The man lowered his pistol and leaned over the railing to get a better look at the dirty, dishevelled elderly woman who had defied him. He raised his eyebrows and a wide grin played across his face, exposing his perfect, straight, white teeth.
He dug inside his thawb and brought out a small book. On its cover was an emblem looking rather like a green rose flower with writing across the centre.
“Do you know what this is?” he asked.
She’d seen enough Qur’ans to know what one looked like, and was about to make a snide remark when the emblem in its centre caught her eye. She looked closer. Beneath what she recognised as the Arabic word for Allah was the bold outline of the Amarna Stickman; the symbol of Aniquilus.
Aniquilus. The destructor of the Xynutian race. And now its symbol had been adopted by fundamentalists. The irony made her smile.
“Aniquilus,” she said. “Although you probably know it better as the Amarna Stickman.”
The man put the book and the pistol away and stood tall on the walkway. His initial surprise at hearing a new term for the Stickman was quickly hidden. “Absolutely correct, Dr Turner.” And without saying a further word, he turned on his heel and left the warehouse.
He returned soon after, accompanied by a much older man dressed in grey. They descended a set of steps to the warehouse floor and made their way towards Gail and George.
“Dr Turner, I presume,” the older man said in perfect English. He smiled at his little joke and stuck his hand out towards her. “Assalaam aleikum! You are most welcome; I do apologise for the conditions in which you have been kept, these are trying times, and you can never be too careful.”
Gail was taken completely off-guard, and accepted the hand in bewilderment, though she stopped short of the formal waleikum salaam response. She had just escaped a pistol-shot to the head from this man’s sidekick, and now she was being welcomed like an old friend.
“I am sorry, how rude of me not to introduce myself. My name is Omar Abdel-Rahman. I am responsible for Abu Qir. Please, do come this way,” he gestured for her to follow him.
George, Ben, Jake and Zahra stepped forward to protect her.
Abdel-Rahman waved them away. “You do not need to worry; we will not harm such an esteemed guest to our country. However, one of you may come with us if it makes you feel more comfortable.”
Chapter 97
Gail and George were taken to a sitting room, instructed to make themselves as comfortable as possible, then left alone.
The room could only be described as opulent. Not just comparative opulence in bleak times, but the kind of opulence that one would expect of a rich home during the twentieth century.
Gold picture frames held paintings that wouldn’t have looked out of place in an art gallery, twin crystal chandeliers hung from richly decorated ceiling roses, plush carpets covered the floor. A display cabinet filled with pottery and glassware occupied one corner of the room, while floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled the remaining wall-space. They sat on one of three Chesterfield sofas, arranged in a square with a large open fireplace making up the fourth side.
George nudged her in the ribs and nodded towards the small coffee table in front of them.
It was stocked with old copies of National Geographic, and a large hardback tome on Islamic art. All were well-thumbed, and Gail noted with interest that the topmost copy of National Geographic was from November 2039, and carried an article on the Amarna Library. Much to the combined chagrin and delight of her esteemed University colleagues, she had been interviewed by the reporter for that very issue, two months before achieving her Doctorate. The chagrin came from some conservative archaeologists who sneered at the sensationalist journalism; she always suspected that they were just trying to hide their envy. The delight came mostly from her old friends Dr Hunt and Ellie.
She had often wondered about them, in the aftermath of the Chaos. About them, Southampton and indeed the rest of the United Kingdom. Britain was such a natural target that it was hard to imagine much of it could have survived. She knew why George wanted to return, she felt it too; the pang of guilt at being safe and well, mixed with curiosity and homesickness. He was a natural optimist, believing that their home was probably safe. There were days when she agreed. In any case, no news of the UK had reached them for many years. It made her sad to think about it, so she tried not to. Jake was more important to her now anyway. Getting him, and his future, away from the dying embers of Egypt and off to a better climate was her only priority.
The sound of the door opening snatched her from her reverie. Turning in their seats they saw that Omar Abdel-Rahman and the man with the hook-nose had entered the room.
Omar sat down on the sofa opposite them.
Gail had already started flicking through the pages of the magazine, looking for the Amarna article.
“I see you have found my favourite magazine,” he smiled. “Joking aside, though, it is a poor article. I was particularly disappointed by the way in which they downplayed your part in the discovery. ‘Gail Turner sat down to take some rest and found herself sitting on the most important archaeological discovery of the century’, they said.” He cocked his head and looked at her. “Surely there was more to it than that?”
“Actually, quite a bit more,” she began with a frog in her throat. She cleared it nervously. “Ben, one of your guests in the warehouse, did all of the sitting. I saw he was sitting on something important.”
“I see!” he slapped his hands together with glee. “But that didn’t make for such a good sub-title, did it? The editors took some poetic licence to make it sound more, dare I say it, Hollywood?”
She shifted in her seat. “I’m sure it was an honest mistake. There were more important things in the article, although,” she hesitated for a moment before continuing. “Although I do agree with you that it wasn’t very scientific.”
Omar grinned again with glee. “How interesting! Tell me,” he said, leaning towards her and lowering his voice, “what else did you find in the Library that hasn’t yet been published?”
“What do you want us to have found?” she asked cautiously.
He raised his hands defensively. “Nothing, I am purely interested scientifically.”
“Why do you have Aniquilus alongside Allah on your emblem,” she challenged, nodding towards a framed picture on the mantelpiece. “What does it have to do with Islam?” She sensed George tense up at this, and so hurriedly added “if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Because Islam is the one true faith, and our way of life is the only acceptable way of life,” he answered without batting an eyelid. “And at the same time, we are a proud Egyptian people. Our heritage is the birth of civilisation. The Stickman represents that foundation, the legitimacy of our people to not be subservient to the western world.”
“So you brought religion and nationalism together, to take over Egypt and run it as an Islamic state?” she sighed. “That sort of thing doesn’t usually end well.”
He raised an eyebrow. “And yet it was the liberal west that destroyed humanity, was it not?” Omar leaned forwards and picked up the National Geographic. He flipped directly to a specific page and looked up at her before reading out loud.
“For now, we shall have to call this new symbol ‘Stickman’; we don’t know if it’s a person, a god, a concept, or even a place or time. With the texts studied so far revealing nothing on this enigmatic symbol, we have to accept that we may never know what, or who, it represents.”
Gail felt strange hearing her own words, as quoted by the journalist, read aloud. It was like hearing a recording of your own voice. She couldn’t help thinking how naïve her younger self had been.