“Jim,” he called.
Hutchinson turned.
“Ben! Ben I don’t believe it.”
He shook the General’s hand vigorously.
Hutchinson saw the looks from Dennis and Natalie.
“Oh I’m sorry. Natalie. Peter. This is my friend Ben Rashid Al-Din. We were at university together.”
Al-Din nodded at Dennis and flashed strong white teeth at Natalie. Von Werner’s body was brought up on deck and dumped at the General’s feet. The skin had been burnt to a crisp and was now soaked. Where the skin was broken it bled. The once elegant white suit was blackened. Natalie couldn’t bear to look at the corpse and she turned her face away. General Ben Rashid Al-Din gazed down at the corpse. He nodded at one of his men to search the body.
“Do we know who he is?”
“His name is Count Otto Brest Von Werner. This is his ship.”
The man frisking the body reached inside the jacket and pulled out the brown leather bound book and handed it to the General.
“What’s this?” Al-Din said turning it over and undoing the little popper that held it shut. He thumbed through the pages.
“It’s mine,” Dennis said, “He took it from me,” he lied.
Al-Din studied the writing and sketches briefly and then handed it to the journalist.
“Very well Mr?”
“Peter Dennis General.”
Al-Din looked over the top of his sunglasses again.
“I believe I have heard your name.”
“Really?” Dennis doubted it.
“Yes it was….” The General glanced up at the sky in thought, “….Now I remember. There was an article in the Tunisian national newspapers about a Peter Dennis who said the tomb of Alexander the Macedonian was buried in my country. It was two days ago. Tell me have you found it yet?”
Hutchinson laughed. He clapped a hand on the General’s shoulder.
“That my friend is another story.”
Dennis watched Hutchinson and the General leave. He walked over to the sarcophagus.
’So many people have fought and died over this,’ he said to himself, ’and it was all for nothing. The Romans, the Germans, the British, Wurtz, Koenig, young Johnny Larder, Von Brest, Von Werner, my grandfather Alfred Dennis.’
For a moment he could almost hear his grandfather’s laughter. Natalie appeared alongside him and took his hand.
“Peter are you coming?”
He turned and smiled at her.
“Yes.”
Arm in arm they walked across the deck and down the stairs to the boat waiting below.
EPILOGUE
Peter Dennis removed his hat and wiped a sleeve across his forehead. His skin sore from the mixture of sand, dust, sweat and sunburn. Men all around him working, digging, scraping, carrying. They had relocated to a point on the map left as a clue by Doctor von Brest more than sixty years before. Dennis unscrewed a plastic bottle top and drained the last of his water. He crushed the bottle and replaced the top to minimise the waste and trudged over to a makeshift workstation.
Natalie sat at a table alone. She was working with a laptop protected by plastic sheeting. Despite this she still had to blow frequently to clear dust from its keys. Dennis put his hand on her shoulder and gently massaged her neck. She closed her eyes and pushed her shoulders up to her ears, stretching aching muscles. It felt good. She looked up at him and he bent down and kissed her briefly on the lips.
“How’s it going?” she asked.
“Well we’re no nearer to finding it. We just need one thing, the smallest clue, just one glimpse of anything other than sand,” he replied looking at the points on the laptop screen, “Are these the areas we’ve already searched?”
“Yes the green dot is our current location. The red are the failed ones. Now look if I superimpose the map of 1942 over it you can now see where the Germans dug slightly to the West.”
“Are we absolutely sure of this position?”
“Yes look,” she said picking up a photocopy of a sheet of paper “Von Brest was adamant that this would be the last location. This is translated from ancient hieroglyphs. It was recorded by Napoleon’s army over two hundred years ago. It describes the desert as having a crescent cut into its floor. Now I know that is nowhere to be seen but it also describes the mountains as having a bowl cut out of them,” she pointed ahead to where a semi-circular depression could clearly be seen on the skyline, “That has to be it.”
“But the crescent in the floor,” Dennis said.
“Has got to be here somewhere,” Hutchinson said. He had joined them and was standing to Peter’s left. Natalie clicked on documents and brought up an image from Google. The picture on the screen was a drawing from the time of Napoleon’s army. It clearly showed a crescent shape in the desert floor.
“Then that has to be directly ahead of us somewhere,” Dennis said to the screen.
“Agreed,” from Hutchinson. He leaned over Natalie’s shoulder and brought up another image. Another drawing, much older.
“That drawing is dated 1799. It was drawn by Napoleons historians. This one is by an Italian explorer, Savanarola Di Marco, dated 1650.”
“They look similar,” Dennis said “Obviously the older one looks more primitive. Probably due to the poor quality writing materials available at the time.”
“Without a doubt. Do you notice how the crescent is much deeper in the older illustration?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m convinced that we are looking at a gorge or possibly a small canyon.”
“Then where is it today?”
Hutchinson moved back away from the screen.
“Buried!”
Natalie and Dennis turned to look at him.
“It’s lost,” he said “Buried forever. Napoleon’s army reported a large sandstorm that almost destroyed them. Over half the battalion was lost, buried alive in swirling sand.”
“Could it do that?”
“Oh yes. There is a famous case of a two thousand camel caravan that disappeared never to be seen again.”
“Imagine that,” Dennis replied.
“Surely if the Romans had lost a legion of men custodian of Alexander’s sarcophagus out here in a desert storm they would have made a record of it.”
“They probably did Peter,” Natalie said.
“Then where would that be?”
“Probably destroyed along with thousands of other records when their great library at Alexandria burned to the ground.”
“That’s a pity.”
“Yes. Priceless records were lost forever. Amongst them undoubtedly what we’re looking for.”
“Why did it burn down?”
“It was destroyed by Julius Caesar who set fire to the Alexandrian fleet in the harbour. The fire spread and the library was engulfed. Four hundred thousand scrolls of recorded history went up in flames.”
“I thought Caesar was one of the good guys.”
“He never recorded its destruction in his ’The civil wars’. He probably felt that it would be damaging to his reputation. Even later writers didn’t record its demise.”
“There must be something left, in Alexandria I mean,” Dennis said.
“Unfortunately in the middle ages there were a series of earthquakes and floods and most of ancient Alexandria is now under thirty feet of sea.”
“I’m afraid it is lost forever,” Hutchinson said.
“Then all we can do is hope that we find what we‘re looking for.”
There was a sudden rush of excitement as the hired diggers found something and they rushed forward to encircle their find. A supervisor shouted across to Hutchinson. He, Natalie and Dennis raced over and pushed their way to the front.