WILL ADAMS

The Alexander Cipher

For my parents

After his death in Babylon in 323 BC, the body of Alexander the Great was taken in a magnificent procession to Egypt for eventual burial in Alexandria, where it remained on display for some six hundred years.

Alexander’s mausoleum was considered a wonder of the world. Roman emperors including Julius Caesar, Augustus and Caracalla paid pilgrimages. Yet after a series of earthquakes, fires and wars, Alexandria fell into decline and the tomb was lost.

Despite numerous excavations, it has never been found.

Contents

Title Page Dedication Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine Chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty-One Chapter Thirty-Two Chapter Thirty-Three Chapter Thirty-Four Chapter Thirty-Five Chapter Thirty-Six Chapter Thirty-Seven Chapter Thirty-Eight Chapter Thirty-Nine Chapter Forty Chapter Forty-One Epilogue Acknowledgements COMING SOONG FROM WILL ADAMS About the Author Copyright About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

The Libyan Desert, 318 BC

There was a freshwater spring at the lowest point of the cave, like a single black nail at the tip of a twisted, charred and mutilated leg. A thick layer of lichen and other scum clotted its surface, barely disturbed in centuries except to ripple and shiver at the touch of one of the insects that lived upon it, or dimple with bubbles of gas belched from deep beneath the floor of the surrounding desert.

Suddenly the skin burst, and the head and shoulders of a man erupted from the water. His face was turned upwards and instantly he gasped huge heaves of life-giving air through his flared nostrils and gaping mouth, as though he’d stayed underwater beyond the limit of his endurance. His breaths didn’t lessen in intensity as the moments passed; rather, they grew ever more desperate, as though his heart was about to burst inside his chest. But at length he reached and passed the worst.

There was no light at all in the cave, not even a phosphorescence of water; and the man’s relief at surviving his underwater flight quickly turned to distress that he’d merely exchanged one mode of death for another. He felt around the edge of the pool until he found a low ledge. He heaved himself up, twisted round to sit upon it. Almost as an afterthought, he reached beneath his soaking tunic for his dagger; but in truth, there was little danger of pursuit. He’d had to fight and kick his way through every inch of that watery escape. He’d like to see that fat Libyan who’d aimed to stick him with his sword try to follow; for sure, he’d cork in the passage, and it wouldn’t spit him out till he’d lost some flesh.

Something whirred past his cheek. He cried out in terror and threw up his hands. The echo was curiously slow and deep for what he’d imagined to be a small cave. Something else flapped past him. It sounded like a bird, but no bird could navigate in such darkness. Perhaps a bat. He’d certainly seen colonies of them at dusk, swarming the distant orchards like midges. His hopes rose. If these were those same bats, there had to be a way out of here. He surveyed the rock walls with his hands, then began to climb the gentlest wall. He wasn’t an athletic man, and the ascent was nightmarish in the dark, though at least the walls were gaunt with holds. When he reached a place from which there was no possible advance, he retreated and found another route. Then another. Hours passed. More hours. He grew hungry and tired. One time he fell crashing to the base, crying out in terror. A broken leg would end him as surely as it would end a mule, but he cracked his head against rock instead, and blackness claimed him.

When he came to, he wasn’t sure for a blessed moment where he was, or why. When memory returned, he felt such despair that he considered returning the way he’d come. But he couldn’t face that passage again. No. Better to press on. He tried the rock wall once more. And again. And finally, on his next attempt, he reached a precarious ledge high above the cavern floor, barely wide enough for him to kneel. He crawled forwards and upwards, the rock-face to his left, nothing at all to his right, only too aware that a single mistake would plunge him to certain death. The knowledge didn’t impede him but rather added sharpness to his concentration.

The ledge closed around him so that it felt as if he was crawling inside the belly of a stone serpent. Soon the darkness wasn’t quite so pure as it had been. Then it grew almost light and he emerged shockingly into the setting sun, so dazzling after his long blindness that he had to throw up a forearm to protect his eyes.

The setting sun! A day at least had passed since Ptolemy’s ambush. He inched closer to the lip, looked down. Nothing but sheer rocks and certain death. He looked up instead. It was still steep, but it looked manageable. The sun would soon be gone. He began to climb at once, looking neither down nor up, contenting himself with progress rather than haste. Patience served him well. Several times the sandstone crumbled in his hand or beneath his foot. The last glow of daylight faded as he reached an overhanging brow. There was no going back now, so he steeled himself, then committed totally to it, hauling himself up with his fingernails and palms and elbows, scrabbling frantically with his knees and feet, scraping his skin raw on the rough rock, until finally he made it over and he rolled onto his back, staring thankfully up at the night sky.

Kelonymus had never claimed to be brave. He was a man of healing and learning, not war. Yet he still felt the silent reproach of his comrades. ‘Together in life; together in death’ – that had been their vow. When Ptolemy had finally trapped them, the others had all taken without qualm the distillation of cherry laurel leaves that Kelonymus had concocted for them, lest torture loosen their tongues. Yet he himself had balked. He’d felt a terrible rush of fear at losing all this before his time, this wonderful gift of life, this sight, this smell, this touch, this taste, the glorious ability of thought. Never again to see the high hills of home, the lush banks of its rivers, the forests of pine and silver fir! Never again to listen at the feet of the wise men in the marketplace. Never to have his mother’s arms around him, or tease his sister, or play with his two nephews! So he’d only pretended to take his poison. And then, as the others had expired around him, he’d fled into the caves.

The moon lit his descent, showing desert all around, making him realise just how alone he was. His former comrades had been shield-bearers in Alexander’s army, dauntless lords of the earth. No place had felt safer than in their company. Without them he felt weak and fragile, adrift in a land of strange gods and incomprehensible tongues. He walked down the slope, faster and faster, the fear of Pan welling in him until he broke into a run and fled headlong before stumbling in a rut and falling hard onto the compact sand.

He had a growing sense of dread as he pushed himself up, though at first he wasn’t sure why. But then strange shapes began to form in the darkness. When he realised what they were, he began to wail. He came to the first pair. Bilip, who’d carried him when his strength had failed outside Areg. Iatrocles, who’d told him wondrous tales of distant lands. Cleomenes and Herakles were next. No matter that they’d already been dead, crucifixion was the Macedonian punishment for criminals and traitors, and Ptolemy had wanted it known that was what he considered these men. Yet it wasn’t these men who’d betrayed Alexander’s dying request about where he was to be buried. It wasn’t these men who’d put personal ambition above the wishes of their king. No. These men had only sought to do what Ptolemy himself should have done, building Alexander a tomb in sight of the place of his father.

Something about the symmetry of the crosses caught Kelonymus’ eye. They were in pairs. All the way along, they were in pairs. Yet their party had been thirty-four. Himself and thirty-three others. An odd number. How could they all be in pairs? Hope fluttered weakly. Maybe someone else had got away. He began to hurry down the horrific avenue of death. Old friends either side, yes; but not his brother. Twenty-four crosses, and none his brother. Twenty-six. He prayed silently to the gods, his hopes rising all the time. Twenty-eight. Thirty. Thirty-two. And none his brother. And no more crosses. He felt, for a moment, an exquisite euphoria. But it didn’t last. Like a knife plunged between his ribs, he realised what Ptolemy had done. He cried out in anguish and rage, and he fell to his knees upon the sand.

When his anger finally cooled, Kelonymus was a different man, a man of fixed and certain purpose. He’d betrayed his oath to these men once already. He wouldn’t betray it again. Together in life; together in death. Yes. He owed them that much. Whatever it took.

ONE

I

The Ras Mohammed reefs, Sinai, Egypt

Daniel Knox was dozing happily on the bow when the girl came to stand with deliberate provocation in the way of his afternoon sun. He opened his eyes and looked up a little warily when he saw who it was, because Max had made it clear that she was Hassan al-Assyuti’s for the day, and Hassan had a proud and thoroughly warranted reputation for violence, especially against anyone who dared tread on his turf.

‘Yes?’ he asked.

‘So are you really a Bedouin?’ she gushed. ‘I mean, that guy Max said like you were a Bedouin, but I mean you don’t look it. I mean, don’t get me wrong, you kind of look it, I mean, your complexion and your hair and eyebrows, but …’

It was no surprise she’d caught Hassan’s eye, thought Knox, as she rambled on. He was notoriously a sucker for young blondes, and this one had a charming smile and startling turquoise eyes, as well as an attractive complexion, with its smattering of pale freckles and pinkish hints of acne, and a slender figure perfectly showcased by her lime-green and lemon-yellow bikini. ‘My father’s mother was Bedouin,’ he said, to help her out of her labyrinth. ‘That’s all.’

‘Wow! A Bedouin gran!’ She took this as an invitation to sit. ‘What was she like?’

Knox pushed himself up onto an elbow, squinting to keep out the sun. ‘She died before I was born.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ A damp, blonde lock fell onto her cheek. She swept her hair back with both hands, holding it there in a makeshift ponytail, so that her chest jutted out at him. ‘Were you brought up here, then? In the desert?’

He looked around. They were on the deck of Max Strati’s dive boat, tethered to a fixed mooring way out into the Red Sea. ‘Desert?’ he asked.

‘Tch!’ She slapped him playfully on the chest. ‘You know what I mean!’

‘I’m English,’ he said.

‘I like your tattoo.’ She traced a fingertip over the blue and gold sixteen-pointed star on his right biceps. ‘What is it?’

‘The Star of Vergina,’ answered Knox. ‘A symbol of the Argeads.’

‘The who?’

‘The old royal family of Macedonia.’

‘What? You mean like Alexander the Great?’

‘Very good.’

She wrinkled her nose. ‘You a fan, then? I always heard he was just a drunken brute.’

‘Then you heard wrong.’

She smiled, pleased to be put down. ‘Go on, then. Tell me.’

Knox frowned. Where did you even start with a man like Alexander? ‘He was besieging this town called Multan,’ he told her. ‘This was towards the end of his campaigns. His men were fed up with fighting. They just wanted to go home. But Alexander wasn’t having that. He was first up the battlements. The defenders pushed away all the other assault ladders, so he was stranded up there alone. Any normal man would have leaped for safety, right? You know what Alexander did?’

‘What?’

‘He jumped down inside the walls. All on his own. It was the one sure way to make his men come after him.’ And they had too. They’d torn the citadel apart to save him, and they’d only just got to him in time. The wounds he’d taken that day had probably contributed to his eventual death, but they’d added to his legend too. ‘He used to boast that he carried scars on every part of his body; except his back.’

She laughed. ‘He sounds like a psycho.’

‘Different times,’ said Knox. ‘You know, when he captured the mother of the Persian Emperor, he put her under his personal protection. After he died, she was so upset, she starved herself to death. Not when her own son died, mind. When Alexander died. You don’t do that for a psychopath.’

‘Huh,’ she said. It was clear that she’d had enough talk of Alexander.

She rose to her knees, placed her left palm flat on the deck the far side of Knox, then reached across him for the red and white icebox. She threw off its lid, sampled each of the bottles and cans inside for cool, taking her time, her breasts swinging free within her dangling bikini-top as she did so, making the most of themselves, nipples pink as petals. Knox’s mouth felt a little dry suddenly; knowing you were being worked didn’t make it ineffective. But it reminded him forcibly of Hassan too, so he scowled and looked away.

She sat back down with a thump, an open bottle in her hand, a mischievous smile on her lips. ‘Want some?’ she asked.

‘No thanks.’

She shrugged, took a swallow. ‘So have you known Hassan long?’

‘No.’

‘But you’re a friend of his, right?’

‘I’m on the payroll, love. That’s all.’

‘But he’s kosher, right?’

‘That’s hardly the smartest way to describe a Muslim.’

‘You know what I mean.’

Knox shrugged. It was too late for her to be getting cold feet. Hassan had picked her up in a nightclub, not Sunday school. If she didn’t fancy him, she should have said no; simple as that. There was naïve and there was stupid. It wasn’t as though she didn’t know what she was doing with her body.

Max Strati appeared around the line of cabins at that moment. He walked briskly over. ‘What happens here, then?’ he asked frostily. He’d come to Sharm el-Sheikh on holiday twenty years before, had never gone home. Egypt had been good to him; he wouldn’t risk that by pissing off Hassan.

‘Just talking,’ said Knox.

‘On your own time, please, not mine,’ said Max. ‘Mr al-Assyuti wishes his guests to have a final dive.’

Knox pushed himself up. ‘I’ll get things ready.’

The girl jumped up too, clapped with false enthusiasm. ‘Great! I didn’t think we’d be going down again.’

‘You will not join us, I think, Fiona,’ Max told her flatly. ‘We have not enough tanks. You will stay here with Mr al-Assyuti.’

‘Oh.’ She looked scared, suddenly; childlike. She put her hand tentatively on Knox’s forearm. He shook her off, walked angrily towards the stern, where the wetsuits, flippers, snorkels and goggles were stored in plastic crates next to the steel rack of air tanks. A swift glance confirmed what Knox already knew; there were plenty of full tanks. He felt stress suddenly in his nape. He could feel Max’s eyes burning into his back, so he forced himself not to look round. The girl wasn’t his problem. She was old enough to look after herself. He had no connection to her; no obligation. He’d worked his balls off to establish himself in this town; he wasn’t going to throw that away just because some bratty teenager had misjudged the price of her lunch. His self-justifications did little good. He felt sick in the pit of his stomach as he squatted down by the crates and started checking equipment.

II

The MAF Nile Delta excavation, Northern Egypt ‘Hello!’ called out Gaille Bonnard. ‘Is there anyone here?’

She waited patiently for an answer, but none came. How odd. Kristos had been clear that Elena wanted help translating an ostracon, but there was no sign of her or her truck; and the magazine, where she normally worked, was closed up. She felt a rare flicker of irritation. She didn’t mind making the fifteen-minute walk from the other site; but she did mind having her time wasted. But then she noticed that the hut door was hanging ajar, which it had never been before, not while Gaille had been there at least. She knocked, pulled it open, looked within, allowing in a little sunlight. The interior walls were lined with shelves, stacked with battery lamps, hammers, mattocks, baskets, rope and other archaeological equipment. There was a dark square hole in the floor too, from which protruded the top of a wooden ladder.

