The Alexander Cipher Page 0,65
and left them crucified for the carrion to feed on. Akylos and the thirty-two gave their lives to honor the wishes of Alexander, son of Ammon, in defiance of Ptolemy, son of nothing. I, Kelonymus, man of Macedonia, brother of Akylos, beseech you, great gods, to welcome these heroes into your kingdom as you welcomed Alexander.”
She looked up again to indicate that she had finished. The looks of excitement had given way to a kind of stunned disbelief. No one spoke for a good five seconds.
It was Nicolas who finally broke the silence. “Does that… ,” he began hesitantly. “Does that mean what I think it means?”
“Yes,” said Ibrahim. “I believe it does.”
THE MOMENT HIS PHOTOGRAPHS WERE SENT, Knox deleted the images from his cell phone, then turned it off altogether and roared away in his Jeep before Nessim had a chance to get to him. Just one more phone call, and he’d be in business. He parked near Pompey’s Pillar, bought himself a ticket, and went inside. The site was a walled enclosure of about a hectare, surrounded by high-density housing. The pillar itself occupied pride of place on the small hillock at its center, but in fact the whole enclosed area was historic as the onetime site of the famous Temple of Serapis.
Knox had always felt a great fondness for Serapis, a benign and intelligent deity who had somehow fused Egyptian, Greek, and Asian religious myths into a single theology. According to one thesis, he was a Babylonian god; in fact, when Alexander had lain dying in Babylon, a delegation of his men went to the Temple of Serapis to ask whether Alexander should be brought to the temple or left where he was. Serapis replied that it would be better for him to be left where he was. The delegation obeyed, and Alexander died shortly afterward, that being the better thing. Other scholars, however, asserted that Serapis had its roots in the Black Sea city of Sinope, while still others claimed that Serapis was Egyptian, because Apis bulls had been sacrificed for centuries and buried in huge vaults known to the Greeks as the Sarapeion, a contraction of “Osiris-Apis” or “dead Apis bull.”
Knox glanced around to make sure no one was looking, then hid himself from view behind the base of Pompey’s Pillar. He checked his watch, took two deep breaths, turned on his cell phone, and began pressing numbers.
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, you’ve lost him?” yelled Nessim.
“He’s turned off his phone.”
Nessim punched his dashboard so hard, he scraped skin from a knuckle. “What was his last location?”
“I told you: near the railway station.”
“Stay on the line,” ordered Nessim, hurtling through the streets. “If he makes another call, I want to know at once.” It was five minutes before they reached the station. Nessim drove around for a while, but there was no sign of Knox or his Jeep. Then Badr spoke again. “He’s turned it back on. He’s making another call.”
“Where?”
“South of you,” said Badr. “He must be right next to Pompey’s Pillar.”
Nessim and his men ducked to look out the windows as they drove. Passing a side street, he glimpsed the marble pillar thrusting upward just a kilometer away. “We’re on our way,” he said. He roared down the road, cut across traffic to Sharia Yousef, then headed along a wide boulevard with a brownstone wall to his right, Pompey’s Pillar on the left. He pulled a U-turn and swerved up onto the pavement, and the four of them jumped out and hurried inside to the ticket booth. “Is this the only entrance?” he asked the woman, pushing some bills through the window.
“Yes.”
“Stay here,” he ordered Hosni, as he and the other two men went into the site. Then he asked Badr on his phone, “Is he still on the line?”
“Yes,” confirmed Badr. “You’re right on top of him.”
“Then we’ve got him!” exulted Nessim.
Chapter Twenty-one
NICOLAS TOOK IBRAHIM TO ONE SIDE. “Do you have an upstairs bathroom?” he asked, patting his stomach. “All this excitement seems to have done strange things to my digestion.”
“Of course,” said Ibrahim, pointing him to the stairs. “First on your left.”
“Thank you.” He hurried up and locked himself in. Then he took out his cell phone to call and brief his father on the blizzard of events and relay the gist of the inscription, too.
“What did I tell you?” said the elder Dragoumis.
“You’ve been right at every step,” acknowledged his son.
“And it was the girl who broke it? Mitchell’s daughter?”
“Yes. You