The Bonaparte Secret

CHAPTER FOUR

Law offices of Langford Reilly

Two days later

Sara made a less than subtle effort not to stare at Lang’s face. If possible, it looked worse than it had when he and Gurt boarded the private charter from Santo Domingo to Atlanta. His nose, broken, was a peak of white bandage between the two black valleys under his all-but-swollen-shut eyes. The bruising had turned a grotesque green and yellow. Lang was grateful she could not see the angry red sores on his chest that just today had ceased suppurating and begun to scab over.

He hoped waterboarding was the most gentle of the enhanced interrogation techniques Dow experienced at the hands of the Dominican security people.

He sat behind his desk gingerly. His legs and groin ached from muscles still protesting his time on horseback. Sinking gratefully into the embracing confines of his Relax the Back desk chair, he looked sourly at the stack of pink call-back slips. There had to be some way to respond using the computer. His nose, packed with gauze, gave his voice a tone too close to a cartoon character’s to be taken seriously by anyone above the age of ten.

The phone on his desk buzzed.

“Yeah?”

“The Reverend Bishop Groom on two. You in?”

Lang sighed. Even that had a nasal sound. “I’ll take it.”

He picked up the receiver. “Good morning, Reverend. What might I do for you today?”

“Mr. Reilly? Is this Mr. Reilly?”

It sure as hell isn’t Donald Duck, no matter how it sounds.

“I, er, had an accident, broke my nose. It affects my voice.”

“You should be more careful,” the reverend reproached. “I’ll pray for your speedy recovery.”

“Any intervention of friends in high places greatly appreciated.”

There was a pause. Among his client’s multitude of failings was a lack of a sense of humor.

“I called two days ago, hadn’t heard back…” There was a note of rebuke.

Lang thumbed the call-back slips. “Yeah, I see you did. I’ve been out of the office. What’s up?”

“I was hoping you could tell me. I mean, have we heard anything?”

Lang drew a momentary blank before he realized to what Groom referred. “The feds? No, not a peep.”

“I was hoping perhaps you were negotiating with them, maybe a suspended sentence or something.”

Fat chance. Lang couldn’t remember the last time he had even heard of a suspended sentence in a federal case. Unlike the states, the U.S. government had endless resources to build prisons as needed. Overcrowding was not a problem. There was no need to make bargains in which the perpetrator did no time. Reduced sentences in exchange for guilty pleas saving the time and expense of a trial, yes. No time at all, unlikely. But there was no reason to screw up the reverend’s day with this factoid just yet.

“Initiating negotiations is frequently viewed as having a weak defense.”

“Perhaps, but I need to know what to expect, have time to get my affairs in order.”

Read: before the government seized all assets it could find for restitution to the man’s victims, get as much cash as possible offshore in banks whose depositors received secrecy rather than interest.

Groom continued. “Why don’t you give the U.S. attorney a call just to see what’s on his mind?”

“It’s a her. ” Lang knew what was probably on her mind: ten to twenty. But he said, “If that’s what you want.”

Minutes later, Lang was dialing a number he was surprised he remembered. It had been two or three years since he had called it. Tactical considerations had not been the only reason he had been hesitant to contact the assistant U.S. attorney assigned to the case.

“Ms. Warner’s office,” announced a disembodied voice.

“Er, is she in? Langford Reilly calling.”

The line went temporarily dead, leaving Lang with his thoughts. In one of Gurt’s several premarital absences from his life, he had briefly dated Alicia Warner. The relationship had never gotten serious and had peacefully wilted rather than died in the acrimony that frequently marks such endings.

“Well, Lang, long time no see,” Alicia’s voice chirped. “How’s married life treating you? I understand you’ve got a little boy.”

She could at least pretend not be so damn happy he was no longer eligible.

“Swell. And you?”

“Just fine, thanks. I must admit, though, nothing like the excitement you showed me. Haven’t been shot at or kidnapped lately.”

She referred to an abduction by a fanatical group of kibbutzniks who had taken her to Israel during what Lang thought of as the Sinai Affair.

“Well, yeah, I can see how that might make things a little dull.”

She tinkled a laugh. “Dull I’ll take.”

There was a brief, uncomfortable pause.

Lang wriggled in his desk chair, one of the few times in his life he wasn’t sure what to say. “Er, Alicia, I was calling about a case you have, the Reverend Bishop Groom…”

“Well, damn! And here I was hoping you were going to boost my ego by soliciting a sordid extramarital affair.”

The wit and sarcasm he recalled was melting his uneasiness like ice on a summer day. “Maybe after the case is over.”

“Maybe by the time the case is over I’ll be married to the king of Siam. Oh, wait a minute. Siam doesn’t have a king anymore. In fact, it isn’t even Siam.”

Lang felt compelled to play along. “The British have two unmarried princes.”

“I couldn’t take the scandals. Besides, I don’t care for Eurotrash.” There was a pause. “Now, what was it you were calling about?”

Lang laughed out loud. “The Reverend Bishop Groom.”

“Oh, yeah. A different species of trash. Hold on.”

There was the click of a keyboard, then, “Here he is: sixteen counts of tax evasion, same number of conspiracy to evade taxes, a dozen counts of mail fraud… Shall I go on?”

“No need. I have a copy of the indictment. You guys really like to pile it on.”

“Oh, c’mon! We didn’t charge him with adultery and fornication, something he’s guilty as hell of.”

“Only because they’re not federal crimes, and I can’t recall the last time a state chose to prosecute. The tender mercy of the United States attorney is well-known. I was calling to see if there might be a plea deal available.”

“Sure, he pleads and the judge deals him about twenty years.”

Lang inhaled deeply. “I’m serious, Alicia. The man is, after all, a preacher anxious to return to his flock.”

“More anxious to fleece his flock, I’d say. He’s done a pretty fair job of that, but I’ll see what we can do and get back to you.”

His previous discomfort forgotten, Lang was smiling as he hung up.

He began sorting the slips into three piles: return ASAP, return when convenient and the last stack on the edge of the desk, which a single sweep of the hand would send into the trash basket.

He had almost finished the task when his phone interrupted. “Lang, it’s someone called Miles. He said you’d know who he was.”

Lang got up, crossed the office and shut the door before he picked up. “Yes, thank you, Miles. I’m healing nicely.”

There was a two count before Mile’s relay replied, “Glad to hear it. How long will it take to get to a pay phone? I noticed there were several in the lobby of your building.”

Lang was not even sure Miles was correct. He hadn’t noticed. With cell phones more common than neckties these days, who used pay phones? Answer: people who suspected their calls, or those of people calling them, might be intercepted. The sheer randomness of selecting a pay phone made eavesdropping unlikely if not impossible.

“Same number?” Lang asked.

“Same number.”

“Gimme about five minutes.”

Three pay phones were, in fact, in the lobby, lined along a wall like books in a shelf. The first was clearly out of order. The second was splattered with some gooey substance, the origins of which Lang chose not to speculate upon, although he suspected it might have something to do with the homeless. Those beggars, addicts and mental cases populated the city’s downtown area, using the facilities of any building whose security was lax. The chamber of commerce’s pleas to the municipal government to solve the problem of aggressive panhandling went unheeded.

After all, the homeless voted, as did the bleeding hearts whose sympathies for their less-fortunate brethren did not include working downtown.

The third phone appeared to be intact and reasonably sanitary. Lang poured in the change required for a longdistance call to the Washington, D.C., area code.

“Lang?”

“Here, Miles. I’m guessing you called to make certain my good looks will not be permanently disfigured.”

“That and a minor matter of national security.”

A few feet away, the body language of a couple in front of an elevator bank said they were arguing. Rather than stare at a blank marble wall, Lang watched.

“I’m not in the national-security business anymore, remember? I did you a favor going to Haiti and got my face rearranged for my troubles.”

“No good deed goes unpunished. But wait till you hear what your pal Colonel Dow had to say.”

The man’s hands were on his hips, his head inclined forward. From his expression, Lang was glad he couldn’t hear what was being said.

“I don’t want to know, Miles. The only reason you’d tell me is to hook me in further. I’m retired and want to stay that way.”

During the pause before Miles’s answer, the woman reacted to whatever the man had said by stepping into the first elevator that opened, although it was in a different bank, going to a floor other than the ones served by the cars for which she had been waiting.

“Well, that’s your business, Lang, but as an old pal, I’ll give you some free advice.”

“No doubt worth every penny I pay for it.”

The man started to follow. He got one foot in past the door before he received a slap to the face that reverberated across the marble lobby. He jerked back as though attempting to avoid the strike of a venomous snake.

“OK, don’t take it. But were I you, I’d beef up whatever security you have around the house.”

A mechanical voice interrupted the conversation, demanding more money.

Lang shoved it in. “Whoa! What about security?”

“Dow pretty well spilled everything he knew after a little, ah, persuasion.”

“I’m disappointed he didn’t get the works, but what about security around the house?”

The man who had been slapped was frantically pushing the up button of the bank of elevators the woman had taken.

“OK, so he was probably in a little more hurt than you were when the Dominicans finished with him. Fact is, he’s under guard in a prison hospital. One of the things he mentioned was, his superiors think you know something you shouldn’t. You know how the Chinese handle that problem. The Guoanbu ain’t good people. They’re going to be on you like white on rice until somebody in the government pulls them off or-”

“I get the picture. And you have a plan to make someone call off the dogs.”

“Of course!” Miles was cheerful, the way he always was when he was getting his way.

Lang sighed. Dealing with the Agency was like waltzing with the tar baby: there was no way not to get stuck.

An elevator door opened. The man got on. Seconds later, another opened and the woman got off. Lang turned to stare at the wall. It was more restful.

“OK, Miles, tell me what you have in mind.”

“First, a little background. About a year ago, ECHELON picked up an exchange of messages between the People’s Republic and Haiti.”

Miles was referring to the system operated by the British, Americans, Australians, New Zealanders and Canadians that intercepted any message in the world sent via satellite. Landlines were becoming as obsolete as buggy whips. Consequently, ECHELON’s volume was so great that computers had to search communications for key words before the number of messages of possible interest could be reduced to numbers a finite staff of humans could listen to or read.

“Since any communication by the Chinese to a country of this hemisphere is of interest,” Miles continued, “we followed the conversation. China has no embassy or even trade attache in Haiti and the two countries have no common code, so the messages were in the clear, something about establishing a trading partnership. As you remarked before going there, there’s damn little Haiti exports that China wants and even less the Chinese manufacture that Haiti could afford.

“Obviously this exchange had some other meaning, so we alerted our asset in Haiti to watch the airport and see who arrived.”

“Whoa,” Lang interrupted. “You told me you had no assets in Haiti.”

“True, we don’t. We had a guy, but we haven’t heard from him nor been able to contact him for some time. I’m afraid he’s been silenced. Anyway, he e-mailed us a photo taken with a special camera we supplied of the Chinese visitor getting off a private plane. It wasn’t some bureaucrat from the trade department. It was Chin Diem.”

“Someone I should know?” Lang asked.

“Undersecretary for foreign relations. Pretty high up the food chain to be making a trip to negotiate the price of coffee.

“Anyway, Diem made one or two more trips. Our asset couldn’t find anyone around the current prez for life who knew what was up. Our guy did lay some serious bling on a waiter in a local restaurant who served Diem and the Haitian president. Seems the Haitian, guy name of duPaar, wanted something in exchange for whatever the Chinese wanted, something the Chinese seemed to be having a hard time delivering. From what he overheard, he, the waiter, was pretty sure it was a specific object. Before we could find out what, our man disappeared.”

“You’re not telling me this just for my enlightenment. What do you want?”

“To find out what duPaar wants. If we can supply it, there’d be no need for him to deal with the Chinese.”

Lang whistled. “Whew, pretty tall order, ole buddy. You telling me this is something the Agency can’t handle? You keep forgetting I’m retired.”

“Retired but incentivized. You solve the riddle, we provide the Haitian pooh-bah with whatever bauble it is he wants and the Chinese no longer have a reason to wish you ill.”

Lang shook his head as if Miles could see the gesture. “I’d say they have a hell of a reason if I’m the one responsible for screwing up their plans.”

“You and I both know that revenge, pure and simple, is not what drives the policy of any rational nation. It’s too expensive a luxury. Once a project is dead, former threats to it become irrelevant.”

True.

Lang changed the subject. “What is their interest in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation, anyway?”

Again, the machine asking for money. Lang scraped the last change from his pocket, depositing it to the accompaniment of what sounded like an old-fashioned cash register.

Miles cleared his throat. “We believe they aren’t interested in Haiti per se. It’s just that the country is the most likely Caribbean nation to accept Chinese on their soil. Can you imagine the boost to the local economy a few thousand Chinese with cash in their pockets could give?”

“OK. I get it. But what does China get?”

“A presence in the Caribbean, more than likely a military one, based on what you saw there. Think of it as an unsinkable aircraft carrier or missile cruiser. But until the Chinese come up with this whatchamacallit, duPaar isn’t unlocking the door, no matter how much good the deal would do his country. The Chinese will have to satisfy him before he agrees to more than the handful of troops you saw up at the old fort.”

Lang checked his watch. He was due for a motions hearing in forty minutes and this was taking far longer than he had anticipated. “Thanks for the poli-sci lesson, but I still don’t see what all this has to do with me.”

“Lang,” Miles said in a tone a teacher might use with one of his duller students, “we, the Agency, have no idea what the gizmo is duPaar wants and no way to find out, much less how or where to acquire it.”

“And I do?”

“Let’s say you’ve already established contact with our Chinese pals. They will keep in touch. Sooner or later, you’ll have a chance to find out what it is.”

“Or get killed in the meantime. Let me get this straight: Because the Chinese will keep trying to kill either (a) me or (b) my family or (c) both of the above, I am the person in the best position to find out what object it is the president of Haiti wants in exchange for allowing the Chinese to establish some sort of military presence there.”

“Makes sense to me.”

Lang hated to admit it, but the idea did present a certain twisted logic. The old baited trap. The opposition wanted to eliminate someone. The proposed victim was made to seem accessible, while covertly guarded. When the potential assassin made a move, the target’s minders moved, capturing the would-be killer, hopefully someone with knowledge of facts that led closer and closer to the information sought. That was the idea. Unfortunately, failures were usually lethal.

“And just why would I want a target painted on my back?”

There was what could have been another clearing of Miles’s throat or a chuckle. Lang suspected the latter. “You already have one. I’m offering you a way to remove it. Look, you know we can cover you 24-7. You can’t get better security for you, Gurt and Manfred.”

Lang thought of the private company he had already hired. Ex-Delta Force, ex-Marine Recon, ex-SEAL types already in discreet positions around his house. Bulletproof SUVs with armed drivers taking Manfred to pre-K, Gurt to the grocery store. He felt pretty damn secure. But for how long? The security people’s incentive was to do what they were hired to do: keep the Reilly family safe. The Agency’s motivation was to foil the Chinese plan to gain a foothold in the Caribbean and, possibly, end the threat to Lang as well.

Lang decided to do what any rational man would do. “I’ll talk it over with Gurt and get back to you.”

472 Lafayette Drive, Atlanta

21:26 the same day

A smile played across Gurt’s face as she watched a waterlogged Lang pour a healthy two fingers of scotch whisky. “You have had a hard time with Manfred?”