She crouched, cupped her hands around her mouth, and called down, but there was no answer. She waited a few seconds, then called down again. When there was still nothing, she stood, put her hands on her hips, and brooded. Elena Koloktronis head of the Macedonian Archaeological excavation was one of those leaders who believed all her team to be incompetent, and who therefore tried to do everything herself. She was constantly running off in the middle of one task to see to another. Maybe that was what had happened here. Or maybe there’d just been a mix-up with the message. The trouble was, it was impossible with Elena to do the right thing. If you went looking for her, you should have stayed where you were. If you stayed, she was furious that you hadn’t come looking.

She crouched again, her hams and calves aching from her long day’s work, and called down a third time, beginning to feel a little alarmed. What if Elena had fallen? She turned on a battery lamp, but the shaft was deep, and the beam was lost in its darkness. There couldn’t be any harm in checking. She had no head for heights, so she took a deep breath as she put her hand on the ladder, reached one foot tentatively onto the top rung, then the other. When she felt secure, she began a cautious descent. The ladder creaked, as did the ropes that bound it to the wall. The shaft was deeper than she’d imagined, perhaps six metres. You couldn’t normally go down so far in the Delta without reaching the water table, but the site was on the crown of a hill, safe from the annual inundation of the Nile – one reason it had been occupied in ancient times. She called out again. Still silence, except for her own breathing, magnified by her narrow confines. Displaced earth trickled past. Curiosity began to get the better of apprehension. She’d heard whispers about this place, of course, though none of her colleagues dared speak openly about it.

She reached the bottom at last, her feet crunching on shards of basalt, granite and quartzite, as though old monuments and statues had been smashed into smithereens and tipped down. A narrow passage led left. She called out again, but more quietly this time, hoping there’d be no answer. Her lamp started flickering and stuttering, then went out altogether. She tapped it against the wall, and it sprang back on like a fist opening. Her feet crackled on the stone chips as she advanced.

There was a painting on the left-hand wall, its colours remarkably bright. It had evidently been cleaned, perhaps even retouched. A profiled humanoid figure dressed as a soldier but with the head and mane of a grey wolf was holding a mace in his left hand, and in his right a military standard, its base planted between his feet, a scarlet flag unfurling beside his right shoulder in front of a turquoise sky.

Ancient Egyptian gods weren’t Gaille’s speciality, but she knew enough to recognise Wepwawet, a wolf god who’d eventually merged with others into Anubis, the jackal. He’d been seen primarily as an army scout, and had often been depicted on shedsheds – the Egyptian military standard he was holding here. His name had meant ‘Opener of the Ways’, which was why the miniaturised robot designed to explore the mysterious air shafts of the Great Pyramids had been christened with a version of his name, Upuaut. To the best of Gaille’s recollection, he’d gone out of fashion during the Middle Kingdom, around sixteen hundred BC. By rights, therefore, this painting should have been over three and half thousand years old. Yet the shedshed that Wepwawet was holding told a different story. For depicted upon it were the head and shoulders of a handsome young man, a beatific look upon his face, tilted up like some Renaissance Madonna. It was hard to know for sure when you were looking at a portrait of Alexander the Great. His impact on iconography had been so profound that for centuries afterwards people had aspired to look like him. But if this wasn’t Alexander himself, it was unquestionably influenced by him, which meant it couldn’t possibly date to earlier than 332 BC. And that begged an obvious question: what on earth was he doing on a standard held by Wepwawet, over a millennium after Wepwawet had faded from view?

Gaille set this conundrum to one side and continued on her way, still murmuring Elena’s name, though only as an excuse should she encounter anyone. Her battery lamp went out again, plunging the place into complete blackness. She tapped her lamp again, and once more it sprang on. She passed another painting; as far as she could tell, identical to the first, though not yet fully cleaned. The walls began to show signs of charring, as though a great fire had once raged. She glimpsed a flash of white marble ahead, and two stone wolves lying prone yet alert. More wolves. She frowned. When the Macedonians had taken Egypt, they’d given many of the towns Greek names for administrative purposes, often basing them upon local cult-gods. If Wepwawet was the cult-god of this place, then surely this must be—

‘Gaille! Gaille!’ From far behind her, Elena was shouting. ‘Are you down there? Gaille!’

Gaille hurried back along the passage. ‘Elena?’ she called up. ‘Is that you?’

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing down there?’

‘I thought you’d fallen. I thought you might be in trouble.’

‘Get out,’ ordered Elena furiously. ‘Get out now.’

Gaille started to climb. She saved her breath until she reached the top. Then she said hurriedly: ‘Kristos told me you wanted to—’

Elena thrust her face in Gaille’s. ‘How many times have I told you this is a restricted area?’ she yelled. ‘How many times?’

‘I’m sorry, Ms Koloktronis, but—’

‘Who the hell do you think you are?’ Elena’s face was red; tendons stood out on her neck like a straining racehorse. ‘How dare you go down there? How dare you?’

‘I thought you’d fallen,’ repeated Gaille helplessly. ‘I thought you might need help.’

‘Don’t you dare interrupt me when I’m talking.’

‘I wasn’t—’

‘Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare!’

Gaille stiffened. For a moment she considered snapping back. It had barely been three weeks ago, after all, that Elena had called her out of the blue and begged her, begged her, to take a month out from the Sorbonne’s Demotic Dictionary project to fill in for a languages assistant who’d fallen ill. But you knew instinctively in this world how well you matched up against other people, and Gaille didn’t stand a chance. The first time Elena had exploded, it had left Gaille shell-shocked. Her new colleagues had shrugged it off, telling her that Elena had been that way ever since her husband had died. She boiled like a young planet with internal rage, erupting unpredictably in gushes of indiscriminate, molten and sometimes spectacular violence. It had become almost routine now, something to be feared and placated, like the wrath of ancient gods. So Gaille stood there and took upon her chin all Elena’s scathing and brutal remarks about the poverty of her abilities, her ingratitude, the damage this incident would doubtless do her career when it got out, though she herself would, of course, do her best to protect her.

‘I’m sorry, Ms Koloktronis,’ Gaille said, when the tirade finally began to slacken. ‘Kristos said you wanted to see me.’

‘I told him to tell you I was coming over.’

‘That’s not what he told me. I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t fallen.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘Nowhere. I just checked at the bottom.’

‘Very well,’ said Elena grudgingly. ‘Then we’ll say no more about it. But don’t mention it to Qasim, or I won’t be able to protect you.’

‘No, Ms Koloktronis,’ said Gaille. Qasim, the on-site representative of the Supreme Council, was every bit as secretive about this place as Elena herself. No doubt it would be embarrassing for Elena to have to admit to him that she’d left the door unlocked and unguarded.

‘Come with me,’ said Elena, locking the steel door, then leading Gaille across to the magazine. ‘There’s an ostracon I’d like your opinion on. I’m ninety-nine point nine nine per cent sure of its translation. You can perhaps help me with the other nought point nought one per cent.’

‘Yes, Ms Koloktronis,’ said Gaille meekly. ‘Thank you.’

III

‘Are you an idiot?’ scowled Max, having followed Knox to the stern of the dive boat. ‘Do you have a death wish, or something? Didn’t I tell you to leave Hassan’s woman alone?’

‘She came to talk to me,’ answered Knox. ‘Did you want me to be rude?’

‘You were flirting with her.’

‘She was flirting with me.’

‘That’s even worse. Christ!’ He looked around, his face suffused with fear. Working for Hassan could do that to people.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Knox. ‘I’ll stay away from her.’

‘You’d better. Trust me, you get on Hassan’s wrong side, you and your mate Rick can forget about your little project, whatever the fuck it is.’

‘Keep your voice down.’

‘I’m just warning you.’ He wagged a finger, as if he had more to say, but then he turned and walked away.

Knox watched him go. He didn’t like Max; Max didn’t like him. But they had a valuable relationship. Max ran a dive school, and Knox was a good, reliable dive instructor who knew how to charm tourists into recommending him to others they met on their travels; and he worked for peanuts too. In return, Max let him use his boat and side-scan sonar for what he disparagingly referred to as his ‘little project’. Knox smiled wryly. If Max ever found out what he and Rick were after, he wouldn’t dismiss it so patronisingly.

Knox had come to Sharm nearly three years before. He’d only been here four weeks when something extraordinary had happened; and it had been prompted by the very same tattoo that had caught Fiona’s eye.

While he’d been sitting on the front one evening, enjoying a beer, a powerfully built Australian man had come up to him. ‘Mind if I join you?’ he’d asked.

‘Help yourself.’

‘I’m Rick.’

‘Daniel. But everyone calls me Knox.’

‘Yeah. So I’ve been told.’

Knox squinted at him. ‘You’ve been asking?’

‘They say you’re an archaeologist.’

‘Used to be.’

‘You gave it up to become a dive instructor?’ asked Rick sceptically.

‘It gave me up,’ explained Knox. ‘A bust-up with the establishment.’

‘Ah.’ He leaned forward. ‘Interesting tattoo.’

‘You think?’

Rick nodded. ‘If I show you something, you’ll keep it to yourself, right?’

‘Sure,’ shrugged Knox.

Rick reached into his pocket, pulled out a matchbox. Inside, embedded in cotton wool, was a fat golden teardrop about an inch long with an eyelet at the narrow end for a clasp or a chain. Specks of pink were accreted from where it had been chiselled out of coral. And, on its base, a sixteen-pointed star had been faintly inscribed.

‘I found it a couple of years back,’ said Rick. ‘I thought you might be able to tell me more about it. I mean, it’s Alexander’s symbol, right?’

‘Yes. Where d’you find it?’

‘Sure!’ snorted Rick, taking it back, replacing it jealously in its makeshift home, then back in his pocket. ‘Like I’m going to tell you that. Well? Any idea?’

‘It could be anything,’ said Knox. ‘A tassel for a robe, a drinking cup, something like that. An earring.’

‘What?’ frowned Rick. ‘Alexander wore earrings?’

‘The star doesn’t mean it belonged to him personally. Just to his household.’

‘Oh.’ The Australian looked disappointed.

Knox frowned. ‘And you found it in these reefs, yes?’

‘Yeah. Why?’

‘It’s odd, that’s all. Alexander never came near here. Nor did his men.’

Rick snorted. ‘And I thought you said you were an archaeologist! Even I know he came to Egypt. He went to visit that place out in the desert.’

‘The Oracle of Ammon in Siwa Oasis. Yes. But he didn’t travel via Sharm, believe me. He cut across the north coast of Sinai.’

‘Oh. And that was his only visit, was it?’

‘Yes, except for …’ And Knox’s heart suddenly started pounding crazily inside his chest as a wild idea occurred to him. ‘Jesus Christ!’ he muttered.

‘What?’ asked Rick excitedly, reading his face.

‘No. No. It couldn’t be.’

‘What? Tell me.’

Knox shook his head decisively. ‘No. I’m sure it’s nothing.’

‘Come on, mate. You’ve got to tell me now.’

‘Only if you tell me where you found it.’

Rick squinted shrewdly at him. ‘You reckon there’s more? That’s what you’re thinking, yeah?’

‘Not exactly. But it’s possible.’

Rick hesitated. ‘And you’re a diver, yeah?’

‘Yes.’

‘I could do with a buddy. The place isn’t easy on my own. If I tell you, we’ll go look together, yeah?’

‘Sure.’

‘OK. Then spill.’

‘Fine. But you’ve got to remember, this is pure speculation. The chances of this being what I think it is—’

‘I get the point. Now spill.’

‘Long version or short?’

Rick shrugged. ‘I’ve got nowhere I need to be.’

‘I’ll have to give you some background first. Alexander came to Egypt only once during his life, like I said, and then for just a few months. Across north Sinai to the Nile Delta, then south to Memphis, the old capital, just south of Cairo, where he was crowned. After that it was north again to found Alexandria, westwards along the coast to Paraetonium, modern Marsa Matruh, then due south through the desert to Siwa. He and his party got lost, apparently. According to one account, they’d have died of thirst except that two talking snakes guided them to the Oasis.’

‘Those talking snakes. Always there when you need them.’

‘Aristobulus tells a more plausible story, that they followed a pair of crows. Spend any time in the desert, you’re pretty much certain to see some brown-necked ravens. They’re about the only birds you will see in many places. They often travel in pairs. And they’re cheeky buggers too; if they can’t find any snakes or locusts to eat, they’ll happily scout around your camp site looking for scraps, before heading off back to the nearest oasis. So if you were to follow them …’

Rick nodded. ‘Like dolphins in the Sea of Sand.’

‘If you want to put it that way,’ agreed Knox. ‘Anyway, they got Alexander to Siwa, where he consulted the oracle, and then it was back into the desert again; but this time he headed east along the caravan trails to Bahariyya Oasis, where there’s a famous temple dedicated to him, and then back to Memphis. That was pretty much that. It was off beating up Persians again. But then, after he died, he was brought back to Egypt for burial.’

‘Ah! And you think this was from then?’

‘I think it’s possible. You’ve got to bear something in mind. This is Alexander the Great we’re talking about. He led thirty thousand Macedonians across the Hellespont to avenge Xerxes’ invasion of Greece, knowing that he’d face armies ten times larger. He hammered the Persians not once, not twice, but three times, and then he just kept on going. He fought countless battles, and he won them all, making himself the most powerful man the world has ever seen. When his best friend Hephaiston died, he sent him on his way on top of a beautifully carved wooden pyre eighty metres high; like building Sydney Opera House, then putting a match to it, just to enjoy the blaze. So you can imagine, his men would have insisted on something pretty special when Alexander himself died.’

‘I get you.’

‘A pyre was out of the question. Alexander’s body was far too precious to be burned. Apart from anything else, one of the duties of a new Macedonian king was to bury his predecessor. So whoever possessed Alexander’s body had a serious claim to kingship, especially as Alexander hadn’t left an obvious successor, and everyone was jostling for position.’

Rick nodded at Knox’s empty glass. ‘You fancy another?’

‘Sure. Thanks.’

‘Two beers,’ shouted Rick at the barman. ‘Sorry. You were saying. People jostling for position.’

