The Alexander Cipher

by Will Adams

  “Something else?” asked Yusuf.

  “The inscription,” said Elena.

  “Inscription? What inscription?” He glared at Ibrahim. “Why haven’t you told me about this inscription?”

  “I believe I did, Secretary General.”

  “Are you contradicting me?”

  “Of course not, Secretary General. Forgive me.” He reopened his photograph of the inscription.

  “Oh, this,” said Yusuf. “Why didn’t you say you were talking about this?”

  “Forgive me, Secretary General. The fault is mine. You’ll note that the characters are Demotic, but the inscription is actually in Greek.” He nodded at Elena. “A colleague of Ms. Koloktronis’s deciphered it. I can explain how it works, if you’re interested. Otherwise, here is a copy of the translation.”

  Yusuf’s mouth worked as he read the text, his eyes going wide as he assimilated the implications. It wasn’t surprising, reflected Ibrahim. Memphis had been known to ancient Egyptians as White Wall. The word desert came originally from Desh Ret: the Red Land. Kelonymus referred to Alexander as the “Son of Ammon,” so the place of his father, it followed, was the Oracle of Ammon in Siwa Oasis, where old sources suggested Alexander had asked to be buried. The inscription, therefore, asserted that a group of shield bearers had stolen Alexander’s body from under Ptolemy’s nose in Memphis and had taken it across the Western Desert to a tomb they’d prepared within sight of the oracle of Ammon in Siwa Oasis. Ptolemy, however, had pursued them, and they had killed themselves rather than fall into his hands. All except Kelonymus, Akylos’s brother, who had avoided capture and who had later brought all his comrades’ remains back to Alexandria for burial, in fulfillment of his vow.

  When Yusuf had finished he blinked twice. “Is this… is this to be believed?” he asked.

  “The translation is correct,” answered Ibrahim carefully. “I’ve checked it myself. And we believe it to be sincere as well. After all, as you’ve seen from the photographs of the underground chamber, this man Kelonymus went to extraordinary lengths to honor these men. He wouldn’t have done it for a hoax.”

  “But it would have been madness,” frowned Yusuf. “Why would these men throw their lives away on such a venture?”

  “Because they believed that Alexander’s dying wish had been to be buried in Siwa,” answered Elena. “Ptolemy betrayed that wish when he started to build a tomb in Alexandria. You must remember, Alexander was a god to these people. They would have risked anything to carry out his orders.”

  “Please, you’re not asking me to believe that Alexander is buried in Siwa, Ms. Koloktronis,” sighed Yusuf. Ibrahim knew what was on his boss’s mind. In the early 1990s, another Greek archaeologist had announced to the world’s media that she had found the tomb of Alexander in Siwa Oasis. Her claim was universally rejected, but not before Siwa and Alexander had become something of a joke in the archaeological community.

  “No,” acknowledged Elena. “Alexander’s embalmed body was on display in Alexandria centuries after this inscription was made. No one’s denying that. However, surely it’s possible that they seized his body and set off towards Siwa, where they had a tomb ready and waiting.”

  Yusuf sat back in his chair and looked sternly at Elena. “So,” he remarked, “the true purpose for your presence at this meeting becomes clear. You’re not here out of concern for the proper excavation of this Alexandria find. Oh, no. You’re here because you believe that somewhere in Siwa there is a tomb appointed with—how does this … Alexander cipher of yours put it, again?—yes, with ‘goods fit for the Son of Ammon.’ And you want my permission to look for them, no doubt.”

  “Alexander was the most successful conqueror in history,” said Elena. “One of Egypt’s greatest pharaohs. Imagine what finding this tomb of his would mean for this country. Imagine what honors would befall the secretary general whose enlightened leadership made it possible. Your name would rightly be venerated along with the great patriots of this nation.”

  “Go on.”

  “And you have nothing to lose. I know the chances of finding anything are extremely thin. I know the resources of the Supreme Council are inexcusably tight. But something should be done. Something small. A low-level epigraphic survey of antiquities, say, conducted with the permission of the SCA. Just me and one colleague. Anything more substantial will only provoke rumors. You know what it is with Siwa and rumors.”