Lang contemplated and discarded a carafe of water before taking a gulp from the crystal tumbler. “What was your first clue, that I’m soaking wet?”

“That helped in the thought process, yes.”

Another swallow. “Bathing Manfred can be a problem when he gets excited. But having Grumps jump in the tub, too?”

“Perhaps you should not let the dog in the bathroom.”

Lang emptied the glass and was working on a refill. “If I shut him out, the damn dog howls and scratches the paint off the door, and Manfred is almost as bad. How do you separate them when Manfred goes to school in the morning?”

Gurt took a sip from her wineglass. “By force of will.”

Lang snorted. “More by bribe. I note you feed the dog just as you take Manfred out the door.”

Gurt picked up the book in her lap and started to read. “What is it you say, by hook and cook?”

“By hook or crook. ”

Gurt’s face wrinkled in puzzlement. “I can understand hooking and cooking to get something, but crook?”

Unable to explain the idiom, Lang added a few drops of water to his glass this time. “I spoke to Miles at length this afternoon.”

Gurt put her book back down, suddenly alert. “And?”

He gave her a summary of the conversation.

When he had finished, she got up, crossed the room to an ice maker under the bar, removed a chilling wine bottle and refilled her glass. “This would mean traveling to where?”

“I don’t know.”

“To find what?”

“I haven’t a clue.”

“How will you find out?”

“I’m not certain.”

Gurt returned to her seat, wineglass in hand and nodding. “You and Miles have a well-planned mission.”

She might not get American idioms but she has sarcasm down cold. Lang slumped into his favorite chair. “Wouldn’t you say our problems with the Chinese began in Venice?”

Not sure where this was going, Girt nodded uncertainly. “Yes.”

“So, it might be a fair statement that whatever it was that this guy, duPaar, wants was in that church, Saint Mark’s, right? Or at least, the Chinese believed so?”

She thought a moment. “If you assume the robbers in Venice were seeking the object duPaar wants and if you also assume that object was really in the church. Did you not tell me you and Francis had this conversation before we went to Haiti?”

“Sort of. He had a theory, or had read a book, positing that Alexander’s, not Saint Mark’s, remains were interred in the basement of the church.”

“You are telling me this man in Haiti wants someone’s bones?”

“They’re called relics, like Saint So-and-so’s toe bone being preserved in the altar of a church. In medieval times, they not only had religious significance but were a boon to local commerce. Pilgrims would travel miles to pray before the elbow of good Saint Such-and-such. The town would prosper from what we would call tourist trade.”

Gurt smiled. “I have seen everything from bones to a vial with a drop of Christ’s blood to a nail from the cross. In Rome, there is a church that displays the chains in which Peter was confined, the ones which miraculously fell away.”

Lang considered another refill but put his glass down on the table beside the chair instead. “San Pietro in Vincoli. Same one that has Michelangelo’s Moses. But yeah, like that. Thing is, what would duPaar want with relics, Alexander’s or Saint Mark’s?”

Gurt was looking at him over the top of her wineglass. “I suppose that is what Miles wants you to find out.”

Lang got up and surveyed the bookshelves as though looking for a volume. “We made a deal when you and Manfred came to live here: we were finished with the Agency. Neither of us would go romping off on adventures without the other’s agreement.”

“Some of the ‘adventures’ came looking for us. We certainly did not ask to be shot at in Venice or have our house broken into.” She pointed to a shuttered window. “Neither of us wish the need to have our home guarded by a security service or use our special devices forever. Soon or late, we will want to live like normal people.”

He turned away from the books, nodding agreement. “That’s why I didn’t turn down Miles’s request flat.”

“Flat?”

“On the spot. Immediately.”

He could visualize Gurt filing this Americanism away wherever she kept such things. “Speak with Francis, then with Miles again. Let us talk after you have some idea what you may be searching for and where it might be.”

Good idea.

Manuel’s Tavern

602 North Highlands Avenue, Atlanta

19:02 the next evening

For over fifty years, Manuel’s Tavern has been the gathering place for Emory University students and faculty, the local Democratic Party elite and those who would like to be either. Jimmy Carter, his hand firmly in that of the business’s founder, Manuel Maloof, smiles down from the wall behind the bar that runs along one wall. Bill Clinton’s autograph is scrawled across a photograph from the waist up. As a local wag speculated, perhaps a full-body shot had been discarded when closer scrutiny revealed the former president’s fly was unzipped.

Across from the bar, wooden booths bear the carved initials of students and fraternities as well as graffiti in Latin and Greek as well as English and other modern languages. The house specializes in political debate, funky atmosphere, generous pitchers of beer, and cuisine that is arguably the worst in any licensed food establishment in the city if not the Southeast.

When Lang and Francis had begun their friendship, it was also one of the few places where a black man in a clerical collar could share a meal with a white man in solemn lawyer garb without drawing stares of curiosity. Among the motley clientele of Manuel’s, the pair hardly drew a glance.

They entered through the back door from the parking lot.

Spurning the tables that occupied the “new” expansion to the bar that had been added nearly thirty years ago, Lang and Francis seated themselves at one of the booths that had been part of the original operation.

Francis turned to look back the way they had come. “I’ve got to say, riding in that SUV beats cramping into your Porsche.”

Lang picked up the menu, something he could have recited in his sleep. “I’ll bet you loved Max, the armed driver, too.”

Francis watched the beefy bodyguard survey the room before taking a seat at the bar. “It seems impolite not to let him join us.”

Lang lifted his eyes from the menu to look at his security escort. Just under six feet, with close-cropped hair beginning to streak with silver, the man moved with a catlike precision that would have revealed his special military background had his resume not already done so. He constantly scanned his surroundings without being obvious about it. “His job isn’t an exercise in manners. He can’t keep an eye on the whole room sitting with us.”

“You really are concerned about you and your family’s safety. You’ve had problems like this before and you didn’t hire a security service.”

Lang put the menu down. “I didn’t have a family, either. I’m not worried about taking care of myself, but when Gurt’s busy tending to Manfred, she can’t be looking over her shoulder.”

“So, how long does this go on?”

Larry, their usual waiter, appeared, a foaming pitcher of beer in each hand. He set one on the table. “I’ll be back with your glasses. The usual, folks?”

“Unless you have something truly fit to eat for a change,” Lang muttered.

Unperturbed, Larry smiled. “Manuel’s: an Atlanta tradition you can rely on.”

“Like warm beer, lousy food and indifferent service.”

Larry turned away with a cheery “But our prices are quite reasonable.”

Both men watched him go, as did Max at the bar.

Francis repeated his question. “How long are you keeping these security guys around?”

“As long as it takes. That’s part of the reason we’re here tonight.”

“And I thought you were yearning for ecclesiastical enlightenment.”

“Maybe some other time. Right now, I need information.”

Francis reached behind himself, producing a book. “You wanted to borrow Chugg’s book, the one about Alexander’s tomb.”

Lang took it. “Yeah, that’s the one. Thanks.”

Francis looked around as though making sure no one was listening. What they would be discussing was esoteric, perhaps even too far-out even for the patrons of Manuel’s. “It’s only a theory, you know, that the Venetian merchants who thought they were stealing Saint Mark’s relics actually wound up with those of Alexander, and a pretty wild one at that.”

Lang was thumbing the pages. “So far, a theory is all I have. I can’t imagine why the Chinese would want the relics of a Christian saint.”

“Or of a pagan general, albeit perhaps the greatest ever.”

“You told me, according to our friend Chugg here, the ancients believed Alexander’s body was some sort of talisman, one that guaranteed victory in battle. That was one of the justifications Ptolemy gave for hijacking it. That could be why a nutcase like duPaar wants it.”

Francis freshened his and Lang’s glasses before holding up the near-empty pitcher. “The ancients also believed in oracles, augury and a panoply of rather ill-behaved gods and goddesses. Do you suppose duPaar also does?”

“Decided, gentlemen?” Larry had pen and pad in hand.

“The salmon,” Francis said with all the enthusiasm of a man approaching the gallows. “And try not to overcook it this time.”

Lang handed his menu to the waiter. “The cheeseburger. Tell the chef I’d like it somewhere between cremated and steak tartare.”

Larry shrugged. “Chef? At these prices you think we can afford a chef? I just throw stuff on the stove and leave it there until I have to make room for something else.”

Both men watched his departure.

“I wish I thought he was kidding,” Francis said ruefully.

Lang became serious. “You were right about Alexander’s remains, relics, whatever, being just a theory, but I have to start somewhere. This book is as good a place as any.”

“You think that book is going to help you find Alexander’s tomb? Its location is one of history’s great mysteries. People have been looking for it since the fourth century AD and no one has even come close. Unless, of course, those Venetian merchants who thought they were stealing Saint Mark actually had Alexander.”

“Maybe, but no one’s life depended on finding Alexander before, either.”

“But you don’t even know if Alexander’s tomb, or his remains, if they still exist, have anything to do with the incident in Venice.”

Or the Chinese involvement in Haiti, Lang thought. “You’re right, but I have to start somewhere. If Venice is the reason my house was burglarized, then whatever was in Saint Mark’s tomb had something to do with it. Since those guys made off with Saint Mark’s relics, or whatever, I’m not going to find out what it was by going back to Italy. If you have another idea, now is the time to share it.”

Francis held up his hands as though to demonstrate they were empty. “No ideas here. If you plan to work Chugg’s theory, where will you start?”

“Well, I think we can assume Chugg was wrong about Alexander in Venice. The Chinese are still trying to find Alexander’s relics. Or at least trying to prevent me from interfering. If they’d succeeded or quit, I wouldn’t need the security detail.”

Francis smiled. “You’re making assumptions based on negatives.”

“Sometimes that’s all there is to base them on.”

“And you accuse religion of being illogical.”

Lang had no intent of renewing that debate at the moment. “The foundation is flying a pair of immunologists to Sudan next week. I figure the Gulfstream can make a stop in Alexandria. That seems a logical place to begin, since the only thing we know for sure is that Alexander was, in fact, entombed there.”

“So you figure if you find the relics first, you can put them beyond the Chinese’s reach and that will be the end of the matter, they will simply go away? Spes sibi quisque.”

Lang took a long sip from his glass. “Virgil would agree I am relying on myself. It’s for sure no one else’s family is at risk.”

“And Gurt?”

“Under the circumstances, we can hardly leave Manfred with the neighbors.”

“Then why not send Gurt, and you take care of your son?”

Lang stared across the table in disbelief. “I hope you are kidding! Gurt would no more leave that child while we are all in danger than…”

The simile failed him.

472 Lafayette Drive, Atlanta

04:12 the next morning

For an instant Lang thought he was dreaming. Then he realized the sound of shattering glass followed by the squeal of tires and a pair of gunshots were not part of a vanishing dream, but what had awakened him. His hand closed around the 9 mm Browning HP automatic in the bedside table as his feet hit the floor. Gurt was already pulling a sweatshirt over her head as Manfred’s frightened voice came down the hall.

Lang almost collided with the little boy, followed by Grumps, as he threw the bedroom door open and lunged into the hall.

“Window downstairs broke,” Manfred announced.

Lang squatted, his face at the same level as his son’s. “You go into Mommy and Daddy’s room, shut the door and stay there until we come back.”

Manfred’s lips began to tremble. “But…”

Lang lifted the child up and placed him across the threshold. In the tone that meant the order was not subject to negotiation, he repeated, “I said, stay there.”

Gurt was beside him. “Lang, the child is terrified.”

Lang was halfway down the stairs, taking them two at a time. “Then you stay with him.”

Any answer was lost as he hit the floor of the foyer. Immediately, he smelled smoke. A quick glance around told him the fire was not inside the house. Not yet, anyway. He reached for the double dead-bolt locks on the front door, his hand stopping in midair. What better way to lure him out into the open, making a clear target, than the possibility of fire?

During the second of indecision, a heavy knock came from outside. “Mr. Reilly? It’s Jake with Executive Security. Open up.”

All the bodyguards looked pretty much alike, varying only in race and height. They all had that military bearing, so he wasn’t sure which one of them was Jake. The voice, though, was familiar. He unlocked and opened the door.

The first thing he saw was a man silhouetted against dying flames. The front yard’s winter-dry grass was smouldering, cinder black.

Jake opened the door wide enough to squeeze in and shut it. Lang noted the M16 automatic rifle grasped in one hand. “Somebody threw the equivalent of a Molotov cocktail from a passing car. Pretty primitive. But if it had exploded inside, I’d guess the whole house would have been a furnace in a second or two. But it hit a window, broke the glass and bounced onto the lawn.” He stopped, puzzled. “You got steel shutters inside the windows?”

“Seemed like a reasonable precaution when we redid the house. Did you get a tag number?”

“Nope, had his lights out. Cooked off a couple of rounds through the rear windshield, though, before I had to hold off for fear of sending ordnance through your neighbors’ windows. Might’ve been two of them. A pickup truck parked across the street took off right behind the one that tossed the firebomb.”

More likely the truck was one of Miles’s men. Although Lang had seen no obvious watchers from the Agency, it would make sense that as Miles had promised, they would keep an eye on things.

Lang pointed to the back of the house. “Come on in and I’ll brew a pot of coffee.”

Jake shook his head. “No thanks. If I’m inside, I’m not doing much good keeping watch.”

“There’s supposed to be a team of two. Where’s your partner?”

“I’d guess he’s somewhere in the backyard, watching the rear of the premises.”

Gurt, holding the hand of a pale and shaken Manfred, came down the stairs. Even Grumps seemed wary. “What…?”

Lang repeated what he had been told.

Jake touched a finger to his forehead, an informal salute. “Guess I better get back to my post. You aren’t paying me to be a houseguest.”

As Lang pulled the door open, he caught a glimpse of a dozen or so people in the street in varying stages of undress despite the chill of the winter night. Bathrobes, housecoats, pajamas under jackets. Although it was too dark to see their faces, he was sure they were gaping. He heard a siren rapidly approaching.

The timely appearance of the Atlanta police could be depended upon when they were no longer needed.

Lang turned toward the kitchen. “Guess I’ll brew that coffee anyway. I expect we’ll need it.”

“Lang?” Gurt asked.

He raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

“You don’t need a weapon to make coffee.”

For the first time, he became aware he was still carrying the Browning. He stuck it in the drawer of an end table. “I guess not.”

An hour later, the police had run out of questions and the pot out of coffee. Wearily, Lang was shutting the front door as the eighteenth-century Birely amp; Sons grandfather clock chimed six times. With Manfred asleep in her arms, Gurt had a foot on the front stairs when the phone rang.

“Who the hell…?”

“Answering it could well provide an answer.”

At first Lang thought the caller had a wrong number. There was that instant’s pause before the anticipated hang-up.

But there was no hang-up. Instead, Miles’s voice, disgustingly cheery, boomed through the line. “Lang! Understand there was a little excitement around the Reilly household this morning!”

Lang was wondering how anyone could be so damn chipper at this hour before he realized it probably wasn’t this hour wherever Miles was. “You could say that.”

“My, but aren’t you the sourpuss, for someone who has just cheated death! Thought you’d like to know: one of our guys followed the car that tossed the Molotov cocktail. Got the license plate.”