‘Yes. The throne was pretty much open. Alexander had a brother, but he was a half-wit. And his wife, Roxanne, was pregnant, but no one could be sure she’d have a son; and, anyway, Roxanne was a barbarian, and the Macedonians hadn’t conquered the known world to be ruled by a half-breed. So there was an assembly of the army in Babylon, and they came to a compromise. The half-wit brother and the unborn child, if he turned out to be a boy, which he did, Alexander the Fourth, would rule together; but the various regions of the empire would be administered for them by a number of satraps all reporting to a triumvirate. You with me?’

‘Yes.’

‘One of Alexander’s generals was a man named Ptolemy. He was the one who made the claim about the talking snakes as it happens. But don’t let that fool you. He was a very shrewd, very capable man. He realised that without Alexander to hold it together, the empire was bound to fragment, and he wanted Egypt for himself. It was rich, out of the way, unlikely to get caught up in other people’s wars. So he got himself awarded the satrapy, and he bedded himself in, and eventually he became Pharaoh, founding the Ptolemaic dynasty, which ended with Cleopatra. OK?’

Their beers arrived. They clinked them in a toast. ‘Go on,’ said Rick.

‘It wasn’t easy for Ptolemy, making himself Pharaoh,’ said Knox. ‘Egyptians wouldn’t recognise just anyone. Legitimacy was very important to them. Alexander was different: a living god of unquestioned royal blood who’d driven out the hated Persians; there was no shame in being ruled by such a man. But Ptolemy was a nobody as far as the Egyptians were concerned. So one of the things he needed was a symbol of kingship.’

‘Ah,’ said Rick, wiping froth from his upper lip. ‘Alexander’s body.’

‘Ten out of ten,’ grinned Knox. ‘Ptolemy wanted Alexander’s body. But he wasn’t the only one. The head of the Macedonian triumvirate was called Perdiccas. He had ambitions of his own. He wanted to bring Alexander’s body back to Macedonia for burial alongside his father, Philip, in the royal tombs of Aigai in Northern Greece. But getting him from Babylon to Macedonia wasn’t easy. You couldn’t just load him on the first boat. He had to travel in a certain style.’

Rick nodded. ‘I’m the same way, myself.’

‘A historian called Diodorus of Sicily gave a very detailed description of all this. Alexander’s body was embalmed and laid in a coffin of beaten gold, covered by expensive, sweet-smelling spices. And a catafalque – that’s a funeral carriage to you and me – was commissioned. It was so spectacular, it took over a year to get ready. It was a golden temple on wheels, six metres long, four metres wide. Golden ionic columns twined with acanthus supported a high vaulted roof of gold scales set with jewels. A golden mast rose from the top, flashing like lightning in the sun. At each of its corners, there was a golden statue of Nike, the ancient goddess of victory, holding out a trophy. The gold cornice was embossed with ibex heads from which hung gold rings supporting a bright, multicoloured garland. The spaces between the columns were filled with a golden net, protecting the coffin from the scorching sun and the occasional rain. Its front entrance was guarded by golden lions.’

‘That’s a whole lot of gold,’ said Rick sceptically.

‘Alexander was seriously rich,’ replied Knox. ‘He had over seven thousand tons of gold and silver in his Persian treasuries alone. It took twenty thousand mules and five thousand camels just to shift it all around. You know how they used to store it?’

‘How?’

‘They used to melt it and pour it into jars and then simply smash off the earthenware.’

‘Holy shit,’ laughed Rick. ‘I could do with finding one of those.’

‘Exactly. And the generals didn’t dare stint on all this. Alexander was a god to the Macedonian troops. Skimping would have been the quickest way to lose their loyalty. Anyway, the funeral carriage was eventually completed. But it was so heavy that the builders had to invent shock-absorbing wheels and axles for it, and even then the route had to be specially prepared by a crew of road-builders, and it took sixty-four mules to draw it along.’ He paused to take another sip of his beer. ‘Sixty-four mules,’ he nodded. ‘And each of them wore a gilded crown and a gem-encrusted collar. And each of them had a golden bell hanging upon either cheek. And each of these bells would have had inside it a golden pendant tongue just exactly like the one you’ve got in your matchbox.’

‘You’re fucking with me,’ said Rick, the shock legible on his face.

‘And, more to the point,’ grinned Knox, ‘this entire catafalque, all this gold, simply vanished from history without a trace.’

TWO

I

A hotel construction site, Alexandria

Mohammed el-Dahab kept a framed photograph of his daughter, Layla, on his desk. It had been taken two years ago, just before she’d fallen sick. He’d developed the habit, while he worked, of glancing at it every few moments. Sometimes it gladdened him to see her face. Mostly, as this time, his heart sank. He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger, muttered a short but heartfelt prayer. He prayed for her like this perhaps thirty times each day, as well as during his formal rek’ahs. His prayers had done little good so far, but faith was like that. Without testing it was nothing.

There were incongruous noises outside; shouting, jubilant laughing. He glanced irritably through his office window. Work on the building site had come to a halt. His crew were congregating in a corner, Ahmed was dancing like a dervish at a moulid. Mohammed hurried out angrily. Allah had cursed him with the laziest crew in all Egypt. Any excuse! He scowled to put himself into the right frame of mind to deliver a proper tongue-lashing, but when he saw what had caused the commotion, he forgot all ideas of that. The mechanical digger had ripped a great gaping hole in the ground, exposing a spiral staircase that wound around a deep, black shaft, still thick with settling dust. It looked yellow, dark, old; old as the city itself.

Mohammed and his men all gazed at each other with the same thought. Who knows how long this has lain hidden? Who can guess what riches might lie at its base? Alexandria was not only one of the great cities of antiquity, it boasted a lost treasure of world renown. Was there a man among them who hadn’t dreamed of discovering the golden sarcophagus of the city’s founder, Iskandar al-Akbar, Alexander the Great himself? Young boys dug holes in public gardens; women confided in their friends the strange echoes they heard when they tapped the walls of their cellars; robbers broke into ancient cisterns and the forbidden cellars of temples and mosques. But if it was anywhere, it was here, right in the heart of the city’s ancient Royal Quarter. Mohammed was not given to idle dreams, but gazing down into this deep shaft, his gut clenched tight as a fist.

Could this be his miracle at last?

He beckoned for Fahd’s flashlight, lowered his left foot slowly onto the top step. He was a big man, Mohammed, and his heart was in his mouth as he rested his considerable weight upon the rutted stone, but it bore him without protest. He tested more steps, his back turned to the rough limestone of the outer wall. The inner wall that separated the spiral staircase from the great central shaft was built of crumbled bricks; many had fallen away, leaving a black jigsaw. Mohammed tossed a pebble through a gap, waited with held breath until it clattered four heartbeats later at the foot. The spiral closed above him and he saw that the entire staircase was carved from the rock, a sculpture rather than a construction! It gave him confidence. He continued his descent, around and around. The spiral at last straightened out, doubled back through an arched portal into a large, circular room, calf-deep in sand, rock and fallen bricks. At the centre, four sturdy pillars surrounded the open base of the central shaft. The thin, rebounded daylight was thick with chalky motes swirling slow as planets, clotting like salve on his lips, tickling his throat.

It was cool down here, gloriously quiet after the incessant building site din. Including the stairwell from which he’d just emerged, four arched doorways led off this rotunda, one for each point of the compass. Curved benches with oyster-shell hoods were recessed into limestone walls sumptuously carved with prancing gods, hissing medusas, rampant bulls, soaring birds, bursting flowers and drapes of ivy. A dark, downward-sloping corridor showed through the first doorway, humped with rubble and dust. Mohammed swallowed with distaste and premonition as he tore aside its cobweb veil. A low side-passage led off the winding corridor into a large, tall chamber, walls pocked by columns of square-mouthed openings. A catacomb. He went to the left-hand wall, lit up a dusty yellow skull, tipped the dome aside with a finger. A small, blackened coin fell from its jaw. He picked it up, examined it, set it back down. He shone his torch within. At the far end, a high heap of skulls and bones had been pushed back to make room for later occupants. He grimaced at the sight, retreated to the main corridor to continue his survey. He passed four more burial chambers before descending a flight of twelve steps, then another five before he reached the top of another flight of steps and the water table.

He returned to the rotunda. Ahmed, Husni and Fahd had come down too, were now on their hands and knees, scrabbling through the rubble. He was puzzled that they hadn’t explored further until he realised it was the only spot with natural light, and he’d taken their one torch.

‘What is this place?’ asked Ahmed. ‘What have I found?’

‘A necropolis,’ answered Mohammed flatly. ‘A city of the dead.’

Obscurely angered by their presence, he walked through a second portal into a large, tall, closed 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. Upon 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-hand 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 Greek characters were carved into the lintel above the arched doorway in the facing wall; they meant nothing to Mohammed. 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 centre, 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. 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. 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. Trusting secrets to such men was like trusting water to a sieve; Alexandria’s slums writhed with villains who’d cut twenty throats on the mere rumour of such a prize. But he wasn’t going to back down because of that. All his life, Mohammed had striven to be good. Virtue had been a source of great pleasure to him. He’d leave a room after he’d done something particularly generous or judicious, and warmly imagine the admiring words being exchanged about him. Then Layla had fallen ill and he’d realised he didn’t give one fig what people thought of him. He cared only for making her better.

The question now 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’d sneak on him to his bosses, maybe even to the police. That would go hard with him. As site manager, he was legally bound to report this find to the Supreme Council for Antiquities. If they learned he’d kept it quiet, he’d lose his job, his licence 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.

II

‘Excuse me. You please will help me with this?’

Knox looked up to see Roland Hinz holding up his huge black wetsuit. ‘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 it on. That wouldn’t go down well. Roland was a Stuttgart banker considering investing in Hassan’s latest Sinai venture. Today’s jag was largely in his honour. He was making the most of it too, giggly with champagne, more than a little coked, getting on everyone’s nerves. He shouldn’t, in truth, be allowed anywhere near the water, but Hassan paid well to have rules stretched. And not just rules. Getting Roland into his wetsuit was like trying to stuff a duvet into its cover; he kept plopping out in unexpected places. Roland found this intensely funny. He found everything funny. He clearly believed himself the life and soul. He tripped over his own feet and laughed hysterically as he and Knox spilled inelegantly onto the deck, looking around at the other guests as though expecting rapturous applause.

Knox helped him back up with a strained smile, then kneeled down to pull on his booties for him. He had bloated, pinkish-yellow feet with dirt caked between his toes, as though he hadn’t washed between them for years. Knox distracted himself by letting his mind drift back to that afternoon when he’d shared his wild ideas about Alexander’s catafalque with Rick. The big Australian’s initial euphoria hadn’t lasted long.

‘So this procession came through Sinai, did it?’ he’d asked.

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

‘Oh bollocks, mate,’ protested Rick, sitting back in his chair, shaking his head angrily. ‘You really had me going.’

‘You want me to tell you what we know?’

‘Sure,’ he said, still annoyed. ‘Why not?’

‘OK,’ said Knox. ‘The first thing you need to understand is that our sources are very 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 fourth-hand accounts.’

‘Chinese whispers,’ suggested Rick.

‘Exactly. But it’s worse even 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. The Caesars worshipped Alexander. The Republicans loathed him. Historians were consequently extremely 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 travelled along the Euphrates from Babylon to Opis, then north-west 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 cV, 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. OK?’

‘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 ten kilometres 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 travelled discreetly either. Yet I’ve never come across any account of it being seen travelling the obvious route south from Syria through Lebanon and Israel to Sinai and the Nile; and surely someone would have seen it.’

‘So he left it behind, like I said?’

‘Possibly. But the catafalque represented an enormous amount of raw wealth. I mean, put yourself in Ptolemy’s shoes. What would you have done?’

Rick considered a few moments. ‘I’d have split up,’ he said. ‘One lot scoots ahead with the body. The other takes a different route with the catafalque.’

Knox grinned. ‘That’s what I’d have done too. There’s no proof, of course. But it makes sense. The next question is how. Syria’s on the Mediterranean, so he might have sailed down. But the Med was notoriously infested with pirates, and he’d have needed ships on hand; and if he’d felt it possible, he’d surely have taken Alexander’s body that way, and we’re pretty certain he didn’t.’

‘What were his alternatives?’

‘Well, assuming that he couldn’t move the catafalque as it was, he could have had it chopped up into manageable pieces and taken them southwest along the coast through Israel to Sinai; but that was the route he almost certainly took himself with Alexander’s body, and there’s not much point splitting up if you’re going to go the same way. So there’s a third possibility: that he sent it due south to the Gulf of Aqaba, then by boat around the Sinai Peninsula to the Red Sea coast.’

‘The Sinai Peninsula,’ grinned Rick. ‘You mean past these reefs here?’

‘These very dangerous reefs,’ agreed Knox.

Rick laughed and raised his glass in a toast. ‘Then let’s go find the bugger,’ he said.

And that’s exactly what they’d been trying to do ever since, though without success. At least, Knox had had a success of sorts. Initially, Rick had only been interested in finding treasure. But the more they’d searched, the more he’d learned, the more he’d caught the archaeological bug. He’d originally been a Clearance Diver in the Australian Navy, the closest they had to Special Forces. Working in Sharm had allowed him to keep diving, but he’d missed that sense of mission. Their quest had restored it to him to such an extent that he’d determined to make a new career in underwater archaeology, studying hard, borrowing Knox’s books and other materials, pestering him with questions …

Roland’s booties were on. Knox stood and helped strap him into his buoyancy control device, then ran through his safety checks. He heard footsteps on the bridge above him and glanced up as Hassan sauntered into view, leaning on the railing and looking down.

‘You guys have fun now,’ he said.

‘Oh, yes,’ enthused Roland, giving the thumbs up. ‘We have great fun.’

‘And don’t hurry back now.’ He beckoned behind him and Fiona came reluctantly into view. She’d put on long cotton trousers and a thin white T-shirt, as though more modest clothing could somehow protect her, yet still she was shivering. Her moist bikini top had made her T-shirt pearly, and her nipples showed through, pebble-dashed with fear. When Hassan caught Knox staring, he grinned wolfishly and put his arm around her shoulders, almost daring Knox to do something about it.

They said on the streets of Sharm that Hassan had slit the throat of a second cousin for sleeping with a woman he’d put his mark on. They said that he’d beaten an American tourist into a coma for protesting when he’d propositioned his wife.

