Читать книгу The Alexander Cipher - Will Adams - Страница 12

‘Excuse me. You please will help me with this?’

Knox looked up to see Roland Hinz holding up his huge black wetsuit. ‘Of course,’ he smiled. ‘Forgive me. I was miles away.’

He stood behind the big German to make sure he didn’t tumble as he tried to pull it on. That wouldn’t go down well. Roland was a Stuttgart banker considering investing in Hassan’s latest Sinai venture. Today’s jag was largely in his honour. He was making the most of it too, giggly with champagne, more than a little coked, getting on everyone’s nerves. He shouldn’t, in truth, be allowed anywhere near the water, but Hassan paid well to have rules stretched. And not just rules. Getting Roland into his wetsuit was like trying to stuff a duvet into its cover; he kept plopping out in unexpected places. Roland found this intensely funny. He found everything funny. He clearly believed himself the life and soul. He tripped over his own feet and laughed hysterically as he and Knox spilled inelegantly onto the deck, looking around at the other guests as though expecting rapturous applause.

Knox helped him back up with a strained smile, then kneeled down to pull on his booties for him. He had bloated, pinkish-yellow feet with dirt caked between his toes, as though he hadn’t washed between them for years. Knox distracted himself by letting his mind drift back to that afternoon when he’d shared his wild ideas about Alexander’s catafalque with Rick. The big Australian’s initial euphoria hadn’t lasted long.

‘So this procession came through Sinai, did it?’ he’d asked.

‘No,’ said Knox. ‘Not according to any of our sources.’

‘Oh bollocks, mate,’ protested Rick, sitting back in his chair, shaking his head angrily. ‘You really had me going.’

‘You want me to tell you what we know?’

‘Sure,’ he said, still annoyed. ‘Why not?’

‘OK,’ said Knox. ‘The first thing you need to understand is that our sources are very unreliable. We don’t have any eyewitness accounts of Alexander’s life or campaigns. Everything we have, we have from later historians citing earlier ones. Second-, third-, even fourth-hand accounts.’

‘Chinese whispers,’ suggested Rick.

‘Exactly. But it’s worse even than that. When Alexander’s empire split up, each of the various factions wanted to paint themselves in the best light, and all the others in the worst, so there was a lot of propaganda written. Then the Romans came along. The Caesars worshipped Alexander. The Republicans loathed him. Historians were consequently extremely selective in their stories, depending on which camp they belonged to. One way or another, most of what we have is very badly slanted. Working out the truth is a nightmare.’

‘Duly noted.’

‘But we’re pretty sure that the catafalque travelled along the Euphrates from Babylon to Opis, then north-west along the Tigris. A magnificent procession, as you can imagine. People trekked hundreds of miles just to see it. And, sometime in 322 or 321 cV, it reached Syria. After that, it’s hard to know. Bear in mind that we’re talking about two things here. The first is Alexander’s embalmed body, lying in its coffin. The second is the funeral carriage and all the rest of the gold. OK?’

‘Yes.’

‘Now we know pretty much what happened to Alexander’s body and coffin. Ptolemy hijacked it and took it to Memphis, probably with the collaboration of the escort commander. But we don’t know what happened to the rest of the catafalque. Diodorus says that Alexander’s body was eventually taken to Alexandria in it, but his story is confused, and it seems clear he’s actually talking about the coffin, not the catafalque. And the most vivid description comes from a guy called Aelian. He says that Ptolemy was so fearful that Perdiccas would try to seize Alexander back that he dressed a likeness of his body in royal robes and a shroud, then laid it on a carriage of silver, gold and ivory, so that Perdiccas would charge off in pursuit of this decoy while Ptolemy took Alexander’s body on into Egypt by another route.’

Rick squinted. ‘You mean Ptolemy left the catafalque behind?’