“Let me guess-the plate, the car or both were stolen.”

“How perceptive for one so grouchy at being awoken from his slumbers!”

Lang picked up his coffee cup from the a table, confirming it was empty. “You didn’t call just to tell me that assassins frequently don’t use their own automobiles.”

“Quite so. But your security guy isn’t a bad shot.”

“Meaning?”

“A patrolman just called in to the APD a report of a man dead in a stolen Ford Taurus. I must say, these people have no taste in automobilia. I wouldn’t be caught dead in a clunker like that.”

Lang was wondering if there might be a teeny-weeny little bit of coffee left in the pot after all. He held up the cup, motioning to Gurt, who was at his elbow, listening as best she could to the conversation. “I suppose you’re going to tell me the deceased is the would-be arsonist.”

“According to what my guy heard on the police scanner, the back window of the car appeared to have been shot out, the dead guy bled out from a bullet wound in the back of his neck and there was a can half-full of gasoline in the backseat. I doubt he was on his way from the filling station to top off his lawnmower. Oh yeah, one more detail. He appears to be Asian, no ID on the body.”

Gurt stood in the kitchen door, Manfred still draped over one arm, the other hand holding a demonstrably empty coffee pot.

“That’s interesting to know, Miles.”

“I thought a few facts like that might speed your decision on my little proposition.”

“It does Miles, it does.”

“Well?”

“I’m definitely leaning in that direction.”

“Lang, do something! Think of your family. They may not miss next time.”

“The thought had occurred to me. You’ll have your answer before the day is out.”

With parting salutations, the conversation ended.

Gurt was facing Lang. “Wherever you have to go, whatever you have to do, make them stop it before one of us gets hurt.”

That was a decision Lang had already made, Gurt’s agreement or not. He just wanted her blessing before he called Miles back.

El Nozha Airport

Alexandria, Egypt

Three days later

The Gulfstream 550’s tires met the runway with a satinlike kiss, a tribute to the piloting skills of its flight crew. Lang was pushed forward in his seat as the engines howled into reverse thrust and the plane came to a near stop before turning sedately onto a taxiway like an elderly dowager leaving the dance floor.

He took his BlackBerry from his pocket and called home. It would be far too early in the morning, eight hours earlier, for Gurt to have hers turned on, but the “missed call” message and his number would let her know he had arrived safely.

Lang had been watching the city as it spread out beneath him on final approach. Mostly sand-colored buildings surrounding green spaces, hardly the sophisticated international metropolis of ancient history. He rubbed eyes, gritty from the lack of sleep that always accompanied air travel. The main terminal, a low squat building, suckled aircraft of Air Arabia, Olympic, Austrian Airlines and Lufthansa. Thankful he would not have to transit what he remembered as the tiny, crowded, ill-smelling and generally filthy arrival lounge, he settled back into his seat to await the arrival of the inevitable officialdom.

The customs and immigration crew had apparently been waiting on the private aviation tarmac. The Gulfstream’s door had hardly wheezed open when two khaki-clad officials climbed the short staircase and began reviewing the general declarations proffered by the plane’s copilot. The deference with which the aircraft’s crew and passengers were treated was far different from the arrogance that Lang recalled being shown across the field in the passenger terminal. But then, the occupants of a sixty-million-dollar private jet were more likely to be powerful people than, say, a merchant arriving from Cairo to visit relatives. Powerful or not, the language of international bureaucracy-paper-was inspected, exchanged and slipped into folders from which it likely would never emerge. Lang purchased the requisite visa stamp for the passport Miles had furnished along with matching Visa card, Mastercard and driver’s permit while explaining the two immunologists with him would not be leaving the aircraft but would depart for Sudan as soon as he left the plane. The disappointment shown at the lost revenues mostly dissipated when Lang thanked the two uniformed men for their prompt and courteous service, slipping an American twenty-dollar bill into both open hands.

With a minimum of luck, these two would be satisfied that the passports did not contain a stamp from Israel, a real problem requiring Higher Egyptian Authority, and be gone shortly.

“We’re in a bit of a hurry.” Lang smiled. “I am expected at an archaeological excavation that is waiting for me before further exploration can take place. I hope you can speed the customs inspection process.”

For another pair of twenties, indeed they could. The “inspection” consisted of brief glances about the aircraft’s cabin without moving a step farther.

Lang had learned long ago that in this part of the world, government officials expected to supplement their salaries. In fact, the value of political appointments in the Arab world had little to do with the pay attached; it had to do with the opportunities to extract baksheesh. Customs inspectors, particularly those along the Sinai’s border with Israel, became wealthy men.

Walking back to the small bedroom at the rear of the plane, Lang picked up a single suitcase. He reached under the mattress on which he had mostly tossed and turned the night before and pulled out the Browning HP in a leather holster. Clipping the holster to the belt in the small of his back, he probed the bedclothes again, this time producing a box of 9 mm ammunition, which he dumped loose into a jacket pocket before tossing the box into a waste basket.

Suitcase in hand, he walked to the aircraft’s open door, surprised at the blast of heat that met him even at this time of year. He was thankful he would not be here in July or August. At the bottom of the steps a sleek Mercedes glistened in the midmorning sun. He gave the briefest of waves to the pilot and copilot standing at the cockpit door and then to the pretty flight attendant who had served him and his two companions three meals since departing Atlanta.

Twenty minutes later, the Mercedes was purring along the Eastern Harbor. To his left, Lang could see turreted Fort Qaitbey, built at the tip of the western edge of a peninsula in the fourteenth century on the site of the famed Pharos Lighthouse with recycled stones from the ruins of the wonder of the ancient world. Between the road and the water, a golden crescent of beach framed colorful fishing boats gently swaying at their moorings. Lang noted there were a great deal more empty anchor buoys than ships. The bulk of the fleet must already have been at sea.

To Lang’s right, three- and four-story limestone buildings lined the waterfront, none of particular interest until the car eased into a parking spot in front of Le Metropole Hotel. The facade looked like the sort of North African fortress Gary Cooper, assisted to a small degree by the French Foreign Legion, might have defended in the 1939 version of Beau Geste.

As a uniformed bellhop opened the back door and Lang slid out, the driver, a swarthy man with a neatly manicured beard, spoke the first words of the trip. “Tell the concierge when you need the car and it will be here in five minutes. Here is my card with my cell-phone number. The service is available 24-7.”

“Thanks.” Lang proffered several bills as a tip.

Without looking at the money, the man shook his head. “Not necessary.”

Stunned, Lang watched the car merge into the brown haze generated by a mix of cars, trucks and scooters. In his travels, he rarely could recall a professional chauffeur declining a tip. In this part of the world, unheard of.

Unless…

Miles.

Miles had insisted on making the hotel reservations at Agency expense and arranging for a driver. A grin crept across Lang’s face as the realization dawned. Miles had arranged for much more. Lang was not alone here.

“Your only bag, sir?” the bellhop wanted to know.

Lang’s attention returned to the hotel. “Yeah, I’ll take it, thanks.”

Pressing a few dollars into the bellhop’s hand to atone for what would be viewed as unwarranted stinginess, Lang walked through revolving doors into a lobby that was a mixture of desert oasis, sheik’s palace and exuberant if less-than-tasteful decor. Plastic date palms drooped under the weight of plastic dates against walls painted with life-size scenes of heroic-looking Bedouins riding camels far too clean and mannerly to be realistic. In the background, painted, burkashrouded women obediently tended to domestic tasks, drawing water from a well and preparing meals over open fires.

To the Western eye, even more unrealistic than the camels.

Lang pretended to study the artwork as he took in the occupants of the lobby. Two men in low chairs were in intense conversation, a little table between them on which were two small coffee cups and an overflowing ashtray. The only other person other than hotel staff was hidden behind an Arabic newspaper. Pretending confusion between the registration desk and the concierge’s, Lang managed a view of the reader, a swarthy Arab.

“This way, sir,” a uniformed employee called from the registration desk as though shepherding a lost child.

Lang proffered the passport with the recently purchased visa. “Dr. Henry Roth,” he announced. “I believe I have reservations.”

The man behind the desk ran one hand over hair that could have been slicked back with axle grease. The other hand edged a finger down a list.

He spoke in British-accented English. “Oh, yes, here it is: Henry Roth. You will be staying with us tonight and tomorrow night?”

“Possibly longer, if I can. I’m not sure yet.”

The expression of distress would have credited an actor. “Oh, dear. I fear we are quite full after tomorrow.”

He studied a computer screen as though it might hold the solution to the problem, a solution Lang knew was elsewhere.

Reaching into a pocket, Lang palmed a fifty, placing his hand on the marble countertop so only the man behind it could see. “I trust you will do your best.”

As the desk clerk reached for the bill, Lang slowly withdrew the money, returning it to his pocket. “Your best is all I can ask.”

There was a meaningful moment of eye contact before the man behind the desk inhaled deeply. “I assure you, my best is what you will get.”

Turning, the desk clerk faced an old-fashioned letter box behind him, the square holes in which letters and room keys were kept.

He selected a key. “I see you have a message.”

He handed over both the key, attached to a heavy bronze tag, and a folded piece of paper. “If you will let me have a credit card and sign the register here…”

He pushed a registration form across the marble. Lang scribbled a signature that matched the one on his passport. As the clerk entered the information into the computer, Lang unfolded and read the read the handwritten note. Dr. Roth: You may find me at the Catholic cemetery of Terra Santa. Rossi

Lang smiled. Antonio Rossi, curator of the Archaeological Museum in Rome, a man he had known briefly during the affair that had ended so badly in the ancient Roman necropolis under the Vatican. Except the archaeologist had known Lang as a Mr. Joel Couch, an American from Indianapolis. But it had taken only a single e-mail to remind him that no matter the name, the American had saved him from an assassin’s bullet at Herculaneum.

At Lang’s request, Rossi had taken over one of the endless digs going on in Alexandria, his credentials satisfying the rigorous requirements of Zahi Hawass, the photogenic if dictatorial general secretary of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.

For centuries, if not millennia, Egypt’s artifacts had been plundered. From the poaching of towering obelisks by the Romans to the relatively minor pilfering of mummies and small statues by Sir John Soane for his private, three-house museum in London in the eighteenth century, all had been available for whatever conquering power had the desire and the means to cart them off.

No more. Dr. Hawass zealously guarded his country’s ancient treasures, even demanding vociferously if futilely for the return of some of the major items: the Rosetta Stone and a colossus of Ramses II from the British Museum, the swan-necked bust of Nefertiti from Berlin, a collection of sarcophagi from the Istanbul Archaeological Museum, statuary from the Louvre.

Other than native laborers, a person in Egypt needed an archaeology pedigree, accreditation and a vita Dr. Hawass approved to even be on the site of a dig. Wealthy backers were helpful.

Lang had none of the above. Dr. Rossi did.

In his room, an overdone version of some caliph’s harem, Lang supposed, he took the usual check on precautions, enjoying a cold Stella larger from the minibar as he worked. The damn thing probably cost the Egyptian equivalent of five bucks, but what the hell, he was thirsty. Disassembling the phone, he made certain there was no listening device there. Nor were any to be found behind the electrical switch plates or any of the places where they could have been installed without tearing out Sheetrock. Lang had expected none but no one he knew had ever died from overcaution. He pulled the heavy drapes closed, pleased to note they were heavy satin, an excellent insulator against remote-listening devices.

Lang pulled on a pair of jeans and T-shirt and, after only a second’s thought, slipped the Browning in its holster onto his belt, sliding it to the small of his back. A short-sleeve shirt, unbuttoned, and shirttails hanging outside his pants concealed the weapon.

In front of the hotel, he chose one of the city’s yellow and black cabs rather than the more conspicuous Mercedes. The first thing he noticed was that all motor traffic, cars, trucks, scooters, had a common trait: they all belched out a brownish exhaust that joined the thickening layer just above the rooftops.

Within minutes, Lang witnessed the chaos of Egyptian driving. Cars charged the wrong way down one-way streets and backed up against traffic to make a missed turn. Red lights, stop signs and lane markings were deemed advisory only. Drivers’ intentions were communicated, if at all, by hand. Passengers exited moving buses and pedestrians paid as little heed to the rules of the road as did drivers.

After a trip that would have compared favorably with any Dodge ’Em carnival ride, the cabby turned down the radio long enough to say “Terra Santa.”

In jeans that had been prefaded just short of white, T-shirt, worn desert boots, and holding a broad-brimmed hat, Lang felt like an extra in an Indiana Jones movie. The costume was, however, a close replica of the clothing he had carefully noted in the most recent National Geographic article concerning desert exploration. He had originally opted for shorts rather than long pants until reading that their function was not only to protect skin from the merciless African sun but to serve as a potential shield against the scorpions who frequently inhabited Egyptian ruins.

Lang took a long glance around the cemetery as the taxi disappeared into the morning’s traffic. After falling into disuse as a burial ground, the discovery of the so-called Alabaster Tomb in 1906 had given archaeologists hope Alexander’s final resting place had been discovered. A cylindrical shaft lined with white marble had led down into a single room hacked into the limestone, its shape possibly Macedonian. This was all they initially found. No other chambers had been discovered. The area eventually became a plant nursery and was forgotten until 1988 and ’89 when modern electromagnetic measuring revealed unexplained anomalies, cuts into the limestone large enough to have served as passages that could well have been sealed off intentionally or by an ancient earthquake.

Lang walked along a fence topped with razor wire until he came to a gate guarded by a large man seated on an uncomfortable-looking camp stool and wearing a holster on his belt. The guard lifted his eyes from the newspaper in his hands and looked Lang over suspiciously.

“Dr. Rossi… I’m here to see Dr. Rossi, Antonio Rossi.”

Without response, the guard produced what looked like a small radio and said something into it Lang could not understand. Lang stood in the increasing heat of the sun for a minute or two, shifting his weight, before Dr. Rossi appeared.

Lang checked his watch. Back in Atlanta, it would be close to Manfred’s time for school. He entered the number and was rewarded with his son’s voice.

“Where are you, Vati?” the child asked.

Ever-cautious about nonsecure communications, Lang replied simply, “A long way away.”

“Are you going to bring me something when you come back?”

“Only if your mother and Grumps say you’ve been a good boy.”

Manfred was only momentarily disquieted by the prospect of being ratted out by the dog. “I will, Vati, I will!”

Rossi was tall, wearing a broad-brimmed hat, military-style khakis and worn rubber knee boots. His face was the color and texture of old leather, wrinkled from years in the sun. A queue of white hair protruded from under the rear of the hat like the tail of some small, furry animal.

“Gotta go, now. Love you!” Lang entered “end.”

Rossi said something to the guard before turning to Lang, brilliant white teeth flashing in a smile. “Dr. Roth! I’m so glad you could come!”

His English was accented more by Oxford than his Italian nationality. Placing a hand under Lang’s elbow, he gently led him past a group of Egyptians gingerly sifting through a mound of loose earth.

“You are Joel Couch, American newspaperman, last time I see you,” Rossi gently chided. “Now you are Henry Roth, doctor of archaeology at a prestigious American university.” He studied Lang’s still-bruised face. “And you have met with an accident.”