  Yusuf frowned. “Every hill in the Oasis has been searched and searched again,” he observed. “If this tomb does exist and has lain hidden for twenty-three centuries, do you truly expect to find it in a matter of weeks? Do you know how wide the Siwa Depression is?”

  “It won’t be easy,” admitted Elena. “But it has to be worth a try. Think of the alternative. When the contents of the Alexander cipher leak, every treasure hunter in the world will converge on Siwa. If we find the tomb first, we can preempt that, or at least announce that there’s nothing to it. Either would be preferable to a gold rush.”

  “There’ll be a gold rush only if word gets out,” pointed out Yusuf.

  “But it will get out,” insisted Elena. “We all know it will. That’s the nature of these things.”

  Yusuf nodded to himself. “Siwa is the territory of Dr. Sayed,” he said sourly, as though he rather resented his colleague. “And Dr. Sayed has his own ways. You’ll need his permission, too.”

  “Of course,” nodded Elena. “Apart from anything else, I understand he has an outstanding collection of reference materials. Perhaps you might speak to him yourself—ask him to give us access. I know, of course, that it will make no difference whatever to your decision, which will be taken solely for the greater benefit of Egypt, but you might perhaps let him know that our backers have set aside very significant fees for all our SCA consultants, including yourself, naturally.”

  “I cannot agree to an open-ended expedition,” said Yusuf. “Siwa may be a large oasis, but it is a small community. Whatever your cover story, people will eventually note what you are doing. Your presence will trigger the very result you seek to avoid.”

  “Six weeks,” suggested Elena. “That’s all we ask.”

  Yusuf rested his hands on his belly. He liked to have the last word on everything. “Two weeks,” he declared. “Two weeks from tomorrow. Then we’ll talk again, and I’ll decide whether to give you another fortnight or not.”

  NESSIM PACED BACK AND FORTH in his hotel room, willing his phone to ring, for one of his sentinels to spot Knox before he could drop out of sight once more. There had to be a good chance. The simple fact that Knox had broken cover to get his belongings back suggested he was after something, that he had a purpose and was prepared to take risks in its pursuit. Yet, for all that, there was something about Knox that made Nessim feel inadequate, almost fatalistic.

  He stopped in mid pace, daunted suddenly by the prospect of confessing another failure to Hassan. He needed to show he was doing something. He needed to demonstrate that he was active. He had kept the hunt largely in-house up till now, but the time for discretion had passed. He unzipped his money belt, checked his cash, and turned to Hosni, Ratib, and Sami. “Get on your phones,” he told them. “A thousand dollars to whoever finds Knox’s Jeep. Two if he’s in it.”

  Ratib pulled a face. “But everyone will know it was us,” he protested. “When Knox turns up dead, I mean.”

  “Do you have a better suggestion?” snapped Nessim. “Or perhaps you’d like to tell Hassan yourself this time why we haven’t found Knox yet.”

  Ratib dropped his gaze. “No.”

  Nessim sighed. The stress was getting to him. And Ratib had a point. “Okay,” he said. “Only people you trust. One in each town. And tell them not to blab, or they’ll be answering to Hassan themselves.”

  His men nodded and reached for their cell phones.

  BY THE TIME the Dragoumis Group’s Lear jet touched down in Thessalonike that night, Gaille had decided that she could get used to traveling like
this, despite the twinge of guilt she felt at all these carbon emissions for so whimsical a trip. White leather seats so comfortable they made her groan with pleasure, a window the size of a widescreen TV, a butler on hand to prepare meals and drinks, the copilot coming back to talk her through her preferred arrangements for flying back in the morning. An immigration officer came out to greet her with cloying politeness (“any friend of Mr. Dragoumis, Ms. Bonnard . . .”), and a chauffeur-driven blue Bentley that whisked her away up into the hills above Thessalonike just so she could sit back and admire the night sky.

