Will Adams: The Alexander Cipher

"What is this place?" asked Ahmed. "What have I found?"

"A necropolis," answered Mohammed flatly. "A city of the dead." Vaguely angered by their presence, he moved off, walking through a second portal into a high-ceilinged chamber lined with limestone blocks. A banqueting hall, perhaps, where mourners would have come each year to commemorate their loved ones. A short flight of steps led down through the final portal into a small forecourt. On a raised step, a pair of tall, blackened studded metal doors with hexagonal handles were set into a white marble wall. Mohammed pulled the left door. It opened with a grinding screech. He squeezed through into a broad, high, empty antechamber. Plaster had fallen away in places from the walls to reveal rough limestone beneath. Two lines of ancient writing were carved into the lintel above the arched doorway in the facing wall, but Mohammed could make nothing of them. He crossed a high step into a second, main chamber, of similar width and height but twice as deep. A knee-high plinth stood in its center, giving the strong impression that something important like a sarcophagus had once lain upon it. If so, it had long since vanished.

A dull bronze button shield was pinned to the wall beside the doorway, and Ahmed tried to wrest it free. "Stop!" cried Mohammed. "Are you mad? Will you truly risk ten years in Damanhur for an old shield and a handful of broken pots?"

"No one knows of this but us," retorted Ahmed. "Who can tell what treasures are here? Enough for us all."

"This place was looted centuries ago."

"But not of everything," pointed out Fahd. "Tourists will pay mad prices for all kinds of ancient rubbish. My cousin has a stall near al-Gomhurriya. He knows the value of such things. If we bring him down-"

"Listen to me," said Mohammed. "All of you, listen. You'll take nothing and you'll tell no one."

"Who gave you the right to make decisions?" demanded Fahd. "Ahmed found this, not you."

"But this project is mine, not yours. This site is mine. If one word of this gets out, you'll answer to me. Understand?" He faced them down, one by one, until they broke and stalked away. He watched them uneasily. Entrusting secrets to such men was like entrusting water to a sieve. Alexandria's slums writhed with villains who would cut twenty throats on the mere rumor of such a prize. But he wasn't going to back down because of that. Though he had striven to be good all his life, since Layla had fallen ill, he cared only for making her better. The question was how to turn this find to that end. Looting it was impractical. For all Ahmed's optimism, there wasn't enough to go around; and if he tried to cut out the others, they would sneak on him to his bosses, maybe even to the police, and that would go hard for him. As site manager, he was legally bound to report this find to the Supreme Council for Antiquities. If they learned he had kept it quiet, he'd lose his job, his license to operate, and almost certainly his liberty, too. He couldn't risk that. His salary was pitiful, but it was all that stood between Layla and the abyss.

The solution, when it finally came to him, was so simple that he couldn't believe he hadn't thought of it at once. "EXCUSE ME. You please will help me with this?"

Knox looked up to see Roland Hinz holding up his huge black wet suit. "Of course," he smiled. "Forgive me. I was miles away."

He stood behind the big German to make sure he didn't tumble as he tried to pull on the neoprene leggings-that wouldn't go down well. Roland was a Stuttgart banker considering investing in Hassan's latest Sinai venture. Today's outing was largely in his honor, and he was making the most of it, too, giggly with champagne, more than a little coked, getting on everyone's nerves. In truth, he shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the water, but Hassan paid well to have the rules stretched. And not just rules. Getting Roland into his wet suit was like trying to stuff a duvet into its cover: he kept plopping out in unexpected places. Roland found this intensely funny, but then, he found everything funny and seemed to think people found him charming. He tripped over his own feet and laughed hysterically as he and Knox spilled inelegantly onto the deck, then looked around at the other guests as though expecting rapturous applause.

With a strained smile, Knox helped him back up, then knelt down to pull on his booties for him. He had bloated, pinkish-yellow feet with dirt caked between his toes, which looked as though he hadn't washed between them for years. Knox distracted himself with thoughts of the quest he and Rick had embarked on. The afternoon when he'd shared his ideas about Alexander's catafalque had been just the beginning, though the big Australian's initial euphoria hadn't lasted long. "So this procession came through Sinai, did it?" he had asked.

"No," said Knox. "Not according to any of our sources."

"Oh, ballocks, mate," protested Rick, sitting back in his chair. "You had me all excited for a minute."

"You want me to tell you what we know?"

"Sure," he said, still annoyed. "Why not?"

"Okay," said Knox. "The first thing you need to understand is that our sources are unreliable. We don't have any eyewitness accounts of Alexander's life or campaigns. Everything we have, we have from later historians citing earlier ones-second-, third-, even fourthhand accounts."

"Chinese whispers," suggested Rick.

"Exactly, but it's even worse than that. When Alexander's empire split up, each of the various factions wanted to paint themselves in the best light, and all the others in the worst, so there was a lot of propaganda written. Then the Romans came along, and while the Caesars worshipped Alexander, the Republicans loathed him. Historians were selective in their stories, depending on which camp they belonged to. One way or another, most of what we have is very badly slanted. Working out the truth is a nightmare."

"Duly noted."

"But we're pretty sure that the catafalque traveled along the Euphrates from Babylon to Opis, then northwest along the Tigris. A magnificent procession, as you can imagine. People trekked hundreds of miles just to see it. And, sometime in 322 or 321 BC, it reached Syria. After that, it's hard to know. Bear in mind that we're talking about two things here. The first is Alexander's embalmed body, lying in its coffin. The second is the funeral carriage and all the rest of the gold. Okay?"

"Yes."

"Now, we know pretty much what happened to Alexander's body and coffin. Ptolemy hijacked it and took it to Memphis, probably with the collaboration of the escort commander. But we don't know what happened to the rest of the catafalque. Diodorus says that Alexander's body was eventually taken to Alexandria in it, but his story is confused, and it seems clear he's actually talking about the coffin, not the catafalque. And the most vivid description comes from a guy called Aelian. He says that Ptolemy was so fearful that Perdiccas would try to seize Alexander back that he dressed a likeness of his body in royal robes and a shroud, then laid it on a carriage of silver, gold, and ivory, so that Perdiccas would charge off in pursuit of this decoy while Ptolemy took Alexander's body on into Egypt by another route."

Rick squinted. "You mean Ptolemy left the catafalque behind?"

"That's what Aelian suggests," said Knox. "You've got to remember, the main prize was Alexander. Ptolemy needed to get him back to Egypt quick, and you couldn't travel quickly with the catafalque. Estimates suggest that it moved a maximum of six miles a day, and that was with a large team of sappers preparing the road. It would have taken months to reach Memphis. And it couldn't exactly have traveled discreetly, either. Yet I've never come across any account of it being seen traveling the obvious route south from Syria through Lebanon and Israel to Sinai and the Nile; and surely someone would have seen it."