The Alexandria Link [antikvár]

PROLOGUE Palestine April 1948 George Haddad's patience ended as he glared at the man bound to the chair. Like himself, his prisoner possessed the swarthy skin, aquiline nose, and deep-set brown eyes of a Syrian or a Lebanese. But there was something about this man Haddad simply did not like. "I'll only ask one more time. Who are you?" Haddad's soldiers had caught the stranger three hours ago, just before dawn. He'd been walking alone, unarmed. Which was foolish. Ever since the British decided last November to partition Palestine into two states, one Arab, the other Jewish, war had raged between the two sides. Yet this fool had walked straight into an Arab stronghold, offering no resistance, and had not said anything since being bound to the chair. "Did you hear me, imbecile? I asked who you are." Haddad spoke in Arabic, which the man clearly understood. "I'm a Guardian." The answer meant nothing to him. "What's that?" "We're keepers of knowledge." He was not in the mood for riddles. Just yesterday the Jewish underground had attacked a nearby village. Forty Palestinian men and women had been herded into a quarry and shot. Nothing unusual. Arabs were being systematically murdered and expelled. Land that their families had occupied for sixteen hun-