The Alexander Cipher

by Will Adams

“Oh,” frowned Gaille. “But why would Alexander consider the Tyrians criminals? They’d only been defending their homes.”

  “Alexander sent in heralds to discuss terms before laying the siege. The Tyrians murdered them and hurled their bodies from the ramparts. That was an absolute no-no back then.” He glanced at Gaille again, puzzled by something. “This is one hell of a tomb for a shield bearer, don’t you think? I mean, a forecourt, an antechamber, and a main chamber. Not to mention Ionic columns, a sculpted facade, bronze doors, and all these paintings. It must have cost an incredible amount of money.”

  “Alexander paid well.”

  “Not that well. Besides, this is how Macedonian kings were buried. It feels, I don’t know, presumptuous, doesn’t it?”

  Gaille nodded. “They’re raising the plinth tomorrow afternoon. Maybe that’ll give us some answers. You’re going to be there, aren’t you?”

  “I doubt it, I’m afraid.”

  “But you must come,” she said earnestly. “We wouldn’t have discovered it without you.”

  “Even so.”

  “I don’t understand,” she complained. “What’s going on?”

  There was pain in her eyes, as well as confusion. Knox knew he couldn’t prevaricate any longer. He pulled a face to let her know he had a difficult subject to broach, then stood up straight, putting distance between them. “You know how I said earlier there was something I needed to tell you?”

  “It’s that damned Knox, isn’t it,” scowled Gaille. “He’s your best bloody friend or something.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Let’s not let him come between us,” she begged. “I was just shooting my mouth off last night. Honestly. He means nothing to me. I’ve never even met the man.”

  Knox looked steadfastly into her eyes, until realization began to dawn. Then he nodded. “Yes, you have,” he told her.

  Chapter Fourteen

  IT TOOK GAILLE a moment to assimilate fully what Knox was saying. Then her expression went cold. “Get out,” she said.

  “Please,” he begged. “Just let me—”

  “Get out. Get out now.”

  “Look. I know how you must feel, but—”

  She went to her door and threw it open. “Out!” she said.

  “Gaille,” he pleaded. “Just let me explain.”

  “You had your chance. You sent me that letter, remember.”

  “It wasn’t what you think. Please just let me—”

  But the concierge had overheard the commotion. Now he arrived outside Gaille’s room, grabbed Knox’s arm, and dragged him out. “You leave,” he said. “I call police.” Knox tried to shake him off, but he had surprisingly strong fingers, which he dug vengefully into Knox’s flesh, giving him no choice but to go with him or start a fight. They reached the lobby. The concierge bundled him into the elevator, punched the button for the ground floor, then slammed the mesh door closed. “No come back,” he warned, wagging his finger.

  The elevator juddered downward. Knox was still in a daze when he stepped out into the ground-floor lobby and down the front steps. The look of anger on Gaille’s face had not only shocked him, it had made him realize just how hard he was falling for her. He turned right and right again, heading down the alley at the rear of her hotel, converted, like so many alleys in Alexandria, into an improvised parking lot, so that he had to wend his way between tightly packed cars.

  He remembered, suddenly, the letter he’d sent her, all the deceits he’d filled it with. His face burned hot; he stopped dead in the alley so abruptly that a man walking behind him barged into his back. Knox held up his hand in apology, started to say sorry, but then he caught a whiff of something chemical, and suddenly a damp, burning cloth was clamped over his nose and mouth, and the darkness began closing in. Too late, he realized that he’d allowed himself to stop worrying about Sinai, about Hassan. He tried to fight, to pull away, but the chloroform was already in his system, and he collapsed tamely into the arms of his assailant.

  IT WAS BARELY ELEVEN THIRTY when Augustin brought Elena back to the Cecil Hotel. He had invited her on to a nightclub; she pleaded weight of work. He insisted on escorting her into the lobby all the same. “There’s no need to come up,” she said drily when they reached the elevators. “I’m sure I’ll be safe from here.”

  “I see you to your room,” he announced gallantly. “I would never forgive myself if anything happened.”