Knox lowered his eyes and looked around, hoping to share the burden of responsibility. Max and Nessim, Hassan’s ex-paratrooper head of security, were checking out each other’s dive gear. He’d get no joy there. Ingrid and Birgit, two Scandinavians Max had brought along to keep Roland company, were already suited and waiting by the stern ladder. Knox tried to catch Ingrid’s eye, but she knew what he was up to and kept her eyes firmly averted. He glanced back up at the bridge. Hassan was still grinning down at him, aware of exactly what was going through Knox’s mind. An alpha male in his prime, savouring the challenge. He ran his hand slowly down Fiona’s flank to her backside, cupping and squeezing her buttock. The man had risen from nothing to make himself the most powerful shipping agent on the Suez Canal by the age of thirty. You didn’t achieve that by being soft. Now they said he was bored, looking to extend his empire every which way he could, including tourism, buying up waterfront properties in the slump that had followed recent terrorist outrages.

Roland was ready at last. Knox helped him down the ladder into the Red Sea, then kneeled to pass him his fins to pull on in the water. The big German spun backwards like a waterwheel, then splashed to the surface again, guffawing maniacally, slapping the water.

‘Hold on,’ said Knox tightly. ‘I’ll be with you in a second.’ He kitted himself up, shrugged on and clasped his BCD and tank, goggles loose around his neck, fins in his hand. He started down the ladder and was about to let go when he glanced up at the bridge one final time. Hassan was still staring down at him, shaking his head in mock disappointment. Beside him, Fiona had crossed her arms anxiously over her chest. Her hair was straggled, her shoulders hunched and miserable. She looked her age suddenly, or lack of it; a child who’d met a friendly Egyptian man in a bar and thought she’d worked herself a freebie for the day, confident she could wriggle and flirt her way out of any expectations he might have. Her eyes were wide, lost and frightened, yet somehow still hopeful, as though she believed that everything would work out fine, because basically people were nice.

Just for a moment, Knox imagined it was his sister, Bee, standing there.

He shook his head angrily. The girl was nothing like Bee. She was an adult. She made her own choices. Next time she’d know better. That was all. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure the sea was clear behind him, put his regulator into his mouth, bit down hard and threw himself backwards to explode like fireworks into the womb-warm waters of the Red Sea. He resolutely didn’t look back as he led Roland towards the reef, staying a modest four metres deep, in easy reach of the surface should anything go wrong. A masque of tropical fish watched their progress intently but without alarm. Sometimes it was difficult to know which was the show and which the audience. A Napoleon fish, surrounded by a shoal of angels and wrasse, turned regally, effortlessly away. He pointed it out to Roland with exaggerated diving gestures; beginners always enjoyed feeling like initiates.

They reached the coral shelf, a wall of ochre and purple that fell dizzily away into blackness. The waters were still and unclouded; visibility was exceptional. He glanced around unthinkingly, and saw the dark hull of the boat and the menacing blurs of distant big fish in the deeper, cooler waters, and he felt a sharp twinge as he suddenly remembered the worst day of his life, visiting his sister in an intensive care unit in Thessalonike after the car crash. The place had been oppressive with the sounds of life support, the steady wheeze of ventilators, the dull, precarious pulse of monitors, the respectful, funeral-home whispering of staff and visitors. The doctor had tried her best to prepare him, but he’d still been too numb from his trip to the morgue, where he’d just had to identify his parents, and so it had come as a shock to see Bee on the business end of a feeding tube and all the other attachments. He’d felt dislocated, as though he’d been watching a play rather than real events. Her head had been unnaturally swollen, and her skin had been pale and blue. He could remember its waxy pallor still, its uncharacteristic flabbiness. And he’d never before realised how freckled she was around her eyes and in the crook of her elbow. He hadn’t known what to do. He’d looked round at her doctor, who’d gestured for him to sit down beside her. He’d felt awkward putting his hand on hers; they’d never been a physically demonstrative family. He’d pressed her cool hand beneath his own, had felt intense and startling anguish, something like parenthood. He’d squeezed her fingers between his own, held them to his lips, and remembered how he’d joked to friends about what a curse it was to have a younger sister to look after.

He didn’t any longer.

He tapped Roland on the arm and pointed upwards. They surfaced together. The boat was perhaps sixty metres away. There was no sign of anyone on deck. Knox felt a flutter of nerves in his chest as his heart realised his decision before his head. He spat the regulator from his mouth. ‘Stay here,’ he warned Roland. Then he set out in strong strokes across the crystal water.

III

Mohammed el-Dahab clasped his case protectively in front of his chest as the woman led him up to the private office of Ibrahim Beyumi, head of the Supreme Council for Antiquities in Alexandria. She knocked once upon his door then pushed it open, beckoned him through. A dapper and rather effeminate-looking man was sitting behind a pine desk. He looked up from his work.

‘Yes, Maha?’ he asked.

‘This is Mohammed el-Dahab, sir. A builder. He says he’s found something on his site.’

‘What kind of something?’

‘Perhaps he should tell you himself,’ she suggested.

‘Very well,’ sighed Ibrahim. He gestured for Mohammed to sit at his corner table. Mohammed looked around, dispiritedly assessing with a builder’s eye the bulging wood-panelled walls, the fractured, high ceiling with its missing clumps of plaster, the mildewed drawings of Alexandria’s monuments. If this was the office of the top archaeologist in Alexandria, there wasn’t as much money in antiquities as he’d hoped.

Ibrahim read his expression. ‘I know,’ he complained. ‘But what can I do? Which is more important, excavation or my comfort?’

Mohammed shrugged as Ibrahim came to sit beside him. He, at least, looked expensive, with his sharp suit and gold watch. He settled his hands primly in his lap, and asked: ‘So you’ve found something, then?’

‘Yes.’

‘You care to tell me about it?’

Mohammed swallowed. He was a big man, not easily cowed by physical dangers, but educated people intimidated him. There was something kindly about Ibrahim, however. He looked like a man who could be trusted. Mohammed set his case on the table, opened it, withdrew his framed photograph of Layla, laid it facing Ibrahim. Touching and seeing her image restored his courage. ‘This is my daughter,’ he said. ‘Her name is Layla.’

Ibrahim squinted curiously at Mohammed. ‘Allah has indeed blessed you.’

‘Thank you, yes. Unfortunately Layla is sick.’

‘Ah,’ said Ibrahim, leaning back. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘They call it Burkitt’s lymphoma. It appeared in her stomach like a grape and then a mango beneath her skin. Her surgeons removed it. She had chemotherapy. We thought she’d conquered it.’

Ibrahim rubbed his throat. ‘Maha said you’d found something—’

‘Her doctors are good people,’ said Mohammed. ‘But they’re overworked, under-equipped. They have no money. They wait for—’

‘Excuse me, but Maha said you’d found—’

‘They wait for her disease to progress so far that there’s nothing more they can do.’ Mohammed leaned forwards, said softly but fiercely: ‘That time is not yet here. My daughter still has one chance.’

Ibrahim hesitated, then asked reluctantly: ‘And that is?’

‘A bone-marrow transplant.’

A look of polite horror crossed Ibrahim’s face. ‘But aren’t those incredibly expensive?’

Mohammed waved that aside. ‘Our Medical Research Institute has a programme of publicly funded transplants, but they won’t consider a patient unless they’ve already identified a donor match. But they’ll not run tests for a match unless the patient is already in the programme.’

‘Surely that makes it impossible—’

‘It’s their way of choosing without having to choose. But unless I can finance these tests, my daughter will die.’

Ibrahim said weakly: ‘You can’t expect the SCA to—’

‘These tests aren’t expensive,’ said Mohammed urgently. ‘It’s just that the chances of a match are low. My wife and I, our closest family, our friends, we’ve all taken the tests, but without success. I can persuade others, more distant cousins, friends of friends, but only if I organise and pay. I’ve tried everywhere to borrow money for this, but already this disease has put me so far in debt that …’ He felt tears coming; he broke off, bowed his head to prevent Ibrahim seeing.

There was silence for a while. Then Ibrahim murmured: ‘Maha said you’d found something on your site.’

‘Yes.’

‘Am I to understand that you want money for these tests in exchange for telling me about it?’

‘Yes.’

‘You realise you’re legally obliged to inform me anyway.’

‘Yes.’

‘That you could go to gaol if you don’t.’

Mohammed lifted his face, met Ibrahim’s gaze with perfect calmness. ‘Yes.’

Ibrahim nodded, gestured around his shabby offices. ‘And you understand I cannot promise anything?’

‘Yes.’

‘Very well. Why don’t you tell me what you’ve found?’

THREE

I

Knox reached the dive boat quickly. He took off his flippers, tossed them aboard, climbed up. He could see no sign of Fiona or Hassan. Now that he was here, he wasn’t certain what to do. He felt conspicuous and rather foolish. He unbuckled and slipped off his BCD and tank, carried it with him as he walked quietly across the deck to the port-side cabins. He tested the doors one by one, looking inside. He finally came to one that was locked. He rattled it. There was a muffled cry inside, then silence.

Some people enjoy and seek out violence. Not Knox. He had a sudden disembodied vision of himself standing there, and it unnerved him badly. He turned and walked away, but then the door opened behind him.

‘Yes?’ demanded Hassan.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Knox, without looking around. ‘I made a mistake.’

‘Come back!’ said Hassan, irritably. ‘Yes, you. Max’s boy. I’m talking to you. Come here now.’

Knox turned reluctantly, walked back towards Hassan, eyes submissively lowered. Hassan didn’t even bother to block his view, so that Knox could see Fiona lying on the bed, forearms crossed over her exposed breasts, cotton trousers half pulled down around her clenched and lifted knees. There was a cut above her right eye; her upper lip was bleeding. A torn white T-shirt lay discarded on the floor.

‘Well?’ demanded Hassan. ‘What did you want?’

Knox glanced again at Fiona. She shook her head at him, to say it was all right, she could cope with this, he shouldn’t get involved. The small gesture triggered something utterly unexpected in Knox, something like rage. He swung his scuba tank like a wrecking ball into Hassan’s solar plexus, doubling him up. Then he clubbed him on the side of his jaw, and sent him reeling backwards. Now that he’d started, he couldn’t help himself. He hit Hassan again and again until he collapsed on the ground. It was only when Fiona pulled him away that his mind cleared.

Hassan was unconscious, his face and chest painted with blood. He looked so badly beaten that Knox kneeled and was relieved to find a pulse in his throat.

‘Quick,’ said Fiona, tugging his hand. ‘The others are coming back.’

They ran together out of the cabin. Max and Nessim were swimming towards the boat. They shouted furiously when they saw Knox. He ran to the bridge, ripped wiring from beneath the two-way radio and ignition. All the keys were kept in a plastic tub on the floor. He grabbed the lot. The speedboat was tied by a single rope to their stern. He hurried down the ladder, hauled the speedboat towards them, helped Fiona onto its bow, followed himself, untying the towrope, jumping into the driver’s seat, slipping the key into the ignition just as Max and Nessim reached them and started to climb aboard. Knox spun the boat in a tight circle and roared away; the wash of water ripped Max free, but Nessim held on, pulled himself aboard, stood. He was a tough bastard, Nessim, angry as hell, but he was hampered by his wetsuit and his tank. Knox threw the boat into another tight spin and sent him flailing over the side.

Knox straightened out and roared off towards Sharm. He shook his head at himself. He’d done it now. He’d fucking done it. He needed to reach his Jeep before Hassan or Nessim could put the word out. If they caught him … Christ! He felt sick at the prospect of what they’d do. He needed out of Sharm, out of Sinai, out of Egypt altogether. He needed out tonight. He glanced around. Fiona was sitting on the bench seat at the back, head bowed, teeth chattering, a blue towel wrapped tight around her trembling shoulders. For the life of him, he couldn’t think how she’d reminded him of Bee. He slammed the heel of his hand against the control panel in anger at himself. If there was one thing he hated, it was memory. You worked your balls off to build a life in a place like this that had no links whatsoever with your past; no friends, no family, nothing to weigh you down. But it wasn’t enough. You took your memory with you wherever you went, and it’d fuck you up in a heartbeat.

II

Ibrahim Beyumi walked Mohammed down to the street to wish him farewell, then thanked him and watched him disappear round the corner. He could have followed him, of course, and found the location of his site that way. But the big man’s story had touched him, not least because he’d effectively put his career and freedom in Ibrahim’s hands, and Ibrahim always liked to repay such trust. Besides, he’d left a telephone number to call when he had news, so he’d be easy enough to track down, if necessary.

Maha, Ibrahim’s assistant, started to rise when he walked over to her desk, but he settled her with a palm, then went to consult the vast street map of Alexandria pinned to the wall behind her. As ever, it filled him with wistful pride, marked as it was with every antiquity in his beloved city, including Pompey’s Pillar, Ras el-Tin, the Latin Cemeteries, the Roman theatre, Fort Qait Bey. There were some fine sites among them, and he boosted them vigorously, but he knew in his heart that none of them was in the first rank of Egyptian antiquities. Alexandria boasted no pyramids, no Karnak or Abu Simbel, no Valley of the Kings. And yet, two thousand years ago, its buildings had been something to marvel at. The Pharos lighthouse had been one of the Seven Wonders. The Mouseion had led the world in learning and culture. The Temple of Serapis had awed worshippers with its splendour and the trickery of its flying statues. The Royal Palaces of Cleopatra were imbued with extraordinary romance. And, most of all, it had boasted the mausoleum of the city’s patriarch, Alexander the Great himself. If just one of these great marvels had survived, Alexandria would surely now rival Luxor or Giza on the tourist trail. But none had.

‘That man,’ said Ibrahim.

‘Yes?’

‘He’s found a necropolis.’

Maha looked around. ‘Did he say where?’

‘In the old Royal Quarter.’ Ibrahim traced out the approximate area with his finger, then tapped its heart. Remarkably, it was impossible to be sure even of the broad outlines of the ancient city, let alone streets or buildings. They’d all been victims of Alexandria’s particular location. With the Mediterranean to the north, Lake Mariut to the south and west, and the marshy Nile Delta to the east, there’d been no room to expand. When new buildings had been needed, old ones had been torn down to make way for them. Fort Qait Bey was built on the ruined foundations of the Pharos lighthouse. And the limestone blocks of Ptolemaic palaces had been reused for Roman temples, Christian churches and Islamic mosques, mirroring the various ages of the city.

