The Emerald Tablet by Meaghan Wilson Anastasios

Author:Meaghan Wilson Anastasios
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia
Published: 2019-09-04T16:00:00+00:00

The warm smell of cloves and cardamom made Ben’s mouth water as he sipped from a small, gilt-edged cup filled with freshly brewed Arabic coffee.

Outside the Cecil Hotel’s arched windows, he watched the wind whip across the Mediterranean, setting aflutter the feathery tops of the colonnade of palms planted along the Corniche.

The city had been established by and named for the man whose presence in this part of the world had left more of a mark than almost any other – Alexander the Great. In his wake came the great Ptolemaic queen, Cleopatra, whose palace had since been lost in one of the many earthquakes that had ravaged the city.

At the far end of the promenade that edged the bay on the easternmost end of Pharos Island was the now-abandoned Citadel of Qaitbay, built by the Mamelukes in the fifteenth century on the site of the ancient Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the seven wonders of the world, whose light could once be seen thirty miles out to sea.

They were her last words to me . . . ‘We will meet at the base of the famous lighthouse of Alexandria . . . I have always wanted to see it.’ The thought erupted, unbidden, into Ben’s mind. Karina.

It had been here that Ben had waited for the arrival of the British frigate that was to have brought his Greek wife to meet him after he’d arrived in the city on a faster launch from Crete to deliver the captured Nazi collaborator, Josef Garvé, to British authorities. A shadow of the same hollow sense of disbelief and icy chill of dread assaulted him as he recalled the moment he’d heard of the German capture of the ship that had been carrying Karina to him and his grim but frantic efforts to get back to the island to save her.

Cleopatra and Mark Antony . . . that’s who we are . . . Cleopatra and Mark Antony. That had been his only thought as the launch he’d managed to commandeer cut through the waves towards Crete. And like those star-crossed ancient lovers, theirs was not to be a happy ending. He’d arrived too late. Karina had died in German hands, along with the child she’d been carrying. His child.

‘Waiter?’ He summoned the liveried bartender. ‘Double scotch, please.’

Being alone with his thoughts for too long never served Ben well. It was why he tried to stay in perpetual motion.

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