Napoleon's Pyramids by William Dietrich Page B

you see, Ethan? It’s as if we’re following in its footsteps. Destiny is at work.”
    Again I was reminded of Stefan’s tales of Caesar and Cleopatra, of crusaders and kings, and a quest that had consumed men through time. “Do any of these Knights remember the piece or know what it means?”
    “No. But we’re on the right path. Can I see it again?”
    “I’ve hidden it for safekeeping because it causes trouble when it’s out.” I trusted Talma, and yet had become reluctant to show the medallion after Stefan’s dire tales of what happened to men through history who grasped it. The savants knew it existed, but I’d deflected requests to share it for examination.
    “But how are we to solve the secret when you keep it hidden?”
    “Let’s just get it to Egypt first.”
    He looked disappointed.
    After a little more than a week our armada set sail again, lumbering eastward toward Alexandria. Rumors flew that the British were still hunting us, but we saw no sign of them. Later we would learn that Nelson’s squadron had passed our armada in the dark, neither side spying the other.
    It was on one of these evenings, the soldiers gambling for each other’s shoes to relieve the tedium of the passage, that Berthollet invited me to follow him to L’Orient ’s deepest decks. “It is time, Monsieur Gage, for us scholars to start earning our keep.”
    We descended into murk, lanterns giving feeble light, men in hammocks swaying hip to hip like moths in cocoons, coughing and snoring and, in the case of the youngest and most homesick, weeping the night away. The ship’s timbers creaked. The sea hissed as it rushed past, water dripping from caulked hull seams as slowly as syrup. Marines guarded the magazine and treasure room with bayonets that gleamed like shards of ice. We stooped and entered Aladdin’s Cave, the treasure hold. The mathematician Monge was waiting for us, seated on a brass-bound chest. Also present was another handsome officer who had listened to most of the philosophical discussions in silence, a young geographer and mapmaker named Edme François Jomard. It was Jomard who would become my guide to the mysteries of the pyramids. His dark eyes shone with a bright intelligence, and he had brought on board a trunk full of books by ancient authors.
    My curiosity at his presence was distracted by what the cabin contained. Here was the treasure of Malta and much of the payroll of the French army. Boxes brimmed with coin like combs of honey. Sacks held centuries of jeweled religious relics. Bullion was stacked like logwood. A fistful could remake a man’s life.
    “Don’t even think about it,” the chemist said.
    “ Mon dieu! If I were Bonaparte, I’d retire today.”
    “He doesn’t want money, he wants power,” Monge said.
    “Well, he wants money, too,” Berthollet amended. “He’s become one of the richest officers in the army. His wife and relatives spend it faster than he can steal it. He and his brothers make quite the Corsican clan.”
    “And what does he want of us?” I asked.
    “Knowledge. Understanding. Decipherment. Right, Jomard?”
    “The general is particularly interested in mathematics,” the young officer said.
    “Mathematics?”
    “Mathematics is the key to war,” Jomard said. “Given proper training, courage does not vary much from nation to nation. What wins is superior numbers and firepower at the point of attack. That requires not just men, but supply, roads, transport animals, fodder, and gunpowder. You need precise amounts, moving in precise miles, to precise places. Napoleon has said that above all, he wants officers who can count.”
    “And in more ways than one,” Monge added. “Jomard here is a student of the classics and Napoleon wants him to count in new ways. Ancient authors such as Diodorus of Sicily suggested that the Great Pyramid is a mathematical puzzle, right, Edme?”
    “Diodorus proposed that in its dimensions the Great Pyramid is somehow a map of the