The Alexander Cipher Page 0,111
Ibrahim dropped the telephone handset and backed away, watching sickly as the wood began to splinter. There was nowhere to hide. The door to the main room was the only way out except for the windows, but they were locked and Manolis had the keys. A letter opener and a paperweight lay on his desk. The knife was sharp and steely, but he knew in his heart that he lacked the nerve to wield it in anger, so he hurled the paperweight through the window instead, then jumped up onto his desk. The door finally gave, the jamb a streak of yellow wood beneath its coat of gloss. The two men charged in. Ibrahim dived for the hole in the shattered window, but Sofronio grabbed his ankle, stopping him dead, so that he plunged down onto a long, jagged shard of glass. It was a strangely dull sensation, more a blow than a cut. All strength ebbed from his limbs. He was dragged back into the room, his chin thumping onto his desk and carpet. He felt his abdominal wall flap open as he was turned onto his back, and saw with a certain perverse pride the deep shock on Manolis’s face as he pressed his hands on either side of Ibrahim’s belly in a futile effort to stem the evisceration. Sofronio simply closed his eyes.
Ibrahim lay there as the two men discussed what to do. Manolis tipped books from the shelves while Sofronio left the room and returned with a large, translucent bottle of white spirits, which he splashed over the papers, carpet, and wooden desk. He stooped to set fire to it with a yellow plastic lighter; then both men hurried away. A teaching of the Prophet came irreverently to Ibrahim’s mind: that a Muslim should keep inviolate his blood, property, and honor. He almost managed an abstract chuckle at this, to have lost all three in such spectacular fashion. His fingers and toes began to tingle like a swallow of good tonic water. He had long had a queasy fascination with the mechanics of death, wondering whether oblivion would follow instantly from his heart stopping or whether his mind would fade out like an antique radio. Fire filled the room with choking thunderclouds, causing his eyes to burn. He heard sirens, a screech and clash of metal, gunshots, and then men in masks and uniforms rushing in, kneeling beside him. But too late, far too late. To his surprise, he felt a mild but growing euphoria. He had brought indelible dishonor on his name, his family, and his city; but at least people would say he had given everything he could to put it right.
IN THE CHAMBER WITHIN THE HILL, Knox, Gaille, and all the Greeks climbed the pyramid together to the summit. There was a moment’s awed silence as they stood around the coffin, raised to waist level on a white marble plinth, its lid lushly carved with scenes of hunting and war. With the side of his hand, Knox brushed away the skin of sand and dust that had settled there over the millennia. One could tell gold from bronze because bronze tarnished over the centuries, and this was definitely gold.
Like a high priest, Dragoumis rested his palms on it. “Open it,” he ordered.
The lid was so heavy, it took all of them heaving together to raise it and shift it sideways and then lay it on the floor beside the coffin. They all stared hungrily down inside, pressing and craning past each other, the better to see. A man’s body lay snugly within, deep in dust and the traces of petals and spices, a giant ruby diadem on his brow, his arms folded across his chest, a sword on one side, a golden scepter on the other. He had evidently once been covered in gold leaf, but it had peeled away in places, exposing blackened, parchmentlike skin and limbs shrunken down to the bones beneath. Black and gold, like so many of the world’s most dangerous creatures.
In the dappled, moving light, Knox looked for the signature scars on the body. Yes. Even after all these centuries, it was possible to discern faint traces of the throat slash of Cyropolis, the shoulder puncture from a Gaza catapult, the nipple pierced by a Multan arrow, and the thigh gashed at Issus. Knox’s skin prickled. He felt weak. There could be no question. “It’s him,” he murmured. “It’s Alexander.”
Dragoumis’s eyes were wet when he looked around. “Then