Will Adams - The Alexander Cipher

"Yes, sir. I understand entirely."

It was Gaille's first visit to Alexandria, and it didn't make much of a first impression, with traffic barely moving along the Corniche, the city's famous seafront. The masts of fishing boats and yachts in the Eastern Harbor jangled in a light breeze that brought with it a faint acidic tang. She rested her head back, shielding her eyes from the early morning sun as it flickered between tall, rectangular, sun-bleached hotels, apartment blocks, and offices, all pocked with satellite dishes. The place was coming to life like a gigantic yawn. Alexandria had always been the late riser of Egyptian cities. Shops were raising steel shutters, lowering canopies. Groups of portly men sipped coffees at pastry cafes and watched benignly as ragged boys and girls wended through the traffic selling packs of napkins and cigarettes. The alleys leading away from the harbor front were tight, dark, and faintly menacing. A tram already crammed with passengers paused to take on more. A policeman in a dazzling white uniform and flat cap held up his hand to divert them right. An ancient commuter train clanked and rattled with taunting slowness through a crossing. Young boys played chase in its open cattle cars.

Elena glanced pointedly at her watch. "You're sure this is the right way?"

Gaille shrugged helplessly. Her only map was a crude photocopy from an outdated backpacker guidebook. She had a nagging suspicion that she had already gone badly wrong, though she had learned enough about her new boss not to admit it. "I think so," she equivocated.

Elena sighed loudly. "At least you could make an effort."

"I'm doing my best." Gaille couldn't shake off the suspicion that she was being punished for her intrusion into the site yesterday or was at least being opportunistically expelled from the Delta dig because of it. They were approaching a large intersection. Elena looked at her expectantly for directions. "Turn right," said Gaille.

"Are you sure?"

"It should be somewhere along here on the left or right."

"Somewhere along here on the left or right?" snorted Elena. "That's really helpful."

Gaille leaned forward, staring through the windshield, her brain aching from lack of sleep and too much coffee. There was a construction site ahead, a huge concrete high-rise with steel rebar waggling like spider legs from the top. She said in desperation, "I think this must be it."

"You think this must be it; or this is actually it?"

"I've never been to Alexandria before," protested Gaille. "How should I know?"

Elena huffed noisily and shook her head, but she signaled and swung through double gates, then bumped along a rutted track. Three Egyptian men were conferring animatedly at the far end. "That's Ibrahim," muttered Elena, with such obvious chagrin that Gaille had to fight back a smile. If Elena thought she was gloating… They parked. Gaille quickly opened her door and jumped down, suffering a momentary, debilitating flutter of shyness. Normally she was confident in professional situations, but she had no faith in her skills as a photographer and consequently felt like a fraud. She went around to the back of the flatbed, ostensibly to check her belongings and equipment, but in truth to hide.

Elena yelled out for her. She took a deep breath to compose herself, fixed a smile to her lips, then walked around to meet them. "Ibrahim," said Elena, indicating the elegant man in the center of the group, "I'd like you to meet Gaille."

"Our esteemed photographer! We are truly grateful."

"I'm not really a-"

"Gaille's an excellent photographer," said Elena, with a sharp glance. "What's more, she's an ancient-languages expert, too."

"Splendid! Splendid!" He gestured to his two companions, who were spreading out a site map on the ground. "Mansoor and Mohammed," he said. "Mansoor is my right hand. He runs all our excavations in Alexandria. I couldn't survive without him. And Mohammed is the construction manager for this hotel."

"Pleased to meet you both," said Gaille.

They glanced up from their map and nodded politely. Ibrahim smiled distractedly, glanced at his watch. "Just one more to come. You know Augustin Pascal?"

Elena snorted. "Only by reputation."

"Yes," nodded Ibrahim seriously. "He's a fine underwater archaeologist."

"That wasn't what I meant," said Elena.

"Oh."

An awkward silence followed, broken only when an engine roared at the mouth of the site. "Ah!" said Ibrahim. "Here he is."

A thirty-something man cruised up the approach on a gleaming black-and-chrome chopper, wending around potholes, bare-headed, allowing his long dark hair to flow free. He was wearing mirror shades, two days' worth of stubble, a leather jacket, jeans, calf-high black biker boots. He rode the chopper up onto its kickstand, stepped off, and fished a cigarette and a brass Zippo from his shirt pocket.

"You're late," said Ibrahim.

"Desole," he grunted, shielding the flame. "Something came up."

Mansoor asked wryly, "Sophia, I suppose?"

Augustin grinned wolfishly. "You know I'd never take advantage of my students like that." Elena clucked her tongue and muttered a Greek obscenity beneath her breath. Augustin grinned and turned to her, spreading his hands. "Yes?" he asked. "You see something you like, perhaps?"

"How could I?" retorted Elena. "You're standing in the way."

Mansoor laughed and slapped Augustin on the shoulder, but Augustin looked unruffled. He looked Elena up and down, then gave her a grin of frank approval, perhaps even of intent, for she was a striking woman, and anger added a certain something to her coloring. Gaille winced and took half a step back, waiting for the inevitable eruption, but Ibrahim stepped between them just in time.

"Well," he said, with nervous jauntiness. "Let's start, shall we?"

The ancient spiral steps looked precarious, and Gaille descended warily, but they reached the bottom without alarm and gathered in the rotunda. The corner of a black-and-white pebble mosaic showed beneath the rubble. Gaille pointed it out in a murmur to Elena. "Ptolemaic," declared Elena loudly, going down on her haunches to brush away the dust. "Two-fifty BC, give or take."

Augustin pointed to the sculpted walls. "Those are Roman," he said.

"Are you suggesting I can't tell a Macedonian mosaic when I see one?"

"I'm suggesting that the carvings are Roman."

Ibrahim held up his palms. "How about this?" he suggested. "Perhaps this site started out as a private tomb for some wealthy Macedonian, which would explain the mosaic. Then, when the Romans came three hundred years later, they decided to turn it into a necropolis."

"That would explain the staircase," admitted Elena grudgingly. "Macedonians didn't usually build in spirals. Only straight lines or squares."

"And they'd have needed to widen the shaft when they expanded it into a necropolis," agreed Augustin. "For light and ventilation, and to lower corpses, and to take out quarried stone. They used to sell it to builders, you know."

"Yes," said Elena scathingly. "I did know, thank you."

Gaille was barely listening. She was staring dizzily up at the circle of sky high above her head. Christ, but she was out of her depth. An emergency excavation offered no second chances, so within the next two weeks, the mosaic and all these exquisite carvings and everything else in this place would need to be photographed. After that, the place would probably be sealed forever. Artifacts like these deserved a professional photographer, someone with an eye for the work, experience, sophisticated equipment, lighting. She plucked anxiously at Elena's sleeve, but Elena brushed her off, following Mohammed down the steps into the forecourt of the Macedonian tomb. They paused to admire the shining white marble blocks of the facade and entablature, then pressed on through the half-open bronze door into the tomb's antechamber.