‘That’s what Aelian suggests,’ said Knox. ‘You’ve got to remember, the main prize was Alexander. Ptolemy needed to get him back to Egypt quick, and you couldn’t travel quickly with the catafalque. Estimates suggest that it moved a maximum of ten kilometres a day, and that was with a large team of sappers preparing the road. It would have taken months to reach Memphis. And it couldn’t exactly have travelled discreetly either. Yet I’ve never come across any account of it being seen travelling the obvious route south from Syria through Lebanon and Israel to Sinai and the Nile; and surely someone would have seen it.’

‘So he left it behind, like I said?’

‘Possibly. But the catafalque represented an enormous amount of raw wealth. I mean, put yourself in Ptolemy’s shoes. What would you have done?’

Rick considered a few moments. ‘I’d have split up,’ he said. ‘One lot scoots ahead with the body. The other takes a different route with the catafalque.’

Knox grinned. ‘That’s what I’d have done too. There’s no proof, of course. But it makes sense. The next question is how. Syria’s on the Mediterranean, so he might have sailed down. But the Med was notoriously infested with pirates, and he’d have needed ships on hand; and if he’d felt it possible, he’d surely have taken Alexander’s body that way, and we’re pretty certain he didn’t.’

‘What were his alternatives?’

‘Well, assuming that he couldn’t move the catafalque as it was, he could have had it chopped up into manageable pieces and taken them southwest along the coast through Israel to Sinai; but that was the route he almost certainly took himself with Alexander’s body, and there’s not much point splitting up if you’re going to go the same way. So there’s a third possibility: that he sent it due south to the Gulf of Aqaba, then by boat around the Sinai Peninsula to the Red Sea coast.’

‘The Sinai Peninsula,’ grinned Rick. ‘You mean past these reefs here?’

‘These very dangerous reefs,’ agreed Knox.

Rick laughed and raised his glass in a toast. ‘Then let’s go find the bugger,’ he said.

And that’s exactly what they’d been trying to do ever since, though without success. At least, Knox had had a success of sorts. Initially, Rick had only been interested in finding treasure. But the more they’d searched, the more he’d learned, the more he’d caught the archaeological bug. He’d originally been a Clearance Diver in the Australian Navy, the closest they had to Special Forces. Working in Sharm had allowed him to keep diving, but he’d missed that sense of mission. Their quest had restored it to him to such an extent that he’d determined to make a new career in underwater archaeology, studying hard, borrowing Knox’s books and other materials, pestering him with questions …

Roland’s booties were on. Knox stood and helped strap him into his buoyancy control device, then ran through his safety checks. He heard footsteps on the bridge above him and glanced up as Hassan sauntered into view, leaning on the railing and looking down.

‘You guys have fun now,’ he said.

‘Oh, yes,’ enthused Roland, giving the thumbs up. ‘We have great fun.’

‘And don’t hurry back now.’ He beckoned behind him and Fiona came reluctantly into view. She’d put on long cotton trousers and a thin white T-shirt, as though more modest clothing could somehow protect her, yet still she was shivering. Her moist bikini top had made her T-shirt pearly, and her nipples showed through, pebble-dashed with fear. When Hassan caught Knox staring, he grinned wolfishly and put his arm around her shoulders, almost daring Knox to do something about it.

They said on the streets of Sharm that Hassan had slit the throat of a second cousin for sleeping with a woman he’d put his mark on. They said that he’d beaten an American tourist into a coma for protesting when he’d propositioned his wife.

Knox lowered his eyes and looked around, hoping to share the burden of responsibility. Max and Nessim, Hassan’s ex-paratrooper head of security, were checking out each other’s dive gear. He’d get no joy there. Ingrid and Birgit, two Scandinavians Max had brought along to keep Roland company, were already suited and waiting by the stern ladder. Knox tried to catch Ingrid’s eye, but she knew what he was up to and kept her eyes firmly averted. He glanced back up at the bridge. Hassan was still grinning down at him, aware of exactly what was going through Knox’s mind. An alpha male in his prime, savouring the challenge. He ran his hand slowly down Fiona’s flank to her backside, cupping and squeezing her buttock. The man had risen from nothing to make himself the most powerful shipping agent on the Suez Canal by the age of thirty. You didn’t achieve that by being soft. Now they said he was bored, looking to extend his empire every which way he could, including tourism, buying up waterfront properties in the slump that had followed recent terrorist outrages.

