The Alexander Cipher

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.