Oath Bound - Book V of The Order of the Air (37 page)

“Alexander’s body,” Willi said. His eyes roved over the doorposts, the tumble of the dome above. “Do you think it could still be there?”

“I don’t know,” Jerry said. He swallowed. “Probably.”

It was so easy to imagine the dome as it had been, to see the picture in his mind’s eye made real — going down those steps into the round chamber beyond, where in the center beneath the dome a crystal coffin lay…

“I’m going down there.”

Willi swore again. “Are you insane? Do you see how unstable that is? Those stones could come down at any moment, and if you start moving things around they will fall on your head!”

It was true. Descending those stairs was incredibly dangerous, even for a man who didn’t have a wooden leg. Descending into a tomb…

Initiation, Jerry thought. That was the classic test, wasn’t it? To descend into a tomb, to face death itself in the most literal manner. And it wasn’t a real initiation if it wasn’t something one really feared — being trapped, failed by one’s body, far underground where there was no help. If a block shifted, if he were crushed, or if he simply couldn’t get out, he would die here like so many Egyptian tomb robbers of old.

Which was why it was a true test. All this went through Jerry’s mind in a moment, watching the carved snakes seem to move in the faint light, an illusion caused by their deep-graven shadows.

Suddenly, in that moment, all the fear was gone. Not just fear of the path or fear of failing, but the fear of everything that lay behind that door, of the past and of the future.
Agathos Daimon
, he thought, and his thought was a burble of laughter,
did you think I would turn back now? Is there any world in which I would not dare the tomb?

To turn back would be untrue to himself, to the deepest essence of all he was, all he ever had been and all he hoped to be. Knowing that, there was no fear. Only joy.

“I think I can get through,” Jerry said. He looked at Willi, his hair soaked with sweat, his eyes concerned, and he knew Willi’s fears were not only for him, but for how this would change him, surely as the occult events at Lop Nur had. He did not fear danger, only evil. “There is nothing evil here,” Jerry said quietly, almost tenderly despite Hussein nearby. “It’s ok.”

Joy. Compassion. Love. Initiation was all these things. And without a single regret, Jerry turned to make his way down the dark stairs, beneath the perilous stones.

Sweating, he crawled over a tilted slab, the flashlight held in his teeth. The weight of the City bore down above him in the darkness, tons of dirt and buildings and streets and people just above going about their own business, unaware that the Soma lay beneath their feet.

Just as it had for fifteen hundred years, since it was lost — deserted — closed —whatever had happened to it in the aftermath of the destruction of the Serapeum. It had been looted by a Christian mob, its library and ancient documents burned, its priests killed with everyone who had taken refuge inside, payback for the Christian martyrs executed by pagan emperors in centuries past. And that was how it went, tit for tat, payback for payback, all in the name of God for century after century. It was still going on, the same story without ending.

But this was different. The
contorniate
they’d found showed that. It was pagan and Christian both, the old way and the new, a fusion like everything about Alexandria. Zealots could never allow that to endure. Impurity, confusion, imperfection — freedom of thought in all its forms. For that the Soma had been sealed. For that the White City had fallen.

Jerry paused, wedged between two blocks of fallen roof, trying to see the way forward. It was a pipe dream, of course. It was foolish to think that restoring the Soma would somehow restore that lost world. In his heart, that was what Jerry wanted. Oh yes, the credit for the dig would be wonderful! It would be amazing to be heralded as the new Howard Carter, the greatest archaeologist of the age. But that wasn’t what he really desired, what he dreamed in his secret heart. What he dreamed was the City reborn. As if touching Alexander’s casket could transform the world…

Jerry slid forward on his belly, the block suddenly steeply pitched, slipping over and three feet down to land on his forearms gracelessly. How he was going to get back up that slope…well, he’d deal with that later.

The floor was mosaic. Jerry turned the flashlight, looking down. He lay on an elaborate border of laurel branches that circumscribed a wide, circular center, its subject unclear from the tiny bit he could see. He opened his hand against it, feeling for one long moment the floor of the Soma. Then he pulled himself up.

