Will Adams - The Alexander Cipher

He found a Tanta bar with a phone directory, then rang local hotels asking for Elena. He got a hit on his fifth attempt. "She not here," the night clerk told him. "Alexandria."

"What about her team?"

"Who you want to speak to?"

Knox ended the call, jotted down the hotel's address, and hurried back to his Jeep.

Philip Dragoumis led Gaille through arches and across polished mosaic floors to a drawing room with gorgeous oils and tapestries on the walls. "A drink," he said. "Then we eat. Red wine? It's from my estate."

"Thank you." She looked around as he opened a bottle and poured two glasses. An oil portrait of a fierce-looking black-bearded man with a mess of scar tissue around his left eye had pride of place above the huge fireplace. A portrait of Philip II, father of Alexander the Great. Her eyes flickered back and forth between the picture and Dragoumis, and she realized with a slight shock that the portrait was intended to draw some kind of subliminal parallel between the two, implying that the birthmark around Dragoumis's own left eye was some kind of stigmata, as though he were Philip reborn. "You don't really believe in reincarnation, do you?" she asked.

He laughed loudly and unaffectedly, pleased by her boldness. "There is a saying: 'When a wise man does business with the Chinese, he speaks Mandarin.' "

"And when he does business with the superstitious?" suggested Gaille.

His smile broadened. He nodded at a second painting: a beautiful young dark woman in ragged peasant clothes. "My wife," he said. "I painted her myself. From memory." He gave a sharp little nod. "She's buried outside. She loved the view from this hill. We used to walk up here. That is why I bought this land and built my home here."

"I'm sorry."

"When I was a young man, I was a troublemaker. I used to go from village to village preaching the Macedonian cause, so the Athens secret police wanted to speak with me. You can imagine, it was not a desire I shared. When they couldn't find me, they visited my wife instead and demanded she tell them where I was. She refused. They poured petrol on her stomach, breasts, and arms, but she told them nothing. Then they lit it. Still she wouldn't talk. They poured petrol onto our baby son. Finally she talked. My wife was left with terrible burns, yet she could perhaps have survived with proper treatment, but I had no money for such treatment. My wife died because I had chosen to preach rather than to work, Ms. Bonnard. The day I buried her was the day I decided to stop playing at politics and become rich."

"I'm sorry," said Gaille helplessly.

Dragoumis grunted, as if to acknowledge the inadequacy of words. Then he said, "I knew your father."

"So your son told me. But I wasn't that close to him, you know."

"Yes, I do know. I have always felt bad about that."

Gaille frowned. "Why should you feel bad about it?"

Dragoumis sighed. "You were due to go to Mallawi with him, were you not?"

"Yes."

"But then he postponed?"

"He had urgent personal business."

"Yes," agreed Dragoumis. "With me."

"No," said Gaille. "With a young man called Daniel Knox."

Dragoumis made a vague gesture, as if to imply it came to the same thing. "Do you know much about Knox?" he asked.

"No."

"His parents were archaeologists themselves. Macedonian specialists. So they often visited this part of the world. A charming couple, who also had a delightful daughter. They worked closely with Elena, you know. Ten years ago they went to visit one of her excavations in the mountains. Elena's husband collected them from the airport. Unfortunately, on the drive up to the site…"

Gaille looked at him numbly. "All of them?" she asked.

Dragoumis nodded. "All of them."

"But… what's that got to do with my father?"

"It was an accident. A terrible accident. But not everyone believed this."

"You mean… murder? I don't understand. Why would anyone want to kill Knox's parents?"

"Not Knox's parents. Elena's husband. Pavlos."

"But who would want to kill him?"

Dragoumis smiled. "Me, Ms. Bonnard," he said. "Me."

Knox arrived in Ras El-Sudr first and loitered near the Beach Inn's parking lot so he could watch out for Rick and then make sure he hadn't been tailed. When he was satisfied, he went to meet him. "Good to see you, mate," grinned Rick.

"You, too."

"Interesting times, eh?" He nodded at a nearby bar. "You want a drink? You can tell me all."

"Sure." They took a table in the shadows, where Knox filled him in on everything that had happened since he fled Sharm.

"I don't believe it," said Rick. "That bastard Hassan had a noose put around your neck and attached it to a car? I'll kill him."

"Actually," said Knox, "I don't think it was Hassan. Hassan wouldn't have had the rope cut."

"Then who?"

"Have I ever told you about what happened in Greece?"

"You mean with your parents? You just told me there'd been a road accident. You never said there was a story to it."

"A winding road, an old car, a misty night in the mountains. The kind of tragedy that happens all the time, right? The only trouble was, the driver was a guy called Pavlos. The husband of that woman Elena I was telling you about. A journalist, very outspoken. A muckraker. He was running a campaign against a very powerful and rich family called the Dragoumises, demanding an inquiry into their businesses-that kind of thing."

"And you figured he was killed to shut him up?"

"I did at the time," nodded Knox.

"So what did you do about it?"

Gaille looked at Philip Dragoumis in horror. "You murdered Pavlos?"

"No," he assured her. "I swear to you on my wife's grave that I had nothing to do with his death-or the deaths of Knox's family. All I meant was that certain people believed I had the motive to do it."

"Why? What motive?"

"You must understand something, Ms. Bonnard. I am a Macedonian patriot. This whole region used to be Macedonia, but then it was cut up by the Treaty of Bucharest and handed out to Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece. I have made it my life's work to undo that gross injustice. But others, men like Pavlos, believe this region rightly belongs to Greece, and they try to stop me. Pavlos was skilled at insinuation. He wanted an inquiry into my life and businesses not because he thought me corrupt, but because he knew it would leave an indelible smear. When he died, the pressure for an inquiry died with him. So you can understand why people believed I was responsible. But I was not responsible, I assure you. I never even considered Pavlos my enemy, only my opponent, and there is a world of difference between the two. Even if I were a man of violence, which I am not, I would never have sanctioned it against Pavlos. And the truth is, I had no need." He leaned closer. "Can I trust you never to tell Elena what I am about to reveal to you?"

"Yes."

"Good. Pavlos had been indiscreet, and I had irrefutable evidence of this. The release of this information would have been… problematic for him. We had spoken together about it. I assure you, he was no longer a threat to me."

"So you say."

"Yes. So I say." There was a trace of impatience in his manner. "Tell me something, Ms. Bonnard. You have been working closely with Elena Koloktronis these past three weeks. Do you really believe that she'd work for me if she thought me guilty of murdering her husband?"

Gaille thought about it for a moment, but there was only one answer. "No."

"And you should understand, Ms. Bonnard, Pavlos was everything to Elena. Trust me: If she believed me responsible for Pavlos's death, she would make sure the whole world knew about it."

"She would have spoken out?"

"Oh, no," Dragoumis grunted. "She'd have killed me." He smiled at Gaille's startled reaction. "It's a fact," he said. "It would have been a blood matter, which is still a powerful force in this region. But when you consider how intensely she loved him…" He shook his head. "I was half fearing she'd do something. So much grief needs venting. But, you see, she knew the truth of it. Her husband was a wild and reckless driver who never serviced his car. No. Elena was brokenhearted, but not a problem. It was your father's young friend, Knox, who was the problem."