Читать книгу The Alexander Cipher - Will Adams - Страница 25

Ibrahim felt in tremendous spirits as he drove through Alexandria. The sun had only just risen, but he’d been too excited to stay in bed. He’d had a dream during the night. No. That wasn’t quite right. He’d been lying there half awake, waiting for his alarm to sound, when he’d suddenly been overwhelmed by a sense of exquisite and intense wellbeing. He couldn’t shake off the idea that he was on the verge of something momentous.

He pulled up outside Mohammed’s address. It was a wretched-looking place, a tall apartment block with pockmarked and discoloured walls, its front doors broken and hanging loose, intestinal wires spilling out of the intercom. Mohammed was already waiting in the lobby. His eyes lit up when he saw Ibrahim’s Mercedes and he walked proudly and slowly across, turning around as he did so, like an actor or a sportsman milking their time upon the stage, wanting as many of his friends and neighbours as possible to see him climb in.

‘Good morning,’ said Ibrahim.

‘We travel in style, then,’ said Mohammed, pushing back the passenger seat as far as it would go to accommodate his legs, yet still struggling to fit.

‘Yes.’

‘My wife’s very excited,’ said the big man. ‘She’s convinced we have found Alexander.’ And he glanced slyly at Ibrahim to gauge his reaction.

‘I doubt it, I’m afraid,’ said Ibrahim. ‘Alexander was buried in a huge mausoleum.’

‘And this isn’t part of it?’

Ibrahim shrugged. ‘It’s very unlikely. It wasn’t just Alexander, you see. The Ptolemies were buried there too.’ He smiled across at Mohammed. ‘They wanted Alexander’s glory to rub off on them. It didn’t work all that well, though. When the Roman Emperor Augustus made his pilgrimage to Alexander’s tomb, the priests asked him if he’d like to see the bodies of the Ptolemies too. You know what he replied?’

‘What?’

‘That he’d come to see a king, not corpses.’

Mohammed laughed loudly. Alexandrians had always enjoyed watching the powerful get taken down a peg or two. Ibrahim was so pleased that he ventured another anecdote. ‘You know Pompey’s Pillar?’

‘Of course. I can see it from my site.’

‘Did you know it had nothing to do with Pompey? No. It was erected in honour of the Emperor Diocletian after he led an expeditionary force here to quash an uprising. He was so angry with the Alexandrians that he vowed to revenge himself upon them until his horse was knee-deep in blood. Guess what happened.’

‘I can’t think.’

‘His horse stumbled and grazed its knees, so that they became covered in blood. Diocletian took this as a sign, and spared the city. His officials put up his pillar and statue in remembrance. But do you know what the Alexandrians did?’

‘No.’

‘They built a statue too. But not to Diocletian. To his horse.’

Mohammed guffawed and slapped his knee. ‘To his horse! I like that!’

They were drawing closer to the city centre. ‘Which way?’ asked Ibrahim.

‘Left,’ said Mohammed. ‘Then left again.’ They paused for a tram. ‘So where was Alexander’s tomb?’ he asked.

‘No one knows for sure. Ancient Alexandria suffered terribly from fires, riots, wars and earthquakes. There was a catastrophic tsunami too. First it sucked away the water from the harbours so that the citizens went out to pick up the fish and valuables just lying there. Then the wave struck. They never stood a chance.’

Mohammed shook his head in wonder. ‘I never heard.’

‘No. Anyway, the city fell into ruin and all the great sites became lost, even Alexander’s mausoleum. And we’ve never found it since, though we’ve tried, believe me.’ Countless excavators had tried, including Heinrich Schliemann, fresh from his triumphs at Troy and Mycenae. All had come up empty-handed.

‘You must have some idea.’

‘Our sources agree that it was on the north-east of the ancient crossroads,’ said Ibrahim. ‘The trouble is, we’re not sure where that was. All these new buildings, you see. Two hundred years ago, yes. A thousand years ago, easy. But now …’

Mohammed looked slyly at Ibrahim. ‘People say Alexander is buried beneath the Mosque of the Prophet Daniel. They say he’s in a golden casket.’