The dome had half collapsed, the half nearer the street, he thought from the tumble of stone behind him. Ahead, what must have been the left hand wall and most of the back were intact, supported by caryatid columns in the shape of winged victories. There was paint on the wall still, a battle scene originally two stories high, mighty war elephants thundering down against the shield wall of a phalanx, while off to the right cavalry gathered for a charge, their movement truncated by a fall of plaster.

It was stupendous, amazing — in itself worth every moment of the journey. He shone the flashlight over it, crimson caparisons still bright in the light’s beam. And there, beneath a tilted column, the light reflected back unbearably bright, glancing off a coffin lidded in glass.

“It can’t be,” Jerry whispered. It couldn’t. The coffin couldn’t be intact, not after all these centuries.

His halting steps were loud across the mosaic floor. One column had fallen at an angle, resting on its caryatid and the marble base of the tomb, the upper section of it protecting the glass lid with victory’s wings spread across it a foot above the fragile surface. Unbroken. Intact.

Jerry’s knee nearly gave out, and he leaned on his cane, trying not to even breathe in the direction of the precariously balanced stone. Carefully, he took a step closer.

Glass is liquid. That is something every archaeologist knows, even every historic preservationist who tends a house where the panes in the leaded glass windows are thicker at the bottom than the top, flowing down the window over the centuries. But windows like that are three or four hundred years old, maybe a little more. Two thousand years had rendered the glass opaque at the base, darkened it on top as it thinned from the perfection Ptolemy Eugertes had wrought. He could not see inside. Whatever lay within, bare bones or a mummy wrapped in muslin, or even the embalmed king in his armor as Strabo had described, it was hidden.

Jerry closed his eyes. Moving the lid without moving the column was impossible, and that would take heavy equipment and a full team of men. It would need to be photographed first, carefully measured, and even then the sudden rush of air into the coffin might destroy what remained. No, the lid must stay closed.

And it was better that way. What could bones show him that his imagination did not supply? He did not need bones to call ghosts. He never had. The past was not shut away in a tomb, but living and breathing around him.

“We are the City,” he whispered. “And we are not dead.”

No echoes stirred, only the weight of silence.

And then a scraping noise. Jerry turned around. From the hole between slabs appeared Willi and Hussein’s heads.

“You didn’t really think we’d let you go alone, did you?” Willi asked, skidding down the tilted stone.

“No,” Jerry said. “I suppose not.” His voice sounded choked.

Hussein bent to examine the mosaic, and then stood up, turning round slowly and carefully. “It’s real,” he said. “Mr. Cavafy was right.”

“It seems so,” Jerry said.

They were all awestruck, speaking softly as though at a funeral, as though a whisper would break the dream.

“This is going to take an enormous team to excavate,” Hussein said. “A decade of work.”

“We can’t find it,” Jerry said. “We can’t tell anyone about this find. Not now.” He looked at Hussein. “Do you understand why?”

Slowly, Hussein nodded, his eyes never leaving the glass coffin beneath its tilted column. “Because it would be destroyed,” he said. “Just like the Serapeum. Just like so many treasures.” His voice hardened, his face for once less young and affable. “We have to protect it.”

“We have to save it for the world to come,” Jerry said. Unexpectedly, tears stung his eyes. “We have to hope there is a world to come where it could be brought to light.”

“In twenty years,” Willi said quietly.

“In a hundred years,” Hussein said.

“I hope so.” He looked once more at the coffin, fixing it in his mind. “I will protect you,” he said, and there in the dark it didn’t sound ridiculous at all. “I will guard this.” He bent his head, feeling the oath’s weight on him like a collar of gold.

Like the pectoral on its string.

Jerry took a deep breath. Then he laid it down gently on the lid of the coffin, just as a sem-priest would have placed an offering at the deceased’s heart. “This has to stay here,” he said. “I can’t take it out of the country and there is nowhere I can be sure it will be safe.”

“Except with Alexander,” Willi said.

“Except with Alexander,” Jerry agreed. The ruddy gold gleamed in the light of the flashlight on its dull string, a puzzle for some future archaeologist.

“Until we return,” Hussein said. “God willing in my lifetime.”

