Читать книгу The Alexander Cipher - Will Adams - Страница 8

The MAF Nile Delta excavation, Northern Egypt ‘Hello!’ called out Gaille Bonnard. ‘Is there anyone here?’

She waited patiently for an answer, but none came. How odd. Kristos had been clear that Elena wanted help translating an ostracon, but there was no sign of her or her truck; and the magazine, where she normally worked, was closed up. She felt a rare flicker of irritation. She didn’t mind making the fifteen-minute walk from the other site; but she did mind having her time wasted. But then she noticed that the hut door was hanging ajar, which it had never been before, not while Gaille had been there at least. She knocked, pulled it open, looked within, allowing in a little sunlight. The interior walls were lined with shelves, stacked with battery lamps, hammers, mattocks, baskets, rope and other archaeological equipment. There was a dark square hole in the floor too, from which protruded the top of a wooden ladder.

She crouched, cupped her hands around her mouth, and called down, but there was no answer. She waited a few seconds, then called down again. When there was still nothing, she stood, put her hands on her hips, and brooded. Elena Koloktronis head of the Macedonian Archaeological excavation was one of those leaders who believed all her team to be incompetent, and who therefore tried to do everything herself. She was constantly running off in the middle of one task to see to another. Maybe that was what had happened here. Or maybe there’d just been a mix-up with the message. The trouble was, it was impossible with Elena to do the right thing. If you went looking for her, you should have stayed where you were. If you stayed, she was furious that you hadn’t come looking.

She crouched again, her hams and calves aching from her long day’s work, and called down a third time, beginning to feel a little alarmed. What if Elena had fallen? She turned on a battery lamp, but the shaft was deep, and the beam was lost in its darkness. There couldn’t be any harm in checking. She had no head for heights, so she took a deep breath as she put her hand on the ladder, reached one foot tentatively onto the top rung, then the other. When she felt secure, she began a cautious descent. The ladder creaked, as did the ropes that bound it to the wall. The shaft was deeper than she’d imagined, perhaps six metres. You couldn’t normally go down so far in the Delta without reaching the water table, but the site was on the crown of a hill, safe from the annual inundation of the Nile – one reason it had been occupied in ancient times. She called out again. Still silence, except for her own breathing, magnified by her narrow confines. Displaced earth trickled past. Curiosity began to get the better of apprehension. She’d heard whispers about this place, of course, though none of her colleagues dared speak openly about it.

She reached the bottom at last, her feet crunching on shards of basalt, granite and quartzite, as though old monuments and statues had been smashed into smithereens and tipped down. A narrow passage led left. She called out again, but more quietly this time, hoping there’d be no answer. Her lamp started flickering and stuttering, then went out altogether. She tapped it against the wall, and it sprang back on like a fist opening. Her feet crackled on the stone chips as she advanced.

There was a painting on the left-hand wall, its colours remarkably bright. It had evidently been cleaned, perhaps even retouched. A profiled humanoid figure dressed as a soldier but with the head and mane of a grey wolf was holding a mace in his left hand, and in his right a military standard, its base planted between his feet, a scarlet flag unfurling beside his right shoulder in front of a turquoise sky.

Ancient Egyptian gods weren’t Gaille’s speciality, but she knew enough to recognise Wepwawet, a wolf god who’d eventually merged with others into Anubis, the jackal. He’d been seen primarily as an army scout, and had often been depicted on shedsheds – the Egyptian military standard he was holding here. His name had meant ‘Opener of the Ways’, which was why the miniaturised robot designed to explore the mysterious air shafts of the Great Pyramids had been christened with a version of his name, Upuaut. To the best of Gaille’s recollection, he’d gone out of fashion during the Middle Kingdom, around sixteen hundred BC. By rights, therefore, this painting should have been over three and half thousand years old. Yet the shedshed that Wepwawet was holding told a different story. For depicted upon it were the head and shoulders of a handsome young man, a beatific look upon his face, tilted up like some Renaissance Madonna. It was hard to know for sure when you were looking at a portrait of Alexander the Great. His impact on iconography had been so profound that for centuries afterwards people had aspired to look like him. But if this wasn’t Alexander himself, it was unquestionably influenced by him, which meant it couldn’t possibly date to earlier than 332 BC. And that begged an obvious question: what on earth was he doing on a standard held by Wepwawet, over a millennium after Wepwawet had faded from view?

