanished anywhere. He could have hidden beneath the sand or climbed the hill or gone round the other side of it by now. The sun was getting higher all the time, and daylight wasn't safe. You could see forever in the desert on a clear day; their vehicles would stand out like beacons. The tourists and the bird-watchers would already be leaving their hotels. Reveille would have sounded in the army barracks. They had to leave now.

  Nicolas half pulled Gaille out of the backseat and pressed the muzzle of the Walther against her temple. "Hear this!" he shouted. "The girl dies if you give us trouble. You hear? Any trouble at all, your old friend's daughter dies."

  His voice echoed off the hill, then faded to silence.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Knox watched from his ledge as Nicolas and several of his men drove off north in the container truck and one of the four-by-fours, leaving others behind to load Rick, Elena, and Costis into the flatbed, which they then drove out into the lake. It plowed up a great white wash as it floated before tipping onto its side, belching out air, and sinking. Knox felt sickened watching the body of his old friend Rick consigned so unceremoniously to the deep-and guilty, too, because Rick had only come here to help him. But now wasn't the time for regret or mourning or vengeance. Those would come later. Right now he had work to do.

  The Greek driver of the flatbed swam in a leisurely breaststroke back to the bank. He shook himself down, walked over to the mechanical digger, started it up, and repeated the trick. The driver hauled himself out the window as the cab vanished beneath the surface. He was halfway back to the bank when the lake erupted behind him and the big Egyptian spluttered up, coughing and choking. His revival lasted only a few moments until the digger dragged him back down beneath the surface, still handcuffed to the wheel. One of the Greeks cracked a joke. They all laughed as they climbed into the second four-by-four and set off after their comrades.

  Knox waited until they were out of view, then scrambled down the cliff face and bounded down the sand dunes to the lake, stripping as he went.

  Choking had shocked Mohammed back to consciousness, but it seemed only so that he could experience terror as the digger pulled him remorselessly down. He managed a last despairing breath before it tugged him beneath the murky water. The engine stalled, the door was hanging open, and the whole vehicle was tilted at a precarious angle as though it might tip over on the soft lake bed. He pulled himself inside, where a little air had been trapped against the cab's curved roof. He breathed in, felt for and switched on the domelight. It cast rings of reflected yellow light on the disturbed water, revealing how small his air supply was. He ducked back down, strained to pull his hand free of its cuff, but his thumb prevented him. He tried to wrench the wheel from its mount. Useless. The exertion was only burning through his meager supply of oxygen. The key was in the ignition, so he turned it, but the engine didn't respond. He went up for another breath, and the digger lurched and tilted further, sending precious bubbles streaming away. He remembered reading about some mountaineer who had sawed off his arm with a penknife to free himself from rockfall. Yes. He could do this for Layla. He took a breath, ducked down, and fumbled on the floor for shards shattered by gunfire, but he found only pebbles of safety glass. He went back up.

  A flurry of water, a tug on his sleeve. He almost died of fright when a man's head bobbed up beside him. The man Nicolas had wanted to kill. "Where's the key?" he asked curtly.

  "The dead Greek," gasped Mohammed. "On his belt."

  The man nodded, ducked, and vanished.

  There was so little air, it was already beginning to go bad. He pressed his cheek against the exposed metal roof and tried to keep calm. An eternity seemed to pass. The air grew fetid, and his mind fuzzed. A headache pounded between his eyes. He prayed for Layla, that somehow she would get through this, that her life would
be good once this dreadful disease was behind her. What could stop her then? All fathers were proud of their daughters, but who among them had such cause?

  The cab lurched again. A small shriek escaped him as more air bubbled away. That was the trouble with hope: it came at the cost of intense fear. He had to pull his cuffed wrist almost taut to reach the remaining air. It was rank, poisoning him, and he had to breathe harder and faster to harvest any oxygen from it at all.

  The cab lurched and tipped remorselessly sideways, spilling up the last of the air. He clamped his mouth with his hand as long as he could, but then he couldn't fight the need in his lungs anymore; he had to open it. Water flooded in. He choked once but then sucked in again, and the liquid poured down his throat. A swirl of random yet comforting colors, patterns, sensations, aromas, all bathed in the warm love of Nur and Layla… and then a burst of bright, white light.