  She sighed and shook her head but didn’t make a point of it. There was a mirror in the elevator. They each checked themselves out in it and then each other, their eyes meeting in the glass, smiling at their own vanity. She had to admit that they made a striking pair. He walked her right to her door. “Thank you,” she said, shaking his hand. “I had fun.”

  “I’m glad.”

  Elena took her key from her purse. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

  “No doubt.” But he made no move to leave.

  “You haven’t forgotten where the elevators are already?” she asked pointedly.

  He smiled wryly. “I think you’re the kind of woman not to be afraid of what she wants. I’m right about this, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Then let me make this clear. If you ask me to leave once more, I truly will leave.”

  There was silence for a few moments. Elena nodded thoughtfully to herself as she unlocked her door and went inside. “Well?” she asked, leaving the door open behind her. “Are you coming in or not?”

  KNOX SLOWLY RETURNED TO CONSCIOUSNESS, aware of his lips, nostrils, and throat burning, of nausea in his gut. He tried to open his eyes. They were glued shut. He tried to lift a hand to his face, but his wrists were bound behind his back. He tried to cry out, but his mouth was taped. When he recalled what had happened, his heart plunged into panicked tachycardia and his body shuddered in a great spasm, arching him off the floor. Something clumped him hard behind the ear, and he slumped back into darkness.

  He was more circumspect when he came around again. He let his senses gather information. He was lying on his front. Some kind of soft carpet with a lump in the middle that pressed against his ribs. His ankles and wrists were so tightly bound that his fingers and toes tingled. His mouth was coppery and tacky from a cut on the inside of his cheek. The air smelled thickly of cigarette smoke and hair oil. He felt the soft vibration of an expensive engine. A vehicle passed at speed, its sound warped by Doppler. He was on the floor of a car, and he was probably being taken to Hassan. That lurch of panic. Vomit welled in his throat, stopping only at the back of his mouth. He inhaled deeply through his nose until the nausea subsided. He reached for a calm thought. It wasn’t necessarily Hassan’s men who had snatched him. Maybe it was freelancers after blood money. If he could just get them to talk, he could establish rapport, negotiate, outbid. He tried to sit up and was again thumped brutally on the back of his head.

  They swung left and began to jolt over rough terrain. It was all Knox could do to buffer himself. His ribs were banged and bruised. They drove for what seemed an age, then stopped abruptly. Doors opened. Someone grabbed him beneath his arms and hauled him out, dumping him on sandy ground. He was kicked onto his back; fingernails picked at the tape on his cheek. It was ripped from his eyes, taking some lashes with it, leaving his skin tender. Three men stood above him, dressed in black sweaters and balaclavas, and the sight of them turned Knox’s guts to water. He tried to tell himself they wouldn’t be hiding their faces unless they thought he’d live. It didn’t help. One of the men dragged Knox by the legs to a wooden post hammered into the ground. He gathered together several loose strands of barbed wire and wrapped them around Knox’s ankles.

  Though their car was parked obliquely, Knox could just make out its rear license plate. He burned it into his memory. A second man popped the trunk and pulled out a coil of rope, which he dumped on the sand. He tied a knot in one end, looped it around the tow bar, and tugged it hard to make sure it would hold. He made a hangman’s noose in the ot
her end, came over to Knox, slipped it around his neck, and tightened it until it bit into the soft skin of his throat.

  Knox had lost sight of the third man. Now he saw him ten paces away, recording everything on the camera phone. It took Knox a moment to see the significance. He was filming a snuff movie to send to Hassan. That explained the balaclavas, too. They didn’t want footage of themselves committing murder. It was then that Knox knew he was going to die. He kicked and struggled, but he was too tightly bound. The driver revved his engine like a young biker throwing down a challenge. Its back wheels spat sand. Then it began speeding away, rope hissing as it paid out. Knox braced himself; he screamed into his gag. The man with the camera phone moved closer to frame his climactic shot as the rope lifted, shivered and went taut.

  Chapter Fifteen

  ITRUST YOU HAVE GOOD NEWS FOR ME,” said Hassan.

  Nessim, even though talking to a phone, closed his eyes as if in prayer. “We’ve had a setback, sir.”

  “A setback?”

