Will Adams - The Alexander Cipher

"I know Hassan al-Assyuti," said Knox.

Nicolas frowned. "The shipping agent?"

"I saved his life," nodded Knox. "A diving accident. I gave him mouth-to-mouth. He said if I ever needed a favor-"

Nicolas squinted at him. "You're lying."

"Take me to see him. He's in Suez. Ask him yourself. He'll tell you."

"Take you to see him?" snorted Nicolas. "He's your best fucking friend and you don't even know his phone number?"

"I never had to call in the favor before."

Nicolas hesitated. Knox was up to something, he was sure of it. But if there was any truth whatever to his claim… He opened his cell phone again, called Katerina, and asked her to find a number for Hassan al-Assyuti. He walked in circles as he waited for her to call back, stamping his feet. When she finally did, he dialed it himself. He didn't trust Knox one bit. He asked for Hassan al-Assyuti and was put on hold. He kept his eyes on Knox all the time, waiting for him to blink, to back down and admit that this was bullshit. A woman picked up and tried to fob him off with the practiced spiel about Hassan being in a meeting, and could she please take a message that she would make sure he received at the very first-

"I need to speak to him now," said Nicolas. "Tell him it's Daniel Knox."

"Daniel Knox?" She was clearly taken aback. "Oh. Yes. Right. I… I'll put you straight through."

Nicolas couldn't hide his astonishment. He held the phone in such a way that Knox could talk, but so that he could listen in as well. Hassan came on. "Knox?" he demanded. "Is that really you?"

"That's right," said Knox quickly. "Listen, I want to come see you."

There was a pause. Then Hassan asked incredulously: "You want to come to see me?"

"That's right. I need something shipped out of Egypt. If I come to see you, will you take care of it for me?"

There was silence. "You'll come yourself? In person?"

"If you agree to help me get this shipment out."

"What kind of shipment? Where headed?"

"I'll tell you when I see you."

"Very well. Can you get to Suez?"

"Sure. Give me six hours."

"Six hours, then. At my container terminal." He snapped off directions, which Nicolas jotted down. The line went dead. Nicolas closed his phone.

"Well?" asked Leonidas.

"He agreed to help," admitted Nicolas reluctantly. Something stank, though he wasn't sure what. Still, it was a lifeline, and he had no option but to grab it. "You'll stay in the container until Suez," he told Knox. "One sound and you're dead. Understand?"

"Yes."

"Get us out of Egypt and you and the girl can go. You have my word." He looked directly into Knox's eyes. Nicolas couldn't afford to have him realize there was no way on earth he would let two witnesses to all this mayhem simply walk away.

Knox and Gaille were gagged and tied to the handrail at the cab end of the container. One of the Greeks, a burly man they called Eneas, was handed a flashlight and ordered to watch over them. Knox's thigh throbbed from the gunshot wound, but from the quick examination he had been allowed, it looked worse than it was, plowing a furrow along his skin, but missing the muscle and bone.

The container was stiflingly hot once the rear doors were closed, and stuffy, too, particularly when Eneas lit a cigarette. After he finished and stubbed it out, he drank great gulps from a water bottle, then splashed it prodigally over his hair and forehead. Just the sound of it was torment. Knox closed his eyes and dreamed of waterfalls and crushed ice.

The coffin and lid were so heavy that the container truck's brakes shrieked when they slowed to refuel. Eneas stood above Knox, menacing him with the butt of the rifle until they rumbled off again, so that he rocked back ever so slightly on his heels. Gears crunched, and the engine whined as they struggled to pick up speed. Just as well that Egypt was so flat.

Gaille began sobbing behind her gag. She had had two or three such bouts already, interspersed with long periods of calm. Terror was too intense to sustain. Knox, too, had had two periods of icy shudders when his shirt became saturated with sweat, worsening his dehydration. In between, however, his mind felt clear as he sought a way to get himself and Gaille out of their dire predicament. So far, nothing came to mind.

He stopped trying to force it. Experience had taught him that answers often appeared when he focused on something else. Their guard lit another cigarette, the flame of his lighter glowing orange off all the gold, and Knox found himself staring at Alexander's coffin. What an end for such a man, a pawn in the never-ending game of politics and personal advancement. But there was a certain appropriateness, too. Alexander's life itself had ended in anticlimax in Babylon, triggered perhaps by the horrors of the Gedrosian Desert, into which he had led forty thousand men, and out of which he had brought just fifteen thousand. Death had been in the air for months. An elderly Indian philosopher called Calanus had joined Alexander on his campaigns but had fallen sick. Unwilling to rot away, he burned himself alive instead, assuring Alexander that they would meet again soon. In a drinking contest to celebrate Calanus's life, forty-one Macedonians had died, including the winner. Then Alexander's closest friend, Hephaiston, had died, too-perhaps the greatest blow of all. But there was also a lesser-known incident, when Alexander visited the tomb of Cyrus the Great at Pasargadae. Cyrus had been the greatest conqueror and emperor before Alexander, a semidivine figure worshipped throughout Persia. Yet Alexander discovered his bones lying scattered on the floor by bandits who had tried unsuccessfully to steal his golden sarcophagus. The inscription on Cyrus's tomb read, "O man, whoever you are and from wherever you may come-for I know that you will come-I am Cyrus, who won the Persians their empire. Therefore, do not begrudge me this little earth which covers my body." But his plea had gone unheard.

They said that when Alexander was lying on his deathbed in Babylon, aware his end was upon him, he tried to drag his failing body down to the river that ran by the palace, so that he would be swept away by the waters, and the world might believe him taken up to his rightful place among the gods. But maybe he had also sought to deny his successors the chance to treat his mortal remains with the disrespect they had shown Cyrus's. So maybe that was the fate Alexander had wanted for his body: not Siwa, not Alexandria, not Macedonia, but the oblivion of water.

The oblivion of water. Yes. And finally, the germ of an idea came to Knox.

It seemed forever before the truck stopped next. The back of the container shrieked as it was opened. Knox leaned his head back against the steel wall, fear tickling his chest like the beads of a rosary. Stars lay low on the horizon. The day was gone. Perhaps his last. Nicolas climbed up inside, one side of his hair spiky, as though he had napped against the window. He pointed the Walther at Knox. "We're in Suez," he said as Eneas untied Knox's bonds and pulled the gag from his mouth. Knox clenched and unclenched his hands to get the circulation back, then stood gingerly, grimacing at the pain in his thigh.

Nicolas gestured for Knox to go to the mouth of the container, but Knox ignored him. He picked up the guard's water bottle and found a few mouthfuls left. He removed Gaille's gag, held the bottle to her lips, tipped it up for her until it was empty, then kissed her on her crown. "I'll do my best," he promised her.

"I know you will."

"Move," said Nicolas, jabbing him with the Walther's muzzle.

Knox hobbled to the end of the container, making more of his injury than it really warranted, hoping to convince Nicolas that he was badly hurt. He helped himself gingerly down onto tarmac, giving a little cry of pain as he landed, then hopping a couple of times on his good leg. They were in the corner of a huge empty parking lot that stank of stale fumes and scorched rubber. Arabic music drifted from a distant petrol station. Over a wall of trees, the sky glowed orange.