  Nicolas called Ibrahim's villa as he led his small convoy north on the Marsa Matruh road. There was no reply. He called Manolis and then Sofronio on their cell phones. Neither answered. Something was wrong. Anxiety gnawed at his stomach. He glanced at Vasileios.

  "What is it?" asked Vasileios.

  "I don't know."

  He looked around at the second SUV, and then the container truck immediately behind it. Burdened by its precious cargo, it was struggling to reach and maintain 70kph. At such a rate, it would take them at least ten hours to reach Alexandria. Ten hours. Christ! Who knew what might happen in that time, especially with Knox on the loose? And he had thought everything would go so smoothly! He picked up his phone to try Ibrahim and the guys again, only to see his signal fade and die altogether. If their journey down was any way to judge, his phone wouldn't pick up again until they neared Marsa Matruh and the coast.

  There was nothing for it but to press on.

  Streams of released AIR and lake bed gasses simmered the surface of the lake, and slicks of oil, algae, and detritus made overlapping circles, marking the places where the vehicles lay on the bottom. Knox swam from the center of one to the other, then kicked down. The flatbed truck had made it farther into the lake than the digger, but the water, usually so clear, was badly roiled; Knox had to work by feel. His lungs were about done when he touched something metallic. He surfaced for more air, then dived once more, pulling himself through an open window into the flatbed's cab. He searched with his hands. The first corpse he found was Rick. He felt that sickness in his gut again but squashed it down. The second body had long hair. A woman-Elena. He pushed her aside and grabbed a foot instead, following it up a trouser leg to a belt. He fumbled along it, found a key chain, then unbuckled the belt and slipped the key chain off. Clutching it tight, he pulled himself out of the cab, kicked for the surface, and heaved in a breath, then swam back until he judged himself to be above the digger. Filling his lungs with air, he kicked down. His eyes were raw and burning as he searched for the excavator, which had tipped completely onto its side. He pulled himself in the broken window to find all the air escaped, and Mohammed slumped and lifeless. In his haste, Knox dropped the keys. By the time he found them and picked them up again, the pressure was building relentlessly in his own lungs, his brain screeching for air. He took Mohammed's wrist. The first key didn't fit; the second, either. In panicked disbelief, he tried the keys again. Still nothing. He wanted to scream. He needed air. The other cuff was locked around the steering wheel. He tried the first key on that, then the second. This time it went in. He turned it, and the cuff released. Grabbing the big man's collar, he dragged him to the window, out and up to the surface, then sidestroked to the shallows, hauling Mohammed behind him with one arm across his chest, pulling him up onto the bank.

  He put one hand on the unmoving chest, his other on the throat. The big man's heart had stopped. Of course it had fucking stopped-he'd been breathing nothing but water for the past three minutes. Knox thought back to the drowning and near-drowning course he had attended as a diving instructor. When water entered the airway, people automatically experienced larygnospasm, which was to say that their throat constricted to divert the inhaled water to their stomachs. But after cardiac arrest, the airways often relaxed again, allowing water to enter the lungs. Kurt, a beanpole Austrian with a beard down to his nipples, had taught no-drainage cardiopulmonary resuscitation straight from the book; but in an acerbic aside had remarked that if his life depended upon it, he'd want the Heimlich first, whatever the current thinking was, because if your airways were blocked, your brain was fucked anyway. Knox stretched both arms around the big man's waist, made a fist of his right hand, thumb just below the solar plexus, then squeezed his abdomen with a sharp upward thrust. Frothy dark water flooded from his mouth and nose. He pumped until nothing more came out, then tilted back his head to open the airway, pinched the nose, and ventilated him twice. He checked for a pulse, found nothing. He kept pumping and ventilating, pumping and ventilating, until the big man suddenly convulsed, choked, gasped, expelled a dribble more water from his throat and mouth, and began again to breathe. Knox slumped onto the muddy sand beside him, naked and drained and trembling.

  Then he remembered with weary horror that Nicolas had Gaille. Let her be alive. Please God, let her be alive.