  “Someone else got to him first.”

  “Someone else?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Nor do we, sir. He went into a hotel. He came out again. He walked around to the back and down an alley. Another man followed him. We thought nothing of it until a black car pulled up and he was bundled into the back.”

  “You mean you just let them take him away?”

  “We were across the street. There was a tram.”

  “A tram?” asked Hassan icily.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “We don’t know, sir. Like I say, there was a tram. We couldn’t get past.” The damned thing had just sat there as he tooted at it, the fat driver smirking at them, enjoying their frustration.

  “Who was it? Who took him?”

  “We don’t know, sir. We’re working on it now. If we’re lucky, it’s someone who heard what he did to you and thinks they can sell him to us at a price.”

  “And if we’re not?”

  “According to his file, he has plenty of enemies. Maybe one of them spotted him.”

  Silence. One beat. Two beats. Three. “I want him found,” said Hassan. “I want him found as a matter of urgency. Do I make myself clear?”

  Nessim swallowed. “Yes, sir. Crystal clear.”

  KNOX FELT INCOMPARABLY OLDER as he trudged north, following tire tracks in the sand. When the rope had paid out and stretched taut, he knew he was going to die. It was a qualitatively different thing, knowing you were going to die as opposed to fearing you might die. It did strange things to your heart. It made you think differently about time, the world, and your place in it.

  Apparently the rope had been cut clean through, then fixed back together again with duct tape. The tape had ripped free as soon as the rope went taut, so that the two sections of rope had pulled apart, and Knox had flopped down on the sand, his bladder venting, his heart bucking like a terrified steer, bewildered by his reprieve. The driver had come around in a great loop over the sand to collect his comrades, who had been squatting there all the time, filming his reaction, the way he pissed himself. They had all laughed uproariously at that, as though it was the funniest thing they had ever seen. One of them had thrown an envelope out the window, and then they drove off, leaving him tied there to the stake, his trousers soaked, his throat raw with burns from the rope.

  It had taken him two hours to free himself from his various bonds. He was shivering by then, full-body tremors. Desert nights were cold. He had dried his trousers as best he could by smearing them with handfuls of dusty sand, then gone over to the envelope. Plain white. No writing on it. When he had opened it, some sand fell out. Ballast to stop it blowing away. Apart from that, it contained only an Egypt Air compliments slip with four words on it: “You have been warned.”

  He climbed a small rise. Far ahead, the pinpricks of headlights were headed in both directions on a busy road. He walked at a slow, tired, dispirited pace. It was easy enough to be bold when you faced abstract dangers, but it was different now that they clearly knew where he was. And he had others to think of, too, particularly Augustin and Gaille. He couldn’t risk putting them in danger.

  It was time to get out.

  NICOLAS DRAGOUMIS was an early riser by temperament, but this morning he awoke earlier than usual, eager as a child at Christmas. He went straight to his laptop to check his e-mail. There was one from Gabbar Mounim, as promised. He downloaded and decrypted the movie file attachment impatiently while he read the message, nodding approvingly as he did so. His father had always insisted that Knox wasn’t to be harmed, and Mounim made it clear that his men hadn’t harmed Knox, not in any real sense. A little chloroform, a tap on the skull, a jolt to his system. That couldn’t count as harm. On the contrary, it would make him appreciate life all the more.

  Nicolas played the movie for the first time: Knox abducted; Knox lying unconscious on the floor of the car; Knox dragged onto the desert sands; the look of terror on his face as the car accelerated away! Nicolas was exultant. To think that this wretch had once caused him and his father such grief! And now look at him! Pissing himself like an eight-year-old. He played it again, then a third time, his back soothing with every frame. A good night’s work. A very good night’s work indeed. Because, unless Nicolas wasn’t the judge of character he knew himself to be, that would be the last he ever saw of Knox.

  IT WAS GROWING LIGHT when Knox finally reached the coast road, but the traffic was still thin. He ran across, then over a bank of dunes and down the beach to the Mediterranean. He peeled off his trousers and boxer shorts, washing them in the lapping waves, wringing them out as best he could. He draped them over his shoulder and walked along the beach, his feet caking pleasantly with the chill, thick sand.