“You’ll know,” Jerry said. “And if not, you’ll pass it on when the time comes, as I will.”

“But to do that we must get out in one piece,” Willi said. “And that will be an adventure. It’s a good thing we followed you. We’re going to have to lift you up that slope ahead of us.”

“A very good thing indeed,” Jerry said.

January 4, 1936

S
tasi examined herself in the mirror, considering. She wore a white dress with navy blue polka dots, a narrow skirt with a short slit in the back, stockings and navy blue pumps. It was not at all the kind of thing one could wear to climb around on the outside of a building. Perfect.

Her heart beat faster and she made her movements very deliberate and calm as she put out her cigarette and turned on the radio, pulling the curtains tight across the French doors that led to the balcony. They were securely latched.

Then she went to check on the children. All four of them were asleep in the adjoining room, Merilee and Dora cuddled like kittens. Carefully, she extracted the flashlight from under the covers where Douglas had been reading and switched it off, putting it silently on the nightstand. Her heart raced. It had never been this dangerous before. She’d never had this much to lose. If she were caught…

But she wouldn’t be. And if she were, there were innocent explanations. Surely there were reasons why a married woman might be in another man’s hotel room when her own husband was on a business trip! Explanations that weren’t innocent, but certainly were understandable, particularly to a man with a big ego. And don’t they all have big egos, darling? They’d like to believe that a woman would break into their room to throw herself at them. If she needed to, it was plausible. But she wouldn’t need to. She was better than that.

She could almost hear what Mitch would say, not disapproving but with his head to the side, curious. “Why is it that important? What’s worth the risk?”

He was, of course. Henry Kershaw had said that Hess needed something to think about besides where Goring’s nephew had gone with Gilchrist Aviation. Well, she had sent a cable warning Mitch in as cloudy terms as she could, but beyond that she could do nothing. Whatever trouble they ran into across the Mediterranean, she was completely helpless to prevent or even to help. But she could distract Hess with a problem he couldn’t ignore. And that might be just as important in the long run.

Or maybe all of this was just to prove she could, a pathology based on repressed feelings. Or something. It didn’t matter. She was going to do it. And she was going to get by with it.

Stasi closed the door separating the children’s bedroom from the sitting room carefully. She was simply a conscientious mother checking on the children before she settled down to listen to the radio and read for a while. There was her book on the table, a gin on the rocks beside it so the ice would be just the right amount melted. Stasi patted a last stray hair into place and went into the bathroom. Now she only had to wait. It was twenty-six minutes after ten o’clock.

Ten minutes. Twelve. The pipes began to sing, the water turning on in the bath above. Perfect. Four minutes for the tub to fill. Yes, that was the water turning off. Stasi turned off the bathroom light and went out into the hall, closing the door to the suite behind her. She didn’t sneak or sidle. Why would one do that? Thieves sneak and sidle, not guests of the hotel who have every reason to do perfectly ordinary things. She simply walked down the hall past the gilded elevator cage, opened the door marked stairs and confidently ascended.

Up one floor. She heard the elevator chiming as she reached the top and waited behind the door while passengers got off, speaking to one another in French as they let themselves into another room. Then she opened the door and walked quickly down to the suite above hers. It was, of course, child’s play to find out which room in the hotel belonged to another guest.

She’d practiced ten times on her own door just to make sure she still had the knack. A bobby pin, a few twists, and the door swung open.

It was a rather nicer suite, probably the best in the hotel as befitted a senior government official, with elaborate eighteenth century furniture upholstered in gold and white, a thick carpet underneath muffling the sound of her feet. The room was in darkness except for a console light on a painted desk in the corner. From the private adjoining bath came the sounds of splashing, and a little light leaked under the bathroom door.

The bedroom was in darkness. His evening coat hung over the back of a chair, while the rest of his clothes occupied it. Stasi stopped, considering, and let her eyes become accustomed to the darkness. Not a particularly tidy man. A man who is used to having others do for him. Where would he put… There, on the bedside table where a man who smoked might put his cigarette case — the tiepin with its twisted insignia, an expensive Swiss watch, and the ring.