  They reached a walled estate patrolled by guards. They were waved through, down to a whitewashed palace lit up like son et lumiere. And then, to cap it all, Dragoumis himself emerged from his front door to meet her, his hands clasped behind his back, a vivid birthmark near his left eye. After all she had imagined of him on her journey, it was a surprise and relief to her to see how short and slight he was. He hadn’t shaved; he looked rustic and very Greek. Just for a moment, she thought she would be able to handle him easily, that he was nothing to fear. Then she drew closer and realized she had been wrong.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  KNOX CUT CROSS-COUNTRY to get to Ras el-Sudr, his route taking him through Tanta, the largest town of the Delta. Something about Tanta niggled in his brain; someone had mentioned it to him recently, but he couldn’t think who. Then he remembered Gaille’s offhand remark about her Tanta concierge, and he pulled the Jeep to the side to think. He hadn’t given much thought to Elena’s Delta excavation; too much else had been going on. But maybe that had been a mistake. Especially now that Nicolas Dragoumis had appeared on the scene.

  It was no secret that Elena’s Macedonian Archaeological Foundation was sponsored by the Dragoumis Group. And the Dragoumises had no interest in Egypt, Knox knew—only in Macedonia. If they were financing an excavation in the Delta, therefore, they were after something Macedonian. And just maybe it was connected with that site they had just found in Alexandria. It certainly couldn’t hurt to find out more.

  He found a Tanta bar with a phone directory, then rang local hotels asking for Elena. He got a hit on his fifth attempt. “She not here,” the night clerk told him. “Alexandria.”

  “What about her team?”

  “Who you want to speak to?”

  Knox ended the call, jotted down the hotel’s address, and hurried back to his Jeep.

  PHILIP DRAGOUMIS LED GAILLE through arches and across polished mosaic floors to a drawing room with gorgeous oils and tapestries on the walls. “A drink,” he said. “Then we eat. Red wine? It’s from my estate.”

  “Thank you.” She looked around as he opened a bottle and poured two glasses. An oil portrait of a fierce-looking black-bearded man with a mess of scar tissue around his left eye had pride of place above the huge fireplace. A portrait of Philip II, father of Alexander the Great. Her eyes flickered back and forth between the picture and Dragoumis, and she realized with a slight shock that the portrait was intended to draw some kind of subliminal parallel between the two, implying that the birthmark around Dragoumis’s own left eye was some kind of stigmata, as though he were Philip reborn. “You don’t really believe in reincarnation, do you?” she asked.

  He laughed loudly and unaffectedly, pleased by her boldness. “There is a saying: ‘When a wise man does business with the Chinese, he speaks Mandarin.’ ”

  “And when he does business with the superstitious?” suggested Gaille.

  His smile broadened. He nodded at a second painting: a beautiful young dark woman in ragged peasant clothes. “My wife,” he said. “I painted her myself. From memory.” He gave a sharp little nod. “She’s buried outside. She loved the view from this hill. We used to walk up here. That is why I bought this land and built my home here.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “When I was a young man, I was a troublemaker. I used to go from village to village preaching the Macedonian cause, so the Athens secret police wanted to speak with me. You can imagine, it was not a desire I shared. When they couldn’t find me, they visited my wife instead and demanded she tell them where I was. She refused. They poured petrol on her stomach, breasts, and arms, but she told them nothing. Then they lit it. Still she wouldn’t talk. They poured petrol onto our baby son. Finally she talked. My wife was left with terrible burns, yet she could perhaps have survived with proper treatment, but I had no money for such treatment. My wife died because I had chosen to preach rather than to work, Ms. Bonnard. The day I buried her was the day I decided to stop playing at politics and become rich.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Gaille helplessly.

  Dragoumis grunted, as if to acknowledge the inadequacy of words. Then he said, “I knew your father.”

  “So your son told me. But I wasn’t that close to him, you know.”

  “Yes, I do know. I have always felt bad about that.”

  Gaille frowned. “Why should you feel bad about it?”

  Dragoumis sighed. “You were due to go to Mallawi with him, were you not?”

  “Yes.”

  “But then he postponed?”

