The Alexander Cipher

Chapter Thirty-four

It was the wee hours of the night, so Knox took it easy on his Jeep until they were out of town; then he opened it up over the rutted desert track, the old suspension groaning and squeaking as they bounced and jarred. Icy air blew through the cracks in the doors and the empty ventilator slots. Rick was in the back, leaning forward between the front seats, while Gaille clamped her hands beneath her armpits. "We must be mad!" she said, shivering. "Why don't we come back in the morning?"

"We can't risk it."

"Risk what?" she grumbled. "Even if people know about the tomb, they can't exactly just loot it."

"Trust me, the Dragoumises will do exactly that if the prize is big enough."

"But is it big enough? I mean, they're certain to be found out. Would they really risk international condemnation and life in prison just for some goods fit for Alexander?"

"Maybe that's not what they're after. Maybe there's more."

"Like what?" asked Rick.

"There's only one thing they'd risk everything for."

"Come on, mate. Spill."

"Dragoumis wants an independent Macedonia. That's only going to happen through an all-out war. He knows that. But nations don't go to war for nothing. They need a cause, something greater than themselves that they can all believe in. The Jews followed the Ark of the Covenant into battle. Christians followed the true cross. If you were Macedonian, what would you follow?"

"The body of Alexander," said Gaille numbly.

"The immortal, invincible lord of the world," agreed Knox.

"But that's not possible," protested Rick. "Alexander was on display in Alexandria hundreds of years after the shield bearers all died."

"Was he?"

"Of course," said Gaille. "Julius Caesar visited him. Octavian. Caracalla."

Knox waved impatiently. "Think about it from a different perspective for a moment. Imagine you're Ptolemy, just settling into Egypt. News comes that these bastard shield bearers have made off with Alexander's body. You need that body. It's the only thing that gives your reign legitimacy, so you set off after them, but by the time you catch them, there's no sign of Alexander, and the shield bearers have all killed themselves. What the hell do you do now?"

"A double?" frowned Rick. "You're suggesting he used a double?"

"It has to be possible, doesn't it? I mean, Ptolemy had already used a decoy once to send Perdiccas off in the wrong direction. Surely the idea would at least have occurred to him."

"But Alexander had the most famous face in antiquity," protested Gaille. "Ptolemy couldn't just embalm a substitute and hope no one noticed."

"Why not? There was no TV, remember. No photography. There was memory and there was art, but all of it was idealized. Listen, Ptolemy kept Alexander's body in Memphis for thirty or forty years before he moved him to Alexandria; archaeologists have been arguing about the reason for that for decades. Do you really believe it took that long to build an appropriate tomb? Or that Ptolemy held the transfer back deliberately so he'd have a grand state event for his son's succession? Bullshit. Maybe this is why. Maybe Ptolemy couldn't risk bringing the body to a Greek city because it wasn't Alexander at all, and he had to wait until everyone who'd known Alexander well was either dead or too gaga to remember what he looked like."

"You're dreaming."

"Am I? You showed me the painting yourself."

"What painting?"

"In the antechamber of the Macedonian tomb, of Akylos with Apelles of Cos. Tell me this: why would Alexander's personal portrait painter waste time on a humble shield bearer? Could it be because Akylos was sitting in as Alexander's model? I mean, we never found his body in Alexandria, did we? And you saw the mosaic. Akylos was short and slight with reddish hair. Now, describe Alexander."

"No," said Gaille weakly. "It can't be."

Knox read it on her face. "What?" he asked. "Tell me."

"It's just," she said, "it seemed odd that Kelonymus buried the shield bearers in the Royal Quarter. I mean, that was the absolute heart of Ptolemy's power. Taking them there would have been suicidal."

"Unless?"

"Kelonymus wrote in the Alexander Cipher that he'd pledged to reunite the thirty-three in death as in life. If you're right-I mean, if it really was Akylos buried as Alexander in Alexandria-then the necropolis would have been as close as Kelonymus could possibly have got the other shield bearers to him. This was his effort to reunite them."

Knox stomped on the gas pedal. They roared across the sand.

Elena watched raptly as Mohammed cleared the marble slab of sand and set the teeth of his scoop between the top of the marble and the limestone lintel, then toppled it forward. She flinched as it fell, professionally appalled by such cavalier vandalism, but the sand was soft and it didn't shatter. She was still as determined as ever on her vendetta, but she also had to see what lay inside. In every way possible, this was the climax of her career.

They each took flashlights, shining them down into the black mouth. A flight of steps almost entirely submerged beneath a slant of sand led down to a rough-hewn corridor just tall and wide enough for two men to stand shoulder to shoulder. Elena followed Nicolas and his father fifty paces into the hill before the corridor opened out into a cavernous chamber. But as they shone their flashlights eagerly around, they soon realized it was empty except of dust and detritus: a broken drinking vessel, an earthenware amphora, the hilt of a dagger, the bones and feathers of a bird, presumably trapped here centuries before. Only the walls repaid in any way the efforts they had made to find this place, for the raw sandstone was handsomely sculpted like the stations of the cross, with scenes from Alexander's life in deep relief, furnished with real artifacts.