He turned to Maha with a storyteller’s smile. ‘Did you know that Alexander marked out our city’s walls himself?’

‘Yes, sir,’ she replied dutifully, but without looking up.

‘He leaked a trail of flour from a sack, only for birds of all colours and sizes to come feast upon it. Some people might have been put off by such an omen. Not Alexander.’

‘No, sir.’

‘He knew that it meant our city would provide shelter and sustenance for people from all nations. And he was right. Yes. He was right.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I’m boring you.’

‘You said you wanted these letters out today, sir.’

‘I do, Maha. Indeed I do.’

Alexander hadn’t lived to see his city built. It had been Ptolemy and his progeny who’d benefited, ruling Egypt with gradually diminishing authority until the Romans had taken over, themselves displaced by the Arab conquest of AD 641. The administrative capital had been transferred south, first to Fustat, then to Cairo. Trade with Europe had fallen off; there’d no longer been such need for a Mediterranean port. The Nile Delta had silted up; the freshwater canals had fallen into disuse. Alexandria’s decline had continued inexorably after the Turks had taken control, and by the time Napoleon had invaded at the turn of the nineteenth century, barely six thousand people had lived here. But the city had since proved its resilience, and today some four million were packed together into high-density housing that rendered systematic excavation impossible. Archaeologists like Ibrahim, therefore, were at the mercy of developers, still tearing down old buildings to erect new ones in their place. And every time they did so, there was just a glimmer of a chance that they’d uncover something extraordinary.

‘He did describe one area in great detail,’ he said. ‘A forecourt with bronze doors leading to an antechamber and main chamber. What do you make of that?’

‘A tomb?’ hazarded Maha. ‘Ptolemaic?’

Ibrahim nodded. ‘Early Ptolemaic. Very early.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Indeed, it sounded to me like the tomb of a Macedonian king.’

Maha stood and turned, her fingers splayed on her desk. ‘You can’t mean …’ she began. ‘But I thought Alexander was buried in a great mausoleum.’

Ibrahim remained silent for several seconds, vicariously enjoying her excitement, wondering whether to deflate her gently now or risk sharing his wilder hopes. He decided to let her down. ‘He was, yes. It was called the Sema; the Greek word for “tomb”, you know. Or perhaps Soma, their word for “body”.’

‘Oh,’ said Maha. ‘So this isn’t Alexander, then?’

‘No.’

‘What is it?’

Ibrahim shrugged. ‘We’ll need to excavate to find that out.’

‘How? I thought we’d spent all our money.’

And that was the nub. Ibrahim’s entire budget for the year was already allocated. He’d begged as much from the French and Americans as they could give. It happened like that here, precisely because excavation was such an opportunistic affair. If too many interesting sites were found in the same financial period, he simply couldn’t handle them all. It became a matter of triage. At this precise moment, all his field archaeologists were involved directly or indirectly in projects right across the old city. Excavating this new site would demand new money, specialists and crew. And it wasn’t as if he could put it on hold until the new financial year. The stairwell was slap in the middle of the hotel’s prospective car park; Mohammed could accommodate a couple of weeks of excavation, but any more would ruin his schedule. That was a real concern to Ibrahim. In uncovering ancient Alexandria, he depended almost entirely upon property developers and construction companies to report significant finds. If ever he got a reputation for being difficult to work with, they’d simply stop notifying him, whatever their legal obligations. In many ways, this latest site was a headache he didn’t need. But it was also an early Macedonian tomb, quite possibly a very significant find indeed. He couldn’t let it slide by. He just couldn’t.

There was one possible source of funds, he knew. His mouth felt tacky and dry just thinking of it, not least because it would mean contravening all kinds of SCA protocols. Yet he could see no alternative. He conjured up some saliva to help him speak, forced a smile. ‘That Greek businessman who keeps offering to sponsor us,’ he said.

Maha raised her eyebrows. ‘You can’t mean Nicolas Dragoumis?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s the one.’

‘But I thought you said he was …’ She caught his eye and trailed off.

‘I did,’ he acknowledged. ‘But do you have a better suggestion?’

‘No, sir.’

Ibrahim had been delighted when Nicolas Dragoumis had first contacted him. Sponsors were always welcome. Yet something about his manner had made Ibrahim apprehensive. After putting down the phone, he’d gone directly to the Dragoumis Group’s corporate website, with all its links to subsidiaries in shipping, insurance, construction, media, import-export, electronics, aerospace, property, tourism, security and more. He’d found a sponsorship section explaining that the Dragoumis Group only supported projects that helped demonstrate the historical greatness of Macedonia, or which worked to restore the independence of Aegean Macedonia from the rest of Greece. Ibrahim didn’t know much about Greek politics, but he knew enough not to want to get involved with Macedonian separatists.

Elsewhere on the site, he’d found a page with a group photograph of the directors. Nicolas Dragoumis was tall, stringy, handsome and well-dressed. But it had been the man standing front centre who’d unnerved Ibrahim. Philip Dragoumis, group founder and chief executive, fearsome-looking, swarthy, lightly bearded, with a large, plum-coloured birthmark above his left cheekbone, and an incredibly potent gaze, even in a photograph. A man to steer clear of. But Ibrahim had no choice. His heart beat a little faster, a little louder, as though he were standing on the very edge of a high cliff.

‘Good. Then could you find me his telephone number, please?’

III

Knox beached the speedboat near his Jeep and waded ashore. Fiona had pulled herself together, was now insisting on returning to her hotel. From the way she wouldn’t meet his gaze, it seemed she’d figured out that Hassan’s wrath would be at Knox, not her; and therefore the safest place was anywhere away from him. Not so dumb after all. Knox revved his Jeep furiously. He was glad not to have her to worry about, but it pissed him off anyway. His passport, cash and plastic were in his money-belt. His laptop, clothes, books and all his research were in his hotel room, but he dared not go back for them.

At the main road, he faced his first major decision. North-east to the Israeli border or up the west coast highway towards the main body of Egypt? Israel was safety, but the road was in bad repair, slow and choking with army checkpoints. West, then. He’d arrived here nine years ago on a boat into Port Said. It seemed a fitting way to leave. But Port Said was on the Suez, and the Suez belonged to Hassan. No. He needed out of Sinai altogether. He needed an international airport. Cairo, Alexandria, Luxor.

He jammed his mobile against his ear as he drove, warning Rick and his other friends to watch out for Hassan. Then he turned it off altogether, lest they use the signal to trace him. He pushed his old Jeep as fast as it would go, engine roaring. Blue oil fires flickered ahead on the Gulf of Suez, like some distant hell. They matched his mood. He’d been driving for less than an hour when he saw an army checkpoint up ahead, a chicane of concrete blocks between two wooden cabins. He choked a sudden urge to swing round and flee. Such checkpoints were routine in Sinai; there was nothing sinister about this. He was waved to the side of the road, felt the bump as he left the road, then cloying soft sand beneath his wheels. An officer swaggered across, a short, broad-shouldered man, with hooded, arrogant eyes; the kind who’d enjoy taunting weaker men until they broke and attacked him, before battering them to pulp and protesting innocently that they had started it. He held out his hand for Knox’s passport, took it away with him. There was little traffic; the other soldiers were chatting around a radio, automatic rifles slung nonchalantly over their shoulders. Knox kept his head down. There was always one who wanted to show off his English.

A long green insect was walking slowly along the rim of his lowered window. A caterpillar. No, a centipede. He put his finger in its way. It climbed unhesitatingly upon it, its feet tickling his skin. He brought it up to eye-level to inspect as it continued on its way, unaware of just having been hijacked, the precariousness of its situation. He watched it up and around his wrist with a sense of fellow feeling. Centipedes had had great resonance for the ancient Egyptians. They’d been closely connected with death, but in a welcome way, because they’d fed upon the numerous microscopic insects that themselves feasted upon corpses, and so had been seen as protectors of the human body, guarding against decomposition, and thus an aspect of Osiris himself. He gently tapped his hand against the outside of his Jeep’s door until the centipede fell off and tumbled to the ground. Then he leaned out the window and watched it creep away until he lost it in the darkness.

Inside the cabin, the officer was reading details from his passport into the telephone. He replaced the handset, perched on the edge of his desk, waiting to be called back. Minutes passed. Knox looked around. No one else was being kept: cursory inspections and then a wave through. The phone in the cabin finally rang. Knox watched apprehensively as the officer reached out to answer it.

FOUR

I

A church outside Thessalonike, Northern Greece ‘The ram which thou sawest having two horns are the kings of Media and Persia,’ intoned the old preacher, reading aloud from the open Bible upon his pulpit. ‘And the rough goat is the king of Grecia: and the great horn that is between his eyes is the first king.’ He paused and looked around the packed church. ‘Every bible scholar will tell you the same thing,’ he said, leaning forward a little, lowering his voice, confiding to his audience. ‘The ram Daniel speaks of represents the Persian king Darius. The king of Grecia represents Alexander the Great. These verses are talking about Alexander’s defeat of the Persians. And do you know when Daniel wrote them? Six hundred years before the birth of Christ, two hundred and fifty years before Alexander was even born. Two hundred and fifty years! Can you even begin to imagine what will be happening in the world two hundred and fifty years from now? But Daniel did it.’

Nicolas Dragoumis nodded as he listened. He knew the old preacher’s text word for word. He’d written much of it himself, and then they’d worked together in rehearsals until every word was perfect. But you could never really tell with something like this until you took it to the people. This was their first night, and it was going well so far. Atmosphere; that was the key. That was why they’d chosen this old church, though it wasn’t an official service. The moon showed through the stained-glass windows. A bird hooted in the rafters. Thick doors excluded the outside world. Incense caught in nostrils, covering the smell of honest sweat. The only lighting came from lines of fat white candles, just bright enough for the congregation to be able to check in their own bibles that these verses were truly from Chapter 8 of the Book of Daniel, as the preacher had assured them, but dark enough to retain a sense of the numinous, the unknown. People knew, in this part of the world, that things were stranger and more complex than modern science tried to paint them. They understood, as Nicolas did, the concept of mysteries.

He looked around the pews. These haggard people. People with compacted lives, old before their time, taking on backbreaking work at fourteen, becoming parents at sixteen, grandparents at thirty-five, few of them making it past fifty; unshaven faces gaunt from stress, sour from disappointment, skin leathery and dark from too much sun, hands callused from their endless struggle against hunger. And angry too, simmering with resentment at their poverty and the punitive taxation they paid on what little they earned. Anger was good. It made them receptive to angry ideas.

The preacher stood up straighter, relaxed his shoulders, continued his reading. ‘Now that being broken, whereas four stood up for it, four kingdoms shall stand up out of the nation, but not in his power.’ He gazed out into his congregation with the slightly manic blue eyes of a madman and a prophet. Nicolas had chosen well. ‘“Now that being broken”,’ he repeated. ‘That phrase refers to the death of Alexander. “Four kingdoms shall stand up out of the nation”. And that refers to the break-up of the Macedonian Empire. As you all know, it was broken into four parts by four successors: Ptolemy, Antigonus, Kassandros and Seleucus. And, remember, this was written by Daniel nearly three hundred years earlier.’

But unrest and anger weren’t enough, reflected Nicolas. Where there was poverty, there was always unrest and anger; but there wasn’t always revolution. There’d been unrest and anger in Macedonia for two millennia, as first the Romans, then the Byzantines and Ottomans had oppressed his people. And every time they’d struggled free from one yoke, another had been placed upon them. A hundred years ago, prospects had at last looked bright. The 1903 Ilinden Uprising had been brutally crushed, but then in 1912, 100,000 Macedonians had fought side-by-side with Greeks, Bulgarians and Serbs finally to expel the Turks. It should by rights have been the birth date of an independent Macedonia. But they’d been betrayed. Their former allies had turned upon them, the so-called Great Powers had collaborated in the infamy, and Macedonia had been cut up into three parts under the wretched Treaty of Bucharest. Aegean Macedonia had been awarded to Greece, Serbian Macedonia to Serbia, and Pirin Macedonia to Bulgaria.

‘And out of one of them came forth a little horn, which waxed exceeding great, toward the south, and toward the east, and toward the pleasant land. The little horn is Demetrios,’ asserted the preacher. ‘For those of you who may not remember, Demetrios was the son of Antigonus, and he had himself acclaimed king of Macedonia, even though he was not of Alexander’s blood.’

The Treaty of Bucharest! Just the name had the power to twist and torture Nicolas’ heart. For nearly one hundred years, the borders the Treaty had laid down had remained largely unchanged. And the loathsome Greeks, Serbs and Bulgars had done everything they could to eradicate Macedonian history, language and culture. They’d shut down free speech, imprisoned anyone who showed the slightest defiance. They’d appropriated the land of Macedonian farmers and resettled outsiders on it. They’d razed villages, orchestrated mass murders and rapes, turned Macedonians into slaves whom they’d then worked to death. They’d committed ethnic cleansing on a grand scale, without a peep of protest from the wider world. But it hadn’t worked. That was the thing. The spirit of Macedonian nationhood still burned strong. Their language survived, as did their culture and Church, in pockets across this ancient region. They lived on in these simple yet proud people, in the glorious sacrifices they’d already made and would soon be prepared to make once more for the greater good. And then his beloved country would finally be free.

‘And it waxed great, even to the host of heaven; and it cast down some of the host and of the stars to the ground, and stamped upon them. Yea, he magnified himself even to the prince of the host, and by him the daily sacrifice was taken away, and the place of his sanctuary was cast down. “And the place of his sanctuary was cast down”,’ repeated the preacher. ‘That’s this place. That’s Macedonia. The land of your birth. It was Demetrios, you see, who began the chaos that has engulfed Macedonia ever since. Demetrios. In 292 BC. Mark that date. Mark it well: 292 BC.’

In Nicolas’ pocket, his mobile began to buzz. Few people had this number, and he’d given his assistant, Katerina, strict instructions not to put any calls through tonight except in an emergency. He stood and walked to the back doors.

‘Yes?’ he asked.

‘Ibrahim Beyumi for you, sir,’ said Katerina.

‘Ibrahim who?’

