A small woman in her sixties wearing a threadbare cardigan despite the rising heat was pacing the steps outside the Museum of Natural History, where she’d said she’d meet them.
She saw them mounting the steps and descended toward them with quick birdlike movements. “Do you have it?” she asked breathlessly. “You’re sure it was placed by Alexander the Great. Do you know what a find this is? I must study the actual stele.” She said all this in a rush, her words blending together in her excitement. “You are Dr. Mercer and Mr. Sykes, right?”
Mercer smiled. “That’s right. You’re Emily French?”
“Yes. I’ve already accosted two sets of tourists coming into the museum, hoping they were you. I just can’t believe this. There are so few new discoveries in Ptolemaic Egyptology anymore, at least that the Egyptians don’t publish themselves first.”
“Ptolemaic?”
“Yes, the time when Egypt was ruled by the Greeks, 331 to 30 B. C. It ended with Cleopatra, who was actually Cleopatra VII but no one would make movies about the first six. Oh, listen to me. I’m babbling. Let’s go to my office and take a look, shall we?”
“How can this possibly be a matter of national security?” she asked as she led them through the public part of the museum and into a warren of offices on the third floor. “This is an ancient artifact, not the plans for a nuclear bomb or something.”
Mercer almost gasped at how closely she’d guessed.
“We’re not at liberty to discuss that, ma’am,” Book replied in his deepest baritone.
“Oh, my.” She led them into her cramped and cluttered office, making an apology for the mess as if it wasn’t always so chock-full of books, stacks of papers, and knickknacks.
“And, Mrs. French,” Mercer added, “you are not allowed to discuss this matter with anyone. What I believe is written on the stele could change history and lead to one of the greatest archaeological discoveries since Tutankhamen. If I am correct and these findings are made public you will receive all due credit, I assure you.”
Her enthusiasm waned until Mercer slipped the computer disc into her laptop and the stele appeared on the screen. She plucked a pair of large glasses from her desk and settled them on her tiny nose. Mercer showed her how to use the mouse as Jacobi had taught him, to manipulate the image and zoom in on specific spots.
“It’s magnificent,” she breathed. “Look there, that’s the sign for battle. Here’s something about a burial, a king perhaps.” She kept changing her point of view, peering at the computer with her face only inches from the screen. “Some of this is in ancient Greek but here’s a cartouche. Let me see. It
“Alexander the Great,” Booker said. “We know.”
“We believe the stele reveals the location of his tomb. It was placed near an old mine in Central Africa after Alexander’s death.”
“His tomb?” Her enthusiasm peaked again. “His actual tomb? Do you know how many people have searched for it over the years?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Can you do a full translation of the stele?” Mercer asked.
“Of course. It will take me some time, hieroglyphs are open to interpretation. They tell a story more than lay out words like a sentence.”
Mercer handed her a business card from a gold-and-onyx case he’d gotten as a gift years earlier from a petroleum heiress he’d dated for a short time. The number on the card was an answering service, so he scribbled his cell and home numbers on the back. “You can call me day or night.”
For dinner Cali cooked Mercer, Book, and Harry pasta carbonara, which she claimed was her best recipe and which made the men fear her worst. Her disappointment that she couldn’t be alone with Mercer had given way to excitement when he explained what they’d done that day and showed her a copy of Jacobi’s disc.
After the meal they settled in the bar with brandies, still talking and speculating about the possibilities. Beyond the alembic, Alexander’s tomb was rumored to be the richest, most magnificent in history. His crystal-and- gold sarcophagus was said to be the greatest work of art ever produced in the ancient world.
Mercer was on his second snifter when his phone rang. The conversation died with words still poised on lips. “Hello.”
“I have good news and bad news,” Emily French said without preamble.
“Okay,” Mercer said, drawing out the word, hoping but trying not to.
It took her five minutes to explain her findings. She summed up by telling him she’d e-mail the entire translation. He gave her the address, set the cordless back on the coffee table, and roared with laughter. The others stared at him, but soon his laughter caught on and they started to chuckle and laugh along with him, until Harry finally said, “Are you going to let us in on the joke?”
Mercer actually had to wipe tears from his eyes and take several deep breaths, and still the laughter was in his voice. “It was there all right.”
“The tomb’s location.”
“Yup. He wasn’t buried in Alexandria or the Sawi Oasis as some scholars speculate. They took his body south along the Nile and buried him in a cave at the very head of a valley they called Shu’ta.”
“So we go find this valley, grab the alembic, and put an end to this nightmare,” Cali said.
“Not so fast.” Mercer chuckled again. “Emily French did some research on our behalf and discovered the exact location of the Shu’ta Valley. In the process she learned that in 1970 it was submerged under about a hundred feet of water when they built the Aswan High Dam. I still want to go see it for myself but she says the area is totally inaccessible.” The irony of it all made Mercer break out in laughter all over again.
Aswan, Egypt
Mercer couldn’t help but recall the last time he was in Egypt. It had been a couple years earlier and he had spent two weeks cruising the Nile with an Eritrean diplomat named Salome. He hadn’t seen or heard from her since, making her memory just an enigmatic smile.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Cali said. They were seated by the pool of a luxury hotel on Elephantine Island right in the middle of the sluggish Nile. Between them and the town of Aswan, tourist boats and lateen-rigged feluccas plied the waters.
“I was here once with somebody,” Mercer replied, refusing to cover the truth with a white lie no matter the consequences.
“Lucky girl,” Cali said. “She comes here for a romantic getaway and I’m stuck chasing old tombs and dirty bombs.”
He should have known Cali didn’t have a jealous bone in her body.
Booker approached their table. In a black tank top and khaki cargo pants cut off at the knee, he made an imposing figure. He eased himself into a seat, mindful of his still-tender back. “We got us a boat.”
“Terrific.”
When Mercer had told Ira Lasko about the tomb’s location, the admiral had reported the findings to the President. Two hours later Ira phoned Mercer back, telling him that they didn’t want to involve the Egyptian government just yet. In truth they didn’t want to involve them at all if they could help it. By the terms of international law the tomb and everything within it belonged to Egypt. No one in the administration wanted to see another Middle Eastern nation with nuclear capabilities. Relations with Cairo were good but that didn’t mean they couldn’t deteriorate in the future. Like so many other Arab nations they had a minority population of fundamentalists eager to turn their country into a theocracy.
It was decided that Mercer, Cali, and Booker would travel to Egypt as tourists and reconnoiter the sunken valley first. If possible the President wanted them to snatch the alembic. A guided missile cruiser was being diverted from a courtesy call to Cyprus and would transit the Suez Canal. If they could get the alembic, they could meet the vessel on the deserted coast of the Red Sea. At that point the location of Alexander’s tomb could be revealed in such a way to politically benefit the United States. If they couldn’t retrieve the alembic covertly then it
