The Alexander Cipher

Chapter Twenty-six

Boss! Boss!"

Nessim glowered at Ratib. Since they offered their reward, their phones had been ringing constantly. Knox's Jeep had been spotted everywhere from Marsa Matruh down to Aswan, as had Knox himself. Nessim was longing for a result, if only so they could call off this damned search and get some peace. But the more time that went by, the lower his hopes fell. "Yes?" he asked.

"It's Abdullah, boss," said Ratib. "You know, from Tanta. Says one of his crew has found the Jeep."

"Where?"

Ratib shook his head. "Kid won't say until he's got his money. And he wants more. Kid's demanding a thousand dollars just for himself. And Abdullah wants the same."

Nessim scowled. The money itself didn't bother him; it was Hassan's, after all. But being held to ransom did. Yet, if this was for real… He checked his money belt to see how much he had on him. "Tell him we want proof," he said. "Tell him to send photographs. If it is, they can each have seven fifty."

Ratib shook his head. "The kid refuses to go back," he said. "Reckons Abdullah will have him followed, and then he won't get anything."

Nessim barked out a laugh. He had met Abdullah twice himself, and both times he instinctively checked his pockets afterward to make sure he still had his wallet. "Ask him to describe exactly what he saw."

Ratib nodded and complied. "He says it was covered with a green tarpaulin," he reported back. "He says he took a peek inside. He says he saw a box of CDs and books."

Nessim grabbed the phone from Ratib. "What books?" he demanded.

"I don't know," answered the kid. He sounded terrified, way out of his depth. "They were in foreigner writing."

A flashback of Knox's hotel room and the archaeology books he had taken away. "Did they have pictures?"

"Yes."

"What kind?"

"Ruins," said the kid. "You know. And those people who dig in the desert."

Nessim clenched his fist. "You stay exactly where you are," he told him. "We're on our way."

"The Rosetta Stone?" frowned Rick, snapping a couple of shots of the painting with his digital camera before moving on. "I know what you'd expect me to know. Why?"

"And that is?"

Rick shrugged. "It's a large chunk of a monumental stela. Black basalt, something like that."

"Quartz-bearing rock," corrected Knox. "It should actually be sparkling gray with a pink vein. The black comes from too much wax and London dirt."

"It's inscribed in three languages," said Rick. "Hieroglyphics, Demotic, and Greek. And it was found in Rosetta by Napoleon's men. Seventeen ninety nine, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

They reached a second painting, similar to the first. Rick took two shots; the flash was blinding in the darkness. "They realized it might hold the key to deciphering hieroglyphics, so they hunted for other fragments. Worth their weight in diamonds, as someone put it." He squinted at Knox. "Is that what we're after? The lost pieces of the Rosetta Stone?"

"No."

"They didn't find anything; but then the stone wasn't from Rosetta originally; it was only transported there as building material." As they walked, the walls turned black with char; great scars scored the baked clay. "One hell of a fire," muttered Rick as he photographed.

"You were telling me about the Rosetta Stone."

"Yes. Copies were made, and there was a race to decipher it. Jean-Francois Champollion made the final breakthrough. He announced his results sometime in the 1820s."

"Eighteen twenty-two. Friday, September 27, to be exact. Considered by many to be the birth date of modern Egyptology."

Rick shrugged. "That's pretty much it."

"Not bad," said Knox. "But you know what you haven't mentioned yet?"

"What?"

"The inscription itself. What it says."

Rick laughed ruefully. "You're right. How about that?"

"You're not alone. This great monument, this iconic image, and hardly anyone knows what it says."

"So what does it say?"

Knox shone his flashlight ahead. The white marble of a portal glowed pale, and on either side lay ghostly wolves. "It's known as the Memphis Decree," he said as they pressed forward. "Written to commemorate Ptolemy Five's accession in one nine six BC. The Golden Age of the Ptolemies had been well and truly over by then, of course, thanks to Ptolemy Four."

"The party animal," nodded Rick, crouching to photograph the wolves.

"Exactly. The Seleucid king Antiochus Three thought he was soft and ripe for plucking. He seized Tyre, Ptolemais, and much of the Egyptian fleet."

"Spare me the detail," said Rick. "We're on the clock, remember."

"Okay," said Knox as they moved on. "There was a great battle at Raphia. The Egyptians won, and peace was restored to the land. It should have been good news."

