His three-hundred-pound frame looked good in the tailored suit. The Milan fashion consultant he kept on retainer had advised him that swarthy colors not only conveyed authority, they also drew attention away from his stature. Which wasn’t an easy thing to do. Everything about him was big. Pouched cheeks, rolled forehead, cob- nose. But he loved rich food and dieting seemed such a sin.
He motioned and the valet buffed his Lorenzo Banfi laced shoes. He stole a last look in the mirror, then glanced at his watch.
“Sir,” the valet said, “she called while you were showering.”
“On the private line?”
The valet nodded.
“She leave a number?”
The valet reached into his pocket and found a slip of paper. He’d managed some sleep both before and after the Council meeting. Sleep, unlike dieting, was not a waste of time. He knew people were waiting for him, and he despised being late, but he decided to call from the privacy of his bedroom. No use broadcasting everything over a cellular.
The valet retreated from the room.
He stepped to a bedside phone and dialed international. Three buzzes shrilled in his ear before a woman’s voice answered and he said, “I see, Supreme Minister, that you’re still among the living.”
“And it’s good to know your information was accurate.”
“I wouldn’t have bothered you with fantasy.”
“But you still haven’t said how you knew someone would try to kill me today.”
Three days ago he’d passed on to Irina Zovastina the Florentine’s plan. “The League watches over its members, and you, Supreme Minister, are one of our most important.”
She chuckled. “You’re so full of it, Enrico.”
“Did you win at
“Of course. Two times into the circle. We left the assassin’s body on the field and trampled it into pieces. The birds and dogs are now enjoying the rest.”
He winced. That was the problem with central Asia. Wanting desperately to be a part of the twenty-first century, its culture remained entrenched in the fifteenth. The League would have to do what it could to change all that. Even if the task would be like weaning a carnivore onto a vegetarian diet.
“Do you know the
He knew she’d have to be humored. “I do.”
He grinned. “You fashion yourself Achilles?”
“There’s much to admire in him.”
“Wasn’t he a proud man? Excessive, as I recall.”
“But a fighter. Always a fighter. Tell me, Enrico, what of
“The Florentine will enjoy a lovely burial north of here, in the lake district. We’ll send flowers.” He decided to see if she was in the mood. “We need to talk.”
“Your payment for saving my life?”
“Your end of our bargain, as we originally discussed long ago.”
“I’ll be ready to meet with the Council in a few days. First, there are things I need to resolve.”
“I’m more interested in when you and I will meet.”
She chuckled. “I’m sure you are. I am, too, actually. But there are things I must complete.”
“My time on the Council ends soon. Thereafter, you’ll have others to deal with. They may not be as accommodating.”
She laughed. “I love that.
“We need to talk.”
“Soon. First, you have that other problem we spoke about. The Americans.”
Yes, he did. “Not to worry, I plan to deal with that today.”
ELEVEN
COPENHAGEN
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN
“I commissioned a fake elephant medallion. It’s quite easy to do, actually. There are many counterfeits on the market.”
“And why did you do that?”
“Cotton,” Cassiopeia said to him, “these medallions are important.”
“Gee, never would have guessed. What I haven’t heard is how and why.”
“What do you know of Alexander the Great,
He’d read on the subject. “I know some.”
“I doubt you know what we do,” Cassiopeia said. She stood beside one of the bookshelves. “Last fall, I received a call from a friend who worked at the cultural museum in Samarkand. He’d found something he thought I might like to see. An old manuscript.”
“How old?”
“First or second century after Christ. Ever hear of X-ray fluorescence?”
He shook his head.
“It’s a relatively new procedure,” Thorvaldsen said. “During the early Middle Ages, parchment was so scarce that monks developed a recycling technique where they scraped away the original ink, then reused the clean parchment for prayer books. With fluorescence, X-rays are formed from a particle accelerator, then bombarded onto the recycled parchment. Thankfully, the ink used centuries ago contained lots of iron. When the X-rays hit that ink, molecules deep in the parchment glow, and those images can be recorded. Pretty amazing, actually. Like a fax from the past. Words once thought erased, written over with new ink, reappear from their molecular signature.”
“Cotton,” Cassiopeia said, “what we know firsthand about Alexander is confined to the writings of four men who all lived nearly five hundred years after Alexander.
“I’ve read the
“But that’s all it is. Alexander is like Arthur, a man whose actual life has been replaced with romantic legend. He’s now regarded as some great, benign conqueror. Some sort of statesman. Actually, he slaughtered people on an unprecedented scale and totally squandered the resources of the lands he acquired. He murdered friends out of paranoia and led most of his troops to early deaths. He was a gambler who staked his life, and the lives of those around him, on chance. There’s nothing magical about him.”
“I disagree,” he said. “He was a great military commander, the first person to unite the world. His conquests were bloody and brutal because that’s war. True, he was bent on conquering, but his world seemed ready to be conquered. He was politically shrewd. A Greek, who ultimately became a Persian. From everything I’ve read, he seemed to have little use for petty nationalism-and I can’t fault him for that. After he died his generals, the Companions, divided the empire among themselves, which ensured that Greek culture dominated for centuries. And it did. The Hellenistic Age utterly changed Western civilization. And all that started with him.”
He saw that Cassiopeia did not agree with him.
“It’s that legacy which was discussed in the old manuscript,” she said. “What
