The Alexander Cipher Page 0,59
plinth, which Ibrahim was due to raise at any moment. He cupped an ear against it but could hear nothing. It was crazy even to consider going on. If he were found, he’d be looking at serious jail time. But he was so close. Surely one brick couldn’t do any harm. Not if he was careful.
He scratched away the dead mortar, then pulled out a single brick and rested it ever so gently on the floor. He listened intently for half a minute. There was complete silence. He tried to peer through, but the hole was too small for both his eyes and his flashlight together. He reached the flashlight through the gap instead, then squinted as best he could along the line of his arm. But the flashlight was now pointed in the wrong direction, so he couldn’t make out a thing. Trying to twist his hand around, his fingers involuntarily opened a fraction and the flashlight slipped agonizingly from his grasp. He tried to grab it back but it fell in spirals and landed with a splashy thump in shallow water, its beam making ghostly white ripples on the facing wall.
Chapter Seventeen
KNOX HAD NO CHOICE but to retrieve the flashlight. Ibrahim, Mansoor, and others were about to raise the plinth, and if they found it, he was certain to be discovered. Besides, he had time. The place was still quiet. He began dismantling the wall, brick by brick, placing them precisely on the ground, the old mortar still resting on them, so that he would be able to rebuild the wall exactly as he’d found it. When he had created enough space, he poked his head through, catching a pungent whiff of ammonia. It was a low, arched corridor with a watery floor, like some Victorian sewer. Its walls were even scratched with lines to make it look as though it had been built of bricks rather than excavated, perhaps to disguise the passage he had just broken through, but possibly because the ancients had simply considered construction more prestigious than excavation.
He stretched down for his flashlight but couldn’t quite reach it, not without leaning on the wall, which he didn’t trust to hold his weight. He removed another two rows of bricks, then straddled what remained. The water felt sharp on his bare foot as he stooped to retrieve the light. He listened intently. Nothing but silence. He was here now. It would be criminal not to take a quick look.
He splashed along the corridor, brushing aside cobwebs, his imagination sensing eels and nocturnal creatures around his bare ankles. He came to a compact chamber beneath a chimney shaft, its mouth blocked by some kind of slab. The plinth, no doubt. He went back the other way and came to a marble portal with an Ancient Greek inscription cut into its architrave:
Together in life; together in death. Kelonymus.
Kelonymus. The name was familiar, as Akylos had been. But the memory wouldn’t come and time was short, so he passed beneath it, reaching the foot of a broad flight of stone steps that spread out like a fan as it rose. And at the top . . .
“Jesus Christ!” muttered Knox.
“WHAT’S GOING ON?” demanded Nicolas, as a large crowd of senior excavators and other guests descended the stairwell to the rotunda.
“How do you mean?” frowned Ibrahim.
“All these people?” said Nicolas. “You can’t seriously be inviting them all.”
“Just to watch. From the antechamber. This is a big moment for us.”
“No,” said Nicolas. “You, me, your archaeologist, Elena. That’s all.”
“But I’ve already—”
“I mean it. If you want the remainder of your Dragoumis sponsorship money, you’ll kick these people out now.”
“It’s not that simple,” protested Ibrahim. “We need Mohammed to lift the plinth. We need the girl to take photographs. Moments like these don’t come often, you know.”
“Fine. Those two. No others.”
“But I—”
“No others,” said Nicolas emphatically. “This isn’t a circus. This is supposed to be a serious excavation.”
“Fine,” sighed Ibrahim. And he turned with a sagging heart to disappoint the crowd of excited excavators.
KNOX’S MOUTH HUNG OPEN as he played his flashlight over the chamber like a searchlight over a bombarded city. He struggled to believe his eyes. To his right, a terrace had been hewn in the limestone. Sixteen golden larnaxes, or burial caskets, stood on each of two shelves, making thirty-two in all. Glass bowls had toppled and fallen both over the shelves and the floor, scattering their contents of precious and semiprecious stones. Also on the floor were