  He pushed himself to his feet and gathered his clothes. His legs were weak and rubbery, but he forced himself to run across the dunes to see if he could salvage the Jeep.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Nicolas leaned out his window to wave the container truck to the side of the road. He needed to refuel and make phone calls, but he couldn't exactly pull into a service station with Gaille lying across his backseats. His men opened the back doors of the container. The sun was still low enough that it hadn't heated up inside yet.

  They waited until the road was clear in both directions, then dragged Gaille inside, gagged her, and tied her to the steel handrail at the front end. Then he ordered Eneas to stay inside with her to make sure she didn't try anything.

  Back in the four-by-four, they raced on ahead. The road was straight and true and untroubled by uniforms. Vasileios turned on the radio and searched for music; Nicolas turned it off again. They finally reached a service station, where a couple of trucks were parked outside, on their way to or from Siwa. Vasileios refueled while Nicolas made calls. There was still no answer from Ibrahim, Sofronio, or Manolis. What the hell was going on? He called his office in Thessalonike and ordered Katerina to look into it. But his apprehension was growing worse all the time as he climbed back into the SUV.

  Knox's jeep was lying at an angle on its roof, a third of the way up a dune. He pushed and pushed, achieving a little back-and-forth resonance, but not quite enough to take it to its tipping point. He dug sand from beneath the roof with his bare hands to increase the angle of tilt, then tried again. Finally, with a great crash, it fell onto its side and then almost onto its wheels, teetering there for a moment before threatening to fall back. Knox hurled himself against it, and though his feet were slipping and slithering in the soft sand, he refused to give way, and finally the Jeep clattered upright, throwing up clouds of sand and dust.

  The key was still in the ignition. He turned it with trepidation, but it caught the first time. Tears of gratitude moistened his eyes. What a beautiful, wonderful fucking car. He raced back to the lake, where Mohammed was breathing shallowly but regularly, though he hadn't regained consciousness. Even with Gaille to worry about, Knox couldn't just leave him. The man weighed at least 250, and it was all Knox could do to heave him into the back. Then he set off back to Siwa and its general hospital, devising plans as he went.

  It was late morning when Nicolas drew close enough to the coast to pick up a cell signal. He called Ibrahim's home number at once, then Manolis and Sofronio. Still nothing. He called Thessalonike, but now Katerina wasn't answering, either. Fear was a pool of acid in his gut. Manolis and Sofronio were his pilot and copilot, so without them he'd be stuck in this shit-hole of a country. Alexandria was still a six hours' drive away, but he had t
o know what was going on, so that he could make contingency plans. He glanced around at the other SUV directly behind him, and then the container truck, weighted by all that gold, slowing them all down.

  He called the second SUV on the cell phone; Bastiaan answered. Nicolas ordered him to drive on ahead, to find out what had happened in Alexandria. Bastiaan gave him the thumbs-up; they pulled out to pass, then speeded on ahead and soon had vanished out of sight.

  Knox pulled up outside SIWA general hospital, tooting his horn frantically. A nurse came out, shielding his eyes from the morning sun, and Knox flung open the rear door to show him Mohammed, who still had a handcuff locked around his wrist.

  "What happened?" asked the nurse, moving already into diagnosis.

  "His heart stopped," replied Knox. "He almost drowned."

  The nurse ran back inside, reappearing a few moments later with a doctor and a gurney. "The police will want to talk to you," said the doctor.

  "Of course."

  They loaded Mohammed gently and wheeled him inside. "Come with us," said the doctor. "You'd better wait inside."

  "In a moment," said Knox. "I need something from my Jeep." He went back out. Police be damned. It wasn't just Nicolas's warning about what he would do to Gaille if he encountered trouble; it was that the Egyptians were notoriously trigger-happy in hostage situations, and there was no way he would entrust Gaille to their care. Anywhere else in the world, he wouldn't have had a hope of catching Nicolas after the head start he had. But this wasn't anywhere else. This was Siwa, and Siwa was unique. There was no way the container truck could cross the desert, which meant it had only one possible route out: north to the coast, then east to Alexandria. Once they were in Alexandria, all Egypt would open up, but that was still many hours away.

  He put his hand on the dashboard. "Just one more trip," he pleaded. "Just one more." Then he roared away.