She nodded quietly.

“Then you know the rules in Egypt, Dr Turner,” he said with a grin. “You can’t visit any archaeological sites without the authorisation and accompaniment of the Tourism Police,” he gestured to Zahra, who smiled in return, though she couldn’t hide the apprehension she felt.

But not one of them was as nervous as Gail. The reasons she had built up for staying behind meant nothing. The size of the boat, her age, how tired she felt, were all excuses to hide her real motivation. Something was drawing her back to Amarna. Back to the Library, and to the Xynutian vaults beneath it.

And the fear inside her was growing.

Chapter 95

Even eighteen years after the beginning of the Chaos, the Nile Delta remained the most densely populated area of what had been, what some insisted still was, Egypt.

But rather than this concentration of people making the area livelier, it served only to make its desolation all the more pronounced.

What little remained of infrastructure was patchy at best; freshwater canals were mostly blocked and stagnant, roads were broken and littered with the carcasses of obsolete vehicles, and power cables were strewn across the landscape like a gigantic collapsed spider web, where one by one the high tension electricity grid had collapsed after years of neglect and unpredictable weather.

People lived among all these remains, mostly in squalor. Some, as some always will, had managed to climb to the top of the heap and make the very most of a bad situation.

It was people like this they did their best to avoid as they weaved their way up the road towards Alexandria, keeping themselves to themselves and walking mostly in silence through any built up area.

About twenty miles from Alexandria, they turned towards the sea port of Abu Qir.

“It’s where we’re most likely to find a large boat,” Ben explained. “If people are to be believed, there may even be some international trade there, we might be able to get on board a ship heading for Europe.”

The fact that the four of them would remain in Egypt had not been shared with the others yet, on Gail’s request. She didn’t want her last days with Jake to be fraught with arguments.

“You may be interested to know,” Ben turned to George and Gail, “that Abu Qir is where your Admiral Nelson and the Royal Navy fought against the French in the Battle of the Nile.”

George nodded in interest. Although he had heard of it, he knew nothing of the battle itself; but the mention of the Royal Navy caused a lump to form in his throat. It might have been a male thing, for Gail didn’t seem that affected, but to him in that very moment the Royal Navy was the United Kingdom. Knowing that in all probability neither existed anymore, and that on top of that he wasn’t going to return to see the remains, was hard to take.

“Let’s hope the place is a little more peaceful, nowadays,” Gail said bitterly. History was a sequence of battles, wars and conflicts, punctuated by periods of peace. The lull they found themselves in now would barely have been described as peaceful thirty years ago. Peace, Gail had decided, was a distinctly relative term.

It was shortly after thinking this that they were stopped by a man brandishing an AK-47, pointed straight at them.

He wore a white thawb, the traditional long tunic worn by most Arab men, including most of the people travelling with Gail. What made this man’s thawb special was its brilliant whiteness, crisp and clean even in the dull evening light. His long, flowing black hair and carefully trimmed beard framed a hook nose and thick-set eyes that looked at them impassively.

Despite the half dozen weapons the group of travellers pointed at him in return, he didn’t flinch or lower the barrel of his rifle.

It didn’t take them long to realise that they had in fact been surrounded by men with AK-47s, and that they had been both outgunned and out-manoeuvred.

Their luck had run out.

Chapter 96

Over the years, Zahra’s connections with the military and police in Egypt had been beneficial in almost every incident that the group had been involved in. Though the Tourism Police had famously been disorganised and generally poorly-lead before the Chaos, in the post-war period people had craved some form of authority and sign of governance.

Everyone, that is, except al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya. Literally the Islamist Group, al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya had been famous in the twentieth century for violence towards any form of authority in democratic Egypt, and were responsible for the killings of dozens of government officials and countless policemen, policewomen and civilians, during the latter part of the century. Their long-term goal had been for an Islamic state, an enforcement of Sharia Law, and the expulsion of foreigners from Egypt.

Now, a power vacuum had clearly given them authority over their own little part of the country.

After some brief questioning, during which Zahra and Gail struggled to keep themselves quiet as the men negotiated, their captors escorted them to the Abu Qir dockyards, where they were locked in an empty warehouse, with no food and little water.

On the third day of captivity, they were provided with a thin meat stew of what they suspected was some of their own donkey, though it could just as easily have been sick cow.

On the fifth day, the man who had stopped them on the road appeared on a walkway running along the end-wall of the warehouse, several metres above their makeshift camping area. This time he wore a black thawb, and he looked as impeccable as before. They, in contrast, had done their best to stay clean but the lack of facilities for such a large group of people had taken its toll. He peered down at them and curled his lips in disgust.

“As you can see,” he said in Arabic, showing the empty expanse of the warehouse in a flowing gesture, “we do not have much to offer. We, like most, are a poor people, though we are infinitely richer than you in both culture and pride.”

George held Gail’s arm tightly, both for comfort and to attempt to quell any rebellious leanings she may have been feeling. She patted his hand reassuringly and he released his grip slightly.

“We have considered your request for a vessel to leave Egypt. It has been rejected. Our boats are too valuable, and your old, stringy donkeys are not sufficient compensation. I must add on a personal note that we would not have been sorry to see you leave. You are rabble. Only a few of your people are strong enough to be a part of our country, though I suspect all of your minds have already been infected by blasphemous liberalism,” he spat the words out in disgust. “And at what cost such liberalism?” he threw his arms up in the air. “The end of your world! Fire and devastation! Death!” Pacing up and down the walkway, he stopped above Gail and Zahra. Their faces and hair were uncovered, and he looked down his nose at them. “And now you want to leave the last place on Earth where order and law remain?”

Zahra looked to the floor, not wanting to exacerbate the situation. But Gail kept her eyes fixed on the man on the walkway. George’s grip tightened once more, but she didn’t waver. The seconds drew out into minutes, until eventually the man swore and drew a pistol from inside the folds of his thawb.

He pointed the gun directly at Gail’s head. “You dare to stare at me, you whore?” he exclaimed, his pistol arm trembling. George was about to act when Jake stepped between his mother and the man with the gun.

In Arabic he apologised for his mother’s indiscretion, and in English he pleaded with her to swallow her pride and look to the floor.

“You are British?” the man asked in surprise.

George nodded. Gail dropped her chin to the floor but kept her eyes on the man as much as possible. “Yes,” she said, defiantly. “My name is Dr Gail Turner, and I worked with the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Cairo.”