“You should see the other fellow.”

“Had your e-mail not included the reference to Herculaneum and the fact you saved my life there, I would have discarded it as…”

“Spam.”

“As spam. Still, it is a mystery to me how Mr. Couch becomes Dr. Roth.”

Lang laid an arm on Rossi’s shoulder. “Believe me, Antonio, you are better off to let it remain a mystery.”

The archaeologist stopped in midstride, facing Lang. “You are also a mystery. But as you Americans say, I owe you one. What may I do to be of help?”

Lang looked around, selecting the shade of one of the few trees left. Lang could only guess how hot this place would be in the summer months. It was uncomfortably warm now.

“It’s a long story,” Lang began, experience warning against telling anyone more than they needed to know. “To make it a lot shorter, some people may be trying to locate Alexander the Great’s tomb, more specifically, his remains. Relics, as it were.”

Rossi gave a short laugh, more bark than merriment. “They and the rest of the archaeological world! The tomb itself has been lost since the fourth century AD.” This time he chuckled. “Even your Shakespeare has Hamlet refer to tracing the ‘noble dust of Alexander.’ ”

“Some say it has been confused with that of Saint Mark.”

Rossi pointed to several empty crates and motioned for Lang to sit on one while he took another. “That is a long story, more of what you would call… supposition? Yes, more supposition than fact.” He took off his hat and fanned himself with it. “We are not even certain where Saint Mark was originally buried. Reliable accounts put his tomb near what became known as Saint Mark’s Gate.”

Lang imitated the archaeologist, thankful for the small cooling effect. “Would that be the same as the Pepper Gate? I understand Alexander was entombed near there.”

Rossi nodded. “Yes, hence the confusion. To add to it, the Roman historian Libanius gives a contemporaneous account of Alexander’s body being on display just before paganism was outlawed in AD 391. There are no later firsthand accounts. Saint Mark’s body surfaces at the end of the fourth century, or about the same time.”

Lang forgot the heat for the moment. “Are you saying…?”

Rossi shook his head. “I’m an archaeologist, a scientist. I report what I find.”

“Archaeologists also theorize, fill in the gaps.”

“True,” the Italian conceded.

“OK, what do you think happened to Alexander’s remains and those of Saint Mark?”

Rossi studied the distance before replying as though inspiration might be there. “In the early centuries of Christianity, it would have been tempting,” he began, “for some official of the Alexandria church to seize the opportunity to both preserve the remains of the city’s founder, Alexander, from the more fanatical Christians and at the same time give Christians a relic to encourage the faithful. Adapting things pagan for Christian use was not unknown in the early days after paganism was made illegal. For example, a bronze idol of the Roman god Saturn was melted down to make a cross. Take a look at the ancient monuments in Rome that are adorned with crosses. Pagan temples, like the Pantheon, became Christian churches. We have the words of the Venetian merchants who supposedly stole the body of Saint Mark that it was mummified like Alexander’s, yet early Christian tradition insists Saint Mark’s body was partially cremated in the first century AD. This is only speculation on my part.”

Lang stood, facing the area where excavation by hand was progressing in ten-foot squares demarcated by strings on short pegs. “If your ‘speculation’ ”-he made quotation marks with his fingers-“is correct, then it is Alexander who was in Saint Mark’s tomb in Venice.”

Rossi also stood, glancing over to where the digging was going on. “Not necessarily. One of the things we learn in studying ancient clues to a question is that we must not overlook that there are often a number of possible answers to the same question.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning Saint Mark’s body was buried at a place where many were interred. It was the… what would you say? The fashionable place for burials, Christians on top of those believing in the Greek gods, the Egyptian gods, the Roman gods. Though mummification was rare by then, it was still practiced. Even if the remains the Venetians took were not Saint Mark’s, there is no evidence they were Alexander’s, either.”

Lang used his sleeve to wipe his forehead. “Why do I feel I’m going in circles?”

Rossi smiled, again exhibiting perfect teeth. “Now you experience the feelings of a true archaeologist: either too many possible answers to a question or not enough.”

“But I understood the area-the palace area, it was called-was not a burial ground.”

“That was true when Alexander’s mausoleum was built here, if this is in fact the neighborhood. In the intervening years, though…” He stretched out a hand to infinity. “Who knows?”

Cemetery of Terra Santa

Alexandria, Egypt

Fifteen minutes later

Lang was watching the monotonous procedure. Diggers removed soil with small trowels, filling buckets that were carried to where he had seen sifting going on. Whenever metal struck something more solid than earth, Rossi watched while what appeared to be dental tools and toothbrushes were used to painstakingly remove clay and loose dirt. In the few minutes Lang had been an observer, two or three pieces of what looked like rock had been removed, cleaned and inspected.

Rossi stood next to Lang, using a red bandanna to wipe a combination of sweat and grime from his face. “It is not as exciting as the History Channel, I fear.”

“At least there aren’t any commercials.”

“No, my friend, the commercials come before the show begins, when I go to various foundations to beg money to support the project.”

Lang was about to reply when a young woman, her denims caked with dirt, her hair covered by a scarf, approached excitedly. She spoke in quick bursts of Italian punctuated with the erratic hand movements that are as much part of the language as the words themselves.

Whatever she was saying, it must have been important, as Rossi didn’t take the time to translate. He gave Lang a “follow me” gesture and took quick steps in the direction she was pointing.

Trotting to keep up, Lang came to a stop, almost colliding with Rossi’s back. Before them was a circular hole, one lined in white marble. A pair of ladders was fixed to the top and disappeared into darkness.

“The Alabaster Tomb,” Rossi explained. “We are searching for the possible passages discovered by electromagnetic imaging.”

“I read about it on the flight over,” Lang said. “Understand you think there may be more than the single chamber known so far.”

Rossi gave him a look that said the archaeologist was thankful not to have to take time to explain. “As you can see, we are working inside as well as digging down to whatever the imaging shows. Come.”

Before Lang could say anything else, the Italian was climbing down one of the ladders. Lang’s choice was to stay here or follow.

Lang had sudden empathy for those whose jobs required descent into manholes. Sunlight lasted for about the first fifteen feet before a string of electric lights became visible, casting about as much shadow as illumination. At the bottom, Lang noted he was standing in an inch or so of water. The proximity to the harbor meant a high water table, although from the smell, Lang guessed fresh or brackish rather than salt water. He looked upward to see a vaulted ceiling over a room perhaps ten by thirty feet, the walls smooth with fluted columns carved into them.

A few feet away, Rossi was conferring with two people whose sex was indeterminable in the pale light. He already had on a miner’s helmet, complete with attached light. Without turning, he handed one to Lang.

The conversation complete, Rossi motioned for Lang to follow as he led the way, flashlight in hand. “Originally it was thought this was the only chamber, hardly a tomb fit for royalty. Today we believe differently. Mind your step.”

The warning was timely. Otherwise, Lang might have tripped over what he thought was only rubble next to a wall. A closer look showed the pile had probably been part of the wall that had been removed to reveal a corridor behind it.

Rossi played his flashlight into the hallway. “This was sealed off, a wall erected and made to look like the rest of the main chamber, where we entered, and disguised to look like nothing more was here.”

“Why would someone go to that much trouble?” Lang asked.

From behind, he could see Rossi shrug, the answer obvious. “To conceal something from grave robbers, perhaps.”

Lang’s miner’s helmet thumped against a particularly low place in the ceiling, making him thankful he had put it on. “Like what?”

“I hope we will find out. Someone certainly has been here before us. The entrance was opened and then resealed.”

Rossi stopped abruptly, his light shining on two more workers. There was going to be a tight squeeze to get past. “Perhaps there was more, er, loot to be had later or some other reason they did not want anyone to know they had been here.”

Rossi was squatting, his light reflecting from something small on the floor. He looked up, asking a question in Italian.

One of the workers, definitely a man, nodded, holding up a palm-sized digital camera.

“We photograph every artifact in the location it was found,” Rossi explained for Lang’s benefit. “Otherwise, it is like taking a fact out of historical context.”

Lang was looking over the archaeologist’s shoulder. “What have you got there?”

Rossi shook his head. “Not sure. Has a small loop on the back. It looks like… a button?”

“They had buttons in the ancient world?”

Rossi was using the flashlight to illuminate the object in his palm. “Sure. Except they were usually larger than this and in fanciful shapes-seashells, animals, deities and so forth. This one is more like a modern button.” He ran a thumb across it. “Until we can get it cleaned off, we won’t really know.”

He produced a small plastic bag from a pocket and dropped the object into it. “But this isn’t what the excitement was all about. Come on.”

He stepped forward. “You will note there are still scraps of plaster on the walls, or rather the cement common to many Greco-Roman structures.” He paused to place the light next to the wall. “You can even see a bit of pigment still sticking to plaster. At one time, there may have been frescoes here, or at least some sort of wall paintings. One does not decorate a hallway to nowhere. A pity centuries of being under water have all but obliterated them.”

“Underwater?”

“The 365 AD earthquake and tsunami moved the harbor inland, raising the water table.”

“But we’re dry now. Or almost.”

“Pumps, my friend. We have pumps running twenty-four hours a day. Otherwise we, too, would be nearly underwater. Only the ceiling was dry when we first entered here.”

The lights strung overhead along the passage terminated at what looked like the end of the corridor. Four or five of the workers whispered excitedly as they pressed against the wall to make way for Rossi.

“A blank wall?” Lang asked, perplexed.

“Perhaps,” Rossi said, running a hand along it. “But note the plaster is slightly different in color than the rest of this hallway, if that is what this is. Before the advent of electric flashlights, that would not be as visible as it is now. The texture of the plaster appears to be just that, plaster. If this is the end of the corridor, why cover it over instead of just leaving the rock? In fact, I’d guess someone resealed this.” He turned his light upward, revealing a series of black smudges. “Whoever was here before used candles or oil lamps.”

“You mean someone before electric lights were available?” Lang asked.

Rossi nodded. “And someone or ones who worked here long enough for the soot from the lighting device to accumulate. Perhaps while they were erecting a false end of the corridor.”

“But I thought this passageway was underwater since the tsunami.”

“Pumps to remove water have been available since ancient times. Someone could have pumped it nearly dry just as we have. Also, they could have braced this wall against the water pressure outside while they erected this wall.”

“Meaning there’s something behind it?” Lang asked.

Rossi took an ordinary rock hammer from one of the observers and tapped the wall. “Meaning I intend to find out.”

Half an hour later, work was halted while wire was strung both for lights and for fans to remove the dust that had reduced vision to a few feet. An extra generator and pump chugged in the darkness, forcing tepid air from the surface into the excavation and the constant trickle of water out. Lang’s eyes stung and he could feel his face caked with grime mixed with sweat. Rossi and the others were dim ghosts in the gritty haze. Even though the corridor was wide enough for only one person to wield the larger sledgehammer at a time, no one was leaving. This was hardly his idea of the romance of searching for ancient worlds, but Lang could feel the tension among the workers like a close score in the last minutes of an intense football rivalry.

There was a muffled cheer as a section of the wall crumbled, leaving a hole through which a spout of water emptied into the corridor before being sucked away by the pumps. The fans could not prevent an incoming tide of grit swirling throughout. It took two or three minutes before a murky visibility was restored. Figures moved in a penumbra of dust, resembling shadows without forms.

A gentle tug at Lang’s elbow turned him toward a haze of swirling particles of dust, plaster and rock as he followed Rossi into the opening. A ray of light from a flashlight, distorted by reflection, stabbed upward. Lang’s eyes followed. The roof had at one time been step-pyramidal, shaped by carefully fitted stones, most of which had fallen, leaving a tangle of roots from the plants above. It had been supported by a colonnade of Ionic columns carved into rock. As visibility increased, Lang could make out what looked like a single slab of stone about four feet high in the middle of the room. Perhaps a permanent catafalque on which a sarcophagus rested?

Even in the gritty near twilight, Lang could see his friend’s grin.

“This is it? This is Alexander’s tomb?”

Rossi’s smile faded. “Possibly. The construction is consistent with what we know of other Ptolemaic tombs.” He played his light around the chamber. “And the Roman historian Lucan tells us when Caesar visited Alexander’s tomb, he ‘eagerly descended,’ indicating something below ground. He also uses the phrase ‘unseemly pyramid.’ ”

“Dedecor?”

Rossi looked at Lang quizzically. “Yes, I believe that is the word.”

“It also can have the connotation, ‘unnecessary’ or ‘useless.’ That would describe an underground tomb with a pyramid- shaped roof.”

Rossi chuckled. “Mr. Couch, Dr. Roth or whoever you might be, I knew you were quick thinking. You proved that at Herculaneum. Now I discover you are also a Latin scholar. I cannot but wonder what is next.”

Lang ignored the remark. “What will it take to identify this as the real tomb of Alexander?”

Rossi gave the patented Italian shrug. “Months if not years. We must find things, carvings, inscriptions that can either be related directly to Alexander or at least have dates compatible with the time he might have been laid to rest here. Every archaeologist who has searched in other places, or most of them, will present papers demonstrating why this cannot be it.”

Academics, Lang thought, were even more jealous of their contemporaries’ success than lawyers.

Something caught his eye and he swept a nearby wall with his light. “Let the games begin. That looks like a carving of some sort.”

Rossi stepped over to it, raising a hand to brush away the dirt caked around it. “It will need cleaning, but it appears to be a battle scene. I would guess Greeks versus Persians.”

“That sounds like Alexander to me.”

Rossi shook his head almost sorrowfully. “Not necessarily. Many wished to, er, clothe themselves in the glory of Alexander. For example, there is the misnamed Alexander Sarcophagus found in Sidon. It was carved with the exploits of Alexander shortly before his death. For years after its discovery in 1887, it was thought it had been carved for Alexander if not actually used.”

“And?”

“Most likely carved for a minor puppet king, Abdalonymus, whom Alexander appointed to rule. It is the gem of the Istanbul Archaeological Museum, though.”

“You’re saying this tomb, if that is what this is, could be carved with scenes from Alexander’s life even if the tomb was somebody else’s?”

Rossi was still studying the carvings. “The Ptolemy dynasty legitimized itself by stressing it was Alexander’s rightful successor. They even formed Alexander cults. They were the ones who promoted him into being seen as a god. Their tombs contain more about him than themselves.”

Lang looked perplexed.

“You’ve seen such things in modern times. Didn’t Stalin claim to be Lenin’s rightful political heir even after disposing of such inconveniences as Trotsky?”

“I guess I never thought of it that way. I-”

Before he could finish, there was a dull thud from above. The whole ground, including the chamber, shook, unleashing a new avalanche of dust and dirt. Lang had an immediate vision of an explosion.

Then, the lights went out.

Worse, the generator powering fans sucking air in from above and water out was silent. It seemed to be getting more difficult to breathe.

Someone’s voice shouted excitedly from the corridor behind them, echoes distorting the tone.

Lang swung his light toward the voice. “What’d he say?”

“He said the entrance to the surface is closed,” Rossi said calmly. “Digging may have undercut the foundations of the old stones, caused them to fall into the excavation. Or one of the supports we erected against the outside water pressure collapsed.”

“Sounded more like an explosion to me.”