  “He had urgent personal business.”

  “Yes,” agreed Dragoumis. “With me.”

  “No,” said Gaille. “With a young man called Daniel Knox.”

  Dragoumis made a vague gesture, as if to imply it came to the same thing. “Do you know much about Knox?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “His parents were archaeologists themselves. Macedonian specialists. So they often visited this part of the world. A charming couple, who also had a delightful daughter. They worked closely with Elena, you know. Ten years ago they went to visit one of her excavations in the mountains. Elena’s husband collected them from the airport. Unfortunately, on the drive up to the site . . .”

  Gaille looked at him numbly. “All of them?” she asked.

  Dragoumis nodded. “All of them.”

  “But… what’s that got to do with my father?”

  “It was an accident. A terrible accident. But not everyone believed this.”

  “You mean… murder? I don’t understand. Why would anyone want to kill Knox’s parents?”

  “Not Knox’s parents. Elena’s husband. Pavlos.”

  “But who would want to kill him?”

  Dragoumis smiled. “Me, Ms. Bonnard,” he said. “Me.”

  KNOX ARRIVED IN RAS EL-SUDR FIRST and loitered near the Beach Inn’s parking lot so he could watch out for Rick and then make sure he hadn’t been tailed. When he was satisfied, he went to meet him. “Good to see you, mate,” grinned Rick.

  “You, too.”

  “Interesting times, eh?” He nodded at a nearby bar. “You want a drink? You can tell me all.”

  “Sure.” They took a table in the shadows, where Knox filled him in on everything that had happened since he fled Sharm.

  “I don’t believe it,” said Rick. “That bastard Hassan had a noose put around your neck and attached it to a car? I’ll kill him.”

  “Actually,” said Knox, “I don’t think it was Hassan. Hassan wouldn’t have had the rope cut.”

  “Then who?”

  “Have I ever told you about what happened in Greece?”

  “You mean with your parents? You just told me there’d been a road accident. You never said there was a story to it.”

  “A winding road, an old car, a misty night in the mountains. The kind of tragedy that happens all the time, right? The only trouble was, the driver was a guy called Pavlos. The husband of that woman Elena I was telling you about. A journalist, very outspoken. A muckraker. He was running a campaign against a very powerful and rich family called the Dragoumises, demanding an inquiry into their businesses—that kind of thing.”

  “And you figured he was killed to shut him up?”

  “I did at the time,” nodded Knox.

  “So what did you do about it?”

  GAILLE LOOKED AT PHILIP DRAGOUMIS IN HORROR. “You murdered Pavlos?”

 
“No,” he assured her. “I swear to you on my wife’s grave that I had nothing to do with his death—or the deaths of Knox’s family. All I meant was that certain people believed I had the motive to do it.”

  “Why? What motive?”

  “You must understand something, Ms. Bonnard. I am a Macedonian patriot. This whole region used to be Macedonia, but then it was cut up by the Treaty of Bucharest and handed out to Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece. I have made it my life’s work to undo that gross injustice. But others, men like Pavlos, believe this region rightly belongs to Greece, and they try to stop me. Pavlos was skilled at insinuation. He wanted an inquiry into my life and businesses not because he thought me corrupt, but because he knew it would leave an indelible smear. When he died, the pressure for an inquiry died with him. So you can understand why people believed I was responsible. But I was not responsible, I assure you. I never even considered Pavlos my enemy, only my opponent, and there is a world of difference between the two. Even if I were a man of violence, which I am not, I would never have sanctioned it against Pavlos. And the truth is, I had no need.” He leaned closer. “Can I trust you never to tell Elena what I am about to reveal to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Pavlos had been indiscreet, and I had irrefutable evidence of this. The release of this information would have been … problematic for him. We had spoken together about it. I assure you, he was no longer a threat to me.”

  “So you say.”

  “Yes. So I say.” There was a trace of impatience in his manner. “Tell me something, Ms. Bonnard. You have been working closely with Elena Koloktronis these past three weeks. Do you really believe that she’d work for me if she thought me guilty of murdering her husband?”