The Alexander Cipher

by Will Adams

  He stopped trying to force it. Experience had taught him that answers often appeared when he focused on something else. Their guard lit another cigarette, the flame of his lighter glowing orange off all the gold, and Knox found himself staring at Alexander’s coffin. What an end for such a man, a pawn in the never-ending game of politics and personal advancement. But there was a certain appropriateness, too. Alexander’s life itself had ended in anticlimax in Babylon, triggered perhaps by the horrors of the Gedrosian Desert, into which he had led forty thousand men, and out of which he had brought just fifteen thousand. Death had been in the air for months. An elderly Indian philosopher called Calanus had joined Alexander on his campaigns but had fallen sick. Unwilling to rot away, he burned himself alive instead, assuring Alexander that they would meet again soon. In a drinking contest to celebrate Calanus’s life, forty-one Macedonians had died, including the winner. Then Alexander’s closest friend, Hephaiston, had died, too—perhaps the greatest blow of all. But there was also a lesser-known incident, when Alexander visited the tomb of Cyrus the Great at Pasargadae. Cyrus had been the greatest conqueror and emperor before Alexander, a semidivine figure worshipped throughout Persia. Yet Alexander discovered his bones lying scattered on the floor by bandits who had tried unsuccessfully to steal his golden sarcophagus. The inscription on Cyrus’s tomb read, “O man, whoever you are and from wherever you may come—for I know that you will come—I am Cyrus, who won the Persians their empire. Therefore, do not begrudge me this little earth which covers my body.” But his plea had gone unheard.

  They said that when Alexander was lying on his deathbed in Babylon, aware his end was upon him, he tried to drag his failing body down to the river that ran by the palace, so that he would be swept away by the waters, and the world might believe him taken up to his rightful place among the gods. But maybe he had also sought to deny his successors the chance to treat his mortal remains with the disrespect they had shown Cyrus’s. So maybe that was the fate Alexander had wanted for his body: not Siwa, not Alexandria, not Macedonia, but the oblivion of water.

  The oblivion of water. Yes. And finally, the germ of an idea came to Knox.

  It seemed forever before the truck stopped next. The back of the container shrieked as it was opened. Knox leaned his head back against the steel wall, fear tickling his chest like the beads of a rosary. Stars lay low on the horizon. The day was gone. Perhaps his last. Nicolas climbed up inside, one side of his hair spiky, as though he had napped against the window. He pointed the Walther at Knox. “We’re in Suez,” he said as Eneas untied Knox’s bonds and pulled the gag from his mouth. Knox clenched and unclenched his hands to get the circulation back, then stood gingerly, grimacing at the pain in his thigh.

  Nicolas gestured for Knox to go to the mouth of the container, but Knox ignored him. He picked up the guard’s water bottle and found a few mouthfuls left. He removed Gaille’s gag, held the bottle to her lips, tipped it up for her until it was empty, then kissed her on her crown. “I’ll do my best,” he promised her.

  “I know you will.”

  “Move,” said Nicolas, jabbing him with the Walther’s muzzle.

  Knox hobbled to the end of the container, making more of his injury than it really warranted, hoping to convince Nicolas that he was badly hurt. He helped himself gingerly down onto tarmac, giving a little cry of pain as he landed, then hopping a couple of times on his good leg. They were in the corner of a huge empty parking lot that stank of stale fumes and scorched rubber. Arabic music drifted from a distant petrol station. Over a wall of trees, the sky glowed orange.

  “This is how it’s going to work,” said Nicolas. “You and Leonidas will go to see al-Assyuti. You’ll negotiate our safe passage back to Greece. When Leonidas is satisfied, he’ll call me and—”

  “Fuck that,” said Knox. “I do nothing until Gaille is safe.”

  Nicolas gave a tight smile. “When Leonidas is satisfied, he’ll call me, and both you and the girl can go free.”

  “Forget it. Let Gaille go now, and I’ll do my best for you. You have my word.”

  Nicolas sighed. “The girl’s our leverage. You can’t expect us to release her.”

  “And Hassan’s my leverage,” replied Knox. “I’m not going to deal with him for you until the girl’s safe.”

  A siren wailed out on the main road. Flashing blue and red lights. They all turned as casually as they could, competing to show the least alarm. It was only an ambulance. They waited until it was out of sight.