“No, no, my friend. We brought no explosives to the dig. To use such things would risk destroying what we hope to find.”

“Now what?” Lang wanted to know.

“Now we wait for the crew above to dig us out.”

Why did Lang think it wasn’t going to be that simple? Was it because he was beginning to smell a whiff of that heavy, pungent, sweet odor of nitroglycerin-based explosives such as dynamite, something someone other than Rossi’s crew might have brought to the site? And if that someone had blasted the opening closed, they certainly had not done so with the consent of Rossi’s people above, the people who supposedly would dig them out.

Lang inhaled a mouthful of dust. No doubt about it: it was getting harder to breathe.

And water was collecting around his feet.

472 Lafayette Drive, Atlanta

9:22 the same day

From under the kitchen table, Grumps watched with palpable relief as Gurt bundled Manfred against one of those late winter storms that paralyze the city every few years. Ice, not snow, covered every outdoor surface, transforming the most humble bush into an iridescent handful of diamonds. At irregular but persistent intervals a rifle shot-like crack attested to the inability of another tree limb to bear the extra weight. As usual, schools, including Manfred’s private pre-K, had announced shutting their doors as the first frozen precipitation had fallen the night before. Predictably, state, local and federal governments seized the opportunity to suspend operations along with a number of large businesses. Smaller operations, those whose bottom lines might be adversely affected by an unplanned holiday, bravely remained opened in the face of a clientele largely fearful of risking life, limb and automotive coach work on streets slick as oil.

Gurt had had enough of being confined in a house with a five-year-old’s rambunctiousness despite her normally strict discipline. Manfred had lost interest in his toys, tired of his mother’s reading to him from books already nearly memorized and tormented Grumps to the extent the dog had taken rare refuge from his young master and closest pal. One alternative was to turn on the television and let the magic screen absorb the child, something Gurt was loath to do. She severely limited Manfred’s TV watching, certain that the mindless junk that passed for entertainment would decrease her son’s IQ if not rot the brain entirely.

Gurt zipped up the child’s jacket, smiling at the resemblance the bulky clothes gave Manfred to the Michelin Man. “There,” she said in German, “now we will go to the park.”

All Gurt had to do was dream up some activity that would both engage and exhaust her son. She shrugged into a knee-length fur coat, checked to make sure her gloves were in the pocket and started to push Manfred toward the front door. In midfoyer she stopped. Grumps had abandoned the safety of the kitchen table. His tail broke into a furious rhythm as Gurt pocketed a tennis ball.

“Wait here,” she commanded both the little boy and the dog.

Grumps, now joyful at the possibility of a romp outside, skidded to a stop just short of a collision with the front door. He waited, tail wagging in impatient anticipation as she trotted up the stairs.

In the bedroom, she removed the Glock 19 from the bedside table, checking the action and magazine before stuffing it in a coat pocket. She normally did not carry a firearm when escorting or driving Manfred, out of the fear that should she need to use it, she would draw return fire, endangering the little boy. Besides, how often did a mother driving her child to kindergarten need a weapon?

But these were not normal times. After Venice and the crude but frightening attempt on her home, she felt leaving her pistol behind was foolish.

She watched her and Manfred’s step carefully as they made their way carefully down the three short but icy stairs from the front door to the brick path that led to the driveway. With canine impetuosity, Grumps made the transition in a single leap, landing hard and sliding a couple of yards on his rear on the ice-encrusted bricks. Both Gurt and Manfred nearly lost their balance as they doubled over with laughter.

By the time they reached the driveway, the stillness of the scene became apparent. Although Ansley Park was normally a quiet neighborhood, today it was totally and eerily silent. The sounds of the surrounding city, the white noise of traffic on busy Peachtree Street three blocks away, the whine of jets arriving or departing distant Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International, the hum of civilization, were absent as if the blanket of ice were some huge sponge that soaked up all sound.

The rattle of tire chains on pavement across the park was like a shout in an otherwise-silent church and reminded her few of her neighbors were natives of Atlanta. This transplant had brought his winter paraphernalia with him when he left Michigan, Illinois or one of those places where snow and ice were common.

The next interruption of the crushing stillness was the cough of an engine cranking. Gurt looked at a black SUV with an exhaust trail, idling at the curb. Although tinted windows prevented her from seeing the occupant, she recognized the vehicle as belonging to the security service Lang had hired.

A door opened and a man got out. She thought she remembered he had been introduced to her as Randy. The way his eyes had never left her bustline made her wonder whether this was a name or a description. He was a beefy man with streaks of gray in his fading red hair. The fouled anchor and globe of the Marine Corps was tattooed on his right forearm above the “ semper fidelis ” motto.

Randy came around the car and opened the rear passenger door. “Going somewhere Mrs. Reilly?”

Even in her bulky coat, his stare made Gurt a little uncomfortable. “No, thank you. Just over to the park. The child is restless.”

She started to add that her name was Fuchs, not Reilly, decided the rebuke was not worth the effort and guided Manfred onto the driveway.

Randy turned to take a long look at the Iris Garden. “I don’t feel comfortable with that, ma’am. Even with the foliage off the trees and bushes, too many places somebody could hide.”

Not without leaving tracks in the sheet of ice a blind man could spot, Gurt thought. But she said, “Thank you for your thoughtfulness, but we will be quite all right.”

Taking Manfred by the hand, although there was no sign of traffic, she stepped into the street. Grumps, lesson unlearned, dashed ahead, again unable to put on the brakes. This time he hit the far curb.

Randy shut the SUV’s door with a little more force than Gurt thought necessary. “Then I’ll have to go with you ma’am.”

The thought of the man’s stares made Gurt inexplicably uncomfortable. She’d been… what would Lang say? Ogled, that was it, ogled. She’d been ogled by men all her adult life and most of her adolescence.

Her tone had a little more snap in it than she might have wished. “I said, we will be quite all right, thank you. I would prefer to be alone with my child.”

Randy shrugged. “Orders are orders, ma’am. I’m to stay with you while you’re outside.”

She saw no one else was in sight on this rare day when fireplaces would be more than decorative and at least half her neighbors would be home. On the unlikely chance anyone showed up to walk the Iris Garden, he would be as obvious as a wart on the nose. But she understood the necessity of obedience to orders as only those of Teutonic origin can. She herself had complied with enough of them in her time with the Agency.

She sighed, admitting defeat. “Very well, but try to keep a distance.”

Randy gave her a wary smile. “I don’t mean to give offense, ma’am.”

“It is not you who is offensive,” Gurt lied smoothly, all too conscious of the gun in her own pocket. “It is I dislike to have my child exposed to men, er, carrying firearms. There is too much violence on television and in the papers already.”

“I understand. The kid won’t see my gun, ma’am.”

“Gun?” Manfred piped up. “The man has a gun?” he turned to Randy. “Can I see?”

Gurt sighed deeply, taking Manfred by the arm. “Come, Manfred. Grumps wants to play.”

“Aw, Mom…”

“I said, come! ”

Today Grumps was more interested in the various smells of the Iris Garden than he was in fetching the tennis ball. Perhaps the small park’s resident squirrels had left a different scent or the neighborhood dogs had deposited more “pee mail” than normal, each requiring a prompt reply.

Whatever the reason, the first toss of the Day-Glo chartreuse ball only got a glance from the sniffing dog. At the second attempt, Grumps stopped his exploration long enough to watch the ball roll down one of the two slopes that formed the valley that was the park. The dog favored Manfred with a look that clearly asked, “Just what, pray tell, do you expect me to do with that?”

The little boy’s enthusiasm undiminished, he followed the dog, followed by Gurt, followed by Randy.

Gurt was breathing hard, the air cold enough to slice her lungs like a surgeon’s scalpel. Cresting a small rise, she saw other human figures, those of her next-door neighbors Paige Charles and her son Wynn Three, Manfred’s friend.

“I am surprised you are out in this cold,” Gurt said when she was within earshot, motioning Randy to keep his distance.

Paige shook her head, a movement hardly perceptible under the fur-lined hood of her heavy parka. “It was either brave the weather or a restless child. You can’t imagine what it’s like to be cooped up with a kid as active as Wynn Three.”

Gurt watched Manfred and Wynn Three, now playing with a compliant Grumps. “Believe me, I do not have to imagine. I-”

A sharp crack shattered the morning’s cathedral-like silence. Gurt’s hand went to her coat pocket as she frantically motioned Manfred to come to her.

Paige must have seen the consternation on her face. “What? That was just another limb breaking off from the tree because of the weight of the ice.”

Gurt barely heard her. She had a protective arm around Manfred, her eyes searching what she thought was the direction of the sound, but she was certain only of two things: Randy was no longer in sight and she surely knew the difference between a shattering oak limb and a gunshot.

The White House

Washington, D.C.

The previous afternoon

The secretary of defense stood, hands clasped behind his back as he stared out of the Oval Office’s French doors into a rose garden desolated by winter. He checked his watch. The president was twenty minutes late for the meeting. That wasn’t even close to the record. The young chief executive had no qualms about keeping staff waiting an hour or so if the opportunity arose for an impromptu press conference, something he invariably mishandled. The man was a golden-tongued orator as long as he could stick to prepared notes and the teleprompter. Off the cuff, he tended to sound self-contradictory or confused. Fortunately, a sympathetic press usually edited out his most nonsensical responses, leaving only Fox News and conservative bloggers to broadcast the miscues.

Still, the man liked press exposure. Many said someone should tell him he no longer had to campaign and should get down to the business at hand.

The business at hand. The SecDef glanced around the room. An odd crew: a fiftyish female lieutenant colonel who had something to do with intelligence; the U.S. delegate to the Organization of American States; and the new head of the CIA, a former college radical, community organizer and a man who, as far as the SecDef knew, had had no experience in running anything the size of a taco stand, let alone one of the world’s largest intel agencies.

But then, neither had the president.

The last chief spook had resigned in protest of the criminal prosecution of a number of CIA agents who, following the previous administration’s guidelines, had inflicted what the new bunch considered torture on some very brutal individuals, extracting information that had prevented at least one and possibly more terrorist attacks on the U.S. both here and abroad.

Such was politics. The new CIA chief, along with his boss, believed sincerely, the SecDef feared, that total candor and self-abasement were the tools of successful relationships with other nations, a policy uniformly embraced in word if not in deed by America’s enemies. The country’s traditional allies had all but ceased to share information for fear the same would appear on the front pages of the New York Times or Washington Post.

It was enough to make the SecDef wish he had not been chosen as the sole holdover from the previous administration.

The absence today of any of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was significant as was the fact that this meeting was taking place here rather than the much larger adjacent conference room, equipped with the latest real-time technology. The president’s dislike of large meetings was well-known and offered as an excuse to exclude most of the intelligence community and military, both of which he equally and openly distrusted.

His thoughts scattered as the president entered wearing his customary golf shirt and slacks, the first person the SecDef had ever seen enter this historic room in less-than-respectful business or military attire. He was followed by Jack Roberts, chief of staff, a man the SecDef thought of as the “presidential dog robber.” Whatever the White House needed, be it leaking a rumor devastating to a member of the opposition, strong-arming a recalcitrant member of his own party or making it convenient for a congressional fence-sitter to come down on the White House’s side of a vote, Roberts was the go-to guy.

The president motioned for everyone to take a seat as he slid behind the desk and nodded to the director of the CIA. “You wanted to see me, Jerry?”

The director nodded, turning to the woman in the army uniform of a lieutenant colonel. “Let me introduce you to Colonel Faith Romer and Jack Hanson. Colonel Romer is the military liaison with the CIA regarding the Caribbean Basin. Jack is the U.S. representative to the Organization of American States.”

The president viewed Faith with obvious distaste. “Colonel, as I understand it, the Chinese military are in the process of setting up shop in Haiti. And so far this information is known only to us, the Chinese and that man… the president of Haiti.”

“DuPaar,” the chief spook supplied.

“DuPaar, yes. To no one else?”

The CIA chief nodded. “As far as we know.”

The president gave him a quizzical look. “Meaning?”

The head of the CIA shifted in his chair uncomfortably. “We had to employ some nonstandard assets to ascertain exactly what the Chinese were doing.”

The president’s thick eyebrows furrowed. “Tell me in nonjargon.”

“The people who sniffed the whole thing out… They were no longer with the Agency.”

The president drummed long fingers on the desktop, a sign he was making a choice. He was known to demand quick decisions. He had insisted Congress pass a budget larger than all previous budgets combined in a period of time shorter than it had taken him to choose a puppy for his children.

He pushed back from the desk, turning to his chief of staff. “OK, Jack, what do you think?”

The SecDef had almost gotten used to the president’s habit of seeking advice from those least qualified to give it. As far as he knew, Robert’s sole qualification to comment on foreign policy was a semester spent in Spain in college.

Roberts rubbed his chin a moment as though in thought, a process the SecDef had not considered possible. “As I see it, a Chinese presence in Haiti presents a possible crisis, one we need to keep secret until we have it solved. A confrontation with the Chinese isn’t something we need, with the off-year elections coming up.”

The president turned to the SecDef. “Your thoughts?”

“Mr. President, the military stands ready to have unmanned aircraft destroy any and all Chinese installations should diplomacy fail.”

“Bomb a small, poor Caribbean country back into the Stone Age?” the chief of staff sneered. “First, Haiti is still in the Stone Age, and second, how do you think that makes us look to the rest of the world?”

Fear of foreign opinion had been a major weakness in American foreign policy since World War II, the SecDef thought. But he said, “Diplomacy isn’t my job.”

Roberts shrugged. “Simple enough. The president meets with the Chinese, either has them withdraw or issues a joint statement of their peaceful intentions and our belief in that.”

The SecDef spoke up. “Maybe you missed the part about the Chinese military.”

Roberts was also the administration’s spinmaster, much loved by the media. It had been he who had convinced the public-at least its more gullible segments-that increases in corporate taxes would not be passed along to the consumer. “Besides, meeting with the Chinese makes you look presidential. You can count on the uptick in the polls. But not if word leaks out beforehand. If the public knew the Chinese have slipped troops into Haiti…”

The president nodded. “So be it. I want a joint meeting with the presidents of Haiti and China for their assurances the Chinese mission is peaceful and to declare that America will not interfere. For the moment, we’ll keep a lid on the fact the Chinese presence is military in nature. No sense in getting all those conspiracy-loving neocons stirred up. And…”

Why did the SecDef think of Neville Chamberlain, Munich and “Peace in our time”?

“After the meeting, I’ll want to address the nation concerning the peaceful intentions of the Chinese…”

Roberts was studying his BlackBerry. “That isn’t going to be easy, Mr. President.”

The president paused in midphrase. “Oh? Why not?”

“Next week is your ‘Friendship Initiative,’ the visit to Venezuela and President Chavez. When you return, you have a major address to the AFL/CIO convention in Detroit before you leave to talk with the president of Iran. A week later, the Russian president comes here to commend your decision to cancel the Eastern European missile-shield program…”

“OK. OK. I get the picture. Work it in somehow. ASAP. In the meantime, we must be certain to do nothing that could be considered hostile to either Haiti or China. I…” He looked at the pained expression on the CIA director’s face. “What’s bothering you, Jerry?”

“Mr. President,” the CIA director said slowly. “There’s a couple of things you need to know.”