"But?"

"Taxes were already punitive, but Ptolemy had to raise them even higher to finance his war and then the victory celebrations. People left their farms and homes because they couldn't afford to pay. Discord spread. There were massive uprisings across Egypt. Ptolemy Four was assassinated, and his successor, Ptolemy Five Epiphanes, was still only a child. When a group of rebels attacked military posts and temples in the Nile Delta, Epiphanes' men went after them. The rebels took refuge in a citadel."

"That's right," said Rick, snapping his fingers. "They thought they'd be safe. They were wrong."

"They were very wrong," agreed Knox as they walked down two steps to a second doorway. "According to the Rosetta Stone, Epiphanes' men stormed it and put them all to the sword."

"Charming."

"You know where it all happened? A place called Lycopolis, in the Busirite administrative district."

"The Busirite administrative district? Wasn't that pretty much where we are now?"

"Exactly," nodded Knox as they reached the portal. "Welcome to the citadel of ancient Lycopolis."

Rick went through first, his flashlight held out ahead. "Oh, Jesus!" he muttered when he saw what was inside. And he turned and looked away, as though about to be sick.

"Come,"smiled Aly Sayed. "This is no evening to waste in a library."

Gaille and Elena followed him to his outside table. A breeze had turned the evening cool. Birds twittered in the distance. Gaille listened as Elena and Aly chatted amiably, exploring connections, mutual friends, and obscure sites they both had visited. After a while, he turned to Gaille. "Your poor father," he said. "I think about him often. My esteemed secretary general did not greatly respect him, as you may know. For myself, I work only with people I respect. No man loved this country more."

"Thank you."

He smiled and turned back to Elena. "Now, tell me what it is you do in Siwa. Yusuf hinted mysteriously that you'd found something interesting in Alexandria."

"You could say that."

"And it has implications for Siwa?"

"Yes." Elena took a set of Gaille's photographs from her bag. "Forgive me, but Yusuf insisted I make you promise not to say a word."

"Of course," nodded Aly. "My lips are sealed."

"Thank you." She passed them to him, explained how they had been found and what they meant, then read out a translation of the Alexander Cipher.

"A tomb fit for Alexander," murmured Aly as he leafed through the pictures. "And you hope to find it in two weeks?"

"We hope to make progress in two weeks," said Elena. "Enough to be granted another two."

"How?"

"The text gives several clues." She ticked them off on her fingers. "It states that the tomb was in sight of the oracle of Ammon, that it was within a hill, that its mouth was beneath the sand, that it was excavated in secret. Tomorrow morning, with your permission, we'll compile a list of all hills in sight of the oracle. Then we'll visit them."

He raised his eyebrows. "Do you know how many sites that will be?"

"We can eliminate a few. This place was built in secret; that cuts out anything near ancient settlements or trading routes. And quarrying is thirsty work. They'd have needed fresh water."

"This is the oasis of a thousand springs."

"Yes. But many are salt, and most of the freshwater ones are settled."

"They could have dug their own well."

"And we'll search for it," agreed Elena. "We've a list of features to look for. For example, as you well know, you can tell quarried rock from the grooves left by the tools. Any significant quantities of such rock will be interesting. Digging in the desert is brutal. The sand's so fine and dry, it runs like liquid. Macedonian soldiers were experienced engineers, so maybe they used a cofferdam. Your aerial photos might help us find its outlines. I'm also having some remote sensing equipment shipped in: a caesium magnetometer, a remote-controlled aircraft for more aerial photographs."

Aly was still flipping through the photographs. Gaille was watching him idly when his expression froze. He caught himself almost immediately, glanced around with attempted nonchalance, then hurried through the other photographs before passing them back. "Well," he said. "I wish you luck."

Bright lights flickered between the trunks of date palms. A canvas-covered truck roared up the drive and stopped in a squeal of brakes. Aly rose to his feet. "Yusuf suggested you would need guides," he said. "I took the liberty of contacting Mustafa and Zayn for you. They are the best in all Siwa. They know everything."

"Thank you," said Elena. "That's most helpful."

"No trouble. We must work together, must we not?" The truck doors opened, and two men jumped down. Aly turned to Gaille and said, "I thought of them the moment Yusuf told me your name."

Gaille frowned. "Why?"