  “We keep the girl,” said Nicolas. “That’s not up for discussion.”

  Knox shrugged. “Then how about this,” he suggested. “I go see Hassan, like you want. And I take your man with me. But Gaille comes, too.”

  Nicolas snorted. “What kind of fool do you take me for?”

  “You want to get out of Egypt, don’t you? All I want is this over and done with. We’ll all go in together, if you don’t trust me.”

  “Sure!” mocked Nicolas. “Straight into your trap.”

  “What trap? How on earth could I have arranged a trap? Besides, you’re going to have to entrust yourself to al-Assyuti at some point.”

  Nicolas glared at him for a few moments, trying to read what he was up to. But then he shook his head and beckoned for Leonidas and Bastiaan to come with him. The three of them walked off a few paces, conferring urgently but quietly. When they were done, Nicolas came back. “We’ll all go in together,” he said, as though it had been his idea. “But the girl will stay in the container with Eneas.” He held up his cell phone. “Try anything, and if I even sniff a trap, it’ll be the end of her. Understand?”

  Knox looked into his eyes. The devil and the deep blue sea, rocks and hard places, Scylla and Charybdis. Hurling nitro at glycerine in hopes of crawling out of the resulting crater wasn’t much of a strategy, but he had no alternative. “Yes,” he said.

  Nicolas gestured at the nearer SUV. “Good. Then, come with me.”

  “If Gaille’s in the truck, I’m in the truck.”

  “Very well,” scowled Nicolas. “We’ll ride up front with Bastiaan.”

  ONCOMING HEADLIGHTS spiked into Knox’s eyes as he sat between the two Greeks in the container truck’s high cab. Adrenaline added luster to the ink-blue night sky, and his mind felt almost unnaturally sharp. Bastiaan drove anxiously, grinding the gears, muttering and cursing, uncomfortable, perhaps, with such a heavy load and—no doubt—with the situation he found himself in. Nicolas kept the muzzle of his Walther pressed unnecessarily hard into Knox’s ribs while giving Bastiaan directions at the same time.

  They turned off the main road into an industrial park of low warehouses and cracked concrete. There was no other traffic. All the offices were closed. Every twenty meters or so, streetlights made yellow pools in the sea of black. A line of tall cranes marked the waterfront. A series of PRIVATE: KEEP OUT signs bearing the logo of Al-Assyuti Trading ran along a high chain-link fence. Bastiaan checked his side mirrors and slowed as they neared the entrance. The brakes began to sing, so he released them. He turned to make the approach, then pulled up at a wooden barrier and lowered his window to attract the attention of the elderly security guard playing checkers against himself in a glass-walled booth, watched by a Doberman on a leash. The old man sighed, hobbled across, squinted up at Bastiaan, and asked in Arabic what he wanted. Bastiaan shrugged and looked at Knox and Nicolas for assistance.

  “I’m Daniel Knox,” said Knox. “Mr. al-Assyuti is expecting me.”

  “All of you?” asked the man.

  “Yes.”

  A ship’s horn sounded in the distance. The guard shrugged and shook his head, then returned to his booth and made a call. With the window open, cool night air flooded in, bringing the smells of diesel, salt, and rotting fish. A security camera whirred and focused; then the barrier lifted. Bastiaan drove on through, struggling to pick up speed. The office buildings were at the far end of the terminal. Stacks of colored containers were everywhere, like a giganti
c set of child’s building blocks. There was no one in sight, no laborers, no forklift drivers, no truckers, no crane operators. Emptiness and silence. The four-by-fours fanned out like wingmen on either side of the truck. A huge ship lumbered along the canal, the lights of its bridge and deck doubling in the water, and Knox had a disembodied yet overpowering sensation that the past decade of his life was now reaching its climax. The deaths of his parents and his sister, his conflict with the Dragoumises, his years with Richard, the quest for Alexander. And Gaille, too—Gaille most of all.

  As if reading his mind, Nicolas punched a number into his cell phone. A moment later, Knox heard it ringing in the container behind them. When Eneas answered, Nicolas held it up for Knox to see. “I’ll do it,” he warned. “I’ll have her killed if you try anything. I swear I will.”

