Will Adams - The Alexander Cipher

Rick grinned. "You'll see."

Gaille and Elena found Dr. Aly Sayed easily enough. He lived in an impressive two-story house at the end of a narrow tree-lined lane. A dark man with snowy hair, eyebrows, and trimmed beard sat outside, a tumbler in one hand, a bulbous fountain pen in the other, his tabletop spread with papers. "Hola!" he cried cheerfully. "You must be my secretary general's friends." He rested his tumbler on his papers to stop them from being blown away, then bounded across. Siwa had been on the ancient slave route, and he clearly had Negro as well as Arab blood, which he seemed to emphasize deliberately with his open sandals, khaki shorts, and short-sleeved gold and scarlet shirt.

"You must be Ms. Koloktronis," he said to Elena, shaking her hand. "And Gaille Bonnard," he said, turning to her. "Yes! Your father's eyes."

Gaille was shocked. "I beg your pardon?"

"You are not Richard Mitchell's daughter?"

"Yes, but-"

"Good! When Yusuf tell me to expect Elena Koloktronis and Gaille Bonnard, I think to myself, ah, yes, I recognize this name! When your father dies in his terrible fall, I post to you I think a great package of papers and belongings. You received it, I trust?"

"That was you? Yes. Thank you."

Aly nodded. "Your father was my very good friend. He stay with me often. You are welcome for your own sake, of course. But the daughter of such a good man is a thousand times welcome."

"Thank you."

"Though I must say I am surprised that Yusuf Abbas commended you so warmly to me." He raised an eyebrow. "It couldn't be that he is unaware of who your father is, could it?"

"I don't know," blushed Gaille, who always felt slightly awkward when her father was discussed in Egypt.

"Perhaps I should tell him myself next time we speak," he mused. But then he saw her expression, and touched her elbow. "Of course you know I'm joking. I would never do such a thing. You have my word. Now, come inside. You'll honor and adorn my humble home. Inside! Inside!"

Gaille and Elena exchanged a glance as they followed. They hadn't expected such an exuberant welcome. He slapped his hand against the rough yellow exterior wall. "Kharshif," he announced. "Mud and salt. Strong like rock but with one weakness. She turn back into mud again when she rain!" He put his hands on his sides and laughed uproariously. "Fortunately, she not rain like this often in Siwa. Not since 1985! Now Siwa is all one concrete block." He thumped his chest. "Me, I like the old ways." His front door opened onto a long hallway. Framed photographs jostled for space. More were stacked on the floor. Discolored patches from previous hangings showed that he often changed them around. He wasn't camera shy, that was for sure. He appeared in picture after picture: Discussing excavation matters on-site; out hunting with an army officer, holding up a white gazelle with a gunshot wound in its head; in mountaineering kit halfway up some cliff; sightseeing in Paris, St. Louis, Granada, and other cities she couldn't place; shaking hands with dignitaries, celebrities, and Egypt experts. Not an ego wall so much as an ego house.

They reached his kitchen, its broad fireplace open to the night sky. A huge old yellowing refrigerator clicked on as they entered, and began to rattle loudly. He kicked it, and the rattling became more subdued. "A drink?" he suggested. "You may not know, but Siwa is dry of alcohol. Our young men enjoy too much the labgi, the alcohol we make from dates, and labgi makes them enjoy too much each other, so no more alcohol! In this sense, however, my house is the oasis!" Gaille found his boisterous good humor disconcerting, as though he was laughing up his sleeve at them. He opened the refrigerator door to reveal a jungle of fresh fruit and vegetables inside, stacks of beer and white wine. He wagged a finger at Gaille. "Your father teach me wicked habits. A terrible thing, the love of alcohol. Each time I run low I must invent SCA business in Cairo, and I hate Cairo. It means I have to pay respects to my secretary general, and, believe me, that is a privilege made all the greater by its rarity."

He poured them drinks, led them back to the hallway, where he unlocked a blue door, pushed it open, flipped on a light, and stood aside. A wave of delicious cool air wafted out. The room was large and lushly carpeted. A single heavy air-conditioning unit stood hissing beneath the closed, bolted, and shuttered windows. A computer, a flatbed scanner, and a color printer rested on two archival tables next to three gray steel filing cabinets and white-painted shelving stacked with books above locked glass-fronted cabinets. She noted the straight lines on the walls. There was no risk of this room, at least, turning back into mud. "I understand you're here to research our old sites, yes?" He waved his hand. "My collection is at your service. If it is published about Siwa and the Western Desert, it is here. And if not published, also."

"You're extremely kind," said Elena.

He waved her thanks away. "We're all archaeologists here. Why would we keep secrets from one another?"

"Do you have photographs?"

"Of course." He opened the top drawer of a filing cabinet, withdrew a large map, and spread it out. Grid lines ran north to south and east to west, giving each square a unique reference number that corresponded to an indexed folder in the cabinets, which contained grainy black-and-white aerial photographs as well as occasional color, ground-level site prints. While he explained his system to Elena, Gaille wandered along the shelves, fingering sheaves of press cuttings on the golden mummies of Baharriya; histories of Kharga, Dakhla, and Farafra and of the geology of desert. Two entire ranges had been given over to Siwa, the shelves packed so tight that she had to pull hard to pluck out a first edition copy of Qibell's A Visit to Siwa. She turned the crumbling yellow pages with great tenderness. She loved the whimsy in the accounts of pioneer travelers like this.

"You know these?" murmured Aly, suddenly at her side.

"Not all of them," she admitted. "In fact…"

He laughed warmly, then stooped to unlatch and open a low cabinet. Inside, wire racks bulged with gray and tan folders of loose papers. Notebooks and journals were stacked in separate piles. He found and removed a thick green folder and handed it to her. "You know the Siwan Manuscript? The history of our Oasis kept by the Mosalims since…" he waved his hand to indicate forever. "These notes in red pen are mine. You'll find them valuable, I think." He set the folder down and returned to his books. "Ah, yes! Ahmed Fakhry. A great man. My mentor and my very good friend. You have read his works?"

"Yes." It was the only research she'd managed so far.

"Excellent. Ah! And this! W. G. Browne's Travels in Africa, Egypt and Syria from the year 1792 to 1798. The first European for centuries to visit Siwa-or to write of it, at least. He thought us nasty, dirty people, while we hurled stones at him because he pretended to be a man of faith. How far the world has come! Here's Belzoni, everyone's favorite circus strongman. And Frederick Hornemann-German, of course, but he wrote in English. His journey was sponsored by the London African Society in, let me see, yes, 1798."

"Is there nothing more up-to-date?"

"Of course, of course. Many books. Copies of every excavation log. But, believe me, when these old people visit, our monuments and tombs were in much better condition. Now many are nothing but dust and sand. 'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings.' " He sighed, shook his head sadly. "So much lost. You read German, yes?"

"Yes."

"Good. One never knows these days. Even reputable universities seem to hand out doctorates to people who can barely speak their own language. Here is J. C. Ewald Falls's Siwa: Die Oase des Sonnengottes in der Libyschen Wuste. Cailliaud's Voyage a Meroe; you must read that. And that criminal Drovetti! I had to travel to Turin to see the Canon of Kings. Turin! Worse even than Cairo! They tried to kill me with their trams!"