Secrets of an ancient library threaten the world order

ABOUT three-quarters of the way into “The Alexandria Link,” thriller writer Steve Berry’s latest entry in what might be called the Dan Brown paradigm of contemporary fiction, the president of the United States shares some penetrating insight with two of the principal players in the unfolding drama. “There’s a lot going on here,” he says ominously. “Happening fast. From several angles.”

At this crucial point in the action, the international crisis that is propelling the reader along at warp speed is just two days old, but the clock is ticking, and the consequences of failure are dire.

For those in need of a comparison, think Jack Bauer and the hit television series “24,” with twists, turns, schemes and counterschemes manifesting themselves by the second, along with eureka moments that reveal which characters are loyal to the correct cause, and which ones are bent on upsetting world order.

The story begins on a Tuesday in October. Cotton Malone -- the same Cotton Malone who made his debut last year in “The Templar Legacy,” retired from his government job as an elite operative and trying to mind his own business as a rare book dealer in Copenhagen -- is awoken at 1:45 a.m. (Times are very important here and are flashed to us often.)

His ex-wife Pam has arrived unannounced at his door from the United States to tell him that their teenage son has been kidnapped.

An e-mail soon arrives telling Malone he has 72 hours to furnish what only he can provide, or the boy will be killed. Malone quickly learns that what he must turn over is not a weapon of mass destruction, but what we might think of as a weapon of mass instruction: the keys, as it were -- or the “link” of the title -- to the fabled Library of Alexandria.

Those who might reasonably wonder how such a premise could be postulated -- given that every vestige of the actual library disappeared more than 13 centuries ago without leaving so much as a scrap of papyrus or a fragment of parchment -- will have to dispense with any sense of incredulity.

The library with its thousands of priceless scrolls is out there, and only a few people know about it, with Malone -- by way of his earlier contact with a Palestinian scholar who is believed to know the library’s location -- being the obvious point of entry.

Only Malone knows how to find the man, presumed by one and all to be dead.

The burning issue is not so much whether the greatest collection of knowledge ever gathered in one place has survived intact in the sands of the Sinai Desert; it’s how an early copy of the Old Testament in its original language, believed preserved somewhere in the library’s collections, might change the geographic boundaries of the Middle East, not to mention the political, economic, religious, and cultural dynamic of the world.

Impossible, you say? Well, it is known that scholars working at the library some two millennia ago made the first translation of the Hebrew Bible into a Greek version still known as the Septuagint.

Because the earliest complete text available today dates only to the 10th century, the question arises -- and Berry offers some interesting background on this -- what would happen if an early text were to be found that would prove, conclusively, that some crucial details got distorted in translation over the centuries, and that certain countries such as Saudi Arabia -- the home of Mecca -- and Israel, to cite just two, might not have the historical claim to lands they now call their own?

As with all novels cut from “Da Vinci Code” cloth, there are secret societies to deal with -- two of them, in this instance, the Guardians and the Order of the Golden Fleece -- and complex ciphers to penetrate.

Bad guys abound, most notable among them the head of the Order of the Golden Fleece, a clique of European industrialists to which only billionaires need apply. That group’s chief operative -- how’s Dominick Sabre for a villain’s name? -- goes by the nom de guerre Talons of the Eagle, and is Malone’s principal nemesis in the field.

A festival of paranoia? You bet, though Berry moves it all toward a neat resolution, nudged along when necessary with some miraculous coincidences. Not least among them is the most consequential disclosure, which comes by way of an overheard conversation under the most unlikely of circumstances.

Want some real speculation on what treasures might have been found in the great library? The best treatment remains Luciano Canfora’s “The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World” (1990).

Berry’s publisher reports that two more Cotton Malone novels are in the works, the next to appear in 2008, with presumably yet another artifact from antiquity playing a central role.

Hey, Berry’s on a roll. And Hollywood must be paying attention.

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Nicholas A. Basbanes is the author of five books, and is working on a narrative history of paper and papermaking.