The Alexander Cipher. Will Adams
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barbed. He climbed it by a concrete post, dropped down the other side, the joints of his fingers raw from the thin mesh. He ran low between the pools of light and the ranks of parked cars. The place was deserted. Departing passengers were already in the terminal; arrivals had long-since driven off. He drove up to the booth, handed money to a sleepy attendant. The barrier lifted.
Blue police lights flashed away to his left as he pulled out onto the main road. He turned right, instead, heading towards Cairo. The lights shrank and then disappeared from his mirror. Police cars with flashing lights hurtled past on the other side of the highway. He found that he’d stopped breathing, had to make himself start.
Where the fuck was he going to go now? He couldn’t stay in Cairo. But he needed to avoid checkpoints too. That cut out Sinai, the Western Desert and the south. Alexandria, then. It was just three hours north, and of all Egypt’s cities, Knox liked it most. He had friends there too, so he could avoid hotels. But he was a fugitive; he couldn’t inflict himself on just anyone. He needed someone who’d believe in him, someone with strong nerves, who relished a little transgression from time to time, just to keep the blood pumping. Put like that, there was only one contender. Knox felt his spirits lifting for the first time in hours. He stamped down his foot and roared north.
I
‘Mais attends!’ yelled Augustin Pascal at whatever bastard was pounding at his door. ‘J’arrive! J’arrive!’ He clambered across the naked girl lying with her face down between his pillows. With that long, wavy, tawny hair, it looked like Sophia. He lifted her mane to make sure. Shit! Shit! He’d been excited for a week at the prospect of nailing her, and now he’d gone and wasted it while too drunk to remember.
A terrible thing, growing old.
The pounding on the door began again, resonating with the demolition works inside his skull. He checked his alarm clock. Five thirty! Five fucking thirty! But this was unbelievable! ‘Mais attends!’ he yelled again.
He kept emergency bottles of water and pure oxygen on his bedside table. He alternated long swallows from the one with deep breaths from the other, until he felt able to stand without keeling over. He wrapped a ragged towel around his waist, lit a cigarette, went to his front door. Knox was standing there.
‘The fuck do you want?’ demanded Augustin. ‘You know what fucking time this is?’
‘I’m in trouble,’ said Knox simply. ‘I need help.’
II
Ibrahim felt in tremendous spirits as he drove through Alexandria. The sun had only just risen, but he’d been too excited to stay in bed. He’d had a dream during the night. No. That wasn’t quite right. He’d been lying there half awake, waiting for his alarm to sound, when he’d suddenly been overwhelmed by a sense of exquisite and intense wellbeing. He couldn’t shake off the idea that he was on the verge of something momentous.
He pulled up outside Mohammed’s address. It was a wretched-looking place, a tall apartment block with pockmarked and discoloured walls, its front doors broken and hanging loose, intestinal wires spilling out of the intercom. Mohammed was already waiting in the lobby. His eyes lit up when he saw Ibrahim’s Mercedes and he walked proudly and slowly across, turning around as he did so, like an actor or a sportsman milking their time upon the stage, wanting as many of his friends and neighbours as possible to see him climb in.
‘Good morning,’ said Ibrahim.
‘We travel in style, then,’ said Mohammed, pushing back the passenger seat as far as it would go to accommodate his legs, yet still struggling to fit.
‘Yes.’
‘My wife’s very excited,’ said the big man. ‘She’s convinced we have found Alexander.’ And he glanced slyly at Ibrahim to gauge his reaction.
‘I doubt it, I’m afraid,’ said Ibrahim. ‘Alexander was buried in a huge mausoleum.’
‘And this isn’t part of it?’
Ibrahim shrugged. ‘It’s very unlikely. It wasn’t just Alexander, you see. The Ptolemies were buried there too.’ He smiled across at Mohammed. ‘They wanted Alexander’s glory to rub off on them. It didn’t work all that well, though. When the Roman Emperor Augustus made his pilgrimage to Alexander’s tomb, the priests asked him if he’d like to see the bodies of the Ptolemies too. You know what he replied?’
‘What?’
‘That he’d come to see a king, not corpses.’
Mohammed laughed loudly. Alexandrians had always enjoyed watching the powerful get taken down a peg or two. Ibrahim was so pleased that he ventured another anecdote. ‘You know Pompey’s Pillar?’
‘Of course. I can see it from my site.’
‘Did you know it had nothing to do with Pompey? No. It was erected in honour of the Emperor Diocletian after he led an expeditionary force here to quash an uprising. He was so angry with the Alexandrians that he vowed to revenge himself upon them until his horse was knee-deep in blood. Guess what happened.’
‘I can’t think.’
‘His horse stumbled and grazed its knees, so that they became covered in blood. Diocletian took this as a sign, and spared the city. His officials put up his pillar and statue in remembrance. But do you know what the Alexandrians did?’
‘No.’
‘They built a statue too. But not to Diocletian. To his horse.’
Mohammed guffawed and slapped his knee. ‘To his horse! I like that!’
They were drawing closer to the city centre. ‘Which way?’ asked Ibrahim.
‘Left,’ said Mohammed. ‘Then left again.’ They paused for a tram. ‘So where was Alexander’s tomb?’ he asked.
‘No one knows for sure. Ancient Alexandria suffered terribly from fires, riots, wars and earthquakes. There was a catastrophic tsunami too. First it sucked away the water from the harbours so that the citizens went out to pick up the fish and valuables just lying there. Then the wave struck. They never stood a chance.’
Mohammed shook his head in wonder. ‘I never heard.’
‘No. Anyway, the city fell into ruin and all the great sites became lost, even Alexander’s mausoleum. And we’ve never found it since, though we’ve tried, believe me.’ Countless excavators had tried, including Heinrich Schliemann, fresh from his triumphs at Troy and Mycenae. All had come up empty-handed.
‘You must have some idea.’
‘Our sources agree that it was on the north-east of the ancient crossroads,’ said Ibrahim. ‘The trouble is, we’re not sure where that was. All these new buildings, you see. Two hundred years ago, yes. A thousand years ago, easy. But now …’
Mohammed looked slyly at Ibrahim. ‘People say Alexander is buried beneath the Mosque of the Prophet Daniel. They say he’s in a golden casket.’
‘They’re wrong, I’m afraid.’
‘Then why do they say this?’
Ibrahim was quiet for a moment, collecting his thoughts. ‘You know that Alexander appears in the Qu’ran?’ he asked. ‘Yes, as the Prophet Zulkarnein, the two-horned one. Leo the African, a sixteenth-century Arab writer, talked of pious Muslims making pilgrimages to his tomb, and he said it was near the church of St Mark, like the Mosque of the Prophet Daniel. And Arab legends speak of a Prophet Daniel who conquered all Asia, founded Alexandria, and was buried here in a golden coffin. Who else could that be but Alexander? You can certainly see why people might