beers,’ shouted Rick at the barman. ‘Sorry. You were saying. People jostling for position.’
‘Yes. The throne was pretty much open. Alexander had a brother, but he was a half-wit. And his wife, Roxanne, was pregnant, but no one could be sure she’d have a son; and, anyway, Roxanne was a barbarian, and the Macedonians hadn’t conquered the known world to be ruled by a half-breed. So there was an assembly of the army in Babylon, and they came to a compromise. The half-wit brother and the unborn child, if he turned out to be a boy, which he did, Alexander the Fourth, would rule together; but the various regions of the empire would be administered for them by a number of satraps all reporting to a triumvirate. You with me?’
‘Yes.’
‘One of Alexander’s generals was a man named Ptolemy. He was the one who made the claim about the talking snakes as it happens. But don’t let that fool you. He was a very shrewd, very capable man. He realised that without Alexander to hold it together, the empire was bound to fragment, and he wanted Egypt for himself. It was rich, out of the way, unlikely to get caught up in other people’s wars. So he got himself awarded the satrapy, and he bedded himself in, and eventually he became Pharaoh, founding the Ptolemaic dynasty, which ended with Cleopatra. OK?’
Their beers arrived. They clinked them in a toast. ‘Go on,’ said Rick.
‘It wasn’t easy for Ptolemy, making himself Pharaoh,’ said Knox. ‘Egyptians wouldn’t recognise just anyone. Legitimacy was very important to them. Alexander was different: a living god of unquestioned royal blood who’d driven out the hated Persians; there was no shame in being ruled by such a man. But Ptolemy was a nobody as far as the Egyptians were concerned. So one of the things he needed was a symbol of kingship.’
‘Ah,’ said Rick, wiping froth from his upper lip. ‘Alexander’s body.’
‘Ten out of ten,’ grinned Knox. ‘Ptolemy wanted Alexander’s body. But he wasn’t the only one. The head of the Macedonian triumvirate was called Perdiccas. He had ambitions of his own. He wanted to bring Alexander’s body back to Macedonia for burial alongside his father, Philip, in the royal tombs of Aigai in Northern Greece. But getting him from Babylon to Macedonia wasn’t easy. You couldn’t just load him on the first boat. He had to travel in a certain style.’
Rick nodded. ‘I’m the same way, myself.’
‘A historian called Diodorus of Sicily gave a very detailed description of all this. Alexander’s body was embalmed and laid in a coffin of beaten gold, covered by expensive, sweet-smelling spices. And a catafalque – that’s a funeral carriage to you and me – was commissioned. It was so spectacular, it took over a year to get ready. It was a golden temple on wheels, six metres long, four metres wide. Golden ionic columns twined with acanthus supported a high vaulted roof of gold scales set with jewels. A golden mast rose from the top, flashing like lightning in the sun. At each of its corners, there was a golden statue of Nike, the ancient goddess of victory, holding out a trophy. The gold cornice was embossed with ibex heads from which hung gold rings supporting a bright, multicoloured garland. The spaces between the columns were filled with a golden net, protecting the coffin from the scorching sun and the occasional rain. Its front entrance was guarded by golden lions.’
‘That’s a whole lot of gold,’ said Rick sceptically.
‘Alexander was seriously rich,’ replied Knox. ‘He had over seven thousand tons of gold and silver in his Persian treasuries alone. It took twenty thousand mules and five thousand camels just to shift it all around. You know how they used to store it?’
‘How?’
‘They used to melt it and pour it into jars and then simply smash off the earthenware.’
‘Holy shit,’ laughed Rick. ‘I could do with finding one of those.’
‘Exactly. And the generals didn’t dare stint on all this. Alexander was a god to the Macedonian troops. Skimping would have been the quickest way to lose their loyalty. Anyway, the funeral carriage was eventually completed. But it was so heavy that the builders had to invent shock-absorbing wheels and axles for it, and even then the route had to be specially prepared by a crew of road-builders, and it took sixty-four mules to draw it along.’ He paused to take another sip of his beer. ‘Sixty-four mules,’ he nodded. ‘And each of them wore a gilded crown and a gem-encrusted collar. And each of them had a golden bell hanging upon either cheek. And each of these bells would have had inside it a golden pendant tongue just exactly like the one you’ve got in your matchbox.’
‘You’re fucking with me,’ said Rick, the shock legible on his face.
‘And, more to the point,’ grinned Knox, ‘this entire catafalque, all this gold, simply vanished from history without a trace.’
I
A hotel construction site, Alexandria
Mohammed el-Dahab kept a framed photograph of his daughter, Layla, on his desk. It had been taken two years ago, just before she’d fallen sick. He’d developed the habit, while he worked, of glancing at it every few moments. Sometimes it gladdened him to see her face. Mostly, as this time, his heart sank. He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger, muttered a short but heartfelt prayer. He prayed for her like this perhaps thirty times each day, as well as during his formal rek’ahs. His prayers had done little good so far, but faith was like that. Without testing it was nothing.
There were incongruous noises outside; shouting, jubilant laughing. He glanced irritably through his office window. Work on the building site had come to a halt. His crew were congregating in a corner, Ahmed was dancing like a dervish at a moulid. Mohammed hurried out angrily. Allah had cursed him with the laziest crew in all Egypt. Any excuse! He scowled to put himself into the right frame of mind to deliver a proper tongue-lashing, but when he saw what had caused the commotion, he forgot all ideas of that. The mechanical digger had ripped a great gaping hole in the ground, exposing a spiral staircase that wound around a deep, black shaft, still thick with settling dust. It looked yellow, dark, old; old as the city itself.
Mohammed and his men all gazed at each other with the same thought. Who knows how long this has lain hidden? Who can guess what riches might lie at its base? Alexandria was not only one of the great cities of antiquity, it boasted a lost treasure of world renown. Was there a man among them who hadn’t dreamed of discovering the golden sarcophagus of the city’s founder, Iskandar al-Akbar, Alexander the Great himself? Young boys dug holes in public gardens; women confided in their friends the strange echoes they heard when they tapped the walls of their cellars; robbers broke into ancient cisterns and the forbidden cellars of temples and mosques. But if it was anywhere, it was here, right in the heart of the city’s ancient Royal Quarter. Mohammed was not given to idle dreams, but gazing down into this deep shaft, his gut clenched tight as a fist.
Could this be his miracle at last?
He beckoned for Fahd’s flashlight, lowered his left foot slowly onto the top step. He was a big man, Mohammed, and his heart was in his mouth as he rested his considerable weight upon the rutted stone, but it bore him without protest. He tested more steps, his back turned to the rough limestone of the outer wall. The inner wall that separated the spiral staircase from the great central
