Will Adams - The Alexander Cipher

"My guy in Tanta was even worse, would you believe?" said Gaille. "He gave me those looks-you know, as if he held women to blame for every evil in the history of the world. I felt like asking him, why run a hotel? Why not run a YMCA or something? Just nice young boys."

Knox laughed and hauled open the door again as they reached the ground floor. "You like seafood?"

"I love seafood."

"There's this restaurant I used to visit a lot. I haven't been there for a while, but I thought we might give it a try."

"That sounds great. You know Alexandria well, then?"

"I used to." Down the hotel's front steps, he steered Gaille away from the bustling and carnival-like Sharia Nabi Daniel, along a quieter road. With Hassan on his tail, he needed to stay in the shadows. He kept looking around, sensing eyes on him, people frowning, taking a second look. In the darkness behind, a man in pale blue robes was talking quietly but urgently on his cell phone, darting glances his way.

"Are you all right?" asked Gaille. "Is something the matter?"

"No," he said. "Forgive me. Just a little distracted." They came to a fork in the road, a minaret on its corner, giving him the opportunity to cover his jitters with conversation. "The Attarine Mosque," he said, pointing it out. "Did you know that that's where they found what might be the sarcophagus of Alexander the Great?"

"No."

"It was your man Napoleon," Knox explained. "He had his people scour Egypt for treasures. Anyway, they found this huge breccia sarcophagus covered in hieroglyphics, which no one could decipher back then but which the locals swore blind had been Alexander's. Alexander was Napoleon's hero, so he decided to be buried in it himself and ordered it back to France. But it got diverted to the British Museum instead, where it's now on show near the Rosetta Stone."

"I'll look out for it."

The man was still the same distance behind, talking earnestly on his cell phone. Knox felt his anxiety increase. He steered Gaille down a narrow side road to see if that would dislodge him. "Of course," he said, "when hieroglyphics were finally cracked, it turned out that it wasn't Alexander's sarcophagus at all, but Nectanebo the Second's."

"Ah."

He glanced around once more, but the road was clear. "Exactly," he said, allowing himself to relax a little. "Nothing annoys a Brit more than being sold a pup by the natives. And no one even considered that there might be a glimmer of truth to the story. After all, Ptolemy would surely never have put Alexander the Great in the cast-off sarcophagus of some fugitive pharaoh like Nectanebo, would he?"

"It does seem unlikely."

"Exactly. Do you know much about Nectanebo?"

Gaille shrugged. "A little."

"The last native Egyptian pharaoh. He defeated the Persians in battle and commissioned lots of new buildings, including a temple in Saqqara, city of the dead for Memphis, Egypt's capital at the time."

"I'm not completely ignorant, you know. I do know Saqqara."

"He also commissioned this sarcophagus," grinned Knox, "though he never got to use it. The Persians came back, and Nectanebo had to flee. So, when Ptolemy took Egypt twenty years later and needed somewhere to keep Alexander's body while he built him a proper mausoleum in Alexandria, Nectanebo's temple and sarcophagus were both lying empty."

"You're suggesting he used them as a stopgap?"

The man who had been following them earlier suddenly appeared ahead of them, still talking quietly but earnestly on his phone. He glanced their way and immediately dropped his eyes. Knox steered Gaille down a side alley, prompting her to frown at him. He quickly regretted his choice. The alley was deserted and dark, and their footsteps rang and echoed on the pavement, emphasizing just how alone they were. And when he glanced around, he saw the man entering the alley behind them.

"What is it?" asked Gaille. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," said Knox, taking her arm and hurrying her along. "Just hungry, that's all."

She frowned, unconvinced, but let it go. "You were telling me about the sarcophagus," she prompted.

"Yes." He glanced back and was relieved to see that they had put some distance between themselves and their tail. "Ptolemy certainly needed a stopgap. I mean, it was several decades before he transferred Alexander to Alexandria. And it would explain how the sarcophagus came to be here. I mean, you should see this thing. It's a beast. But perfect for protecting Alexander's body in transit."

"It makes sense from an Egyptian point of view, too," agreed Gaille. "You know they believed Alexander to be the son of Nectanebo the Second?"

Knox frowned. "You don't mean that old Alexander Romance story?" The Alexander Romance had been a runaway best-seller of ancient times, a book of half-truths, exaggerations, and lies about Alexander, including a story that Nectanebo II had visited the Macedonian court, where he seduced Philip's wife, Olympias, and fathered Alexander.

"It's more than that. When Alexander beat the Persians at Issus, he didn't just make himself de facto ruler of Egypt. To Egyptian eyes, it proved he was Nectanebo's legitimate successor. Did you know that one of his Egyptian throne names was 'he who drives out the foreigners,' just like Nectanebo?"

"Hey!" protested Knox. "I thought you said you didn't know anything about Nectanebo?"

"I said I knew a little," smiled Gaille.

"So you think the Alexander Romance story is credible, then?" he asked, steering her to the right, taking another look back as he did so. Their tail was still there-closer, if anything. And then two men walked around the corner ahead. Knox readied himself to run. But the two men kept on walking, paying no attention to Knox or their tail.

"Well, obviously it's not true," said Gaille. "Nectanebo never went anywhere near Greece. But I can certainly believe that such a story gained currency among the Egyptians. Maybe Alexander even encouraged it. He was incredibly skilled at winning hearts and minds. I've always thought that was one reason he visited Siwa. I mean, everyone assumes that he went because the Oracle of Ammon was so revered by the Greeks. But the Egyptians revered it, too, and had for centuries. Did you know that all the Twenty-Eighth Dynasty pharaohs traveled to Siwa to be acknowledged, and that they were all depicted with rams' horns, too, just like Alexander?"

They finally emerged onto the Corniche. A breaker crashed against the rocks, spraying spume over the high wall, leaving the road shining black. Knox glanced around again to see their tail put his phone away in his pocket then look anxiously all around him. "Is that right?" asked Knox.

Gaille nodded vigorously. "The Egyptians were sticklers for legitimacy in their pharaohs. Alexander succeeded Nectanebo, so in a sense, of course he was his son. The story about Nectanebo sleeping with his mother was just a convenient way of explaining it." She smiled apologetically. "Anyway, enough shop. Where's this restaurant of yours?"

"Just up here." He glanced around a final time. Their tail was advancing with a broad smile on a dark-haired woman and two young children, picking them up, laughing joyfully as he spun them around. Knox breathed a sigh of relief. Nothing but paranoia. Then he reminded himself sternly that just because it had proved benign this time didn't mean he could afford to relax.

They reached the restaurant, a plush place overlooking the waterfront. Gaille looked at Knox in horror, then down at her shabby clothes. "But you told me it wasn't fancy!" she protested.

"It isn't. And you look beautiful."

She pursed her lips, as if she thought he was lying, even though he wasn't. She had the kind of looks he had always found irresistible, shining with gentleness and intelligence. She said, "I only put on these horrid things because I didn't want to give your friend Augustin any encouragement. If I'd known it'd be you…"