Gaille set this conundrum to one side and continued on her way, still murmuring Elena’s name, though only as an excuse should she encounter anyone. Her battery lamp went out again, plunging the place into complete blackness. She tapped her lamp again, and once more it sprang on. She passed another painting; as far as she could tell, identical to the first, though not yet fully cleaned. The walls began to show signs of charring, as though a great fire had once raged. She glimpsed a flash of white marble ahead, and two stone wolves lying prone yet alert. More wolves. She frowned. When the Macedonians had taken Egypt, they’d given many of the towns Greek names for administrative purposes, often basing them upon local cult-gods. If Wepwawet was the cult-god of this place, then surely this must be—

‘Gaille! Gaille!’ From far behind her, Elena was shouting. ‘Are you down there? Gaille!’

Gaille hurried back along the passage. ‘Elena?’ she called up. ‘Is that you?’

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing down there?’

‘I thought you’d fallen. I thought you might be in trouble.’

‘Get out,’ ordered Elena furiously. ‘Get out now.’

Gaille started to climb. She saved her breath until she reached the top. Then she said hurriedly: ‘Kristos told me you wanted to—’

Elena thrust her face in Gaille’s. ‘How many times have I told you this is a restricted area?’ she yelled. ‘How many times?’

‘I’m sorry, Ms Koloktronis, but—’

‘Who the hell do you think you are?’ Elena’s face was red; tendons stood out on her neck like a straining racehorse. ‘How dare you go down there? How dare you?’

‘I thought you’d fallen,’ repeated Gaille helplessly. ‘I thought you might need help.’

‘Don’t you dare interrupt me when I’m talking.’

‘I wasn’t—’

‘Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare!’

Gaille stiffened. For a moment she considered snapping back. It had barely been three weeks ago, after all, that Elena had called her out of the blue and begged her, begged her, to take a month out from the Sorbonne’s Demotic Dictionary project to fill in for a languages assistant who’d fallen ill. But you knew instinctively in this world how well you matched up against other people, and Gaille didn’t stand a chance. The first time Elena had exploded, it had left Gaille shell-shocked. Her new colleagues had shrugged it off, telling her that Elena had been that way ever since her husband had died. She boiled like a young planet with internal rage, erupting unpredictably in gushes of indiscriminate, molten and sometimes spectacular violence. It had become almost routine now, something to be feared and placated, like the wrath of ancient gods. So Gaille stood there and took upon her chin all Elena’s scathing and brutal remarks about the poverty of her abilities, her ingratitude, the damage this incident would doubtless do her career when it got out, though she herself would, of course, do her best to protect her.

‘I’m sorry, Ms Koloktronis,’ Gaille said, when the tirade finally began to slacken. ‘Kristos said you wanted to see me.’

‘I told him to tell you I was coming over.’

‘That’s not what he told me. I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t fallen.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘Nowhere. I just checked at the bottom.’

‘Very well,’ said Elena grudgingly. ‘Then we’ll say no more about it. But don’t mention it to Qasim, or I won’t be able to protect you.’

‘No, Ms Koloktronis,’ said Gaille. Qasim, the on-site representative of the Supreme Council, was every bit as secretive about this place as Elena herself. No doubt it would be embarrassing for Elena to have to admit to him that she’d left the door unlocked and unguarded.

‘Come with me,’ said Elena, locking the steel door, then leading Gaille across to the magazine. ‘There’s an ostracon I’d like your opinion on. I’m ninety-nine point nine nine per cent sure of its translation. You can perhaps help me with the other nought point nought one per cent.’

‘Yes, Ms Koloktronis,’ said Gaille meekly. ‘Thank you.’