‘They’re wrong, I’m afraid.’

‘Then why do they say this?’

Ibrahim was quiet for a moment, collecting his thoughts. ‘You know that Alexander appears in the Qu’ran?’ he asked. ‘Yes, as the Prophet Zulkarnein, the two-horned one. Leo the African, a sixteenth-century Arab writer, talked of pious Muslims making pilgrimages to his tomb, and he said it was near the church of St Mark, like the Mosque of the Prophet Daniel. And Arab legends speak of a Prophet Daniel who conquered all Asia, founded Alexandria, and was buried here in a golden coffin. Who else could that be but Alexander? You can certainly see why people might confuse the mosque with Alexander’s tomb. And then a Greek man claimed he’d glimpsed a body wearing a diadem on a throne in the mosque’s vaults. It’s a very seductive idea. There’s only one problem with it.’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s completely wrong.’

Mohammed laughed. ‘You’re sure?’

‘I’ve searched the vaults myself,’ nodded Ibrahim. ‘Believe me, they’re Roman, not Ptolemaic. Five or six hundred years too late. But the idea has stuck, not least because our best map of ancient Alexandria marks the mausoleum very near the mosque.’

‘There you are, then!’

‘It was made for Napoleon the Third,’ said Ibrahim. ‘He needed information on ancient Alexandria for his biography of Julius Caesar, so he asked his friend Khedive Ismail. But there was no reliable map at the time, so Khedive Ismail commissioned a man called Mahmoud el-Falaki to make it.’

‘Research is certainly easier if you’re an emperor.’

‘Quite,’ agreed Ibrahim. ‘And it’s a really fine piece of work. But not perfect, I’m afraid. He fell for the old legends too, because he marked Alexander’s tomb near the mosque, and all the modern guide books and histories now reprint it, keeping the myth alive. The poor imam is constantly being pestered by tourists hoping to find Alexander. But they won’t find him there, believe me.’

‘Where should they be looking?’

‘On the north-east side of the old crossroads, like I said. Near the Terra Santa cemetery, probably. A little north-west of the Shallalat Gardens.’

Mohammed was looking downcast. Ibrahim patted his forearm. ‘Don’t give up hope just yet,’ he said. ‘There’s something I haven’t told you.’

‘What?’

‘I haven’t told anyone. I don’t want rumours to start, you know. And you mustn’t get your hopes up. You really mustn’t.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Alexander didn’t have just one tomb in Alexandria. He had two.’

‘Two?’

‘Yes. The Soma, the great mausoleum I told you about, was built in around 215 BC by Ptolemy Philopater, the fourth of the Ptolemaic kings. But, before that, he had a different tomb, more in the traditional Macedonian style. More, as it were, like the one you and your men found yesterday.’

Mohammed looked wonderingly at him. ‘You think this is what we have found?’

‘No,’ said Ibrahim gently. ‘I really don’t. This was Alexander, remember. The Ptolemies would surely have built something spectacular for him.’ Not that they knew what. They didn’t even know when Alexander’s body had been brought here from Memphis. The modern consensus was 285 bc, nearly forty years after his death, though no one had satisfactorily explained why the transfer should have taken so long. ‘We believe that his body would have been on display, so it’s unlikely we’ll find it deep underground. Besides, Alexander was worshipped as a god for centuries. The city authorities would never have tolerated even his former tomb being turned into a common necropolis.’

Mohammed looked crestfallen. ‘Then why did you say that it might be?’

‘Because this is archaeology,’ grinned Ibrahim. ‘You never know for sure.’

And there was something else too, though nothing he felt like sharing. It was that ever since he’d been a small boy, listening to his father murmur him to sleep with tall stories about the founder of this great city, he’d had a sense of destiny: one day he’d play his part in the rediscovery of the tomb of Alexander. This morning, as he’d lain awake in bed, he’d had a reprise of that feeling, a conviction that the time was upon him. And, for all his intellectual misgivings, he was sure in his heart that it had something to do with the tomb they were on their way to inspect.