"Because they were the guides with your father on that terrible day, of course." And, just for a moment, all warmth left his expression. He squinted at her with an almost clinical detachment, curious of her reaction. But then he caught himself; his smile was back, and he was the perfect host again, crackling with benevolent energy, making everybody welcome.

Knox swung his flashlight around to see what had made Rick flinch. There were skeletons lying everywhere on the floor, some of them tiny, many still wearing ragged fragments of clothing, along with jewelry and amulets. "Oh, man," grimaced Rick. "What the hell happened?"

"The siege, remember?" said Knox, more calmly than he felt. "The men would have fought. The women, children, and elderly would have taken refuge. An underground temple would have seemed perfect. Until they got shut in and someone lit a fire between them and their only escape."

"Christ! What a way to go."

Knox nodded absently as he was forcibly reminded of an incident from Alexander the Great's conquests. Samaria had risen in revolt, killing its Macedonian governor. In punishment, Alexander destroyed the city, executing every rebel he could lay his hands on, then hunting two hundred others to a desert cave. Instead of going in after them, he had built a fire in the mouth and asphyxiated them all. Their remains had recently been discovered, along with seals and legal documents that were considered the oldest cache of Dead Sea Scrolls ever found. Knox had never paid much attention to the incident, an almost inconsequential sidebar to Alexander's campaigns, but suddenly he felt an empathetic sadness for all those people who had gotten in the way of Alexander's glory juggernaut.

Rick tapped his arm. "No time for daydreaming, mate. We're down to ten minutes."

Knox tore his gaze from the huddled corpses to look around the rest of the space. It was effectively a subterranean Greek temple, with Ionic columns embedded in the exterior walls and in front of the pronaos. A wooden walkway had been set up on concrete blocks to enable excavators to move around quickly and without causing damage. Knox went into the pronaos, its walls carved with pastoral scenes, ivy, fruit, and animals, then into the naos, dominated by a white marble statue of Alexander on a rearing horse. "Look!" said Rick, pointing to the far corner. "Steps."

They led down into a crypt, a sarcophagus against the far wall, with Greek writing on its side. "Kelonymus," read Knox. "Holder of the secret, founder of the faith."

"Kelonymus?" frowned Rick. "That's your friend from the papyri, right?"

"And from Alexandria," agreed Knox. There were stone vats around the walls, filled with limestone and earthenware ostraca. Knox picked one out and squinted at the faded writing. "A petition to the gods," he said.

"So this is a temple? A temple to Kelonymus?"

Knox shook his head. "To Alexander. That's his cult statue upstairs. But Kelonymus must have been the founder or chief priest or something." He crouched down. "So what have we got?" he asked rhetorically. "An old man in Mallawi writes about his childhood in Lycopolis. He reveres Alexander, Akylos, and Kelonymus and despises the Ptolemies, dismissing them as liars and frauds. And why were Epiphanes' men so ruthless when they stormed the citadel? Everyone was slaughtered or taken for execution." He glanced at Rick. "Doesn't that smack of more than an ordinary uprising? I mean, the southern rebels were granted amnesties. So why did these people all have to be killed?"

"They knew something," suggested Rick. "They needed to be shut up."

"The holder of the secret," nodded Knox. "Must have been one hell of a secret."

"Any ideas?"

Knox frowned at the glimmer of a possible answer. "The Ptolemies were never really taken into Egyptian hearts," he said. "They were only tolerated because of their direct succession from Alexander. That's why they tried so hard to associate themselves with him. They spread rumors that Ptolemy One had been Alexander's brother, you know, and they built his great mausoleum in Alexandria partly so they themselves could lie next to him. Imagine what would have happened if the legitimacy of that succession came into question."

"I'll imagine it later, if you don't mind," said Rick, tapping his watch. "We need to scoot."

Knox nodded. They hurried up the steps, then back along the walkways and the corridor to the wooden ladder. Rick climbed it first, going for haste rather than quiet, Knox struggling to keep up. "Okay," murmured Rick, when they reached the top. "Let's do it." He opened the steel door, ushered Knox out, and padlocked it behind them. Away to their left was a flutter of lamplight and the growl of a dog. "Perfect timing," grinned Rick. But then the second guard stepped out from behind a tree directly in front of them, zipping up his pants. They all looked at each other in shock.

"Run!" cried Rick. "Run!"