The Alexandria Link

He stepped close and unsnapped the harness.

She raised her arms and allowed the pack to hit the ground. Then she popped her right knee into his crotch.

Electrifying pain soared through his spine and found his brain. His legs trembled and he crumpled to the ground.

The breath left him.

Been awhile since he’d been racked.

He folded himself into the fetal position and waited for the misery to subside.

“Hope that was good for you, too,” she said, walking away.

SIXTY-EIGHT

VIENNA

9:28 AM

HERMANN ENTERED HIS LIBRARY AND SHUT THE DOOR. HE hadn’t slept well, but there was little he could do until Thorvaldsen made a mistake. When that happened he’d be ready. Sabre might be gone, but Herma

He was going to try diplomacy first. That always was preferable. Perhaps he could reason with Thorvaldsen once the Dane saw that demonstrating to the world the Old Testament had been manipulated could be an effective political tool-if managed properly. Many times throughout history, chaos and confusion had been translated into profit. Anything that jostled the Middle East affected oil prices. Knowing that was coming would be invaluable. Controlling its extent, unimaginable. Order members stood to reap enormous profits.

And their newfound ally in the White House would benefit, too.

But to accomplish all this he needed Sabre.

What was he doing in the Sinai?

And with Cotton Malone.

Both seemed to him good signs. Sabre’s plan had been to entice Malone to go after the Alexandria Link. After that, success depended on Malone. Either they would learn what they could and then eliminate Malone, or partner up and see where he led. Apparently, Sabre had chosen the latter.

For several years he’d thought about what would happen once he was gone, as he knew that Margarete would be the ruin of the family. Even worse, she was oblivious to her incompetence. He’d tried to teach her, but every effort failed. Truth be known, he liked the fact that Thorvaldsen had taken her. Maybe he could be rid of the problem? But he doubted it. The Dane was not a murderer, no matter how much bravado he liked to portray.

He’d actually come to like Sabre. The man showed promise. He listened well and acted swiftly, but never haphazardly. He’d often thought Sabre might make an excellent successor. No more Herma

But why had Sabre not checked in?

Was something more happening?

He flushed his doubts away and concentrated on the immediate concern. The Assembly would meet again later. He’d tantalized the members yesterday with the plan. Today he’d drive the point home.

He stepped over to a folio built into the lower portion of a bookcase. Inside, he kept the map he’d commissioned three years ago. The same scholar he’d retained to confirm Haddad’s theory about the Old Testament had also mapped his findings. He’d been told how site after biblical site fit perfectly with the geography of Asir.

But he’d wanted to see for himself.

Comparing scriptural landmarks to Hebrew place-names, both in the Old Testament and on the ground, his expert had located biblical places such as Gilgal, Zidon, al-Lith, Dan, Hebron, Beersheba, and the City of David.

He removed the map.

Its image was already loaded on the computer in the meeting hall. The members would soon see what he’d long admired.

Even the question of Jerusalem’s twenty-six gates, identified in Chronicles, Kings, Zechariah, and Nehemiah, had been solved. A walled city would have had no more than four gates, one leading in each direction. So twenty-six was questionable from the start. But the Hebrew word used throughout the Old Testament for “gate” was shaar. That word, like so many, possessed a double meaning, one of which was “passage or mountain col.” Interestingly, there were twenty-six identified openings through the mountain escarpment that separated the identified Jerusalem territory from Judah. He recalled his own amazement when that reality had been explained. The King’s Gate, Prison Gate, Fountain Gate, Valley Gate, and all the others so descriptively labeled in the Old Testament could be linked with near-perfect accuracy-through their proximity to still-existing villages-to mountain passes through the Jordan escarpment located in Asir.

Nothing even remotely close existed in Palestine.

The proof seemed incontrovertible.

The events of the Old Testament had not occurred in Palestine. Instead they’d all happened hundreds of miles to the south in Arabia. And Jerome and Augustine knew that, yet deliberately allowed the errors of the Septuagint not only to remain, but in fact to flourish, further altering the Old Testament so the passages would seem an indisputable prophecy for the Gospels of their New Testament. The Jews were not to enjoy a monopoly on God’s Word. For their new religion to thrive, the Christians needed a co

So they manufactured one.

Simply finding a Hebrew Bible from before the time of Christ could prove decisive, but a copy of Strabo’s Histories could likewise answer many questions. If the library still existed, he could only hope that one or both would have been preserved.

He stepped over to the glass case that he’d shown the vice president last night. The American had been unimpressed, but who cared? America’s new president would see the havoc they would wreak. Still, he hoped Thorvaldsen would be more impressed seeing them. He reached beneath and pressed the release button. He swung the case open and thought, for a moment, that his eyes were deceiving him.

Empty.

The letters and translations were gone. How? Not the vice president. Herma

Only one possible explanation.

Thorvaldsen.

Anger sent him darting to his desk. He lifted the phone and called for his chief of the guard. Then he opened a desk drawer and removed his gun.

Margarete be damned.

SIXTY-NINE

SINAI PENINSULA

MALONE’S LEGS REMAINED WOBBLY, AND HIS CROTCH ACHED. Pam had said little since their encounter, and McCollum had wisely stayed out of the fight. But Malone couldn’t complain. He’d asked for it and she’d delivered.

He stared in every direction at the desolate serenity. The sun had risen quickly, and the air was heating like an oven. He’d retrieved the GPS unit from his pack and determined that the precise coordinates-28º 41.41N, 33º 38.44E-lay less than a mile away.

“Okay, McCollum. What now?”

The other man slipped a piece of paper from his pocket and read out loud: “Then, like the shepherds of the painter Poussin, puzzled by the enigma, you will be flooded with the light of inspiration. Reassemble the fourteen stones, then work with square and compass to find the path. At noon, sense the presence of the red light, see the endless coil of the serpent red with anger. But heed the letters. Danger threatens one who arrives with great speed. If your course remains true, the route will be sure.

“That’s all there is to the quest,” McCollum concluded.

Malone rolled the cryptic words through his mind.

Pam plopped to the ground and drank some water. “That arbor in England had a Poussin image. What was it? A tomb of some sort with writing on it? Apparently Thomas Bainbridge left a few clues, too.”