The president’s confidence seeped away like water into dry soil. He despised surprises. “Like what?”

“Like this Chinese-Haitian thing. We had an asset keeping an eye on things, until he disappeared. Then one of our best handlers recruited a former agent, the one I told you about a few minutes ago, to find out what was going on, and he did. Unfortunately, the Chinese know about it and are trying to kill him and his wife, who went to Haiti with him.”

“I would think we can convince the Chinese to lay off by not opposing whatever they are doing in Haiti.”

“Possibly so, yes, sir, if we can convince them before they succeed. Unfortunately we, the CIA, are protecting him and his family right now.”

The presidential eyebrows arched. “You are conducting a mission in the United States?”

The director was studying the presidential seal in the blue carpet. “Well, sort of. Just providing protection for the man’s family. We did sort of promise him that.”

The presidential scowl was obvious. At his level of politics, promises were obstacles easily overcome or circumvented. “You know your agency is prohibited from conducting operations, any operations, on U.S. soil. Providing domestic protection is the FBI ’s job.”

“Yes, sir. But you see, we’re also providing protection for this, er, asset out of the country. He’s trying to find out exactly what the Haitians want in exchange for letting the Chinese pretty much do as they wish.”

The president thought that over a second. “Since we are now welcoming them, it no longer matters, does it?”

The CIA director, thankful the conversation had taken a turn in a direction other than his, nodded. “I wouldn’t think so. As a matter of fact, this asset, this former agent, could become an embarrassment if what he knows became public too soon.” He looked over at the chief of staff. “Even you would have a hard time hushing up an on-site report of exactly what the Chinese are up to.”

“He’s right,” the president agreed. “Jerry, since you are providing protection to this man and his family, there should be no problem picking them up. We can detain them under the Patriot Act until I have a chance to calm the nation’s possible uneasiness about all this.”

The SecDef started to point out the present administration had a bill before Congress to repeal that law, the series of statutes enacted in the wave of panic following 9/11 that gave the federal government more police powers than it had enjoyed since the laws Lincoln had had enacted at the outbreak of the Civil War. Some of the similarities-suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and the prohibitions against search and seizure-were frightening.

He thought better of it and instead said, “Mr. President, do I understand you are planning to arrest and detain American citizens because they gained knowledge this country asked them to obtain but which now becomes politically inexpedient?”

“Of course not!” the chief of staff snapped. “We’re simply continuing to perform promises made to these people. The only difference is we can protect them far better in a facility of our choosing.”

“And if they decline your offer?”

“Then we’ll have to act in the best interests of the country.”

Somehow, the SecDef doubted if these unnamed “assets” would see it that way.

Cemetery of Terra Santa

Faful wondered if the four men were really Bedouins. He, like several other laborers of the excavation crew, had grown up a nomad in the Western Desert, immigrating to the city and a more settled existence when he was fourteen. These men who had appeared at the dig had removed guns from under their flowing dishdashas, robes with sleeves tied back with cord, over which they wore the vestlike aba. The head cover was the traditional kaffiyeh, bound with bright camel-hair rope. The flowing tails of the headdress were drawn across faces, leaving only the eyes showing, as though the men were in a sandstorm.

But under the dishdashas they wore saronglike skirts, something typical of nomads of the southern Arabia Peninsula, not Egyptian Bedouins, who went bare legged.

Either way, though, Bedouins would have attracted no attention on the streets of Alexandria.

More importantly, they had ordered everyone into the administration tent, the largest of several such canvas structures.

This one was where records were kept and artifacts stored until the end of each day, when they were removed for safekeeping to the basement of the National Museum of Alexandria. This tent was the only one large enough to hold the entire crew remaining aboveground, which was why they were there under the watchful eyes of two of the Bedouins. If that was what they really were.

At first, Fafal had thought these men meant to steal whatever antiquities were on hand. Bedouins were notorious for plundering unguarded archaeological sites for artifacts to sell to unscrupulous dealers in such things. But stealth, not force, was the common method. Perhaps these men were not after artifacts.

Also, the strange Bedouins communicated mostly with gestures but occasionally in a language Faful had never heard before. Perhaps they were not Bedouin at all.

Shielded from the fitful sea breeze, the interior of the tent was going from uncomfortably hot to stifling, but the men with the guns seemed not to notice. Two of them had carried a wooden box outside. Though the flap of the tent was closed, Fafal could hear their sandals crunching in the sandy soil, toward the Alabaster Tomb.

What were they after?

His question was answered moments later when the ground shook with a muffled explosion.

Faful’s first reaction was even more puzzlement. Why would they blow up the Alabaster Tomb? If it was antiquities they were after, destroying the work already done at the dig was going to also destroy what they wanted. Besides, the sound would draw the police.

Unless these men had arranged otherwise.

A few Egyptian pound notes of baksheesh could guarantee the indifference of all three street-level law-enforcement agencies-municipal police, Tourist Police or Central Security Forces-to any event smaller than a nuclear blast.

That still left the question, why?

Less than a hundred yards away and nearly a hundred feet down, Lang played his flashlight on the water gathering around his feet. Only an inch or so a few minutes ago, it was trickling over the top of his ankle-high boots now.

He sensed Rossi was making the same observation. “How long do you think it will take to run out of air or drown if we stay here?”

“Do not think of such things. Our crew will dig us out before there is even such a possibility.”

Lang started to say that if, as he believed, an explosion had sealed them in, the crew above were probably not free to rescue anyone. They were either dead, wounded or being restrained from taking action.

Instead, he said, “On the off chance they can’t do it quickly enough, is there another exit here somewhere?”

The fact oxygen was getting thinner and thinner in the air provided one answer he didn’t want to hear.

“Wealthy Greeks and pre-Christian Romans were entombed in sepulcra, what we would today call mausoleums, rather than simple tombs. They were like small houses, complete with wall paintings, sculpture and housewares. We are in a rather elaborate example. It was customary to leave a small hole at the top so visitors, family and friends of the deceased might share food and wine with the spirit of the dead.”

“So, there would be one here?”

The doubt in Rossi’s tone was not encouraging. “Possibly, but this hole would have never been large enough for an adult to get through.”

“But it would at least let in air.”

“My friend, this tomb has been here for more than two millennia, below ground level for almost as long. Whatever aperture might have existed in the ceiling would have long been sealed by dirt and vegetation.”

“True,” Lang agreed, “but two thousand years of debris and vegetation has got to be easier digging than solid rock.” He shifted his light to the ceiling. “And trying to find it beats waiting to either suffocate or drown.”

“But my crew…,” Rossi protested.

“If they are able to dig us out, swell. I, for one, don’t intend to bet my life on it.”

Muttering among some of the crew who had come down here with them suggested they shared Lang’s feelings.

Lang swept the beam of his flashlight upward. Where the ceiling had fallen, roots of vegetation grasped downward like bony fingers.

“I doubt you will find anything,” Rossi commented.

“Better hope I do. In case you haven’t noticed, the water is already halfway to my waist and rising.”

Although he couldn’t see it in the darkness, Lang would have bet Rossi was in the midst of a very Italian shrug. “Even if you find such a thing, how will you reach it?”

Good question.

Iris Garden, Atlanta

Gurt took Manfred by the hand, keeping her voice level. “We will go home now.”

“Aw, Mom,” the little boy protested, “Wynn Three and Grumps and me were just beginning to have fun.” His eyes flicked to her face, noting she was unpersuaded. “And Wynn Three doesn’t have to…”

Another look at his mother’s face told him the argument, if there had been one, was over.

Paige, startled by the abruptness of Gurt’s decision to leave, asked, “What…?”

But she was speaking to Gurt’s back.

Her hand clasping Manfred’s, the other on the butt of the Glock in her pocket, Grumps grudgingly following, Gurt climbed the gentle hill, feet planted firmly through the crust of ice with each step. When she reached street level, she had a better view of her surroundings. Randy’s SUV was still parked in front of her house, although the tinted glass prevented her from seeing if he was in it. After his insistence on accompanying her, she doubted he would have returned to the vehicle while she was still in the park.

She almost missed it: about a hundred yards away, a streak, a trough in the coating of ice on the hillside on the opposite side of the park, where it looked like something had been dragged. Her eyes followed the trail to a pair of frozen shallow ponds connected by a short stream, that part of the park directly across from the house. The ice on the lower pool had been broken and something was extending out of it, something that could be a fallen branch, explaining the shattered ice or…

Or a human arm.

The distance was too great to be sure, but she wasn’t going to delay reaching the security of the house to find out. She increased her pace, almost dragging Manfred in her haste.

Then she stopped. Ambling toward her was one of Atlanta’s homeless, a man pushing a grocery-store cart filled to overflowing with an assortment of rags, a clear plastic trash bag of tin cans and junk she could not identify.

Agency training had made her permanently aware of her surroundings, alert to anomalies. With ice on the ground and the temperature below freezing, anyone with a modicum of sanity would have sought refuge in any of a number of the city’s shelters or, at least, found a steam vent over which to camp. His clothes, an orange ski jacket and heavy sweat pants, though dirty, were not torn, not the ragged hand-me-downs that were the uniform of most of society’s jetsam. Add to these observations the fact that no stringy hair hung out from beneath the watch cap and he appeared to have shaved recently.

The shoes were the clincher, sneakers that looked like one of the more expensive Nike models. The footwear was always the giveaway. Although a torn and laceless pair would have been more in keeping with the persona someone was trying to create, no professional was going to risk wearing anything not securely bound to the foot. A fight in which a shoe might come off with a kick, a chase in which pursuer or pursued lost the race because of the loss of a shoe… No, shoes were the one part of a disguise no one who knew what he or she was doing would compromise.

Stifling her impulse to just pick Manfred up and flee, Gurt bent over, pretending to adjust his jacket and giving her an opportunity to look behind without obviously doing so. She was not surprised to see a second man, his lower face covered by a muffler shoved into the turned-up collar of his overcoat.

Miles?

He had promised to have a man or two keep watch, like the one who had come out of nowhere the night of the attempted firebombing. But this was no surveillance, not two men in this weather, converging at once on a sidewalk glazed with ice. She recognized the classic maneuver intended to surround an enemy before he was aware of what was happening.

For an instant, she considered brandishing the Glock. Perhaps seeing that she was armed would make whoever these men were back off. Unlikely. More probable they were armed, too. A sudden display of a weapon could precipitate gunplay with the chance of a stray shot hitting Manfred.

No, surprise was her only logical weapon, to continue as though she suspected nothing, turning on the false tramp at the last moment. Nonchalantly, she shifted Manfred to her other side, the one away from the approaching stranger.

Usually, in dangerous situations, her mind seemed to slow down as it worked out points of attack, favorable angles and the like. As she closed with the homeless look-alike, she thought about a quick shot through her coat, another at the man behind before he could react. No, foolish. What if, as improbable as it sounded, they were exactly what they appeared to be: a hobo and a guy just coincidentally walking down a quiet residential street?

Mostly, though, she was considering Manfred’s safety.

And where the hell were Miles’s people?

Cemetery of Terra Santa

If there had been any doubt as to their peril, it was dispelled by the sound of rushing water. The flooding of the corridor outside had apparently defeated the braces against the water pressure on its walls. Water was up to Lang’s waist and he was taking two or three deep breaths at a time just to keep a minimum of air in his lungs. He was experiencing a mild dizziness, the first signs of oxygen starvation. He could hear the crew panting in the dark like a pack of exhausted dogs as the lights on their miner’s helmets moved, fruitlessly seeking an escape route.

“I don’t think we can wait for your people,” he gulped to Rossi.

“You have a plan?” Rossi croaked back.

“Maybe.”

Lang played his light around the chamber until it centered on the place the stone slab had become invisible underwater. Moving slowly to conserve breath, he sloshed through the water until his foot touched something solid. With the next step, he climbed on top.

“That will help little,” Rossi gasped. “The water will continue to rise. You will drown on that piece of rock.”

Lang shook his head. “Not if I’m not on it.”

“But, how…?”

Rossi’s gaze followed Lang’s flashlight to the roots hanging from the ceiling. “You cannot reach them. Even if you could-”

“I appreciate your eternal optimism,” Lang snapped a little harsher than he had intended. “How about a little help instead?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m guessing if there was a hole in the ceiling of this sepulcrum, it would be right over where the sarcophagus was.”

“So? It is nearly ten meters high. You cannot reach it.”

Rather than expend breath uselessly, Lang swung his light among the now-silent crew. Picking the smallest man he could see, he beckoned. “You, come here.”

“Dante,” Rossi said. “His name is Dante, like the poet.”

Rossi translated and the man cautiously joined Lang on the stone slab. Lang handed him a hand pick one of the crew had dropped and said haltingly, waiting for Rossi to translate each phrase while pointing to the roots overhead, “Dante, here is what we’re going to do: you climb onto my shoulders and see if you can snare one of those roots with the pick. Do you think you can climb it?”

Dante, short, squat and muscular, listened to Rossi and nodded enthusiastically, beginning to see hope where there had been none before.

Lang continued, using his hands to illustrate. “When you get close enough, I want you to use that pick to dig just above us, capisce? ”

He waited for Rossi’s translation, just to make sure.

Dante nodded understanding again, this time smiling.

On the first attempt, the poet’s namesake leaped from Lang’s shoulders, pick extended, missed a large cluster of roots and splashed into the rapidly accumulating water. Though the effort would have produced howls of laughter under normal circumstances, no one even chuckled.

Dante climbed onto Lang’s shoulders again, this time directing the light on his miner’s helmet from one clump of roots to another before making a decision. Lang let go of the man’s ankles as Dante leaped again. This time he succeeded in grasping a tangle of roots, climbing upward with the agility of a monkey. Had the task not been far from complete, Lang would have congratulated himself on his choice of men.

There was still a long way to go, and the humid air was getting thinner as the water rose.

Almost without thought, Lang transferred his BlackBerry and wallet from his pants pocket to the one in his shirt.

His one arm and his legs wrapped around the root cluster to hold him in place, Dante took a one-handed swing at the roof of dirt, roots and remnants of stone ceiling. He was rewarded by being pelted with a curtain of loose dirt. Undeterred, he took another swing with the same result. Below, the crew, the lamps on their helmets trained upward, watched in silence. The only sounds were the bite of Dante’s pick accompanied by the splash of detritus freed from the earthy roof, and the collective gasps for breath.

Even if Dante succeeded in opening a hole to the ground above, only one of their problems would be solved, the almost-depleted supply of oxygen. The water would rise to wherever the normal table was and no farther, leaving them still below the surface. Anyone who couldn’t swim, or at least tread water, until help arrived would be in serious danger of drowning.

Help.

Once again, Lang thought of the members of the crew Rossi had left aboveground. He had heard no shots since the explosion that had blocked the exit from this chamber, but the fact no one had come to their assistance was ominous.

Lang temporarily forgot the question of those above-ground as a crack of light appeared above his head. With Dante’s next swing of the pick, chunks of dirt and stone crashed into the water below, scattering several crew members who, like Lang, had been watching the little Italian’s progress.