‘The archaeologist from Alexandria. I wouldn’t have bothered you but he says it’s urgent. They’ve found something. They need a decision at once.’

‘Very well. Put him through.’

‘Yes, sir.’

The line switched. Another voice came on. ‘Mr Dragoumis. This is Ibrahim Beyumi here. From the Supreme Council in—’

‘I know who you are. What do you want?’

‘You’ve been generous enough to offer sponsorship in certain—’

‘You’ve found something?’

‘A necropolis. A tomb. A Macedonian tomb.’ He took a deep breath. ‘From the description I was given, it sounds just like the Royal Tombs at Aigai.’

Nicolas clutched his phone tight and turned his back on the church. ‘You’ve found a Macedonian royal tomb?’

‘No,’ said Ibrahim hurriedly. ‘All I have so far is a description from a builder. I won’t know what it really is until I’ve inspected it myself.’

‘And when will you do that?’

‘First thing tomorrow. Providing I can arrange finance, at least.’

In the background, the preacher was still talking. ‘Then I heard one saint speaking,’ he intoned, squeezing every sonorous drop from the biblical prose, ‘and another saint said unto that certain saint which spake, How long shall be the vision concerning the daily sacrifice, and the transgression of desolation, to give both the sanctuary and the host to be trodden under foot? How long shall Macedonia and the Macedonians be trampled underfoot? How long shall we pay the price for Demetrios’ sin? Remember, this was written three hundred years before the sin of Demetrios, which took place in 292 BC!’

Nicolas clamped a hand over his ear, the better to concentrate. ‘You need finance before you inspect?’ he asked sardonically.

‘We have a peculiar situation,’ said Ibrahim. ‘The man who reported the find has a very sick daughter. He wants funds before he’ll talk.’

‘Ah.’ The inevitable baksheesh. ‘How much? For everything.’

‘In money terms?’

Nicolas clenched his toes in frustration. These people! ‘Yes,’ he said, with exaggerated patience. ‘In money terms.’

‘That depends on how big the site proves to be, how much time we have, what kind of artefacts—’

‘In US dollars. Thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands?’

‘Oh. It typically costs six or seven thousand American dollars a week for an emergency excavation like this.’

‘How many weeks?’

‘That would depend on—’

‘One? Five? Ten?’

‘Two. Three if we’re lucky.’

‘Fine. Do you know Elena Koloktronis?’

‘The archaeologist? I’ve met her once or twice. Why?’

‘She’s on a dig in the Delta. Katerina will give you her contact number. Invite her tomorrow. If she vouches for this tomb of yours, the Dragoumis Group will give you twenty thousand dollars. I trust that will meet all your excavation costs, plus any more sick children who turn up.’

‘Thank you,’ said Ibrahim. ‘That’s most generous.’

‘Talk to Katerina. She’ll talk you through our terms.’

‘Terms?’

‘You don’t think we’d provide funds on this scale without terms, do you?’

‘But—’

‘Like I say, talk to Katerina.’ And he snapped closed his phone.

‘And he said unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed. Two thousand and three hundred days!’ cried the preacher exultantly. ‘Two thousand and three hundred days! But that’s not the original text. The original text talks about the “evenings and mornings of sacrifices”. And those sacrifices took place once each year. Two thousand three hundred days therefore doesn’t mean two thousand three hundred days at all. No. It means two thousand three hundred years. And who can tell me what date is two thousand three hundred years on from the sin of Demetrios? No? Then let me tell you. It is the year of Our Lord 2008. It is now. It is today. Today, our sanctuary is finally to be cleansed. It says so in the Bible, and the Bible never lies. And remember, this was all predicted exactly by Daniel, six hundred years before the birth of Christ.’ He wagged a finger in both admonition and exhortation. ‘It is written, people. It is written. This is our time. This is your time. You are the chosen generation, chosen by God to fulfil His command. Which of you dare refuse His call?’

Nicolas watched with gratification people turning to look at each other, murmuring in astonishment. This was indeed their time, he reflected, and it wasn’t a fluke. His father had been working towards it for forty years now, and he for fifteen. They had operatives in every hamlet, town and village. Vast caches of weapons, food and drink were waiting in the mountains. Veterans of the Yugoslavian wars had trained them in ordnance and guerrilla campaigns. They had sleepers in local and national government, spies in the armed services, friends in the international community and among the Macedonian Diaspora.

The propaganda war was in full swing too. The schedules of Dragoumis TV and radio were crammed with programmes designed to stir Macedonian fervour, their newspapers filled with stories of Macedonian heroism and sacrifice, alongside tales of the opulent lifestyles and unthinking cruelty of their Athenian overlords. And it was working. Anger and hatred was building across northern Greece, even among those who had little sympathy with the separatist cause. Civil disturbance, riots, increasing incidents of ethnic assaults. All the telltale trembling of an imminent earthquake. But they weren’t there yet. Much as Nicolas craved it, they weren’t quite there. A revolution needed people so worked up they wanted martyrdom. Break out the guns now, it would look promising for a while, but then everything would fizzle out. The reaction would come. The Greek army would deploy upon the streets, families would be menaced and businesses investigated. There’d be arbitrary arrests, beatings and counterpropaganda. Their cause would be set back years, might even be irreversibly crippled. No. They still needed something more before it could begin. Something very particular. A symbol that the Macedonian people would be prepared to fight to the death for.

And it was just possible that his recent phone call from Egypt might provide it.

II

The Egyptian army officer was still speaking on the phone. He seemed to be talking for a very long time. He came out with a pen and a pad of paper, crouched to jot down the licence plate of Knox’s Jeep. Then he went back inside and read it out to whoever was at the other end of the phone.

The Jeep’s keys were in the ignition. For a crazy moment, Knox contemplated driving for it. If Hassan caught him, he was finished anyway. But though the Egyptian soldiers looked cheerful and relaxed enough, that would change in a heartbeat if he fled. The threat of suicide bombers was simply too high around here for them to take risks. He’d be shot dead before he made it fifty yards. So he forced himself to relax, to accept that his fate was out of his hands.

The officer replaced the handset carefully, composed himself, walked across. He wasn’t swaggering any more. He looked thoughtful, even apprehensive. He gestured to his men. Immediately, they became alert. He stooped a little to talk through the Jeep’s open window, tapping the spine of Knox’s passport against the knuckles of his left hand as he did so.

He said: ‘I am hearing whispers of a most remarkable story.’

Knox’s stomach squeezed. ‘What whispers?’

‘Of an incident involving Hassan al-Assyuti and some young foreigner.’

‘I know nothing about that,’ said Knox.

‘I’m glad,’ said the officer, squinting down the road to Sharm, as though expecting a vehicle to appear at any moment. ‘Because, if the rumours are true, the young foreigner in question has a very bleak future.’

Knox swallowed. ‘He was raping a girl,’ he blurted out. ‘What was I supposed to do?’

‘Contact the authorities.’

‘We were in the middle of the fucking sea.’

‘I’m sure you’ll have your chance to tell your side.’

‘Bollocks,’ said Knox. ‘I’ll be dead within an hour.’

The officer flushed. ‘You should have thought of that before, shouldn’t you?’

‘I should have covered my arse, you mean? Like you’re doing now?’

‘This isn’t my fight,’ scowled the officer.

Knox nodded. ‘People in my country, they think that all Egyptian men are cowards and thieves. I tell them they’re wrong. I tell them that Egyptian men are honourable and brave. But maybe I’ve been wrong.’

There was an angry muttering. One of the soldiers reached in the open window. The officer clamped his hand around his wrist. ‘No,’ he said.

‘But he—’

‘No.’

The soldier retreated, a little shamefaced, while the officer looked down thoughtfully at Knox, clearly uncertain what to do. A pair of headlights crested a hill behind. ‘Please,’ begged Knox. ‘Just give me a chance.’

The officer had noticed the approaching headlights too. His jaw tightened as he came to his decision. He tossed the passport onto the passenger seat, then signalled his men to stand aside. ‘Get out of Egypt,’ he advised. ‘It’s no longer safe for you.’

Knox let out a long breath. ‘I’m leaving tonight.’

‘Good. Now go before I change my mind.’

Knox put the Jeep into gear, accelerated away. His hands began shaking wildly as his body flooded with the euphoria of escape. He held himself back until he was a distance down the road, then he whooped and punched the air. He’d done a stupid, reckless thing, but it looked as though he’d got away with it.

III

Nessim, Hassan al-Assyuti’s head of security, arrived in Knox’s Sharm backpacker hotel to find the middle-aged concierge snoring raucously behind his desk. He came awake with a strangled shriek when Nessim slammed down the wooden access hatch.

‘Knox,’ said Nessim. ‘I’m looking for Daniel Knox.’

‘He’s not here,’ said the concierge, breathing heavily.

‘I know he’s not here,’ said Nessim coldly. ‘I want to see his room.’

‘But it’s his room!’ protested the concierge. ‘I can’t just show it to you.’

Nessim reached into his jacket pocket for his wallet, making sure that the concierge caught a glimpse of his shoulder holster while he was at it. He took out fifty Egyptian pounds and set them down on the counter. ‘This is me asking nicely,’ he said.

The concierge licked his lips. ‘Just this once, I suppose.’

Nessim followed the fat man upstairs, still brooding on what had happened on the boat, the humiliation of being bested by some beach-bum foreigner. At first, he’d thought that Knox would be easy to track down, but it wasn’t proving that simple. He’d had word back from a contact in the army that Knox had somehow bluffed his way through a checkpoint. When he’d heard about that, he’d felt a spike of intense anger and frustration. How simple it might have been! But he knew better than to make waves. Only a fool took on the army in Egypt; and Nessim wasn’t a fool.

The concierge unlocked and opened Knox’s door, looking around nervously lest other guests see what was happening. Nessim went inside. He had one night to capture Knox, and he had that only because Hassan was on morphine to manage his pain. When he woke in the morning he’d demand to know what progress had been made.

He’d want Knox.

Nessim fingered the shabby clothes hanging in the wardrobe, checked the side-pockets of the red canvas bag in the bottom, crouched to inspect the books lined up on the floor against the walls. A few comic novels and thrillers, but mostly academic works on Egypt and archaeology. There were CDs, too, some music, others for his laptop. He picked up a cone-bound document. The front page read, in both English and Arabic:

Mallawi Excavation First Season Notes Richard Mitchell and Daniel Knox

He flipped through it. Text and photographs of an excavation near an ancient Ptolemaic settlement a few kilometres from Mallawi in Middle Egypt. He put it back thoughtfully. Why would an Egyptologist be working as a dive instructor in Sharm? He checked a few more documents. Maps and photographs of reefs systems, as best as he could make out. He took the canvas bag from the wardrobe and packed all of Knox’s documents inside. Then he packed up Knox’s laptop too, and his work-related CDs and floppy disks. In the top drawer of Knox’s desk, he found photocopies of his passport and driver’s licence, presumably in case he lost the originals; and a strip of colour passport-sized photographs, no doubt for the myriad documents foreigners needed to work in Sinai. He scooped these up and tucked them away in his jacket pocket. Then he picked up the canvas bag and laptop to take away with him. The concierge gave a little whimper.

‘Yes?’ asked Nessim. ‘Is something the matter?’

‘No,’ said the concierge.

‘Good. A word of advice. I’d clear the rest of his stuff out, if I were you. I very much doubt your friend will be coming back any time soon.’

‘No?’

‘No.’ Nessim handed the man one of his business cards. ‘But call me if he does.’

FIVE

I

The mosquitoes were in a malevolent mood that evening. Gaille had spiked two smouldering green coils onto their tin stands, had buttoned her white chemise tight around her throat and wrists, tucked her long trousers into socks, then sprayed all her remaining exposed skin to a shine with repellent; yet these gossamer fiends still found a way to feed off her, then boast of it afterwards with that infuriating trumpeting of theirs, retreating to the high hotel ceiling well out of range of reprisal even when she stood on a chair. Whatever had happened to the notion of sisterhood? There it was again, that gloating buzz behind her ear. She slapped at her neck but only as a gesture to punish herself for being so easily caught. The damage was done. The side of her right hand began to pulse and redden. Her mouse hand was an easy target as she typed up these damned excavation notes every night. She paused momentarily, glanced at her window. Just one night off wouldn’t hurt. A cold beer and a little conversation. But if Elena caught her in the bar—

Her door opened without warning and Elena herself strode in as though she owned the place. She had no regard for anyone else’s privacy, but heaven help you if you dared so much as knock upon her door without first giving two weeks’ written notice!

‘Yes?’ asked Gaille.

‘I’ve just had a phone call,’ said Elena. She squinted belligerently at Gaille, as though she found herself at a disadvantage and expected Gaille to make the most of it. ‘Ibrahim Beyumi. You know him? He’s head of the Supreme Council in Alexandria. Apparently he’s found a necropolis. He thinks part of it may be Macedonian. He wants me to check it out with him. He also said he was putting together a team for possible excavation, and asked if I could provide specialist support. I had to remind him I had my own excavation to run. Still, I mentioned you were available.’

Gaille frowned. ‘He needs support with languages?’

‘It’s an emergency excavation,’ snorted Elena. ‘The job is to record, remove, process and store. Translation will come later.’

‘Then—’

‘He needs a photographer, Gaille.’

‘Oh!’ Gaille felt bewildered. ‘But I’m not a photographer.’

‘You’ve got a camera, haven’t you? You’ve been taking pictures for us, haven’t you? Are you telling me they’re no good?’

‘I only took them because you asked me to—’

‘So it’s my fault now, is it?’

Gaille asked plaintively: ‘What about Maria?’

‘And who will we be left with? Are you claiming to be as good a photographer as she is?’

‘Of course not.’ The only reason she’d brought her camera was to photograph badly faded ancient ostraca, so that she could use her laptop’s image software to make the writing clearer. ‘I just said I’m not a—’

‘And Maria doesn’t speak Arabic or English,’ pointed out Elena. ‘She’d be useless to Ibrahim, and all on her own. Is that what you want?’

‘No. All I’m saying is—’

‘All you’re saying is!’ mocked Elena spitefully, imitating her voice.

‘Is this about what happened earlier?’ asked Gaille. ‘I told you, I didn’t see anything down there.’

