Steve Berry: The Alexandria Link

MALONE STARED ACROSS THE ROCKY ELEVATION AT KRONBORG Slot. Once its cannons were aimed at foreign ships that traversed the narrow straits to and from the Baltic, the collected tolls swelling the Danish treasury. Now the creamy beige walls stood somber against a clear azure sky. Not a fortress any longer, merely a Nordic renaissance building alive with octagonal towers, pointed spires, and green copper roofs more reminiscent of Holland than Denmark. Which was understandable, Malone knew, since a sixteenth-century Dutchman had been instrumental in the castle’s design. He liked the location. Public locales could be the best spots in which to be invisible. He’d used many during his years with the Billet.

The drive north from Christiangade had taken only fifteen minutes. Thorvaldsen’s estate sat halfway between Copenhagen and Helsingør, the busy port town that stood adjacent to the slot. Malone had visited both Kronborg and Helsingør, wandering the nearby beaches in search of amber-a relaxing way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Today’s visit was different. He was on edge. Ready for a fight.

“What are we waiting for?” Pam asked, her face set like a mask.

He’d been forced to bring her. She’d absolutely insisted, threatening to make more trouble if he left her behind. He could certainly understand her unwillingness to simply wait with Thorvaldsen. Tension and monotony made for a volatile mixture.

“Our man said eleven,” he noted.

“We’ve wasted enough time.”

“Nothing we’ve done has been a waste of time.”

After hanging up with Stephanie, he’d managed a few hours’ sleep. He would do Gary no good half awake. He’d also changed clothes with the spares from his rucksack, Pam’s cleaned by Jesper. They’d eaten a little breakfast.

So he was ready.

He checked his watch: 10:20 AM.

Cars were starting to fill the parking lots. Soon buses would arrive. Everyone wanted to see Hamlet’s castle.

He couldn’t have cared less.

“Let’s go.”

“THE LINK IS A PERSON,” GREEN SAID. “HIS NAME IS GEORGE HADDAD. A Palestinian biblical scholar.”

Stephanie knew the name. Haddad was personally acquainted with Malone and, five years ago, had specifically asked for Malone’s assistance.

“What’s worth the life of Gary Malone?”

“The lost Library of Alexandria.”

“You can’t be serious.”

Green nodded. “Haddad thought he’d located it.”

“How could that have any relevance today?”

“Actually, it could be quite relevant. That library was the greatest concentration of knowledge on the planet. It stood for six hundred years until the middle of the seventh century, when the Muslims finally took control of Alexandria and purged everything contrary to Islam. Half a million scrolls, codices, maps-you name it, the library stored a copy. And to this day? No one has ever found a single shred of it.”

“But Haddad did?”

“So he implied. He was working on a biblical theory. What that was, I don’t know, but the proof of his theory was supposedly contained within the lost library.”

“How would he know that?”

“Again, I don’t know, Stephanie. But five years ago, when our people in the West Bank, the Sinai, and Jerusalem made some innocent requests for visas, access to archives, archaeological digging, the Israelis went berserk. That’s when Haddad asked Malone to help.”

“On a blind mission, which I didn’t like.”

Blind meaning that Malone was told to protect Haddad, but not to ask any questions. She recalled that Malone hadn’t liked the condition, either.

“Haddad,” Green said, “only trusted Malone. Which was why Cotton eventually hid him away and is the only one today who knows Haddad’s whereabouts. Apparently the administration didn’t seem to mind hiding Haddad, so long as they controlled the route to him.”

“For what?”

Green shook his head. “Makes little sense. There’s a hint, though, as to what might be at stake.”

She was listening.

“In one of the reports I saw, written in the margin was Genesis 13:14-17. You know it?”

“I’m not that good with my Bible.”

“The Lord said to Abram, lift up now your eyes and look from the place where you are northward and southward and eastward and westward, for all the land which you see, to you I will give it, and to your seed forever.”

That she knew. A covenant that, for eons, had been the Jews’ biblical claim to the Holy Land.

“Abram removed his tent and lived on the plain of Mamre and built there an altar to the Lord,” Green said. “Mamre is Hebron-today the West Bank-the land God gave to the Jews. Abram became Abraham. And that single biblical passage goes to the core of all Mideast disagreements.”

That she knew, too. The conflict in the Middle East, between Jews and Arabs, was not a political battle, as many perceived. Instead it was a never-ending contest over the Word of God.

“And there’s one other interesting fact,” Green said. “Shortly after Malone hid Haddad away, the Saudis sent bulldozers into west Arabia and obliterated whole towns. The destruction went on for three weeks. People were relocated. Buildings leveled. Not a remnant remained of those towns. Of course that’s a closed part of the country, so there was no press coverage, no attention drawn to it.”

“Why would they do that? Seems extreme, even for the Saudis.”

“No one ever came up with a good explanation. But they went about it quite deliberately.”

“We need to know more, Brent. Cotton needs to know. He has a decision to make.”

“I checked with the national security adviser an hour ago. Amazingly, he knows less about this than I do. He’s heard of the link, but suggested I talk with someone else.”

She knew. “Larry Daley.”

Lawrence Daley served as the deputy national security adviser, close to the president and vice president. Daley never appeared on the Sunday-morning talk-show circuit. Nor was he seen on CNN or Fox News. He was a behind-the-scenes power broker. A conduit between the upper echelons of the White House and the rest of the political world.

But there was a problem.

“I don’t trust that man,” she said.

Green seemed to catch what else her tone suggested but said nothing, staring at her with penetrating gray eyes.

“We have no control over Malone,” she made clear. “He’s going to do what he has to. And right now he’s running on anger.”

“Cotton’s a pro.”

“It’s different when it’s one of your own at risk.” She spoke from experience, having recently wrestled with ghosts of her own past.

“He’s the only one who knows where George Haddad is,” Green said. “He holds all the cards.”

“Which is precisely why they’re squeezing him.”

Green kept his gaze locked on her.

She knew her quandary was certainly being transmitted through suspicion she could not remove from her eyes.

“Tell me, Stephanie, why don’t you trust me?”

OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND

9:00 AM

GEORGE HADDAD STOOD WITH THE CROWD AND LISTENED TO the experts, knowing they were wrong. The event was nothing more than a way to garner media attention for both the Thomas Bainbridge Museum and the little-praised cryptanalysts of Bletchley Park. True, those anonymous men and women had labored in total secrecy during the Second World War, eventually deciphering the German Enigma code and hastening an end to the war. But unfortunately their story wasn’t fully told until most of them were either dead or too old to care. Haddad could understand their frustration. He, too, was old, nearing eighty, and an academician. He, too, once labored in secrecy.