‘That is why the ASPS are here,’ said Deyab. ‘The stories say Alexander was buried with many great treasures. It is our job to make sure they stay with him!’
He sounded the horn to encourage a dawdling van to clear his path, then turned the Mercedes down a side street. The buildings here were squeezed together even more closely, but there was a prominent gap ahead. Tall wooden boards and plastic road cones around a space between apartment blocks marked a building site — but the armed men in dark paramilitary uniforms showed that there was more going on than normal construction work.
Deyab gave another quick blast on the horn, this time to alert the guards to his arrival. One waved, then rolled aside a high metal gate. The Egyptian guided the Mercedes through.
The area beyond was roughly square, strewn with dirt and rubble. Ragged trenches marked where the developers had begun to dig out foundations for the new building — but it was a far more carefully excavated section that was the focus of attention. A shelter had been erected over it, a pair of portable cabins nearby acting as operations centre and security post. More armed men watched the new arrivals closely.
The car stopped. Deyab got out and spoke briefly to one of his fellow ASPS, then opened the doors for Nina and Macy while Eddie emerged from the other side. ‘Dr Assad and Dr Banna are underground,’ he told them.
‘Dr Banna?’ said Eddie. ‘You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry.’ Macy giggled.
Nina was puzzled. ‘What?’
Her husband and the younger woman exchanged mocking looks. ‘Seriously, Nina?’ said Macy. ‘You’ve never heard of the Incredible Hulk?’
‘Of course I have!’ she replied, adding with a smile: ‘I’m married to him.’
Eddie feigned modesty, brushing the lapel of his leather jacket. ‘Yeah, I am pretty incredible, aren’t I? But Banner, Banna, they sound — oh, never bloody mind.’
Deyab looked on with bewildered amusement. ‘This way,’ he said, leading them to the shelter. They clomped down a series of sloping wooden planks to the bottom of the covered pit. A ladder led into a hole in the ground. The floor was about eight feet below, faint inscriptions and images visible on the dust-covered walls.
Nina knew the dig’s background from the files she had read while still at the IHA. The construction work had opened up a hole in the ceiling of a long tunnel running at an angle beneath Alexandria’s street grid. Archaeologists had since discovered a complex of chambers at its far end, everything found within adding credence to the theory that this was indeed the long-lost tomb of Alexander the Great, but as yet the final barrier — sealing what was believed to be the burial chamber of Alexander himself — had not yet been opened.
That would happen tomorrow… assuming all went to plan.
Their Egyptian minder descended the ladder, then gestured for them to follow. Nina went first, taking the opportunity to examine the tunnel as she waited for Macy and Eddie. Lights strung along the wall revealed that in one direction the passage was blocked after about forty feet by rubble where the ceiling had collapsed long ago. In the other, it continued on for some distance until the line of lights dropped out of sight at a set of stairs.
She took a closer look at the wall. Cracks lanced through the surface, but she could still see what was left of the reliefs carved into it. Alexander’s name stood out beneath a scene showing a group of men in battle against a far larger force.
The picture’s focus was clear: a figure on horseback leading the group of soldiers, sword hand raised high. The Macedonian king had not been one to issue orders from a safe distance behind the lines.
Eddie joined her. ‘So that’s the big man, is it?’ he said, before indicating other bas-reliefs along the passage. ‘And that, and that… I can see why they think this is the tomb.’
‘Yeah, it’s fairly compelling evidence,’ said Nina. Macy reached the bottom of the ladder, and Deyab led the way down the tunnel. ‘But I know why they’re being cautious. Alexandria’s riddled with ancient sites, and people have been mistaken about what they’ve found before. There are even fringe theories that the tomb isn’t in Alexandria at all.’
‘How can you lose a tomb? It’s a hole in the ground — it’s not like they can go anywhere.’
‘No, but what’s in them can,’ Macy piped up. ‘Some of the Egyptian rulers who came after Alexander moved his body to their own seats of power, so they’d look like his legitimate successor.’
‘That’s right,’ said Nina. ‘He was supposed to be buried in Macedonia, his homeland, but Ptolemy — one of Alexander’s generals, who took control of Egypt after his death — hijacked his body and buried it in Memphis, south of Cairo. Then his son Ptolemy the Second brought it to Alexandria after he took power.’
Eddie shook his head. ‘So if Alexander’s body was so important, how the hell did they lose track of it?’
‘Alexandria hasn’t exactly been the most stable place in history. Plenty of wars have been fought over it, and there have been natural disasters too — most of the old city was destroyed at one time or another. The most recent historical reference to the tomb was by Leo Africanus, in the sixteenth century, and even that only seemed to be a marker of its location rather than the tomb itself. The last person we know to have actually gone into the tomb was the Roman emperor Caracalla, who died in the third century. So there’s kind of a long gap.’
They reached the end of the passage, which dropped down a flight of age-worn steps. Deyab called out in Arabic. A reply soon came. ‘Dr Assad and Dr Banna are in here,’ he told his charges.
Nina, however, was less interested in who they were about to meet than where they were meeting them. ‘God!’ she exclaimed as she reached the foot of the steps. ‘This is amazing!’
The space they entered was a rectangular room around fifty feet long and thirty wide, its arched ceiling supported by two rows of ornate columns. The walls were decorated with more reliefs depicting the life and conquests of the Macedonian leader. At the far end was a marble tableau, statues kneeling before a larger-than-life figure poised in an eternally heroic stance.
Alexander the Great.
The sculpture was similar to other representations of the king that Nina had seen: waves of thick hair flowing down around a handsome yet hard face with a broad, almost leonine nose. A noticeable change from other statues of Alexander was a greater sense of age — not of the stone, but the subject it had captured. This leader was near the end of his short but eventful life, weariness showing through his commanding presence in contrast to the almost boyish features usually portrayed.
‘So that’s him?’ said Eddie as they passed two armed ASPS stationed on each side of the entrance.
‘That’s him,’ Nina replied. ‘Alexander of Macedon.’
‘Nice hair, I’ll give him that much.’
A young Egyptian man with a thin and patchy beard emerged from behind a pillar. ‘Dr Wilde?’
‘Yes, hi,’ said Nina, peering past him for the senior archaeologists they were there to meet. ‘I’m here to see Dr Assad and Dr Banna. Can you take us to them?’
The man’s eyes widened, and he rose to his full height, affronted. ‘I am Dr Banna!’
‘Really?’ she said, surprised. He only appeared to be in his mid twenties, just a few years older than the recently graduated Macy, and nowhere near old enough to have earned a PhD. ‘I mean, of course you are,’ she quickly corrected as his expression of offence deepened.
It did not mollify him. ‘I should have expected nothing else from the great Nina Wilde,’ he said, the emphasis positively dripping with derision. ‘Why would you bother to find out who you are meeting? Everyone else is beneath the world’s most famous archaeologist! And here you are, swooping in to take credit for someone else’s discoveries, as you have done so many times before.’