TWO

      I

       A hotel construction site, Alexandria

      Mohammed el-Dahab kept a framed photograph of his daughter, Layla, on his desk. It had been taken two years ago, just before she’d fallen sick. He’d developed the habit, while he worked, of glancing at it every few moments. Sometimes it gladdened him to see her face. Mostly, as this time, his heart sank. He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger, muttered a short but heartfelt prayer. He prayed for her like this perhaps thirty times each day, as well as during his formal rek’ahs. His prayers had done little good so far, but faith was like that. Without testing it was nothing.

      There were incongruous noises outside; shouting, jubilant laughing. He glanced irritably through his office window. Work on the building site had come to a halt. His crew were congregating in a corner, Ahmed was dancing like a dervish at a moulid. Mohammed hurried out angrily. Allah had cursed him with the laziest crew in all Egypt. Any excuse! He scowled to put himself into the right frame of mind to deliver a proper tongue-lashing, but when he saw what had caused the commotion, he forgot all ideas of that. The mechanical digger had ripped a great gaping hole in the ground, exposing a spiral staircase that wound around a deep, black shaft, still thick with settling dust. It looked yellow, dark, old; old as the city itself.

      Mohammed and his men all gazed at each other with the same thought. Who knows how long this has lain hidden? Who can guess what riches might lie at its base? Alexandria was not only one of the great cities of antiquity, it boasted a lost treasure of world renown. Was there a man among them who hadn’t dreamed of discovering the golden sarcophagus of the city’s founder, Iskandar al-Akbar, Alexander the Great himself? Young boys dug holes in public gardens; women confided in their friends the strange echoes they heard when they tapped the walls of their cellars; robbers broke into ancient cisterns and the forbidden cellars of temples and mosques. But if it was anywhere, it was here, right in the heart of the city’s ancient Royal Quarter. Mohammed was not given to idle dreams, but gazing down into this deep shaft, his gut clenched tight as a fist.

       Could this be his miracle at last?

      He beckoned for Fahd’s flashlight, lowered his left foot slowly onto the top step. He was a big man, Mohammed, and his heart was in his mouth as he rested his considerable weight upon the rutted stone, but it bore him without protest. He tested more steps, his back turned to the rough limestone of the outer wall. The inner wall that separated the spiral staircase from the great central shaft was built of crumbled bricks; many had fallen away, leaving a black jigsaw. Mohammed tossed a pebble through a gap, waited with held breath until it clattered four heartbeats later at the foot. The spiral closed above him and he saw that the entire staircase was carved from the rock, a sculpture rather than a construction! It gave him confidence. He continued his descent, around and around. The spiral at last straightened out, doubled back through an arched portal into a large, circular room, calf-deep in sand, rock and fallen bricks. At the centre, four sturdy pillars surrounded the open base of the central shaft. The thin, rebounded daylight was thick with chalky motes swirling slow as planets, clotting like salve on his lips, tickling his throat.

      It was cool down here, gloriously quiet after the incessant building site din. Including the stairwell from which he’d just emerged, four arched doorways led off this rotunda, one for each point of the compass. Curved benches with oyster-shell hoods were recessed into limestone walls sumptuously carved with prancing gods, hissing medusas, rampant bulls, soaring birds, bursting flowers and drapes of ivy. A dark, downward-sloping corridor showed through the first doorway, humped with rubble and dust. Mohammed swallowed with distaste and premonition as he tore aside its cobweb veil. A low side-passage led off the winding corridor into a large, tall chamber, walls pocked by columns of square-mouthed openings. A catacomb. He went to the left-hand wall, lit up a dusty yellow skull, tipped the dome aside with a finger. A small, blackened coin fell from its jaw. He picked it up, examined it, set it back down. He shone his torch within. At the far end, a high heap of skulls and bones had been pushed back to make room for later occupants. He grimaced at the sight, retreated to the main corridor to continue his survey. He passed four more burial chambers before descending a flight of twelve steps, then another five before he reached the top of another flight of steps and the water table.

      He returned to the rotunda. Ahmed, Husni and Fahd had come down too, were now on their hands and knees, scrabbling through the rubble. He was puzzled that they hadn’t explored further until he realised it was the only spot with natural light, and he’d taken their one torch.

      ‘What is this place?’ asked Ahmed. ‘What have I found?’

      ‘A necropolis,’ answered Mohammed flatly. ‘A city of the dead.’

      Obscurely angered by their presence, he walked through a second portal into a large, tall, closed chamber lined with limestone blocks. A banqueting hall, perhaps, where mourners would have come each year to commemorate their loved ones. A short flight of steps led down through the final portal into a small forecourt. Upon a raised step, a pair of tall, blackened, studded metal doors with hexagonal handles were set into a white-marble wall. Mohammed pulled the left-hand door. It opened with a grinding screech. He squeezed through into a broad, high, empty antechamber. Plaster had fallen away in places from the walls to reveal rough limestone beneath. Two lines of Greek characters were carved into the lintel above the arched doorway in the facing wall; they meant nothing to Mohammed. He crossed a high step into a second, main chamber, of similar width and height, but twice as deep. A knee-high plinth stood in its centre, giving the strong impression that something important like a sarcophagus had once lain upon it. If so, it had long since vanished.

      A dull bronze button shield was pinned to the wall beside the doorway. Ahmed tried to wrest it free.

      ‘Stop!’ cried Mohammed. ‘Are you mad? Will you truly risk ten years in Damanhur for an old shield and a handful of broken pots?’

      ‘No one knows of this but us,’ retorted Ahmed. ‘Who can tell what treasures are here? Enough for us all.’

      ‘This place was looted centuries ago.’

      ‘But not of everything,’ pointed out Fahd. ‘Tourists will pay mad prices for all kinds of ancient rubbish. My cousin has a stall near al-Gomhurriya. He knows the value of such things. If we bring him down—’

      ‘Listen