Almost immediately, there was a grumble of crumbling earth and a shriek. Lang would have rejoiced at the speck of daylight that appeared had it not been for a falling object plummeting from the surface above. Like a bird shot in flight, a white-clad form tumbled through the hole, smashing into the water below. It took Lang a full second to recognize the object as human, someone who seemed to be wrapped in sheets. He joined the group gathered around. A man, either dead or stunned, lay in the still-rising water. He wore what Lang guessed was Bedouin robes but there was nothing Semitic about his facial features: they were decidedly Asian. The gun that had fallen with him was unmistakable. The bullpup configuration, action and trigger in front of the magazine identified it as a QBZ type 95/97, a relatively new Chinese assault weapon that was replacing the Kalashnikov knock-off that had been the primary small arm of the People’s Liberation Army.

Lang snatched it from the water just as a burst of gunfire from above churned the water not five feet away, sending the gathered crew frantically splashing toward the far edges of the chamber.

Lang lunged to his left, grasping the unfamiliar QBZ in one hand. The gun had made its first public appearance when the PLA marched in to reoccupy Hong Kong, long after Lang had left the Agency and its recurring training in contemporary firearms. Happily, he still browsed the gun publications frequently enough to know what he held, if not exactly how it worked. Muzzle velocity, clip capacity and caliber were a number of details Lang would have liked to know, but now was hardly time for a familiarization lecture. The one thing he did know was that this automatic rifle would provide firepower vastly superior to the Browning in its holster at his back.

If only he could figure out what was the safety and what was the fire selector.

Another fusillade ripped the water, this time close enough to shower him.

Shit! He still wore his miner’s helmet, with its light providing a perfect target. One sweep of a hand sent it spinning into dusky shadows and drawing yet more fire.

He ducked, spinning farther into the nightlike shade provided by what was left of the mausoleum’s roof. Now he was standing in darkness, looking up at a patch of sunlit sky. Reaching to his belt, he removed the flashlight he had jammed into it, turned it on and tossed it toward the circle of light playing off the room’s flooded floor.

It had barely splashed before a man’s head and shoulders appeared at the rim of the hole above. A ragged flame of muzzle flash jetted in the direction of the flashlight.

The Chinese rifle was too short to steady comfortably against his shoulder and squeeze the trigger at the same time. One hand on the forward grip, the other on the trigger, Lang pointed and held on tightly as the gun bucked in his hands, its blast deafening in the confines of the burial chamber.

For a second, he could only hear the ringing of his ears. There was no sign of the man at whom he had fired.

How could he have missed with such a clear target?

His question was answered a split second later as a figure leaned over the edge of the opening as though to shout something to those below. It slowly tumbled through the hole. The bright light from above showed another white robe, this one punctuated with a series of red splotches.

As his hearing slowly returned, Lang became aware of two sounds. Someone, one of Rossi’s crew from above, was shouting something as he tossed a rope ladder into the opening. The other was the vibrating wail of approaching sirens.

Even the Alexandria police had a limit as to how much they could ignore.

Ansley Park

Gurt was slightly more than an arm length away from the street person when he stopped. “Ms. Fuchs? I need to speak with you.”

The use of her name, one she had never changed, was uncommon among her contemporary friends and associates. She had found it easier to respond to Mrs. or Ms. Reilly than explain, the reason she had not corrected Randy as they left the house… what, less than an hour ago?

“Who are you?” she demanded.

He gave a smile that wasn’t a lot warmer than the ice on the ground. “A friend, a friend who’s here to help you.”

Gurt took a step back, conscious of the man behind her. “Why do you think I need help?”

The man’s smile didn’t move. “Because there are some very bad people who want to hurt you and your family. If you’ll just come quietly along with me…” He pointed to a black Chevrolet Suburban that hadn’t been there a second before but was now slowly cruising down the street. “We can take you to a safe place.”

Gurt indicated the house with a jut of her chin. “My house is safe.”

The tramp peered over her shoulder, obviously gauging if his partner, the man in the overcoat, was going to be any help. “Ms. Fuchs, I have orders to move you to safety. Your preference is not, repeat, not, a factor. You have quite a reputation for being able to defend yourself and my superiors feared you could be difficult. That’s why this street-bum getup, so I could at least get close enough to speak with you, try to reason without getting an arm broken.”

Gurt sidestepped onto a neighbor’s lawn. “Tell your ‘superiors’ they were right.”

The man was becoming exasperated. “Look, lady, I don’t want any trouble…”

“Then go away and take the man behind me with you.”

“No one is going to hurt you.”

The voice came from behind.

Gurt turned to look at the man in the overcoat. “Tell that to the man in the pond in the park down there.”

Overcoat’s face became blank. “What man?”

Gurt took a heavy breath. “The man your housekeeping department is going to have to remove before someone finds the body.”

Overcoat gave a chuckle that had about as much warmth as his partner’s smile. “Oh, that man! There’s no body, although there might be if he doesn’t recover from the tranquilizer dart in time to get out of the water before he freezes. Now, are you coming with us?”

He made a grab for Manfred, who yelped in fright.

Whether it was the sound, the motion or both, the child’s reaction caused another.

With a snarl, Grumps dove into Overcoat, sinking his teeth into the man’s ankle. With a shriek of pain, he hobbled backward, dog still attached, as he tried to pry Grumps loose.

Gurt no longer had to think, just act.

With a shove, she sent the tramp’s grocery cart slamming into his midsection, doubling him over with a whoosh of expelled air. Clinching her hands together above her head, she used the combined strength of both arms to bring them down on the back of his head. A few inches lower would have snapped his spine like a rotted stick of wood, but that was not her intent. Instead, she was content to smash his face into the rails of the grocery cart. She thought she heard the cartilage that was his nose snap, but she had no time to be certain.

Turning to where Overcoat was trying to both shake his leg free of the growling Grumps and land a kick with the other, she gave the grossly unbalanced man a shove that sent him sprawling on the icy ground. She took a step back and landed a kick of her own that, if it missed his crotch, was close enough for him to roll into a protective fetal ball.

Reaching down, she removed the Glock from his shoulder holster before stepping over to where the other man was still on the sidewalk groaning, hands to a face that was a bloody mask. She took his weapon, too.

“Grumps! Enough!”

An observer of the Marquess of Queensberry rules, Grumps let go with a parting bark.

“Grumps bit the bad man,” Manfred chortled gleefully.

For the moment, Gurt ignored him. “Gentlemen,” she called sweetly. “Gentlemen! I’ll have your attention before anyone gets seriously hurt.”

With eyes brimming equally with pain and hatred, they stared at her as she slowly unlocked the clip of each gun and thumbed the bullets onto the ground. Stooping, she retrieved each and dumped them into the pocket of her coat. “Please tell whoever sent you I am quite capable of taking care of myself. Any questions about that?”

She was not surprised there were none.

“Is good, then.” She tossed each man his empty pistol. “Our business is finished, yes?”

Again, no answer.

And the Chevy Suburban was gone.

Cemetery of Terra Santa

The last of those who had been trapped in the burial chamber were climbing the rope ladder out of it as Rossi put a friendly arm around Lang’s shoulders. “Once again, Mr. Couch, Dr. Roth, you have saved my life.”

Lang saw no reason to point out that in both instances it had been he, not the archaeologist, who had been the target of an assassination attempt. “Glad to be of service.”

“Do you suppose I shall ever learn who you really are?”

This time it was Lang who shrugged. “Does it matter?”

A parade of police cars squalled to a stop in the adjacent street, their sirens muttering to silence, lights flashing.

Rossi took a glance at the new arrivals. “I would guess you do not want to be involved with the authorities?”

“You would be right.”

“Then merge with the rest of the crew.” He seemed to hesitate a moment before reaching into a pocket and handing Lang the small plastic bag in which he had earlier placed the object tentatively identified as a button. “I guess the police will detain us with questions for the remainder of the day. I do not want to risk losing this before we can relate it to the dig. Could you deliver this to the museum for safekeeping?”

“Sure.”

Without examining it, Lang shoved the baggie into his pocket as he headed for the tent that served as headquarters and to the still-jabbering, milling crew.

No less than six cars emptied officers wearing the winter khaki of the municipal police and black of the assault-rifle-carrying Central Security Forces. They surrounded the area of the dig. Lang wasn’t going to just fade into the background as he had hoped.

Two men were in plain clothes. Rossi’s crew, both Italians and Egyptians, chattered in a polyglot tumult of languages and dialects. Piecing words and phrases together, Lang understood four men in Bedouin robes had appeared at the dig. Two had held the crew at gunpoint while the other two had detonated some sort of explosive. There were nearly as many versions of what had happened thereafter as there were those telling them.

Lang had left the QBZ in the mausoleum. There had been too many witnesses to his brief gun battle with the Asian in the robes. Even in the confusion that was likely to reign for hours, the police were going to seek him out at some point. His main concern was slipping away from the scene unnoticed before then. Although he had little doubt his forged passport back at the hotel would survive scrutiny, being detained had unhealthy implications. He was fairly certain the attempt to kill all those belowground had been aimed specifically at him, and at least two of the four who had made the effort were still at large. In the custody of the police, he would be an easy target.

Within minutes, Rossi was engaged in an animated conversation in English with one of the men in plain clothes while the other wore a dubious expression as he peered into the chamber below. Lang reached the tent, glancing around. He spied a camera, one used to photograph objects in situ. Slinging the camera’s strap around his neck, it took him only a few minutes to find a pen and pad. So equipped, he approached Rossi and his interrogator.

He shouldered his way between them, holding up his wallet so only the archaeologist could see he was showing nothing more than a driver’s license. “Dr. Rossi? I’m Ben Towles, Egyptian correspondent for the New York Times.”

As verification of his bona fides, Lang thrust the camera into Rossi’s face, snapping a picture before doing the same to the policeman. He had no idea if the paper even had such a position on its staff but he was fairly sure the Egyptian cop didn’t either. Rossi’s eyes opened wide in surprise, his expression showing he thought there was a chance Lang had gone nuts.

Lang didn’t give him an opportunity to express that or any other opinion. “I understand you were involved in a shooting just a few minutes ago. Do you think Muslim fundamentalists were involved?”

Rossi cleared his throat, giving himself an extra second to think. “Er, I do not know. I…”

The policeman was taking a few seconds of his own to recover from the surprise of having a reporter interrupt a police investigation. A member of Egypt’s own media would have expected to have his skull cracked for such impertinence, but the influence and power of American news was as world famous as its insolence. The last thing the officer wanted was a diplomatic incident on his hands.

He finally asserted himself, showing a badge. “And I,” he said in British-accented English, “am Major Hafel Saleem of the Alexandria security police. I have many questions for this man. You may ask yours when I am finished.”

“But I have a deadline,” Lang protested, shoving the major aside. “What kind of fascist regime does Egypt have? Have you never heard of freedom of the press?”

It was exactly the wrong thing to say, which of course was the right thing, under the circumstances.

Major Hafel Saleem’s eyes burned into Lang’s as the policeman grabbed him by the shirtfront. “You are not in America; you are in Egypt. Your precious ‘freedom of the press’ does not run police investigations here. I do.” He shoved Lang, sending him stumbling backward. “Now get out of my sight before I decide to have you arrested for interfering with a police investigation!”

Lang considered threatening a complaint to the American embassy or any of the things the American media is likely to do when confronted with a system where the Fourth Estate is treated as less than privileged. He decided he had achieved his goal and didn’t need an arrest or a beating to go with it. Doing his best imitation of sullen, he slunk away to the street to hail one of the city’s ubiquitous cabs.

Minutes later, the car was stalled in traffic, surrounded by exhaust fumes, noise and smells Lang did not want to even try to identify.

He hardly noticed. How in hell had those guys known where he was? He had taken a random cab to be less obvious than the Mercedes. During the ride, he had taken a look behind the taxi, making reasonably sure they were not followed. Admittedly, in Alexandria’s traffic, a tail would be as difficult to spot as to maintain. He had told no one where he was going. Even if Rossi’s message had been read before delivery to him… No, there had been no time or date.

Then what…? He was recalling every move he had made since arrival here.

The call to Manfred on the BlackBerry!

How careless can you get?

The thought brought him straight up in the cab’s seat. All cell phones, including this one, communicated with one or more relay facilities when taking or making a call. For that matter, the phone, even not in use, was constantly searching for the nearest relay station. Where there were a number of relays, as in a city, the search signals could be triangulated to place the particular cell phone in an area of a few square feet.

He took the BlackBerry from his shirt pocket, scowling at it accusingly. His first impulse was to throw the perfidious device out of the cab’s window. Second thought gave him a better idea. He leaned forward and changed the directions he had given the cabby.

The taxi pulled up in front of a DHL office whose red and yellow logo announced its ability to deliver anywhere worldwide. The criterion Lang had requested had been somewhat more simple: the closest shipping office, FedEx, UPS or DHL. The cab stopped at the curb, provoking a cacophony of angry horns, which the driver ignored along with the shouted insults and rude gestures of Alexandria’s ever-impatient drivers.

Minutes later, Lang was back in the cab, his BlackBerry on a voyage of its own. He could only hope the battery lasted long enough to complete its way to a weather station in Chilean Patagonia, that isolated end of the world where South America yields to Antarctica. He remembered the area from a map he had once perused. Spanish names that translated into things like Desolation Land, Gulf of Sorrows, Cape of Torments.

Just the places you’d want your enemies to visit.

Cemetery of Terra Santa

An hour later

Major Hafel Saleem of the Alexandria security police was frustrated. He had gotten 90 percent of the pertinent facts in the first twenty minutes of his arrival at the cemetery. The other 10 percent, perhaps the most important 10 percent, eluded him.

Four men in Bedouin attire had appeared at the site of a duly permitted archaeological dig. Nothing unusual about that. There were always these types of explorations going on around the city. The four men had suddenly produced weapons. Not as rare an event as the major would like to think. These desert nomads were frequently armed, if not with firearms, then with knives. Violence was not uncommon. Insults, real or imagined, to family, feuds, vengeance, it really didn’t matter. They killed or maimed each other on a regular basis. The only truly unusual facet of the incident was the unique automatic weapon in the burial chamber. Saleem had never seen one quite like it.

At one time it had been the major’s hope that Egypt’s Bedouins would eventually be so successful in killing each other, there would be none left. But alas, they moved to the city and took up city ways, peacefully stealing and cheating each other instead of killing.

But the men with the weapons at this site had not come to kill other Bedouins. In fact, the dead man and the one who had fallen into the hole weren’t Bedouins at all. Though the dead man, the one shot by the American, was beyond the major’s interrogation techniques, the living one was not. The fact he had broken a bone or two in the fall would ensure he would answer questions with less effort on the major’s part.

Saleem was confident that before calls to evening prayer blared from the mosques’ minarets, he would know who these men were, why they had attempted to either drown or suffocate a dozen or so people, and other matters of interest, particularly who the American was.

Antonio Rossi, the Italian in charge of this dig, had been cooperative but less than helpful. The American’s name was Henry Roth, supposedly an archaeologist from one of those big American universities, the one in California. Saleem had phoned this information into his staff for verification by Internet or otherwise, only to learn within minutes (1) there were several big universities in California, (2) none of them were currently involved in a dig in Alexandria, Egypt, (3) all but one had never heard of, much less employed, a Dr. Roth in their archaeological departments, and (4) the university that did employ a Dr. Roth (whose name was Harold, not Henry) insisted he had been on campus that very day.

