Steve Berry - The Alexandria Link

He actually wanted her to respond, but she said nothing.

And her silence stung.

So he walked away.

OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND

10:30 AM

GEORGE HADDAD ENTERED BAINBRIDGE HALL. FOR THE PAST three years he’d been a frequent visitor, ever since he’d convinced himself that the answer to his dilemma lay within these walls.

The house was a masterpiece of marble pavings, Mortlake tapestries, and richly colored decorations. The grand staircase, with elaborately carved floral panels, dated from the time of Charles II. The plaster ceilings from the 1660s. The furnishings and paintings were all eighteenth and nineteenth century. Everything a showpiece of English country style.

But it was also much more.

A puzzle.

Just like the white arbor monument in the garden where members of the press were still gathered, listening to the so-called experts. Just like Thomas Bainbridge himself, the unknown English earl who’d lived in the latter part of the eighteenth century.

Haddad knew the family history.

Bainbridge had been born to the world of privilege and high expectations. His father had served as the squire of Oxfordshire. Though his position in society had been fixed by generational affluence and family tradition, Thomas Bainbridge shunned the traditional military service and turned his attention to academics-mainly history, languages, and archaeology. When his father died, he inherited the earldom and spent decades traveling the world, being one of the first Westerners to intimately explore Egypt, the Holy Land, and Arabia, documenting his experiences in a series of published journals.

He taught himself Old Hebrew, the language in which the Old Testament had originally been written. Quite an accomplishment considering that the dialect was mainly vocal and consonantal, and had disappeared from common usage around the sixth century before Christ. He wrote a book published in 1767 that challenged the known translations of the Old Testament, calling into question much of his age’s conventional wisdom, then spent the latter part of his life defending his theories, dying bitter and broken, the family fortune gone.

Haddad knew the text well, having studied every page in detail. He could relate to Bainbridge’s troubles. He, too, had challenged conventional wisdom with disastrous consequences.

He enjoyed visiting the house but, sadly, most of the original furnishings had been long ago lost to creditors, including Bainbridge’s impressive library. Only in the past fifty years had some of the furniture been found. The vast majority of the books remained missing, drifting from collectors, to vendors, to the trash, which seemed the fate of much of humanity’s recorded knowledge. Yet Haddad had been able to locate a few volumes, spending time rummaging through the myriad of rare-book shops that dotted London.

And on the Internet.

What an amazing treasure. What they could have done in Palestine sixty years ago with that instant information network.

Lately he’d thought a lot about 1948.

When he’d toted a rifle and killed Jews during the nakba. The arrogance of the current generation always amazed him, considering the sacrifices made by their predecessors. Eight hundred thousand Arabs were driven into exile. He’d been nineteen, fighting in the Palestinian resistance-one of its field leaders-but it had all been fruitless. The Zionists prevailed. The Arabs were defeated. Palestinians became outcasts.

But the memory remained.

Haddad had tried to forget. He truly wanted to forget. Killing, though, came with consequences. And for him it had been a lifetime of regret. He became an academician, abandoned violence, and converted to Christianity, but none of that rid him of the pain. He could still see the dead faces. Especially one. The man who called himself the Guardian.

You fight a war that is not necessary. Against an enemy that is misinformed.

Those words had been burned into his memory that day in April 1948, and their impact eventually changed him forever.

We’re keepers of knowledge. From the library.

That observation had charted the course of his life.

He kept strolling through the house, taking in the busts and paintings, the carvings, the grotesque gilding, and the enigmatic mottoes. Walking against a current of new arrivals, he eventually entered the drawing room, where all the antique gravity of a college library blended with a feminine grace and wit. He focused on the shelving, which had once displayed the varied learning of many ages. And the paintings, which recalled people who had privately shaped the course of history.

Thomas Bainbridge had been an invitee, just like Haddad’s father. Yet the Guardian had arrived in Palestine two weeks too late to pass on the invitation, and a bullet from Haddad’s gun had silenced the messenger.

He winced at the memory.

The impetuousness of youth.

Sixty years had passed, and he now viewed the world through more patient eyes. If only those same eyes had stared back at the Guardian in April 1948, he might have found what he sought sooner.

Or maybe not.

It seemed the invitation must be earned.

But how?

His gaze raked the room.

The answer was here.

WASHINGTON, DC

5:45 AM

STEPHANIE WATCHED AS LARRY DALEY COLLAPSED INTO ONE of the club chairs in Brent Green’s study. True to his word, the deputy national security adviser had arrived within half an hour.

“Nice place,” Daley said to Green.

“It’s home.”

“You’re always a man of few syllables, aren’t you?”

“Words, like friends, should be chosen with care.”

Daley’s amicable smile disappeared. “I was hoping we wouldn’t be at each other’s throats so soon.”

Stephanie was anxious. “Make this visit worth our while, like you said on the phone.”

Daley’s hands gripped the overstuffed armrests. “I’m hoping you two will be reasonable.”

“That all depends,” she said.

Daley ran a hand through his short gray hair. His good looks projected a boyish sincerity, one that could easily disarm, so she cautioned herself to stay focused.

“I assume you’re still not going to tell us what the link is?” she asked.

“Don’t really want to be indicted for violating the National Security Act.”

“Since when did breaking laws bother you?”

“Since now.”

“So what are you doing here?”

“How much do you know?” Daley asked. “And don’t tell me that you don’t know anything, because I’d be really disappointed in you both.”

Green repeated the little bit he’d already related about George Haddad.

Daley nodded. “The Israelis went nuts over Haddad. Then the Saudis entered the picture. That one shocked us. They usually don’t care about anything biblical or historical.”

“So I sent Malone into that quagmire five years ago blind?” she asked.

“Which is, I believe, in your job description.”

She recalled how the situation had deteriorated. “What about the bombing?”

“That was when the shit hit the fan.”

A car bomb had obliterated a Jerusalem café with Haddad and Malone inside.

“That blast was meant for Haddad,” Daley said. “Of course, since this was a blind mission, Malone didn’t know that. But he did manage to get the man out in one piece.”

“Lucky us,” Green noted with sarcasm.

“Don’t give me that crap. We didn’t kill anybody. The last thing we wanted was for Haddad to die.”

Her anger was rising. “You placed Malone’s life at risk.”

“He’s a pro. Goes with the territory.”

“I don’t send my agents on suicide missions.”