The Alexander Cipher Page 0,110
first thing he saw was Costis, grinning knowingly at him and pointing his gun.
He picked himself up and helped Gaille up, too. Someone retrieved a flashlight and shined it at where the wall had been—a great, gaping hole was now torn in its heart. There was blackness beyond, indicative of an even greater space, and the glint of metallic objects on the floor. They edged closer, treading tentatively on pulverized sandstone littered with fragments of a tougher stone, like marble, that crackled beneath their feet.
Knox looked up at the circular shaft that rose almost vertically above him into the hill before vanishing into darkness. Cutting the Gordian knot must have triggered a rockfall. But then he was through to the other side, and other matters took his attention. The hewn passage zigzagged left and right, shielding it from the blast of the falling rock. Then it began to funnel open. Niches were cut in the walls, and in them were life-size painted alabaster statues of nymphs and satyrs, a rearing horse, Dionysus on a couch, his head thrown back, drinking from a goblet, surrounded by tendrils of ivy and fat bunches of purple grapes. They passed other objects, too: Attic vases of brown, red, and black painted with scenes from Alexander’s life. Too crude to be the work of Kelonymus, perhaps they were the personal tributes of the shield bearers themselves. A wooden model of a chariot. Some crude pottery figurines. A silver wine jug and matching drinking vessels. A bronze cauldron. A golden bowl containing fistfuls of uncut precious and semiprecious stones: rubies, turquoise, lapis lazuli, amethyst, diamonds, sapphires. A golden cup inscribed with a sixteen-pointed star, and next to it a golden handbell that reminded Knox poignantly of Rick. And then, set in the right-hand wall, a painting of Alexander in his chariot, carrying a golden scepter, just like the frieze described by Diodorus Siculus as part of the funeral catafalque, enabling Knox to answer at last the question of how Kelonymus and the shield bearers had financed all their endeavors. They had had the catafalque. Perhaps these shield bearers were the very unit that Ptolemy had tasked with bringing it back to Egypt, only for them to change their plans once they realized that he meant to betray Alexander’s last wish.
Costis nudged him in the back again. They moved on, passing what could only be described as an ancient library: scrolls bound with ivory holders and stacked in loculi cut in the sandstone walls, and books in open silver and golden caskets, the handwriting still faintly visible on their yellow parchment and papyrus, as well as drawings of herbs, flowers, and animals.
“My god!” muttered Gaille, looking at Knox with wild eyes, all too aware of the intrinsic and historic value of this find.
They kept walking and the passage opened up again into a great domed chamber twice the size of the previous one, its floor glittering like shattered quartz with metallic artifacts, its walls and ceiling decorated with gold leaf, so that their flashlights reflected dazzlingly from all sides. And there were grave goods here, too, set on twelve altars: rings and necklaces and amphorae and coins and caskets. Weapons, too: a shield, a sword, a helmet, a breastplate, a crested helmet. And in the center of the chamber, at the heart of all the altars, at the focal point of their flashlights, stood a high pyramid, rising in steps on every side to a peak on which rested a magnificent golden anthropoid coffin.
And no one could be in any doubt now about what they had found.
Chapter Thirty-six
IBRAHIM SLAMMED HIS OFFICE DOOR and turned the key in the lock just as Sofronio charged the door with his shoulder. Ibrahim jumped back and cried out as the panels bulged and the frame shook, but the door held. Sofronio charged again; still it held. Ibrahim gained confidence. He strode to his desk, picked up his phone, and dialed the police emergency number. It rang twice before it was answered. He gave his name and address and had begun to explain his situation when the line suddenly went dead. His eyes tracked the white cable to the point where it pierced the wall and ran out to the rest of the house. He stared at it dumbly. A different kind of pounding started on the door, sharp and loud: a boot, not a shoulder, two men taking it in turns. The frame by the jamb at last began to give.