  Something about his choice of words made Knox frown. A memory of Elena came unexpectedly to his mind—of her standing before Dragoumis in the moment before she shot him, and the words she had used to explain herself. “Elena didn’t kill Pavlos,” he muttered. “She had him killed. That’s what she told your father.”

  Nicolas scowled. “So?”

  “Elena was an archaeologist, not a mafia wife. How would she have someone killed?”

  “How the fuck should I know?” But there was an edge of anxiety in Nicolas’s voice.

  “How long has Costis worked for you?” demanded Knox, certain he was onto something.

  “Shut up!”

  “I bet he was working for you back then, wasn’t he? Did Elena know him?”

  “Where do you get this bullshit?” protested Nicolas shrilly.

  “Elena went to Costis,” asserted Knox. “She hired him to kill Pavlos.”

  “Stop this!”

  “And that’s why Elena shot him. Not because he was standing next to your father, but because he was the one who actually arranged the crash.”

  “I said stop it!”

  “And Costis was on your payroll.”

  “I’m telling you, this is your last warning.”

  “He would never have accepted a job like that without clearing it with you first.”

  Nicolas smacked Knox on the head with the barrel of the Walther. “I warned you!” he yelled.

  “Did you know my family would be in that car?” demanded Knox.

  “For fuck’s sake! Shut up, will you!”

  “Did you know my sister would be in it?”

  “Just fucking shut up!”

  “She was sixteen years old,” said Knox. “She was sixteen fucking years old.”

  “This is war!” shrieked Nicolas. “Don’t you understand? War! Sacrifices have to be made.”

  There was a moment of shocked silence, as though neither man could quite believe the confession. Nicolas pointed the Walther at Knox’s brow, his hand trembling with shame and fear, his finger on the trigger, ready to murder him merely to avoid his reproach. But then the truck’s brakes began to sing again as Bastiaan pulled up outside the office building, and a man pushed through the darkened double doors ahead, letting them swing shut behind him.

  “Who’s that?” muttered Nicolas. “Is that Hassan?”

  Knox shook his head. “Nessim.”

  “Nessim?”

  “Hassan’s head of security.”

  “Security?” Nicolas’s voice went flat, deadened by presentiment.

  Nessim waited until all the vehicles had come to a halt. Then he gave a signal, and all around them, on the roofs of containers, men armed with automatic weapons stood up, aiming down, poised to fire. Sash windows were raised in all the offices, and more gun barrels slithered out. “You’re completely surrounded,” shouted Nessim, hands cupped around his mouth. “Turn off your engines. Put away your weapons. Place your hands on your heads. Open your doors slowly. Then come out one by one. No one needs to die.”

  Nicolas glared at Knox with utter loathing. He raised his cell phone. “It’s a trap,” he snarled. “Kill the—”

  Knox smashed the phone from Nicolas’s hand before he could finish his command, but Nicolas still had the Walther, and he turned it on Knox as he pulled the trigger. Knox flung back his head so that the bullet only scorched his cheek before shattering the driver’s-side window. It was like a starter’s pistol, setting everyone off. Bursts of gunfire flashed orange from the SUV to their left. Nessim flung himself down. A countering firestorm erupted from on top of the containers and the office windows, turning the vehicle instantly into a sieve, bullets clanging and whistling and shrieking through the metal and off the asphalt. Knox grabbed Nicolas’s wrist and twisted it until he dropped the Walther, while Bastiaan crunched the truck into reverse, gunning the engine in a desperate effort to pick up speed. There was yelling all around, cries of pain, people running, constant gunfire, but somehow the truck remained unscathed. The second four-by-four turned in a circle, automatic weapons blazing from its window. The firestorm turned its wrath onto the four-by-four, glass and metal puncturing and shattering. A back door opened, and a man jumped out. He ran five paces, firing blindly behind him before being cut down by a barrage of bullets.

