The Alexander Cipher Page 0,44
mouth’? That’s like crossing Elena. You don’t do it twice, trust me.”
“Fine,” grumbled Knox. “So how come you’re working for her? I mean, it’s a Greek excavation, isn’t it? You don’t strike me as particularly Greek.”
“Elena’s expert fell ill and she needed a replacement. Someone gave her my name. You know what it’s like.”
“Yes.”
“She just called up one afternoon. I was really flattered, and I had nothing I couldn’t get out of. Besides, it’s all very well reading about Egypt in books, but it’s not the same, is it?”
“No,” agreed Knox. “So is this your first excavation?”
She shook her head. “No, but I hate talking about myself. It’s your turn. You’re an underwater archaeologist, yes?”
“An archaeologist who knows how to dive.”
“And an intellectual snob, too?”
He laughed. “Raging.”
“Where did you study?”
“Yale.”
“Oh!” She pulled a face.
“You don’t like Yale?” protested Knox. “How can you not like Yale?”
“It’s not Yale exactly. Just someone who used to study there.”
“An archaeologist?” he grinned. “Excellent! Who?”
“Oh, I’m sure you won’t know him,” she said. “His name’s Daniel Knox.”
Chapter Eleven
MARVELOUS!” LAUGHED AUGUSTIN, clapping his hands, when Knox reported back later that evening. “But that’s just marvelous. What did you do?”
“What the fuck could I do?” grumbled Knox. “I told her I’d never heard of him, and changed the subject.”
“And you’ve no idea why she dislikes you so much? You didn’t perhaps fuck her one time, then never call?”
“No.”
“You’re sure? That’s what it usually is with me.”
Knox scowled. “I’m certain.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know,” he shrugged helplessly. “I can’t think. Unless . . .”
“What?”
“Oh, no,” said Knox, his cheeks suddenly ablaze. He put his hand on his forehead. “Oh, Christ!”
“What?”
“Her name’s not Gaille Dumas, you idiot. It’s Gaille Bonnard.”
“Dumas, Bonnard.” He shrugged indifferently. “I knew it was something to do with the arts. And who is she anyway, this Gaille Bonnard?”
“She’s Richard’s daughter,” answered Knox. “That’s who she is.” Then he added bleakly, “No wonder she hates me.”
IT WAS STICKY IN GAILLE’S ROOM, even with her balcony doors wide open. That flicker on Mark’s face when she’d mentioned Daniel Knox, his hurried change of subject, the way he was so ill-at-ease afterward. She cursed herself for her big mouth; she had been having a really good time until then. Of course they would have known each other. Frankly, it would have been astonishing if two Yale-educated archaeologists of similar age hadn’t been friends.
Some hatreds were based on principle; others were personal. Whenever Gaille thought of Knox, though she’d never even met him, she felt a fusion of the two, snakes writhing in her chest. Her mother, a nightclub singer, had had a brief fling with her father and gotten pregnant, coercing him into a marriage that never stood a chance, not least because he finally realized that he preferred men. Gaille had been just four when her father finally gave up and fled to Egypt. Her mother, struggling to come to terms with a homosexual husband and a career on the skids, had taken it out on Gaille. She had also found solace in abusing every substance she could lay her hands on until, finally, on the eve of her fiftieth birthday, she had misjudged one of her periodic cries for help and taken her own life.
As a child, Gaille had done what she could to cope with her mother’s self-hatred, anger, and violence, but it had never been enough. She might have gone crazy from the strain of it, except that she had a safety-valve, a way to relieve the building pressure. It had been the one month every year when she joined her father on one of his excavations in North Africa or the Levant, and she’d loved every second.
When she was seventeen, Gaille had been due to join his second season near Mallawi in Middle Egypt. For eleven months, she’d been studying Coptic, hieroglyphics, and Hieratic in a desperate effort to prove her value so conclusively that her father would take her on full-time. But three days before she was due to fly out, he had arrived unexpectedly at their Paris apartment. Mama had thrown one of her tantrums and refused to let him see Gaille. She’d had to kneel outside the cramped sitting room door and listen through its plywood panels. A nearby television had been loud with sporadic canned laughter, so she hadn’t heard everything—but enough. He was postponing Mallawi to deal with an urgent personal situation. Now it wouldn’t take place until after Gaille was back at school.
That season had proved her father’s