Will Adams - The Alexander Cipher

And all the while, Mohammed had brooded on why Nicolas would want such equipment in Siwa. None of the possible answers made him feel any better. The rising sun threw his truck's shadow far ahead of him on the black highway. Mohammed drove into it as into a dreadful premonition.

Knox stared through the Jeep's windshield at the sands stretching out before him. The desert was at its most beautiful in the early morning and late afternoon, when the angle of the sun created chiaroscuro shadows in the golden dunes, and the heat was less intense. But when the sun was high, the landscape turned monochrome and flat, except for those areas covered by a layer of salt crystals from some long-vanished sea, where it was so dazzling he had to squint to protect his eyes.

The track he was driving had been in use since ancient times-an old caravan trail from the Nile to Siwa. On either side lay the bones of camels, empty petrol cans, burst tires, discarded water bottles. They had been here perhaps a week, perhaps decades. The Western Desert didn't recycle like other places; instead, it froze like a time capsule. On one of his trips with Richard, retracing the tracks of the Zerzura Club explorers who had mapped the Western Desert and the Gilf Kabir, Knox had encountered the remains of a man in Bedouin dress sitting by the ashes of a fire in a dune valley, who had apparently died abruptly of a heart attack, and his hobbled camel nearby, which, unable to move, had perished with him.

His lips were badly cracked with dehydration; his tongue kept gluing itself to the roof of his mouth. He took another swig from the water bottle he kept clamped between his legs, swilling it around before swallowing. Within seconds, however, his mouth was as dry as before. He glanced over his shoulder to reassure himself that he and Rick had gotten sufficient supplies.

"What's that?" frowned Rick, pointing ahead.

The Jeep's windshield had smeared so badly that Knox had to lean his head out the window to make it out clearly. There was a low darkness on the horizon, like rain, except that there were no clouds in the sky, and rain was the least of one's worries out here in the Western Desert. "Trouble," muttered Knox.

Elena was in a fiery mood when she reached Ibrahim's villa, fresh from her trip to Cairo.

"You're late," said Nicolas angrily, leading her into the kitchen, where Philip Dragoumis was at the table discussing plans with Costis, his longtime head of security, and several of his team, battle-hardened veterans of the various Balkan conflicts. "I told you to be here at nine."

Just the sight of Dragoumis made Elena's bag weigh heavier on her shoulder, but this wasn't the moment. "I had something to do," she said. "What's the rush, anyway?"

"We need to be in Siwa by nightfall."

"Siwa!" she protested. "You made me drive all the way up here just to drive straight back down again."

"It's for your own good," said Nicolas, nodding at the security monitor. "You've been recorded arriving. Tomorrow evening you'll be recorded leaving. And Ibrahim will swear you've stayed here all the time in between."

"Then how-"

"There's a back gate," said Nicolas. "We've rigged the camera on it to show nothing." He glanced at his watch. "But we need to get moving. Can I have your cell phone, please?"

"Why?"

"Because if you use it while we're traveling, you can be traced," he said with exaggerated patience. "There's not much point in having an alibi if you're going to blow it with a phone call."

"Then how will we communicate?"

"We have phones in the cars," said Nicolas. "Now, please just give it to me."

"I don't have it," admitted Elena, a little sheepishly. "I threw it away."

He frowned. "You threw it away? Why?"

"Does it matter? Now, what's this about? It had better be good."

"I think you'll find it good," growled Dragoumis. She frowned at him. He beckoned for her to join him at the table. He opened the two books of Siwa for her to see and laid them alongside a photograph of the mosaic from the Alexandrian tomb.

"Christ!" murmured Elena.

"Yes. We've found it at last. Now all we have to do is bring it home."

She looked at him in horror. For all that she sympathized wholeheartedly with the Macedonian cause, she was an archaeologist, too. Sites and artifacts were sacred to her. "Bring it home?"

"Of course. What else do you think we've been working for?"

"But… this is crazy. You'll never get away with it."

"Why not?"

"For one thing, it may not be there."

"If it isn't, it isn't," shrugged Dragoumis. "But it is." He put his hand over his heart. "I know it in here."

"But an excavation like this can take months. Years."

"We have one night," grinned Nicolas. "Tonight. A mechanical digger will meet us there. Eneas and Vasileios are bringing other equipment and a container truck. One of our ships is headed to Alexandria. It'll be docked by morning, in plenty of time to load whatever we find. Believe me, our captains are skilled at playing the three-card trick with sealed containers. Within days it will be back in Thessalonike, and then we can make the announcement."

"Announcement? But you can't! Everyone will know we stole it."

"So? They won't be able to prove it. Especially when you say that the Macedonian Archaeological Foundation made this discovery in the mountains of Macedonia. As a respected archaeologist, people will accept your word."

"I don't believe this!" protested Elena. "I'll be an international joke."

"I don't see why," said Nicolas. "If it's possible Alexander had a tomb prepared for him in Siwa, why not in Macedonia?"

"We have an explanation for Siwa: the Alexander Cipher."

"Yes," said Dragoumis. "And what does it say, exactly? That the shield bearers prepared a tomb for Alexander in the place of his father and that they crossed the desert to take him there. That applies to Siwa, certainly. Ammon was Alexander's divine father, and Siwa lay across the Western Desert. But it applies to Macedonia, too. Philip was Alexander's mortal father. And the shield bearers would have had to cross the Sinai desert to reach it."

Elena's mouth fell open. She couldn't refute the logic, yet still she felt appalled. "But people would still know," she said weakly.

"We certainly hope so," grinned Nicolas.

"How do you mean?"

"What do you imagine the reaction will be when Athens tries to wrest it off us, as international pressure will force them to do? Can you imagine the outcry? Macedonia will never stand for it."

"There'll be war," said Elena numbly.

"Yes," agreed Nicolas.

Elena turned to Dragoumis. "I thought you were a man of peace," she said.

"And so I am," he agreed. "But every nation has the right to defend itself. And we are no different."

The place where Gaille's father had fallen to his death was at the eastern edge of the Siwa Depression, some three hours' drive from Siwa Town. When Gaille asked Mustafa and Zayn to take her out there, they looked deeply uncomfortable. But she pointed out to them that she was his daughter, that she had never had a proper chance to say good-bye to him, and finally they agreed.

They drove east along the Bahariyya track for the best part of a hundred kilometers, then turned north. It was a beautiful though slightly eerie setting. High cliffs jutted from the great Sea of Sand. There was no greenery out here. A white snake slithered down a steep dune. Apart from that, Gaille saw no life at all, not even a bird.

It was a five-minute scramble from where they parked to the foot of a high, sheer cliff. A cairn of stones marked the exact spot. His full name, Richard Josiah Mitchell, had been scratched crudely into the top one. He had always hated being called Josiah. His closest friends, knowing this, had teased him mercilessly with it. She picked it up and asked her guides if either of them was responsible. They shook their heads, then suggested it must have been Knox. She set it back as she had found it, uncertain what to think.