Elena shook her head. ‘This has nothing to do with that. It’s very simple. The head of the Supreme Council in Alexandria has asked for your help. Do you really want me to tell him you refused?’

‘No,’ replied Gaille miserably. ‘Of course not.’

Elena nodded. ‘We’re doing an initial survey first thing tomorrow morning. Make sure you’re packed and ready to leave at seven.’ She took a look round Gaille’s messy hotel bedroom, shook her head in exaggerated disbelief, then slammed the door behind her as she left.

II

It was a wrench for Knox to abandon his Jeep in long-term parking. It had been his one constant companion since he’d been in Egypt. Eight hundred thousand already on the clock, and more left beneath the bonnet. You grew to love a car when it had done that well for you. He left his keys and the car-park receipt beneath the seat. He’d give one of his Cairo friends a call, see if they wanted it.

The airport was busy. There was so much refurbishment going on, everything was squeezed into half the space. Knox pulled his baseball cap down over his eyes, though it seemed unlikely that Hassan’s people would be ahead of him. He had a choice of flights. Many planes arrived in Egypt late at night, turning round to reach their home airports around dawn. He wandered along the bank of check-in desks. London? Screw that. When you’d fucked up your life, the last thing you wanted was to be reminded of it by the success of old friends. Athens was out too. When he’d lost his marbles in the wake of family tragedy, Greece had been put off-limits to him. Stuttgart? Paris? Amsterdam? The thought of such places depressed him horribly.

A dark-haired woman in the queue for Rome caught his eye and smiled coyly. It seemed as good a reason as any. He went to the enquiries counter to see if there were tickets. The man in line ahead of him was moaning about freight surcharges for his computer. Knox tuned out. Go home, that checkpoint officer had urged. But Egypt was his home. He’d lived here ten years. He’d grown to love it, for all its heat, discomfort, chaos and clam-our. He loved the desert most of all, its searing clean lines, its extraordinary gift of solitude, the kaleidoscopic sunsets and the chill mists in the dune valleys in the moments before dawn. He loved the hard labour of excavation, the thrill of potential discovery, that glorious kick it gave you getting out of bed each morning. Not that he ever got the chance to excavate any more.

The man ahead of him finally paid up. Knox stepped forward, fluttery with nerves. If he was going to have problems, this was where he’d find out. The booking clerk smiled blandly. He asked about seats; she assured him there were plenty. Knox handed across his passport and a credit card. She tapped keys, glanced up. ‘Mi Scusi un momento.’ She took his passport and card, vanished through a door at the back of her booth. He leaned forward to see what it said on her screen. He saw nothing to alarm him. He looked around the concourse. Everything appeared normal.

The clerk returned. She wouldn’t quite meet his eye. She kept his passport and credit card in her hand, fractionally out of his reach. He glanced around again. Teams of security guards appeared almost simultaneously through doors at either end of the concourse. Knox lunged forward to snatch his passport and card from the startled clerk, then turned, ducked his head, and walked briskly away, his heart pumping wildly. To his left, a security guard yelled. Knox abandoned pretence. He raced for the exit. The doors were automatic, but they slid open so slowly that he had to turn shoulder-first and still crashed into them, forcing his way through, spinning round. A guard on duty outside took his rifle from his shoulder so hastily that he fumbled it clattering to the floor.

Knox fled left, away from the bright lights of the terminal building into the darkness beyond. He vaulted a rail, ran down a steep embankment to a poorly lit airport bus stop, leaped between a group of young travellers sitting on their backpacks, smashed into the wall of an underpass, grazing his palm. Two uniformed janitors sharing a cigarette looked at him in astonishment as he ran between them, the whiff of their black tobacco catching in his throat. He turned left, sprinting hard, ignoring the shouting and the sirens. There were trees to his left; he ducked into their cover, running for another ten minutes until he couldn’t manage any more and came to a stop, bent double, his hands on his knees, heaving for air. Car headlights were slowly patrolling the roads, flashlights sweeping through the trees. The sweat on his shirt cooled; he shivered as he caught the scent of himself. This was bad. This was truly fucking awful. If the police got to him, it wouldn’t matter if he could prove his case, Hassan would already have him by the balls. He thought through his options. The air and sea ports were clearly on alert. Border crossings would have his photo. You could get any documents in the world forged in Cairo, but Hassan’s reach was long. He’d soon know Knox was in Cairo, and he’d put out the word. No. He needed to get away as quick as possible. He could flag down a taxi or a bus, but the drivers would remember him. Trains were often packed with soldiers and police. Better to risk going back for his Jeep.

There was shouting from his left, a single gunshot. Knox flinched and ducked. It took him a moment to realise they were shooting at shadows. He had his breath back now, and his bearings. He crouched and kept moving until he reached the perimeter wire fence of long-term parking, high but not barbed. He climbed it by a concrete post, dropped down the other side, the joints of his fingers raw from the thin mesh. He ran low between the pools of light and the ranks of parked cars. The place was deserted. Departing passengers were already in the terminal; arrivals had long-since driven off. He drove up to the booth, handed money to a sleepy attendant. The barrier lifted.

Blue police lights flashed away to his left as he pulled out onto the main road. He turned right, instead, heading towards Cairo. The lights shrank and then disappeared from his mirror. Police cars with flashing lights hurtled past on the other side of the highway. He found that he’d stopped breathing, had to make himself start.

Where the fuck was he going to go now? He couldn’t stay in Cairo. But he needed to avoid checkpoints too. That cut out Sinai, the Western Desert and the south. Alexandria, then. It was just three hours north, and of all Egypt’s cities, Knox liked it most. He had friends there too, so he could avoid hotels. But he was a fugitive; he couldn’t inflict himself on just anyone. He needed someone who’d believe in him, someone with strong nerves, who relished a little transgression from time to time, just to keep the blood pumping. Put like that, there was only one contender. Knox felt his spirits lifting for the first time in hours. He stamped down his foot and roared north.

SIX

I

‘Mais attends!’ yelled Augustin Pascal at whatever bastard was pounding at his door. ‘J’arrive! J’arrive!’ He clambered across the naked girl lying with her face down between his pillows. With that long, wavy, tawny hair, it looked like Sophia. He lifted her mane to make sure. Shit! Shit! He’d been excited for a week at the prospect of nailing her, and now he’d gone and wasted it while too drunk to remember.

A terrible thing, growing old.

The pounding on the door began again, resonating with the demolition works inside his skull. He checked his alarm clock. Five thirty! Five fucking thirty! But this was unbelievable! ‘Mais attends!’ he yelled again.

He kept emergency bottles of water and pure oxygen on his bedside table. He alternated long swallows from the one with deep breaths from the other, until he felt able to stand without keeling over. He wrapped a ragged towel around his waist, lit a cigarette, went to his front door. Knox was standing there.

‘The fuck do you want?’ demanded Augustin. ‘You know what fucking time this is?’

‘I’m in trouble,’ said Knox simply. ‘I need help.’

II

Ibrahim felt in tremendous spirits as he drove through Alexandria. The sun had only just risen, but he’d been too excited to stay in bed. He’d had a dream during the night. No. That wasn’t quite right. He’d been lying there half awake, waiting for his alarm to sound, when he’d suddenly been overwhelmed by a sense of exquisite and intense wellbeing. He couldn’t shake off the idea that he was on the verge of something momentous.

He pulled up outside Mohammed’s address. It was a wretched-looking place, a tall apartment block with pockmarked and discoloured walls, its front doors broken and hanging loose, intestinal wires spilling out of the intercom. Mohammed was already waiting in the lobby. His eyes lit up when he saw Ibrahim’s Mercedes and he walked proudly and slowly across, turning around as he did so, like an actor or a sportsman milking their time upon the stage, wanting as many of his friends and neighbours as possible to see him climb in.

‘Good morning,’ said Ibrahim.

‘We travel in style, then,’ said Mohammed, pushing back the passenger seat as far as it would go to accommodate his legs, yet still struggling to fit.

‘Yes.’

‘My wife’s very excited,’ said the big man. ‘She’s convinced we have found Alexander.’ And he glanced slyly at Ibrahim to gauge his reaction.

‘I doubt it, I’m afraid,’ said Ibrahim. ‘Alexander was buried in a huge mausoleum.’

‘And this isn’t part of it?’

Ibrahim shrugged. ‘It’s very unlikely. It wasn’t just Alexander, you see. The Ptolemies were buried there too.’ He smiled across at Mohammed. ‘They wanted Alexander’s glory to rub off on them. It didn’t work all that well, though. When the Roman Emperor Augustus made his pilgrimage to Alexander’s tomb, the priests asked him if he’d like to see the bodies of the Ptolemies too. You know what he replied?’

‘What?’

‘That he’d come to see a king, not corpses.’

Mohammed laughed loudly. Alexandrians had always enjoyed watching the powerful get taken down a peg or two. Ibrahim was so pleased that he ventured another anecdote. ‘You know Pompey’s Pillar?’

‘Of course. I can see it from my site.’

‘Did you know it had nothing to do with Pompey? No. It was erected in honour of the Emperor Diocletian after he led an expeditionary force here to quash an uprising. He was so angry with the Alexandrians that he vowed to revenge himself upon them until his horse was knee-deep in blood. Guess what happened.’

‘I can’t think.’

‘His horse stumbled and grazed its knees, so that they became covered in blood. Diocletian took this as a sign, and spared the city. His officials put up his pillar and statue in remembrance. But do you know what the Alexandrians did?’

‘No.’

‘They built a statue too. But not to Diocletian. To his horse.’

Mohammed guffawed and slapped his knee. ‘To his horse! I like that!’

They were drawing closer to the city centre. ‘Which way?’ asked Ibrahim.

‘Left,’ said Mohammed. ‘Then left again.’ They paused for a tram. ‘So where was Alexander’s tomb?’ he asked.

‘No one knows for sure. Ancient Alexandria suffered terribly from fires, riots, wars and earthquakes. There was a catastrophic tsunami too. First it sucked away the water from the harbours so that the citizens went out to pick up the fish and valuables just lying there. Then the wave struck. They never stood a chance.’

Mohammed shook his head in wonder. ‘I never heard.’

‘No. Anyway, the city fell into ruin and all the great sites became lost, even Alexander’s mausoleum. And we’ve never found it since, though we’ve tried, believe me.’ Countless excavators had tried, including Heinrich Schliemann, fresh from his triumphs at Troy and Mycenae. All had come up empty-handed.

‘You must have some idea.’

‘Our sources agree that it was on the north-east of the ancient crossroads,’ said Ibrahim. ‘The trouble is, we’re not sure where that was. All these new buildings, you see. Two hundred years ago, yes. A thousand years ago, easy. But now …’

Mohammed looked slyly at Ibrahim. ‘People say Alexander is buried beneath the Mosque of the Prophet Daniel. They say he’s in a golden casket.’

‘They’re wrong, I’m afraid.’

‘Then why do they say this?’

Ibrahim was quiet for a moment, collecting his thoughts. ‘You know that Alexander appears in the Qu’ran?’ he asked. ‘Yes, as the Prophet Zulkarnein, the two-horned one. Leo the African, a sixteenth-century Arab writer, talked of pious Muslims making pilgrimages to his tomb, and he said it was near the church of St Mark, like the Mosque of the Prophet Daniel. And Arab legends speak of a Prophet Daniel who conquered all Asia, founded Alexandria, and was buried here in a golden coffin. Who else could that be but Alexander? You can certainly see why people might confuse the mosque with Alexander’s tomb. And then a Greek man claimed he’d glimpsed a body wearing a diadem on a throne in the mosque’s vaults. It’s a very seductive idea. There’s only one problem with it.’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s completely wrong.’

Mohammed laughed. ‘You’re sure?’

‘I’ve searched the vaults myself,’ nodded Ibrahim. ‘Believe me, they’re Roman, not Ptolemaic. Five or six hundred years too late. But the idea has stuck, not least because our best map of ancient Alexandria marks the mausoleum very near the mosque.’

‘There you are, then!’

‘It was made for Napoleon the Third,’ said Ibrahim. ‘He needed information on ancient Alexandria for his biography of Julius Caesar, so he asked his friend Khedive Ismail. But there was no reliable map at the time, so Khedive Ismail commissioned a man called Mahmoud el-Falaki to make it.’

‘Research is certainly easier if you’re an emperor.’

‘Quite,’ agreed Ibrahim. ‘And it’s a really fine piece of work. But not perfect, I’m afraid. He fell for the old legends too, because he marked Alexander’s tomb near the mosque, and all the modern guide books and histories now reprint it, keeping the myth alive. The poor imam is constantly being pestered by tourists hoping to find Alexander. But they won’t find him there, believe me.’

‘Where should they be looking?’

‘On the north-east side of the old crossroads, like I said. Near the Terra Santa cemetery, probably. A little north-west of the Shallalat Gardens.’

Mohammed was looking downcast. Ibrahim patted his forearm. ‘Don’t give up hope just yet,’ he said. ‘There’s something I haven’t told you.’

‘What?’

‘I haven’t told anyone. I don’t want rumours to start, you know. And you mustn’t get your hopes up. You really mustn’t.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Alexander didn’t have just one tomb in Alexandria. He had two.’

‘Two?’

‘Yes. The Soma, the great mausoleum I told you about, was built in around 215 BC by Ptolemy Philopater, the fourth of the Ptolemaic kings. But, before that, he had a different tomb, more in the traditional Macedonian style. More, as it were, like the one you and your men found yesterday.’

Mohammed looked wonderingly at him. ‘You think this is what we have found?’

‘No,’ said Ibrahim gently. ‘I really don’t. This was Alexander, remember. The Ptolemies would surely have built something spectacular for him.’ Not that they knew what. They didn’t even know when Alexander’s body had been brought here from Memphis. The modern consensus was 285 bc, nearly forty years after his death, though no one had satisfactorily explained why the transfer should have taken so long. ‘We believe that his body would have been on display, so it’s unlikely we’ll find it deep underground. Besides, Alexander was worshipped as a god for centuries. The city authorities would never have tolerated even his former tomb being turned into a common necropolis.’

Mohammed looked crestfallen. ‘Then why did you say that it might be?’

‘Because this is archaeology,’ grinned Ibrahim. ‘You never know for sure.’

