“Maybe he didn’t want to be king. From what I’ve read, there was so much treachery and cynicism going around that nobody survived long. Murder was simply part of the political process.”
“But maybe Ptolemy knew something no one else did.” She saw that Malone was waiting for her to explain. “That the body in Egypt was not Alexander’s.”
He grinned. “I read about those stories. Supposedly, after highjacking the cortege, Ptolemy fashioned a likeness of Alexander and substituted it for the real corpse, then allowed Perdiccas, and others, a chance to seize it. But those are tales. No proof exists to substantiate them.”
She shook her head. “I’m talking about something entirely different. The manuscript Ely discovered tells us exactly what happened. The body sent west for burial in 321 BCE was not Alexander. A switch was made in Babylon, during the previous year. Alexander himself was laid to rest in a place only a handful knew about. And they kept their secret well. For twenty-three hundred years, no one has known.”
Two days had passed since Alexander executed Glaucias. What was left of the physician’s body remained outside Babylon ’s walls, on the ground and in the trees, the animals still picking flesh from the bones. The king’s fury continued unrestrained. He was short-tempered, suspicious, and unhappy. Eumenes was called into the king’s presence and Alexander told his secretary that he would soon die. The statement shocked Eumenes, as he could not imagine a world without Alexander. The king said that the gods were impatient and his time among the living was about to end. Eumenes listened, but placed little credence in the prediction. Alexander had long believed that he was not the son of Philip, but instead the mortal descendant of Zeus. A fantastic claim for sure, but after all his great conquests many had come to agree with him. Alexander spoke of Roxane and the child she carried in her womb. If it be a boy he would have a solid claim to the throne, but Alexander recognized the resentment Greeks would have toward a half-foreign ruler. He told Eumenes that his Companions would battle among themselves for his empire and he did not want to be a part of their struggle. “Let them claim their own destiny,” he said. His was made. So he told Eumenes that he wanted to be buried with Hephaestion. Like Achilles, who wished that his ashes be mixed with those of his lover, Alexander wanted the same. “I shall make sure your ashes and his are joined,” Eumenes said. But Alexander shook his head. “No. Bury us together.” Since just days earlier Eumenes had witnessed Hephaestion’s grand funeral pyre, he asked how that would be possible. Alexander told him that the body burned in Babylon was not Hephaestion’s. He’d ordered Hephaestion embalmed last fall so that he could be transported to a place where he could forever lie in peace. Alexander wanted the same for himself. “Mummify me,” he commanded, “then take me where I, too, can lie in clean air.” He forced Eumenes to pledge that he would fulfill this wish, in secret, involving only two others, whom the king named.
Malone glanced up from the screen. Outside, the rain had quickened. “Where did they take him?”
“It becomes more confusing,” Cassiopeia said. “Ely dated that manuscript to about forty years after Alexander died.” She reached over to the laptop and scrolled through the pages on the screen. “Read this. More from Hieronymus of Cardia.”
How wrong that the greatest of kings, Alexander of Macedonia, should lie forever in an unknown place. Though he sought a quiet respite, one which he arranged, such a silent fate does not seem fitting. Alexander was correct about his Companions. The generals fought among themselves, killing each other and all who posed a threat to their claims. Ptolemy may have been the most fortunate. He ruled Egypt for thirty-eight years. In the last year of his reign, he heard of my efforts in writing this account and summoned me to the palace from the library at Alexandria. He knew of my friendship with Eumenes and read with interest what I had so far written. He then confirmed that the body buried in Memphis was not that of Alexander. Ptolemy made clear that he’d known that ever since he’d attacked the funeral cortege. Years later he’d finally become curious and dispatched investigators. Eumenes was brought to Egypt and told Ptolemy that Alexander’s true remains were hidden in a place only he knew. By then the grave site in Memphis, where Alexander was said to lay, had become a shrine. “We both fought by his side and would have gladly died for him,” Ptolemy told Eumenes. “He should not lie forever in secret.” Overcome by remorse and sensing that Ptolemy was sincere, Eumenes revealed the resting place, far away, in the mountains, where the Scythians taught Alexander about life, then Eumenes died shortly thereafter. Ptolemy recalled that when asked to whom did he leave his kingdom, Alexander had answered “to the brightest.” So Ptolemy spoke these words to me:
Ptolemy then handed me a silver medallion that showed Alexander when he fought against elephants. He told me that, in honor of those battles, he’d minted the coins. He also told me to come back when I solved his riddle. But a month later Ptolemy lay dead.
TWENTY-FIVE
SAMARKAND
CENTRAL ASIAN FEDERATION
11:50 P.M.
ZOVASTINA LIGHTLY RAPPED ON A WHITE LACQUERED DOOR. A stately, well-groomed woman in her late fifties with dull gray-black hair answered. Like always, Zovastina did not wait to be invited inside.
“Is she awake?”
The woman nodded and Zovastina marched down the hall.
The house dominated a wooded lot on the eastern outskirts of the city, beyond the sprawl of low-slung buildings and colorful mosques, in an area where many of the newer estates had sprung, the hilly terrain once littered with Soviet-era guard towers. Federation prosperity had generated both a middle and an upper class, and those with means had begun to flaunt it. This house, built a decade ago, belonged to Zovastina, though she’d never actually lived here. Instead, she’d given it to her lover.
She surveyed the luxurious interior. An elaborately carved Louis XV console displayed an array of white porcelain figurines given to her by the French president. A coffered ceiling topped the adjacent living room, its floor covered by inlaid parquetry protected by a Ukrainian carpet. Another gift. A German mirror anchored one end of the long room and taffeta draperies adorned three towering windows.
Every time she stepped down the marbled hall, her mind wandered back six years, to one afternoon when she’d approached the same closed door. Inside the bedroom she’d found Karyn naked, a thin-chested man with curly hair and muscular arms atop her. She could still hear their moans, their ferocious exploration of each other surprisingly arousing. She’d stood for a long minute, watching, until they broke apart.
“Irina,” Karyn calmly said. “This is Michele.”
Karyn had climbed from the bed and brushed back her long wavy hair, exposing breasts Irina had many times enjoyed. Lean as a jackal, every inch of Karyn’s unblemished skin shimmered with the color of cinnamon. Thin lips curved contemptuously, tilted nose with delicate nostrils, cheeks smooth as porcelain. Zovastina had suspected her lover’s cheating, but it was an entirely different matter to witness the act firsthand.