In the first, to their left, Alexander was a gurgling infant in his cot, strangling snakes like Hercules-and evidently there had once been real snakes there, though time had disintegrated them, leaving only wafer-thin translucent skins. In the second, he was leading his famed horse Bucephalus away from his own shadow, the better to tame him. The third showed him with other young men around the feet of an elderly man, perhaps Aristotle himself, reading from what would once have been a parchment scroll but which had long since crumbled into fragments that lay at his feet. The fourth showed Alexander on horseback, exhorting his men to battle. The fifth had him plunging a wooden-shafted javelin through the chest of a Persian soldier with a bronze ax. Then came the celebrated Gordian knot. Legend had promised sovereignty over all Asia to the person who could untie it, even though untying it was impossible-a conundrum that Alexander resolved with his customary directness by cutting straight through the rope, represented here by a carved trunk of wood, one end looped around the metal yoke of a chariot, the other anchored inside a slot in the rock wall. The next scene showed him consulting the oracle of Siwa itself, the chief priest assuring him of his divinity. And so it went on, his victories, his setbacks, and his deathbed, all beautifully recorded. The final scene showed his spirit ascending a mountain to join the other gods, being welcomed as an equal.

Their flashlights played among these mesmerizing sculptures, creating shadows that stretched and danced and ducked and darted with life after twenty-three hundred years of utter stillness. No one dared speak. For though this was a remarkable find, Elena knew that it wasn't what Philip and Nicolas Dragoumis had come for, it wasn't what they needed for their mission. Either the shield bearers had never made it this far with Alexander's body or someone had been here before them.

"I don't believe this," muttered Nicolas, balling his fist. "I don't fucking believe this. All our work! All our work!" He gave an inarticulate cry of frustration and kicked the rock wall.

Elena ignored his tantrum and crouched down instead by the foothills of the mountain up which Alexander's spirit was ascending. "There's an inscription," she told Dragoumis.

"What does it say?"

She wiped away the dust and held her flashlight at an angle to accentuate the shadows and make it easier to see. " 'Go up into the secret skies, Alexander,' " she translated aloud, " 'while your people here mourn.' "

"There's another one there," said Costis, pointing his flashlight at the base of the relief of the infant Alexander strangling the snakes.

Dragoumis translated this one himself: "You do not know your strength, Alexander. You do not know what or who you are." He glanced doubtfully at Elena. "Does it mean anything to you?"

"It's from the Iliad, isn't it?"

Dragoumis nodded. "They both are. But what are they for?"

Elena went down on her haunches by a third scene, a depiction of fierce fighting. " 'Shield clashed against shield, and spear with spear. The clamor was mighty as the earth turned red with blood.' "

Dragoumis was by the Gordion Knot, he and Costis working their flashlights in tandem, the better to see. " 'Whichever man undoes the knot that fixes this yoke will find himself the Lord of all Asia.' "

" 'Talk not of running, nor of fear,' " said Elena, " 'for I know of neither.' "

They went on around the walls, deciphering the inscriptions. When they were done, Elena looked at Dragoumis. "What do you think?"

"I think we need more-"

A heavy thump reverberated from up the passage at that moment. The floor shook; dust shivered from the walls. Nicolas looked around, then closed his eyes in anger as he realized what it was. "Mohammed," he muttered.

Opportunity had taken Mohammed by surprise. The Greeks, every last one of them, had gone inside the hill. Curiosity had gotten the better of them. He had waited a minute or two, half expecting one or another of them to realize their mistake and come back out. When they didn't, his courage began to mount. If he could block them in, he could go into Siwa and bring back the police. They would all go to jail for years, unable to affect Layla or exact revenge.

His first idea was to ram the mouth of the passage with one of the vehicles, but they were all the wrong shape. He decided instead to reseal the passage with the marble slab, then swamp it beneath sand. He slid the teeth of his hydraulic scoop beneath it and tried to lift it, but it was so heavy, his rear wheels left the ground, his hydraulic mechanism screeched and stalled, and the slab slipped sideways and clapped loudly on the sand. He cursed himself. They were bound to have heard that. Shouts of alarm came from within, so it was too late to back down now. He reversed a little way, then accelerated forward, using momentum to pick up the marble slab. A Greek arrived at the mouth just as it tipped back neatly into its slot. Mohammed felt jubilant as he scooped sand and more sand onto it. He exulted as the pink marble quickly disappeared, imprisoning them all inside. He could hardly believe how simple it had been. Nur was right: she always said that if you faced your demons, you could conquer any-

A muffled burst of gunfire. A second burst.

Mohammed watched numbly as a cone was sucked out of the sand in front of him, as it widened and deepened. A small black hole appeared. A man clambered through. Mohammed swung the scoop at him, but he ducked it easily and aimed his AK-47 at Mohammed's face. Mohammed took his hands off the controls and raised them numbly. A second man crawled out, and a third. He thought of Layla, what would happen to her now, and felt despair. More Greeks scrambled out, like so many rats. Costis opened the cab door, switched off the ignition, and took away the keys. Nicolas appeared, brushing down his sleeves and trousers. He said, "If any of my people knew how to work this machine, you would be dead now. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"You have a daughter," he said. "Her life depends upon our goodwill. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"You will cooperate?"

"Yes."

He nodded at Costis, who had returned with a pair of handcuffs. He closed one cuff around the steering wheel and the other around Mohammed's left wrist, allowing him enough movement to work the controls but not enough to escape. He added the key to a key ring on his belt. Then he frowned and looked over his shoulder, out over the dunes. It was a moment before Mohammed heard what had distracted him: the faint growl of an engine coming from the direction of Siwa. Costis glanced at Nicolas, who held up his hand for silence. The noise died away momentarily, then returned even louder. Nicolas grimaced with foreboding. It was the early hours of the morning. No one should be out driving in the desert, not unless they had a very specific purpose.

"You want us to check it out?" asked Costis.

"Yes," said Nicolas.

Costis signaled to Leonidas, Bastiaan, Vasileios, and Dimitris to go with him. They grabbed weapons and sprinted for their four-by-fours.