The major’s Dr. Roth was a guise, then.

So, who was the American who had done the shooting and, if not one of the scientists, why was he here?

The suggestion that Dr. Rossi’s complicity in allowing the American, posing as a reporter, to vanish would prevent him from ever obtaining another permit to dig in Egypt had elicited only scraps of information, the most useful of which was that he, the American, had arrived today.

Assuming this elusive American had used the same name, all the police had to do was check the registrations reported by the city’s hotels.

This American might or might not have committed a crime, but he certainly had information Saleem wanted, information he would get once the American was found.

Le Metropole Hotel

At the same time

Lang entered the hotel and headed straight for the elevators. He had almost crossed the lobby when he noted the desk clerk frantically signaling to him. Lang detoured.

The clerk gave Lang an obsequiously oily smile. “Wonderful news, Dr. Roth! I have personally had some things… how do you Americans say? Moved around? Yes, moved around. I had things moved around and your room will be available the rest of the week.”

Lang had forgotten his earlier request. “I’ve had a change of plans. How quickly can you get my bill ready? It shouldn’t take long, as the room was prepaid.”

The smile vanished as if by magic, to be replaced by a petulant frown. “Dr. Roth, I and my staff…”

Lang held up a silencing hand, digging in a pocket with the other. “I can imagine the effort involved.” He produced a money clip and peeled off fifty American dollars. “Have my bill ready to pay by the time I get back here from my room and it’s still yours.”

How hard could that be? He’d only had a single beer from the minibar.

The return of the smile was like the sun peeking out from fading storm clouds. “Of course, Dr. Roth. Shall I send someone to fetch your luggage?”

“Not necessary!” Lang called over his shoulder as he dashed to beat the closing doors of an elevator.

In his room, he stuck a hand in his pocket, groping until he remembered the BlackBerry was no longer there. He cursed silently as he snatched his open bag from the closet and began to hurriedly repack the few items he had taken from it. That cop from the cemetery would be looking for Dr. Henry Roth in the near future, and Dr. Roth had sudden urgent business elsewhere.

His bag nearly packed, he glanced into the spacious bath. He would have loved a soothing shower, letting steaming hot water remove the grit of the dig as well as the patina of mud from the rising water. No time. He’d have to settle for washing his face and a quick change of clothes. No telling when the local fuzz might show up.

He splashed cold water on his face and, eyes closed, groped for a towel. He grabbed his discarded shirt and pants to cram them into his suitcase before zipping it shut. He felt something small and hard in a pocket. The thing Rossi had found in the corridor before the trouble had started.

He took it from the pocket, opened the baggie and dumped the object into his palm. Sure looked like a button, but he couldn’t be sure because of all the dirt caked on it. His curiosity battled against his desire for a speedy exit. He needed to leave now, but when would he have the chance to find out what he was really holding?

He stepped back into the bath, turned on the sink’s spigot and held the object under it. Using a thumbnail to help scrape away the grime, he soon saw metal tarnished the color of mint. No doubt it was a button, a brass button. On the front was the number twelve, surrounded by branches of… what? Olive? Laurel?

He was not sure he could have told the difference between the two if he had held real leaves in his hand, but the design was one he had seen before.

He turned it over, holding it up to the light to make out the letters. “Fonson amp; Co.” arched across the top. Under the loop by which the button would be attached, “Brux.”

But where?

No time now.

Returning the button to its bag and both to his pocket, he zipped the single suitcase shut. Then he picked up the room’s phone, entering the number for the front desk.

“Yes, Dr. Roth?”

“I’d like for you to make a call for me.”

“Certainly, sir.”

Lang took the limo driver’s card from his wallet, reading the number. “And would you tell him I need him in about five minutes?”

“Certainly, sir.”

Downstairs, Lang retrieved his passport-or rather, that of Dr. Roth-and handed the clerk the credit card that had come with the passport. The clerk turned to put the plastic in one of those machines that stamps a receipt while he punched numbers into a telephone, presumably to verify the card. The procedure was one Lang had not seen in the U.S. for years.

The desk clerk turned to face Lang, puzzled. “Visa says the card has been cancelled.”

Cards issued by the Agency were never cancelled, at least not until the mission for which they were issued was complete. “I’d guess either you or the company made an error.”

The clerk gave him a suspicious look. “Do you wish me to try again?”

“Yeah, sure.” Lang looked at his watch. It had been over an hour since he had escaped from the cemetery. The cops would be looking for him by now. How much could the damn beer cost? “No, never mind.” He pulled a wad of bills from his wallet, counting out the Egyptian pounds.

The clerk gave him a look that said his suspicions had been confirmed, took the money and stamped Lang’s copy of the bill. “Will there be anything else?” he asked in a tone that contrasted with his previous ingratiating manner.

A man who had just had his credit card cancelled was a man unlikely to be a generous tipper.

“Yeah,” Lang nodded. “I asked you to call the limo for me.”

The desk clerk gave a sigh, at his patience’s end in dealing with this pretender. “The number has been disconnected.”

Lang felt a hollowness in his stomach as though all nourishment had been sucked from his body. Some sort of electronic glitch could have fouled up the card, but the limo driver’s phone? Lang was not a believer in coincidences, and the cancellation of the card and disconnection of the phone had the earmarks of an operation being rolled up.

But this one was in midstride.

It wouldn’t be the first time the Agency had cancelled an affair early. Many operations could be kept secret just so long before an overzealous member of some oversight committee leaked them to the Agency-hating press or the purpose of the business became averse to a sea change in policy. As the light of publicity hit the media, operatives scattered like cockroaches, seeking the safety of anonymity. Some didn’t make it. Jobs were lost, careers destroyed, all in the name of political expediency.

This was not a problem for Lang. He no longer depended on foreign policy that shifted with each election. He did, however, need to know if Miles was covertly covering his backside as originally indicated. More important, were his people still keeping watch over Gurt and Manfred?

Damn! If he had his BlackBerry, he could call Miles. He glanced at the row of house phones across the lobby.

He was pondering the possibility when two cars pulled out of traffic and stopped in front of the hotel. All but one of the men getting out wore uniforms.

Time to exit stage left.

As the police entered the lobby, Lang had already reached the adjacent dining room, where a few guests were having an early dinner. Ignoring the maitre d’s question as to his preference of tables and offer to keep watch on his single suitcase, he headed for the kitchen, nearly colliding with a waiter. The surprised cook staff watched him walk briskly to the rear and exit a door. He found himself in a short hall leading to a loading dock. In seconds, he was in an alley. Scabrous dogs competed with rats the size of cats among trash cans overflowing with rotting food that smelled bad enough to bring bile to the back of Lang’s tongue.

A couple of the dogs growled defensively at the potential rival as he hurried to the daylight at the end. He reached a street just as one of the city’s aging yellow three-car trams made a stop at a corner fifty feet or so away. Yellow meant the tram was part of the east line, toward the terminal. Blue would have denoted west line, or so Lang remembered from the brief information he had read on the flight. Since the numbers and routes posted on the front were in Arabic script, he could not be sure of the destination. The important thing was to get away from here, not where he might be going.

He was careful to approach the first car, not the middle, the one reserved for women. Reaching in his pocket for a handful of piastres, he climbed aboard and held out his palm for the motorman to select the fare. No doubt the man would include a generous tip for himself, but Lang was not in a position to haggle.

The car was full, its worn seats crowded. Lang stood as the car clanked along its rails at a walk. Periodically, he twisted around for a glimpse out of the dirty windows. No one seemed to be following, and if he was having trouble seeing out, any pursuer would have equal difficulty looking in. At last, the tram reached Ramla, the main downtown terminal. If Lang remembered the city map, the bus depot was not far away.

The bus depot reminded him of a stockyard he had seen in Texas: teeming, noisy and odoriferous. In fact, the stockyard smelled better. The good news was that the destinations were posted in multiple languages. It took fifteen minutes for him to reach the front of the line and purchase a ticket to Cairo. Other than a few municipal police vainly trying to keep order, he saw little in the way of an official presence. He had arrived at the depot before the security police had had time to post men at all departure points.

A few minutes later, he boarded a bus that could have begun life as a 1950s Greyhound, definitely not one of the “Superjet” buses of the Arab Union transport company, with the impala on its side, which boasted all the comforts of air travel including videos and hostesses walking the aisle to sell high-priced snacks. He could not afford the luxury of waiting for more suitable transportation. Sooner or later the security police would be covering the bus terminal.

The moment he shoved his bag into the overhead rack, he was assaulted by a cloying heat that only the movement of air through the open windows would diminish. The price of a ticket apparently did not include air-conditioned comfort. A quick glance toward the back, the women’s section, confirmed it did include toilet facilities, though how functional remained to be seen. Lang was glad he had not succumbed to the temptation to down another cold Stella before departing the hotel.

His seat was on the aisle next to a bearded man wearing a white skullcap. His fingers constantly moved a string of beads through them as his lips moved in silent prayer. As Lang slid into his seat, the man paused long enough to give him the disdainful glare a true believer reserves for the infidel.

Ah well, Lang hadn’t been looking for a chatty seatmate, anyway.

As the bus rumbled through Alexandria’s outer slums, Lang remembered Rossi’s button. Hadn’t taken it to the museum, hadn’t exactly had time to. He took it out of his pocket, emptied it into his palm and frowned at the encircled 12 on the front and the inscription on the back.

Where had he seen that before?

The possibility dawned like an Old Testament prophet’s revelation. A long-ago visit to Les Invalides in Paris, site of Napoleon’s elaborate tomb. The upstairs of the former military hospital was a museum of French military glory with battle flags, uniforms and arms. Each room represented a different period. The largest by far was of the Napoleonic era, the rooms dwindling in size in proportion to France’s military prowess. World Wars I and II were little more than the average bedroom, Indochina and the siege of Dien Bien Phu by the Vietcong a closet.

The largest display, that of the Napoleonic Wars, included some of the uniforms worn by Bonaparte’s troops. Lang had marveled at the diversity that had been implemented in 1811. Red pom-poms, for instance, on line troops, red plumes on the shakos of fusiliers, yellow lining on the lapels of others. He supposed the different battle dress had served as a form of communication, allowing the commander to actually see what parts of his army were where. The differences, though, even applied to the smaller details of the uniforms, like this button. Numbers had been fairly common, denoting the wearer’s organization, in this case the Twelfth Brigade.

He turned the button over again. “Fenson amp; Co. Brux.” The Brux. was an abbreviation for the French word for Brussels, home, most likely, to Fenson amp; Co. He leaned back, trying to find what little softness remained in the shabby bus seat. Most of the seat’s foam stuffing had spilled out through a series of cracks and tears long ago, and the Browning in its holster was jabbing at his back. At the same time, he turned the significance of the button over in his mind. A Napoleonic uniform in what was possibly a Macedonian tomb that predated Bonaparte by over two millennia?

The idea wasn’t as absurd as it first seemed. Someone had intentionally sealed off the main burial chamber, someone who had had to use a smoking candle or oil lamp. Hadn’t Napoleon spent time in Egypt? Of course he had. It was his troops, or one of the scientists, the savants, who accompanied them, who had found the Rosetta Stone. It was highly probable they had found and explored the tomb in Alexandria as well. But why close it off?

He stared across his seatmate, now gently snoring, and watched the desert glide by, occasionally replaced by palmfringed green fields along the sluggish brown Nile. Where the river was hidden by levees, its course was marked by the triangular sails of feluccas, small craft virtually unchanged since the time of the Pharaohs.

Lang forgot the scenery. It was time to devise a plan.

From the diary of Louis Etienne Saint Denis, secretary to Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of France Tuileries, Paris June 1, 1815 The mob cheered the emperor today as they have each day since his return from Elba. ^ 1 He has all but completed the restoration of his officer corps who have, in turn, reorganized the Imperial Army, men who served with the emperor before and will gladly do so again. It is good to be away from Elba. We had barely arrived when we received news of the death of Josephine. ^ 2 Though the emperor took his duties as the island’s ruler seriously, making many improvements, ^ 3 he soon tired of such banal chores and longed to return to the task he viewed as given him by fate, uniting all of Europe. Once, brooding upon this unfinished task, he asked his mother what he should do, to which she replied he should fulfill his destiny. I know not if these words inspired him to complete his escape plans, of which few of us were aware. The Congress of Vienna ^ 4 has declared the emperor an outlaw and is raising armies to meet him. It will not be long before he must take to the field again. It was with this in mind, I believe, that he spoke to me last evening. After the usual polite inquiries into the health of myself, my wife and children, he remarked upon the uncertainties of war, a fact I suppose is much in his mind of late. I bespoke my certainty of his success in the coming campaigns. Then, he spoke most strangely, saying, “Saint Denis, you have been a loyal servant. It is in your name I leave that which is my most dear possession.” I took this to mean he intended to bequeath to me some treasure for my long service upon his death and endeavored to convince him I expected his demise no time soon. I much desired, though, to know the nature of this legacy to be bestowed upon me. He must have sensed my eagerness to know more, for he added, “It is upon the heel of a return from anonymity” At first, I thought I had not heard correctly, the phrase was so odd and seemingly out of context. Before I could further query, one of the emperor’s generals, I believe Marshal Ney, insisted upon an immediate audience. ^ 5

1 At his forced abdication and May 1814 exile to an island off the Tuscan coast, Napoleon was given the duty of ruling it and its twelve thousand inhabitants. He arrived with his mother, his sister Pauline and one thousand men who agreed to go with him, including Napoleon’s mistress and their illegitimate son and Saint Denis. Napoleon’s second wife and their legitimate child refused to come or, for that matter, answer his letters. By means still not certain, he eluded over a hundred guards and a British frigate, escaped the next February and returned to Paris March 20, 1815. The recently installed Bourbon king, Louis XVIII, fled. The police sent to arrest Napoleon knelt before him and joined his army which, like the phoenix, quickly arose from the ashes of its own destruction.

2 May 29, 1814. Though she and Napoleon had divorced so he might sire a son, they continued to exchange letters. He spent the last days before his exile at her home at Malmaison.

3 The water-delivery system, for instance.

4 The first such gathering of representatives of European states since the days of the Holy Roman Empire (see the author’s monograph, “The Holy Roman Empire: Neither Holy, nor Roman nor an Empire,” University of Paris Press, 2006). The Congress of Vienna had been convened to decide how to undo what most crowned heads of Eu rope viewed as the damage Napoleon had done to the old status quo, most particularly, the institution of royalty. They were in session when Bonaparte escaped from Elba, and placed the En glish Duke of Wellington in charge of an international force to try to put the genie back in the bottle. Hence the “Hundred Days” campaign leading up to Waterloo.

5 Michel Ney (1769-1815). As noted earlier, Napoleon conferred the title “Marshal of France” on a number of his generals. It had mostly an honorary significance. Ney, however, was marshal in both the military and honorary sense. He and Napoleon might have had much to discuss. Ney had been among those demanding his former commander’s exile and had served the Bourbons before rejoining Napoleon upon his return from Elba. He was hotheaded and heroic, and many blame Ney’s rash actions for the loss at Waterloo.