The Alexander Cipher Page 0,74
to them. And it won’t include me.”
“Perhaps you have not heard. Elena was at this meeting, too.”
“Yes, but—”
“And she has persuaded the secretary general that she is the best person to lead this search.”
“What? But… how?”
“Elena is skilled at negotiation, believe me. However, she is not so skilled at other aspects of archaeology. That is why I asked you here. I want you to go to Siwa with Elena. I want you to find this tomb for me.”
“Me?”
“Yes. You have a gift, as your father did.”
“You overestimate my—”
“You discovered the lower chamber, didn’t you?”
“Actually, that was—”
“And you deciphered the inscription.”
“Someone else would have deciphered—”
“Humility does not impress me, Ms. Bonnard,” he said. “Success impresses me. Elena has many virtues, but she lacks imagination and empathy. These are your gifts. They are gifts our cause needs.”
“Your cause?”
“You think it old-fashioned to have a cause?”
“I think ‘cause’ is a politician’s word for bloodshed,” said Gaille. “I don’t think archaeology should be about causes. I think it should be about the truth.”
“Very well,” nodded Dragoumis. “How about this truth? My grandfathers were both born in Greater Macedonia. By the time they were men, one was Serbian, the other Greek. To people like you, people without causes, it may seem an excellent thing that families like mine can be cut up and parceled out like slaves. But one group of people feels strongly that this is not acceptable. Can you guess, perhaps, who these people are?”
“I imagine you mean those people who call themselves Macedonian,” answered Gaille weakly.
“I do not seek to change your mind, Ms. Bonnard,” said Dragoumis. “I simply ask you this question: who, in truth, should decide who a person is—they themselves or someone else?” He paused, perhaps to give her a chance to respond, but she found she had nothing to say. “I believe that there’s a legitimate nation of Greater Macedonia,” he continued. “I believe that this nation has been illegally divided between Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece. I believe that the Macedonian people have been unfairly oppressed for centuries, that they’ve suffered decades of ethnic cleansing, that they are persecuted still because they have no voice, no power. Hundreds of thousands in this region agree with me, as do millions more across the world. They share culture, history, religion, and language with each other, not the states to whom they’ve been allocated. They call themselves Macedonian, whatever world opinion tells them they’re called. I believe these people deserve the same rights to liberty, religion, self-determination, and justice that you take for granted. These people are my cause. They are why I ask your help.” His gaze seemed to grow in intensity as he looked at her; there was something almost triumphal about it, about his self-certainty. She tried not to meet his eyes, but she couldn’t help herself. “And you will give it,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-four
KNOX WAS KEEN to stash his Jeep somewhere Nessim wouldn’t easily find it. He turned down a narrow country lane just south of Tanta, Rick following in his Subaru. Then they drove in convoy for fifteen minutes or so, until he saw in the moonlight a line of derelict farm buildings in an overgrown field used as a makeshift dump site. Perfect. He lurched his way down a rutted earth track to a yard of broken concrete. A row of barns stood along the opposite side, open to the elements, their floors muddy, their corners filled with windblown litter, their mouths blocked by a line of drinking troughs partially filled with rainwater. To his left was a low, ugly concrete-block outbuilding with a wide steel door that screeched on the concrete when they swung it open on its hinges. The building was empty inside except for the pungent smell of spilled diesel and urine, and white splashes of bat and bird droppings on the floor. Knox parked inside, took everything he might need to the Subaru, then covered the Jeep with his tarpaulin.
“You ready to explain now?” prompted Rick as they started for Tanta.
“Sure,” said Knox. “Did I ever tell you about my Mallawi excavation?”
Rick snorted. “Did you ever stop?”
“Then you’ll remember the basics,” said Knox, opening his laptop and checking the CDs Rick had brought. “Richard Mitchell and I found an archive of Ptolemaic papyri. We passed them for safekeeping to Yusuf Abbas, now secretary general of the SCA. He liked what he saw so much, he took over the whole excavation.”
“And then you spotted some of the papyri on the black market.”
“Exactly.