And there was something else too, though nothing he felt like sharing. It was that ever since he’d been a small boy, listening to his father murmur him to sleep with tall stories about the founder of this great city, he’d had a sense of destiny: one day he’d play his part in the rediscovery of the tomb of Alexander. This morning, as he’d lain awake in bed, he’d had a reprise of that feeling, a conviction that the time was upon him. And, for all his intellectual misgivings, he was sure in his heart that it had something to do with the tomb they were on their way to inspect.

III

Nessim had been on the go all night, working furiously to catch Knox before Hassan woke. But he’d failed. He’d received his summons fifteen minutes ago, and now here he was, clenching a fist to steel himself before knocking on his boss’s bedroom door at Sharm’s medical centre.

Nessim had joined the Egyptian Army at the age of seventeen. He’d become a paratrooper, one of the elite. But a twisted knee had put an end to hopes of active service, so he’d resigned his commission through boredom and had become a mercenary in the endless African wars. A mortar round had landed fizzing in his lap, yet hadn’t exploded; instead, it had convinced him that it was time for a change of pace. Back in Egypt, he’d made a name for himself as a bodyguard before being recruited by Hassan as his head of security. If he’d scared easily, Nessim would never have survived such a life. But there was something about Hassan that scared him. Having to report bad news scared him.

‘Come in,’ muttered Hassan. His voice was softer than usual, and a little wheezy. He’d lost a tooth, and had suffered severe bruising of his ribs too, making breathing painful. ‘Well?’ he asked.

‘Would you please excuse us?’ Nessim asked the doctor sitting beside his bed.

‘With pleasure,’ said the doctor, a shade too emphatically for his own good.

Nessim closed the door behind him. ‘We’ve got the girl,’ he told Hassan. ‘She was going for a bus.’

‘And Knox?’

‘We almost had him. At Cairo Airport. He got away.’

‘Almost?’ said Hassan. ‘What good is almost?’

‘I’m sorry, sir.’

Hassan closed his eyes. Yelling evidently hurt too much. ‘You call yourself my head of security?’ he said. ‘Look at me! And you let the man who did this wander around Egypt like some kind of holiday-maker?’

‘You’ll have my resignation as soon as—’

‘I don’t want your resignation,’ said Hassan. ‘I want Knox. I want him here. Do you understand? I want you to bring him to me. I want to see his face. I want him to know what he’s done and what’s going to happen to him because of it.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I don’t care what it takes. I don’t care how much you spend. I don’t care what favours you have to call in. Use the army. Use the police. Whatever is necessary. Am I clear?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well?’ asked Hassan. ‘Why are you still here?’

‘With respect, sir, there are different ways to catch him. One, as you rightly suggest, is by using our contacts in the police and the army.’

Hassan squinted. He was a shrewd man, for all his wrath. ‘But?’

‘It was easy enough to secure their help last night. We simply told them that Knox had caused a serious incident on a boat but that the details were still unclear. But tomorrow and the day after, if we still want their active help, they’ll want evidence of this serious incident.’

Hassan looked at Nessim in disbelief. ‘Are you saying what he did to me isn’t sufficient evidence?’

‘Of course not, sir.’

‘Then what are you saying?’

‘So far, very few people know anything more than rumours. I picked your medical team myself. They know better than to talk. I’ve had my own people guarding your door. No one has been allowed in without my explicit permission. But if we involve the police, they’ll want to investigate for themselves. They’ll send officers to interview you and take photographs and talk to the other guests on the boat, including your Stuttgart friend and the girl. And you have to ask yourself if that would be helpful at this particular moment; or indeed whether it would be good for your reputation to have photographs of your injuries reaching the newspapers or the Internet alongside exaggerated reports of how they were incurred, which could easily happen, because we both know you have enemies as well as friends in the police. And you should also ask yourself what it would do for your personal authority if people got to see what a mere dive instructor had done to you, and that he’d managed to escape too, even if only for a little while.’

Hassan frowned. He knew the value of being feared. ‘What’s our alternative?’

‘We drop the charges. We say it was all a misunderstanding. We get the girl out. You lie low until you’ve recovered. Meanwhile, we go after Knox ourselves.’

There was a long silence. ‘Very well,’ said Hassan finally. ‘But you’re to take personal charge. And I expect results. Understand?’

‘Yes, sir. I understand entirely.’

SEVEN

I

It was Gaille’s first visit to Alexandria. There was congestion along the Corniche. The masts of fishing boats and yachts in the Eastern Harbour jangled like flamenco in a light breeze that brought with it a faint, acidic tang. She rested her head back, shielded her eyes from the early morning sun as it flickered between tall, rectangular, sun-bleached hotels, apartment blocks and offices, pocked with satellite dishes. The place was coming to life like a gigantic yawn. Alexandria had always been the late-riser of Egyptian cities. Shops were raising steel shutters, lowering canopies. Groups of portly men sipped coffees at pastry cafés and watched benignly as ragged boys and girls wended the traffic, selling packs of napkins and cigarettes. The alleys leading away from the front were tight, dark and faintly menacing. A tram already crammed with passengers paused to take on more. A policeman in a dazzling white uniform and flat cap held up his hand to divert them right. An ancient commuter train clanked and rattled with taunting slowness across a junction. Young boys played chase in the open cattle-carts.

Elena glanced pointedly at her watch. ‘You’re sure this is the right way?’

Gaille shrugged helplessly. Her only map was a crude photocopy from an outdated backpacker guidebook. Even so, she had a nagging suspicion that she must already have gone badly wrong to have ended up here, though she’d learned enough about her new boss not to admit it. ‘I think so,’ she equivocated.

Elena sighed loudly. ‘At least you could try.’

‘I am trying.’ Gaille couldn’t shake off the suspicion that she was being punished for her trespass yesterday, or was at least being opportunistically expelled from the Delta dig because of it.

They were approaching a large junction. Elena looked at her expectantly for directions. ‘Turn right,’ said Gaille.

‘Are you sure?’

‘It should be somewhere along here on the left or right.’

‘Somewhere along here on the left or right?’ snorted Elena. ‘That’s really helpful.’

Gaille leaned out her window, her brain aching from lack of sleep and coffee. There was a construction site ahead, a huge concrete high-rise with steel bars waggling like spider legs from the top. She said in desperation: ‘I think this must be it.’

‘You think this must be it; or this is actually it?’

‘I’ve never been to Alexandria before,’ protested Gaille. ‘How should I know?’

Elena huffed noisily and shook her head, but she indicated left and swung through double gates, then bumped along a rutted track. Three Egyptian men were conferring animatedly at the far end.

‘That’s Ibrahim,’ muttered Elena, with such obvious chagrin that Gaille had to fight back a smile. If Elena thought she was gloating … ! They parked. Gaille quickly opened her door and jumped down, suffering a momentary, debilitating flutter of shyness. Normally she was confident in professional situations, but she had no faith in her skills as a photographer and consequently felt a fraud. She went around to the back of the flatbed, ostensibly to check her belongings and equipment, but in truth to hide.

Elena yelled out for her. She took a deep breath to compose herself, fixed a smile to her lips, then walked around to meet them. ‘Ibrahim,’ said Elena, indicating the elegant man in the centre of the group. ‘I’d like you to meet Gaille.’

‘Our esteemed photographer! We are truly grateful.’

‘I’m not really a—’

‘Gaille’s an excellent photographer,’ said Elena, with a sharp glance. ‘What’s more, she’s an ancient languages expert too.’

‘Splendid! Splendid!’ He gestured to his two companions, who were spreading out a site map on the ground. ‘Mansoor and Mohammed,’ he said. ‘Mansoor is my right hand. He runs all our excavations in Alexandria. I couldn’t survive without him. And Mohammed is construction manager for this hotel.’

‘Pleased to meet you both,’ said Gaille.

They glanced up from their map, nodded politely. Ibrahim smiled distractedly, glanced at his watch. ‘Just one more to come. You know Augustin Pascal?’

Elena snorted. ‘Only by reputation.’

‘Yes,’ nodded Ibrahim seriously. ‘He’s a fine underwater archaeologist.’

‘That wasn’t what I meant,’ said Elena.

‘Oh.’

It was a few more minutes before an engine roared at the mouth of the site. ‘Ah!’ said Ibrahim. ‘Here he is.’

A thirty-something man cruised up the approach on a gleaming black and chrome chopper, wending potholes, bare-headed, allowing his long dark hair to flow free. He was wearing mirror shades, two days’ worth of stubble, a leather jacket, jeans, calf-high black biker boots. He rode the chopper up onto its stands, stepped off, fetched a cigarette and a brass Zippo from his shirt pocket.

‘You’re late,’ said Ibrahim.

‘Desolé,’ he grunted, shielding the flame. ‘Something came up.’

Mansoor asked wryly: ‘Sophia, I suppose?’

Augustin grinned wolfishly. ‘You know I’d never take advantage of my students like that.’

Elena clucked her tongue and muttered a Greek obscenity beneath her breath. Augustin grinned and turned to her, spreading his hands. ‘Yes?’ he asked. ‘You see something you like, perhaps?’

‘How could I?’ retorted Elena. ‘You’re standing in the way.’

Mansoor laughed and slapped Augustin on the shoulder. But Augustin himself looked unruffled. He gazed Elena up and down, then gave her a grin of frank approval, perhaps even of intent, for she was a striking-looking woman, Elena, and anger added a certain something to her colouring. Gaille winced and took half a step back, waiting for the inevitable eruption, but Ibrahim stepped between them just in time.

‘Well,’ he said, with nervous jauntiness. ‘Let’s start, shall we?’

The ancient spiral steps looked precarious. Gaille descended warily. But they all reached the bottom without alarm and gathered in the rotunda. The corner of a black and white pebble mosaic showed beneath the rubble. Gaille pointed it out in a murmur to Elena.

‘Ptolemaic,’ declared Elena loudly, going down on her haunches to brush away the dust. ‘Two fifty BC, give or take.’

Augustin pointed to the sculpted walls. ‘Those are Roman,’ he said.

‘Are you suggesting I can’t tell a Macedonian mosaic when I see one?’

‘I’m suggesting that the carvings are Roman.’

Ibrahim held up his palms. ‘How about this?’ he suggested. ‘It started as a private tomb for some wealthy Macedonian. Then some Romans discovered it three hundred years later and turned it into a necropolis.’

‘That would explain the staircase,’ admitted Elena grudgingly. ‘Macedonians didn’t usually build in spirals. Straight lines or squares.’

‘And they’d have needed to widen the shaft when they expanded it into a necropolis,’ agreed Augustin. ‘For light and ventilation, and to lower corpses, and to take out quarried stone. They used to sell it to builders, you know.’

‘Yes,’ said Elena scathingly. ‘I did know, thank you.’

Gaille was barely listening. She was staring dizzily up at the circle of sky high above her head. Christ, but she was out of her depth. An emergency excavation offered no second chances. Within the next two weeks, the mosaic and all these exquisite carvings and everything else in this place would need to be photographed. After that the place would probably be sealed for ever. Artefacts like these deserved a real professional, someone with an eye for the work, experience, sophisticated equipment, lighting. She plucked anxiously at Elena’s sleeve, but Elena obviously realised what she wanted to discuss and brushed her off, following Mohammed down the steps into the forecourt of the Macedonian tomb, the dull matt yellow of the limestone shown up by the shining white marble blocks of the façade, and the four engaged marble ionic columns and the marble entablature running across their top. The party paused for a few moments to admire, then pressed on through the half-open bronze door into the tomb’s antechamber.

‘Look!’ said Mansoor, shining his torch at the side walls. They all went closer to inspect them. There was paint on the plaster, though terribly faded. It had been common practice in antiquity for important scenes from the dead person’s life to be painted in or around their tombs. ‘You can photograph these?’ asked Mansoor.

‘I’m not sure how well they’ll come out,’ said Gaille wretchedly.

‘You must wash them first,’ said Augustin. ‘Lots and lots of water. The pigment may look dead now. But give them some water and they will spring back to life like beautiful flowers. Trust me.’

‘Not too much water,’ warned Mansoor. ‘And don’t set up your lights too close. The heat will crack the plaster.’

Gaille looked round desperately at Elena, who was studiously refusing to meet her eye. Instead she shone her torch at the inscription above the portal into the main chamber. ‘“Akylos of the thirty three,”’ said Augustin, translating from the Ancient Greek. The light vanished from the inscription at that moment, as Elena fumbled and dropped her torch, cursing so violently that Gaille glanced at her in surprise.

Ibrahim turned his own torch on the inscription instead, allowing Augustin to start his translation from the beginning. ‘“Akylos of the thirty three,”’ he read out. ‘“To be the best and to be honoured above the rest.”’

‘It’s Homer,’ murmured Gaille. Everyone turned to look at her in surprise. She felt her cheeks burn. ‘It’s from The Iliad,’ she said.

‘That’s right,’ nodded Augustin. ‘About a man called Glaucus, I believe.’

‘Actually, it comes up twice,’ said Gaille timidly. ‘Once about Glaucus and once about Achilles.’

‘Achilles, Akylos,’ nodded Ibrahim. ‘He evidently thought a great deal of himself.’ He was still staring up at the inscription when he followed Mohammed into the main chamber, so that he tripped over the low step and went sprawling onto his hands and knees. Everybody laughed as he picked himself up and brushed himself down with the self-deprecating face of the accident-prone.

Augustin went to the shield pinned to the wall. ‘The shield of a hypastist,’ he said. ‘A shield-bearer,’ he explained, when Ibrahim frowned. ‘Alexander’s special forces. The greatest unit of fighting men in the most successful army in the history of the world. Maybe he wasn’t being so boastful after all.’

II

Morning sunlight fell upon Knox’s cheek as he lay on Augustin’s couch and tried to catch up on sleep. He groaned and showed it his back, but it was no good. The day was already too sticky. He rose reluctantly, took a shower, ransacked Augustin’s room for clothes, then ground up some coffee beans for the percolator, and set it brewing. He slathered a croissant with butter and confiture de framboises, then wolfed it down as he wandered the flat looking for ways to divert himself. Egyptian TV was gruesome at the best of times, but Augustin’s flickering black-and-white portable made it completely unwatchable. And there was nothing to read except tattered newspapers and some comic books. This was not a flat for killing time in. It was a flat for sleeping in, and preferably not alone.

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