Will Adams - The Alexander Cipher

Nicolas had had as much of being polite as he could take. He grabbed Ibrahim by the arm and dragged him to one side. "Perhaps we could get started," he said tightly. "I need to get back to Thessalonike tonight."

"Of course. Yes. But there's just one more person I'd like you to meet."

"Who?" sighed Nicolas.

"Mohammed el-Dahab," said Ibrahim, pointing to a mountain of a man. "He's site manager for the construction company."

"And then we can start?"

"Yes."

"Good." They walked across. "Salaam alekum," said Nicolas curtly.

"Wa alekum es salaam," replied Mohammed. "And thank you. Thank you."

Nicolas frowned. "What for?"

"The sick girl I told you about," beamed Ibrahim. "She's Mohammed's daughter."

Nicolas looked back and forth in surprise between the two men. "You mean there really is a sick girl?"

"Of course," frowned Ibrahim. "What did you think?"

"Forgive me," laughed Nicolas. "I've been dealing too much with your compatriots in Cairo. I assumed baksheesh."

"No," said Mohammed emphatically. "This money makes all the difference to us. Your money gives my daughter a chance. We'll hear our results tonight. But whatever the outcome, my family is forever in your debt."

"It was nothing," said Nicolas. "Really." He turned back to Ibrahim, glanced at his watch. "Now, really, we must get started," he said.

Knox sat in the darkness with his back against one of the support walls, biting the knuckle of his thumb in frustration. It just made too much sense for this place to be connected to the lower chamber. Yet he'd checked every square inch of the chamber's exterior he could get at, everything except for those areas blocked by the support walls.

He frowned. There had to be at least two feet of limestone above his head, and yet there were support walls. He pushed himself up onto his knees, placed his palms flat against one of them, and rested his cheek against it, as though to listen to its secrets. Why on earth would anyone have bothered? This chamber was excavated out of solid rock. The ceiling didn't need props. There were dozens of chambers in this necropolis, and dozens of necropolises in Alexandria. In none of them had Knox ever seen support walls like this. So maybe they weren't support walls at all. Maybe they had another purpose. Maybe they were hiding something.

He walked up and down, inspecting them closely. They were each made up of six columns of six blocks. Each block was a little more than a foot high and wide, and about three feet long, stacked sideways, with the old mortar between them crumbled into dust. He went to where the support wall abutted the exterior wall, and pushed hard against the top block. It grated but slowly gave, revealing a glimpse of solid limestone behind. He left it for the time being and went to the second support wall. This time, when he pushed back the top block, he exposed the edge of a hole in the exterior wall. He tried to push the top two blocks back together, but they were too heavy for him, so he climbed up between the walls like a climber in a rock chimney, then pushed the blocks back with his feet until they were pinned precariously between the remaining blocks beneath and the ceiling above. He dropped down again and went to inspect what he had revealed. A tight hole into a compact space the size of a broom closet, another wall at its far end. He filled his pockets with everything he might need, then squeezed through headfirst, falling hard on his hands and landing with a grunt.

He turned on the flashlight, brushed off his palms, and went to inspect the far wall. It was built of bricks rather than blocks, small enough for one person to manage with relative ease. Knox felt his breath coming faster as he spread his palm out on it. Whatever lay on the other side had to be connected with the plinth, which Ibrahim was due to raise at any moment. He cupped an ear against it but could hear nothing. It was crazy even to consider going on. If he were found, he'd be looking at serious jail time. But he was so close. Surely one brick couldn't do any harm. Not if he was careful.

He scratched away the dead mortar, then pulled out a single brick and rested it ever so gently on the floor. He listened intently for half a minute. There was complete silence. He tried to peer through, but the hole was too small for both his eyes and his flashlight together. He reached the flashlight through the gap instead, then squinted as best he could along the line of his arm. But the flashlight was now pointed in the wrong direction, so he couldn't make out a thing. Trying to twist his hand around, his fingers involuntarily opened a fraction and the flashlight slipped agonizingly from his grasp. He tried to grab it back but it fell in spirals and landed with a splashy thump in shallow water, its beam making ghostly white ripples on the facing wall.

Knox had no choice but to retrieve the flashlight. Ibrahim, Mansoor, and others were about to raise the plinth, and if they found it, he was certain to be discovered. Besides, he had time. The place was still quiet. He began dismantling the wall, brick by brick, placing them precisely on the ground, the old mortar still resting on them, so that he would be able to rebuild the wall exactly as he'd found it. When he had created enough space, he poked his head through, catching a pungent whiff of ammonia. It was a low, arched corridor with a watery floor, like some Victorian sewer. Its walls were even scratched with lines to make it look as though it had been built of bricks rather than excavated, perhaps to disguise the passage he had just broken through, but possibly because the ancients had simply considered construction more prestigious than excavation.

He stretched down for his flashlight but couldn't quite reach it, not without leaning on the wall, which he didn't trust to hold his weight. He removed another two rows of bricks, then straddled what remained. The water felt sharp on his bare foot as he stooped to retrieve the light. He listened intently. Nothing but silence. He was here now. It would be criminal not to take a quick look.

He splashed along the corridor, brushing aside cobwebs, his imagination sensing eels and nocturnal creatures around his bare ankles. He came to a compact chamber beneath a chimney shaft, its mouth blocked by some kind of slab. The plinth, no doubt. He went back the other way and came to a marble portal with an Ancient Greek inscription cut into its architrave:

Together in life; together in death. Kelonymus.

Kelonymus. The name was familiar, as Akylos had been. But the memory wouldn't come and time was short, so he passed beneath it, reaching the foot of a broad flight of stone steps that spread out like a fan as it rose. And at the top…

"Jesus Christ!" muttered Knox.

"What's going on?" demanded Nicolas, as a large crowd of senior excavators and other guests descended the stairwell to the rotunda.

"How do you mean?" frowned Ibrahim.

"All these people?" said Nicolas. "You can't seriously be inviting them all."

"Just to watch. From the antechamber. This is a big moment for us."

"No," said Nicolas. "You, me, your archaeologist, Elena. That's all."

"But I've already-"

"I mean it. If you want the remainder of your Dragoumis sponsorship money, you'll kick these people out now."

"It's not that simple," protested Ibrahim. "We need Mohammed to lift the plinth. We need the girl to take photographs. Moments like these don't come often, you know."

"Fine. Those two. No others."

"But I-"

"No others," said Nicolas emphatically. "This isn't a circus. This is supposed to be a serious excavation."

"Fine," sighed Ibrahim. And he turned with a sagging heart to disappoint the crowd of excited excavators

Knox's mouth hung open as he played his flashlight over the chamber like a searchlight over a bombarded city. He struggled to believe his eyes. To his right, a terrace had been hewn in the limestone. Sixteen golden larnaxes, or burial caskets, stood on each of two shelves, making thirty-two in all. Glass bowls had toppled and fallen both over the shelves and the floor, scattering their contents of precious and semiprecious stones. Also on the floor were countless precious artifacts: swords and spears and shields and amphorae of silver and clay. White marble had been inlaid into the far wall, a lengthy inscription carved into it, though too distant for him to make out what it said.