“Off and on for three years.”
Her eyes drifted again, like while the museum burned. They were so alike. Both of them masked feelings. But everyone had a limit. He was still dealing with the realization that Gary was not his natural son—the product of an affair his ex-wife had long ago. A picture of the boy rested on one of the nightstands and his gaze shot toward it. He’d determined that genes didn’t matter. The boy was still his son, and he and his ex-wife had made their peace. Cassiopeia, though, seemed to be wrestling with her demon. Bluntness seemed in order. “What are you trying to do?”
Her neck tensed and hands stiffened. “Live my life.”
“Is this about Ely or you?”
“Why does it matter?”
Partly, she was right. It shouldn’t matter either way. This was her fight. Not his. But he was drawn to this woman, even though she obviously cared for someone else. So he flushed emotion from his brain and asked, “What did Viktor’s fingerprints reveal? Nobody mentioned a word about that at dinner.”
“He works for Supreme Minister Irina Zovastina. Head of her personal guard.”
“Was anyone going to tell me?”
She shrugged. “Eventually. If you’d wanted to know.”
He quelled his anger, realizing she was taunting him. “You think the Central Asian Federation is directly involved?”
“The elephant medallion in the Samarkand museum has not been touched.”
Good point.
“Ely found the first tangible evidence of Alexander the Great’s lost tomb in centuries. I know he passed that on to Zovastina, because he told me about her reaction. She’s obsessed with Greek history and Alexander. The museum in Samarkand is well funded because of her interest in the Hellenistic Age. When Ely discovered Ptolemy’s riddle about Alexander’s tomb, Zovastina was fascinated.” Cassiopeia hesitated. “He died less than a week after telling her.”
“You think he was murdered?”
“His house burned to the ground. Not much left of it or him.”
The dots connected. Greek fire. “And what of the manuscripts he uncovered?”
“We had some inquiries made by academicians. No one at the museum knew anything.”
“And now more buildings are burning and medallions are being stolen.”
“Something like that.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I haven’t decided if I need your help.”
“You do.”
She appraised him with suspicion. “How much do you know about the historical record regarding Alexander’s grave?”
“He was first entombed by Ptolemy at Memphis, in southern Egypt, about a year after he died. Then Ptolemy’s son moved the body north to Alexandria.”
“That’s right. Sometime between 283 BCE, when Ptolemy I died, and 274. A mausoleum was built in a new quarter of the city, at a crossroad of two main avenues that flanked the royal palace. It eventually came to be called the Soma—Greek for body. The grandest tomb in the grandest city of the time.”
“Ptolemy was smart,” he said. “He waited until all of Alexander’s heirs were dead then proclaimed himself pharaoh. His heirs were smart, too. They reshaped Egypt into a Greek kingdom. While the other Companions mismanaged or lost their portions of the empire, the Ptolemys kept theirs for three hundred years. That Soma was used to great political advantage.”
She nodded. “An amazing story, actually. Alexander’s tomb became a place of pilgrimage. Caesar, Octavian, Hadrian, Caligula, and a dozen other emperors came to pay homage. Should have been quite a site. A gold-encrusted mummy with a golden crown, encased in a golden sarcophagus, surrounded by golden honey. For a century and a half Alexander lay undisturbed until Ptolemy IX needed money. He stripped the body of all its gold and melted the coffin, replacing it with a glass one. The Soma eventually stood for six hundred years. The last record of it existing was in 391 CE.”
He knew the rest of the tale. Both the building and the remains of Alexander the Great disappeared. For sixteen hundred years people had searched. But the greatest conqueror of the ancient world, a man venerated as a living god, had vanished.
“Do you know where the body is?” he asked.
“Ely thought he did.” The words sounded distant, as if she were talking to his ghost.
“You think he was right?”
She shrugged. “We’re going to have to go and see.”
“Where?”
She finally looked at him with tired eyes. “Venice. But first we have to get that last medallion. The one Viktor is surely headed toward right now.”
“And where is it?”
“Interestingly, it’s in Venice, too.”
Malone 3 - The Venetian Betrayal
TWENTY-NINE
SAMARKAND
2:50 A.M
ZOVASTINA SMILED AT THE PAPAL NUNCIO. HE WAS A HANDSOME man with gray-streaked, auburn hair and a pair of keenly inquisitive eyes. An American. Monsignor Colin Michener. Part of the new Vatican orchestrated by the first African pope in centuries. Twice before, this emissary had come and inquired if the Federation would allow a Catholic presence, but she’d rebuked both attempts. Though Islam was the nation’s dominant religion, the nomadic people who’d long populated central Asiahad always placed their law ahead of even the Islamic sharia. A geographical isolation bred a social independence, even from God, so she doubted Catholics would even be welcomed. But still, she needed something from this envoy and the time had come to bargain.
“You’re not a night person?” she asked, noticing the tired look Michener tried only minimally to conceal.
“Isn’t this time traditionally reserved for sleeping?”
“It wouldn’t be to either of our advantages to be seen meeting in the middle of the day. Your Church is not all that popular here.”