The Alexander Cipher Page 0,15

would do. He needed out of Sharm, out of Sinai, out of Egypt altogether—and he needed out tonight. He glanced around and saw Fiona 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 had 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 whatever 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 would fuck you up in a heartbeat.

IBRAHIM BEYUMI walked Mohammed down to the street to wish him farewell, then thanked him for reporting his find at the building site and watched him disappear around the corner of the street.

Maha, his assistant, started to rise when he returned upstairs, 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 theater, Fort Qait Bey. There were some fine sites among them, and he boasted vigorously about them to anyone who would listen, but he knew in his heart that none of them were in the first rank of Egyptian antiquities. Alexandria boasted no pyramids, no Karnak or Abu Simbel, no Valley of the Kings, despite the fact that 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 splendor and the trickery of its flying statues. The Royal Palaces of Cleopatra were imbued with extraordinary romance. And most of all, the city 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 of the outlines of the ancient city, let alone the position of a particular street or building. Alexandria was virtually surrounded by water, with the Mediterranean to the north, Lake Mariut to the south and west, and the marshy Nile Delta to the east, limiting its room for growth. When new buildings had been needed, therefore, old ones had simply 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 then 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 to have birds of all colors and sizes 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 benefited, ruling Egypt with gradually diminishing authority until the Romans took 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 was no longer 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 took control, and by the time Napoleon invaded at the turn of the nineteenth century, barely six thousand people lived here. But the city had since proved its resilience, and its