He ran a hand through his hair and asked, “You’ve been alive for what, twenty-five hundred years?”

“Give or take a few decades,” Alexander replied with a grin, a lit cigar clenched between his teeth.

“And in that time, you’ve done what? Other than the myths you’re known for, have you been anyone else in history?” A straight answer might not help him figure out exactly what Alexander was up to now, but it might give him some indication about the kind of man he was, or had been.

“You mean, have I been anyone important? A king. A general.”

King just waited for an answer.

“George Washington.”

As King whipped his head toward Alexander the man burst out laughing.

“I was being serious,” King said, realizing a straight answer out of Alexander might be more impossible than cracking the secret of immortality, which to his knowledge had been accomplished twice already. He stepped ahead of Alexander and opened the hotel’s front door. “After you, Mr. President.” Alexander snubbed out the cigar in the hotel’s outdoor ashtray and entered the hotel. King gave the street and parking lot a quick glance. No one had followed them. Not that he could see, anyway.

The hotel lobby was four stories tall capped by a grand arched ceiling. Tall windows and an array of sconces flooded the gaping space with light. Four palm trees, covered in white lights, stood in the center. It looked one part Hollywood at Christmas and one part opulent Arabian palace. King was fond of neither look, but still could not take his eyes off the surreal lobby. He had waited outside when they dropped Davidson off and had yet to see the hotel’s interior.

“You haven’t answered my question,” King said. But Alexander just kept on walking, heading straight for the elevator.

Alexander entered the elevator and hit the button for the fifth floor, which was directly over the lobby. He didn’t even acknowledge that King had spoken.

Growing impatient, King said, “Have you done anything meaningful with your life? Cured a disease? Freed an oppressed people? Anything at all?”

Alexander remained stoic.

“You haven’t, have you?” King grew angry at the thought. Alexander had infinite resources, a devout following of Herculean Society members, immortality, and a genius intellect; nothing should have been out of reach for him. “In twenty-five hundred years you haven’t done a damn thing.”

Alexander looked at him with a smile. “I can tell you one thing I’ve done,” he said. “I’ve learned to not let angry men with no concept of time ruffle my feathers. One hundred years from now, I will have all but forgotten this conversation. I live outside your understanding of time. Like a chess player, I can set things in motion and not see the resulting goal until several moves later, which for me could be hundreds of years. Sometimes longer.”