  The sun rose orange, laying a fiery comet on the foamy backwash of a wave. He reached a walled compound of holiday homes, a gate swinging on the breeze. It looked deserted. These estates came alive only on weekends and holidays. Many of the homes had clotheslines outside, several draped with swimming costumes, towels, and clothes. He went in, wandered among them until he spotted an old cream djellaba and headdress, faintly damp, perhaps because of the early hour and the nearness of the Mediterranean. He left his trousers in part exchange, along with as much cash as he could afford. Then he took them and fled before he was spotted.

  It was all very well for those men to warn him to get out. But he needed his bank cards, passport, and papers, all of which he’d left at Augustin’s. Most of all, he needed his Jeep. It took him an hour thumbing before a three-wheeler stopped to offer him a ride. The driver addressed him in gruff Arabic, so Knox replied in kind without even thinking, his mind elsewhere. They talked of soccer; the man was a passionate Ittihad fan. It was only after Knox had got out that he realized he’d been mistaken for an Egyptian. His Bedouin clothes and genes, no doubt, plus his deep tan and a day’s worth of stubble.

  He was almost out of money, so he took buses to Augustin’s apartment block, walking the last kilometer. He was on alert as he made his way through the parking lot, or he wouldn’t have spotted the two men in the white Freelander, one smoking a hand-roll, the other hidden in the shadows. He went closer. Through its rear window, he saw a familiar red overnight bag, a black laptop case, and a cardboard box packed with his own belongings from his Sinai hotel room. He spun on his heel and hurried away, but he hadn’t gone far before he realized that there was no real point in fleeing. If Hassan had wanted him captive or dead, he wouldn’t have let him go last night. These men were surely here to make sure he really did leave.

  He turned again and walked boldly over to the front steps, his back to the Freelander, trusting his Egyptian robes to act like a cloak of invisibility. A janitor was mopping the red terra-cotta tiles. Knox stepped around the wet patch and risked a glance as he waited for the elevator. The men were still sitting in the Freelander. He took the elevator up to the seventh floor,
walked down a flight, crouching below window level to let himself in. There was no sign of Augustin. He had evidently been playing away. Knox packed his belongings, then wrote a brief note thanking Augustin for his hospitality, letting him know he’d hit the road, promising to call in due course. He was just finishing up when he heard footsteps outside, then a key scraping in the lock. He watched in frozen horror as the handle turned and the door opened and Nessim came in with a translucent bag of electronic equipment in his left hand.

  Chapter Sixteen

  KNOX AND NESSIM stared spellbound at each other for a moment, each equally startled. Nessim recovered first, reaching inside his jacket. The glimpse of his shoulder holster jolted Knox into action. He charged Nessim, knocking him over backward. The gun went skittering away, tumbling into the stairwell, plummeting six floors before clattering at the bottom. Knox raced for the stairs. Nessim scrambled to his feet. They bounded down, leaping a flight at a time, bouncing off the walls as they turned corners, Nessim barely an outstretched arm behind. Knox reached the ground-floor lobby, tiles still slick from their mopping. He slowed just enough to keep his footing, but Nessim’s feet went from under him and he crashed into the bank of elevators, turning his ankle, cursing loudly. Knox burst out the door and sprinted for his Jeep. He risked a glance behind. Nessim had emerged, too, hobbling badly. He had retrieved his gun but was holding it flat against his side—this place was too public for such things. He shouted at his colleague, who started up the Freelander and drove over to pick him up.

  Knox ran to his Jeep, jumped in, turned on the ignition. The engine caught on the first try. He was away at once, up a narrow alley to a main road, which he cut into so sharply that cars behind him had to swerve and brake, getting in each other’s way, honking like enraged geese. A glance in his rearview mirror told him the Freelander was struggling to bull its way through this sudden traffic jam. Knox took advantage, turning left, left again, losing himself in the maze of streets, constantly checking his mirrors, but there was no sign of them. He allowed himself to relax a little. Then he checked once more, and there they were. How the hell had they managed that? He stomped on the gas, but the faster and more maneuverable Freelander was catching him inexorably.