two thousand years old, and the man I bought it from had no idea what he had. But he saw my interest, and he gouged me with bloodthirsty enthusiasm.”
That was how things were in the Middle East. There was so much history in that area that a trained scholar couldn’t go anywhere without tripping over some forgotten historic record or ages-old document. The worst part about it was that so many of the people in possession of those things didn’t know what they had.
Of course, that could be said about the United States as well. In a country not quite two hundred and fifty years old, there were still many things that had been lost and subsequently found. The extra copy of The Declaration of Independence that had been found behind a painting only a few years ago was a good case in point. The possible number of things that had been lost in countries thousands of years old was staggering. And so many of those lost items were documents of one type or another. Some of them were on clay tablets, papyrus, even on turtle shells.
The trick lay in knowing how to read those things, and that was what Lourds excelled at.
“Of course, I immediately thought of you when I saw it.” Boris clapped Lourds on the shoulder hard enough to nearly knock him off his feet.
“You only thought of me after you couldn’t figure it out.”
“This is true. But at least I thought of you.” Boris sighed. “I have missed you, my friend. I’ve missed times like these. And I miss Lev.”
Lev Strauss had been one of Lourds’s best friends. Last year, he had been murdered, and Lourds had taken up the chase to solve the quest Lev had begun.
Boris shook his head. “The good ones always die so young. It is tragic.”
Lourds took a deep breath of the chill air, surprised to note how sober he was feeling. “You never told me what specifically brought you here.”
Boris shrugged. “Hellenistic history. What else am I to do? I love history, Thomas.” He held out a big hand. “Alexander the Great was incredible. Here was this big, handsome young man, only thirty-two years old, and he had the known world practically in his hand. All he had to do was close the deal.” He closed his hand into a fist. “But he never got the chance.”
“Persia got in the way. That might have been the tipping point.”
Boris heaved a sigh. “He was young. He fell in love with new ways too easily. Alexander came here, to Persia as it was then, and he grew enamored of the ways and customs.”
“That didn’t sit well with the hometown people.”
“No, but Alexander really tried to sell it. Gave his men wives, harems. Alas, all of that was to no avail. He was even going to send the older soldiers and the disabled ones back to Macedon while he was in Persia, but they didn’t trust what he was trying to do for them.”
“They rebelled at Opis, as I recall.”
Boris shot Lourds a wry grin. “You’ve heard this story before.”
“Drunk as well as sober, but you tell it well.”
“I do, don’t I?” Boris smiled happily, and the flashlight glow illuminated the expression. “Anyway, after the uprising and disagreement, three days later while he was still stymied by his men, Alexander started appointing Persians to command positions in his army. Can you imagine the shock and chagrin that went through his troops?”
“Probably on the same level with the dean of my school when I present him with an expense sheet.”
Boris hooted with laughter, and Lourds knew he wasn’t the only one still feeling the effects of the grape.
“Anyway, shortly after that, the army capitulated. But the victory was short-lived. Alexander returned to Macedon and discovered that some of his soldiers had desecrated the tomb of Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian Empire. He had those soldiers executed at once, of course.”
The tomb still stood in Pasargadae, Iran, and was a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Lourds had seen it and had been awed by it. The epitaph had been particularly moving. He cleared his throat. “‘O man, whoever you are and wherever you come from, for I know you will come, I am Cyrus who won the Persians their empire. Do not therefore begrudge me this bit of earth that covers my bones.’”
Boris sniffed. “It sounds better in Russian.”
Lourds switched to that language and repeated the epitaph.