Roland was ready at last. Knox helped him down the ladder into the Red Sea, then kneeled to pass him his fins to pull on in the water. The big German spun backwards like a waterwheel, then splashed to the surface again, guffawing maniacally, slapping the water.

‘Hold on,’ said Knox tightly. ‘I’ll be with you in a second.’ He kitted himself up, shrugged on and clasped his BCD and tank, goggles loose around his neck, fins in his hand. He started down the ladder and was about to let go when he glanced up at the bridge one final time. Hassan was still staring down at him, shaking his head in mock disappointment. Beside him, Fiona had crossed her arms anxiously over her chest. Her hair was straggled, her shoulders hunched and miserable. She looked her age suddenly, or lack of it; a child who’d met a friendly Egyptian man in a bar and thought she’d worked herself a freebie for the day, confident she could wriggle and flirt her way out of any expectations he might have. Her eyes were wide, lost and frightened, yet somehow still hopeful, as though she believed that everything would work out fine, because basically people were nice.

Just for a moment, Knox imagined it was his sister, Bee, standing there.

He shook his head angrily. The girl was nothing like Bee. She was an adult. She made her own choices. Next time she’d know better. That was all. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure the sea was clear behind him, put his regulator into his mouth, bit down hard and threw himself backwards to explode like fireworks into the womb-warm waters of the Red Sea. He resolutely didn’t look back as he led Roland towards the reef, staying a modest four metres deep, in easy reach of the surface should anything go wrong. A masque of tropical fish watched their progress intently but without alarm. Sometimes it was difficult to know which was the show and which the audience. A Napoleon fish, surrounded by a shoal of angels and wrasse, turned regally, effortlessly away. He pointed it out to Roland with exaggerated diving gestures; beginners always enjoyed feeling like initiates.

They reached the coral shelf, a wall of ochre and purple that fell dizzily away into blackness. The waters were still and unclouded; visibility was exceptional. He glanced around unthinkingly, and saw the dark hull of the boat and the menacing blurs of distant big fish in the deeper, cooler waters, and he felt a sharp twinge as he suddenly remembered the worst day of his life, visiting his sister in an intensive care unit in Thessalonike after the car crash. The place had been oppressive with the sounds of life support, the steady wheeze of ventilators, the dull, precarious pulse of monitors, the respectful, funeral-home whispering of staff and visitors. The doctor had tried her best to prepare him, but he’d still been too numb from his trip to the morgue, where he’d just had to identify his parents, and so it had come as a shock to see Bee on the business end of a feeding tube and all the other attachments. He’d felt dislocated, as though he’d been watching a play rather than real events. Her head had been unnaturally swollen, and her skin had been pale and blue. He could remember its waxy pallor still, its uncharacteristic flabbiness. And he’d never before realised how freckled she was around her eyes and in the crook of her elbow. He hadn’t known what to do. He’d looked round at her doctor, who’d gestured for him to sit down beside her. He’d felt awkward putting his hand on hers; they’d never been a physically demonstrative family. He’d pressed her cool hand beneath his own, had felt intense and startling anguish, something like parenthood. He’d squeezed her fingers between his own, held them to his lips, and remembered how he’d joked to friends about what a curse it was to have a younger sister to look after.

He didn’t any longer.

He tapped Roland on the arm and pointed upwards. They surfaced together. The boat was perhaps sixty metres away. There was no sign of anyone on deck. Knox felt a flutter of nerves in his chest as his heart realised his decision before his head. He spat the regulator from his mouth. ‘Stay here,’ he warned Roland. Then he set out in strong strokes across the crystal water.