The Venetian Betrayal

He did. “He was Alexander’s closest companion. Probably his lover. Died a few months before Alexander.”

“The molecular manuscript,” Cassiopeia said, “that was discovered in Samarkand actually fills in the historical record with some new information. We now know that Alexander was so guilt-ridden over Hephaestion’s death that he ordered the execution of his personal physician, a man named Glaucias. Had him torn apart between two trees tied to the ground.”

“And what did the doctor do to deserve that?”

“He failed to save Hephaestion,” Thorvaldsen said. “Seems Alexander possessed a cure. Something that had, at least once before, arrested the same fever that killed Hephaestion. It’s described in the manuscript simply as the draught. But there are also some interesting details.”

Cassiopeia removed a folded page from her pocket.

“Read it for yourself.”

So shameful of the king to execute poor Glaucias. The physician was not to blame. Hephaestion was told not to eat or drink, yet he did both. Had he refrained, the time needed to heal him may have been earned. True, Glaucias had none of the draught on hand, its container had been shattered days before by accident, but he was waiting for more to arrive from the east. Years earlier, during his pursuit of the Scythians, Alexander suffered a bad stomach. In return for a truce, the Scythians provided the draught, which they had long used for cures. Only Alexander, Hephaestion, and Glaucias knew, but Glaucias once administered the wondrous liquid to his assistant. The man’s neck had swollen with lumps so bad he could hardly swallow, as if pebbles filled his throat, and fluid spewed forth with each exhale. Lesions had covered his body. No strength remained within any of his muscles. Each breath was a labor. Glaucias gave him the draught and, by the next day, the man recovered. Glaucias told his assistant that he’d used the cure on the king several times, once when he was near death, and always the king recovered. The assistant owed Glaucias his life, but there was nothing he could do to save him from Alexander’s wrath. He watched from the Babylonian walls as the trees ripped his savior apart. When Alexander returned from the killing field he ordered the assistant to his presence and asked if he knew of the draught. Having seen Glaucias die so horribly, fear forced him to tell the truth. The king told him to speak of the liquid to no one. Ten days later Alexander lay on his deathbed, fever ravaging his body, his strength nearly gone, the same as Hephaestion. On the final day of his life, while his Companions and generals prayed for guidance, Alexander whispered that he wanted the remedy. The assistant mustered his courage and, remembering Glaucias, told Alexander no. A smile came to the king’s lips. The assistant took pleasure in watching Alexander die, knowing that he could have saved him.

“The court historian,” Cassiopeia said, “a man who also lost someone he loved when Alexander ordered Callisthenes executed four years previous, recorded that account. Callisthenes was Aristotle’s nephew. He served as court historian until spring 327 BCE. That’s when he got caught up in an assassination plot. By then, Alexander’s paranoia had amplified to dangerous levels. So he ordered Callisthenes’ death. Aristotle was said never to have forgiven Alexander.”

Malone nodded. “Some say Aristotle sent the poison that supposedly killed Alexander.”

Thorvaldsen scoffed at the comment. “The king wasn’t poisoned. That manuscript proves it. Alexander died of an infection. Probably malaria. He’d been trudging through swamps a few weeks prior. But it’s hard to say for sure. And this drink, the draught, had cured him before and it cured the assistant.”

“Did you catch those symptoms?” Cassiopeia asked. “Fever, neck swelling, mucus, fatigue, lesions. That sounds viral. Yet this liquid totally cured the assistant.”

He was not impressed. “You can’t place much credence in a two-thousand-plus-year-old manuscript. You have no idea if it’s authentic.”

“It is,” Cassiopeia said.

He waited for her to explain.

“My friend was an expert. The technique he used to find the writing is state of the art and doesn’t lend itself to forgeries. We’re talking about reading words at a molecular level.”

“Cotton,” Thorvaldsen said. “Alexander knew there’d be a battle for his body. He’s known to have said, in the days before he died, that his prominent friends would engage in vast funerary games once he was gone. A curious comment, but one we’re begi

He’d caught something else and wanted to know from Cassiopeia, “You said your friend at the museum was an expert? Past tense?”

“He’s dead.”

And now he knew the source of her pain. “You were close?”

Cassiopeia did not answer.

“You could have told me,” he said to her.

“No, I couldn’t.”

Her words stung.

“Suffice it to say,” Thorvaldsen said, “that all this intrigue involves locating Alexander’s body.”

“Good luck. It’s not been seen in fifteen hundred years.”

“That’s the catch,” Cassiopeia coldly replied. “We might know where it is, and the man coming here to kill us doesn’t.”

FIFTEEN

SAMARKAND

12:20 P.M.

ZOVASTINA WATCHED THE STUDENTS’ EAGER FACES AND ASKED the class, “How many of you have read Homer?”

Only a few hands raised.

“I was at university, just like you, when I first read his epic.”

She’d come to the People’s Center for Higher Learning for one of her many weekly appearances. She tried to schedule at least five. Opportunities for the press, and the people, to see and hear her. Once a poorly funded Russian institute, now the center was a respectable place of academic learning. She’d seen to that because the Greeks were right. An illiterate state leads to no state at all.

She read from the copy of the Iliad open before her.

“‘The skin of the coward changes color all the time, he can’t get a grip on himself, he can’t sit still, he squats and rocks, shifting his weight from foot to foot, his heart racing, pounding inside the fellow’s ribs, his teeth chattering. He dreads some grisly death. But the skin of a brave soldier never blanches. He’s all control. Tense but no great fear.’”

The students seemed to enjoy her recitation.

“Homer’s words from over twenty-eight hundred years ago. They still make perfect sense.”

Cameras and microphones pointed her way from the back of the classroom. Being here reminded her of twenty-eight years ago. Northern Kazakhstan. Another classroom.

And her teacher.

“It’s okay to cry,” Sergej said to her.

The words had moved her. More so than she’d thought possible. She stared at the Ukrainian, who possessed a unique appreciation for the world.

“You’re but nineteen,” he said. “I remember when I first read Homer. It affected me, too.”

“Achilles is such a tortured soul.”

“We’re all tortured souls, Irina.”

She liked when he said her name. This man knew things she didn’t. He understood things she’d yet to experience. She wanted to know those things. “I never knew my mother and father. I never knew any of my family.”

“They’re not important.”

She was surprised. “How can you say that?”

He pointed to the book. “The lot of man is to suffer and die. What’s gone is of no consequence.”

For years she’d wondered why she seemed doomed to a life of loneliness. Friends were few, relationships nonexistent, life for her an endless challenge of wanting and lacking. Like Achilles.

“Irina, you’ll come to know the joy of the challenge. Life is one challenge after another. One battle after another. Always, like Achilles, in pursuit of excellence.”