  The truck was finally picking up speed. Nicolas and Knox fought for the Walther as it slid around the floor beneath the cab’s seats. A single bullet put a cobweb in the windshield, and Bastiaan grunted and was thrown back, a small hole in the front of his forehead. Then he slumped forward, revealing a great red crater in the back of his skull. They began at once to lose speed. Nicolas seized the Walther and turned it on Knox, but Knox butted him on the bridge of the nose, then grabbed his wrist and slammed it repeatedly against the dashboard until he dropped the gun. Knox pushed Bastiaan’s body aside and reached his foot across to hit the gas, causing them to accelerate once more. He wrenched the steering wheel around, reversing them toward the canal. Nicolas picked up the Walther again and aimed it at Knox just as the rear wheels dropped off the jetty’s edge, and the undercarriage scraped and screeched on the canal wall. The weight of gold in the container used the jetty’s edge as a fulcrum to hurl the cab into the air. Nicolas shrieked as they were flung upright, then plunged down into the water. The truck shuddered as it hit, then again as gravity threw Alexander’s golden coffin and lid like twin battering rams into the rear doors, tearing them off their hinges, then spilling out into the canal, plunging down through the water.

  The truck bobbed twice, then flopped onto its belly. Without the golden coffin weighing it down, there was enough trapped air to keep it afloat for now. Nicolas tried to wrest open the passenger door to get out, but the weight of water wouldn’t allow it. He rolled down the window instead, letting the canal gush in, frothing silver. He tried to climb out, but Knox grabbed his ankle and rolled the window back up, pinning his waist. The cab tipped onto its side, trapping Nicolas underwater. He kicked and kicked in an effort to break free, but Knox, his own head still above water, hardened his heart by reminding himself of his sister, his parents, and Rick. It seemed an age before Nicolas finally went still, then Knox climbed out the other window, keeping the container between himself and the gunmen now lining the jetty. His eyes were soon on fire from the polluted water, so that he had to feel his way around, but when he opened them in a blurry squint, he was sure for a moment that he could see the twin eye sockets of a skull staring back at him before it fell on its side, releasing bubbles like a dying breath, and swirling away down into the deeps.

  He shook his head to clear it. Let the dead bury the dead. He had Gaille to save. The container’s rear doors had been ripped off, so he was able to pull himself inside. The heavy steel box was already two-thirds underwater and filling fast. Everything had tipped out during the plunge—everything but Gaille, saved by her rope cuffs around the handrail, as he had prayed she would be. But the water was already up to her throat, and she had her head tilted back, straining upward for air. Knox ducked underwater to find and then untie her bonds, but the wet knots had pulled tight, and the water level was rising all the time, over her chin now, her mout
h, her nostrils. He kept on at the rope until he felt at last a little give in it, enough to work in a nail and then a fingertip, and suddenly the knots were loose. Gaille slipped her wrists free, and they both turned and swam for the mouth of the container, emerging from it together, gasping for breath, turning around to watch it vanish underwater with a final belch of released air.

  A line of men stood along the waterfront, rifles raised and aimed. Nessim, standing out front, pointed them to a flight of steps that led up out of the water. The fight that had kept Knox going finally deserted him. He knew that it was all up for himself, and all he could hope for now was to give Gaille a chance. He swam tiredly across, then helped her out by her elbow. She took his hand. He tried to pull free, to put distance between them, but she realized what he was up to, and refused to let go. They climbed the steps silently together, still holding hands, giving each other courage.

  “Follow me,” ordered Nessim.

  Knox’s leg had started bleeding again. It pulsed with pain, so that his limp was no longer an act. Hassan’s men were pulling bodies out of the SUVs. A rear door fell open, and Vasileios’s head flopped out, his Kalashnikov rattling onto the concourse. Weapons immediately turned toward the noise, safety catches off. Then they realized there was no danger, and someone cracked a joke and everybody laughed—relief from the nervous tension of combat. Knox’s sodden clothes grew increasingly chilled. He put his arm around Gaille, squeezed her shoulder, kissed her temple. She smiled bravely at him. The polluted water burned tears from his eyes, which ran freely down his cheeks. Wiping them away, he kept thinking about the moment Nicolas had shuddered and died, the door between life and death, where they themselves were now standing. Despite his fear, he had no urge to run. It was out of his hands; the jury had retired. Nessim showed them into a drab office with a huge stuffed fish in a glass case, and tattered charts of freshwater and marine species on the wall. He left for a moment, returned with two dirty hand towels, and tossed them one each. They wiped dry their faces and arms. Knox sat down and clamped his towel over his leg. “What happens now?” he asked.