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Neues Museum, Museum Island, Berlin
“WHAT THE GERMAN people have,
they keep,” Adolf Hitler famously responded when Egyptian authorities suggested
that the famous bust of Queen Nefertiti in Berlin ought to be returned to
Cairo.
Anson was standing among other
admiring visitors in front of the bust of the iconic queen in a long gallery at
the north cupola of the Neues Museum, when he recalled the Fuehrer’s response.
The suggestions from the Egyptian authorities had risen to the level of
rancorous clamour in recent years, yet there were still no signs that Nefertiti
was going back to Egypt anytime soon. The queen’s image was everywhere, on
postcards, in books and on publicity posters. Nefertiti had the pulling power
of a superstar.
Was it James Bond’s creator Ian
Fleming who’d remarked that the ancient queen of Egypt could make an entrance
today in a designer gown and give the beautiful people a run for their money?
I never thought I’d agree with
Hitler on any subject, Anson reflected, shaking his head in wonder at her
beauty. The timeless elegance, lovely neck and airborne eyebrows produced a
powerful effect on the beholder. If I had Nefertiti I wouldn’t part with her
either.
Yet it was not always true that
‘what the German people have, they keep’ when it came to Egypt’s treasures,
Anson thought, if there was any truth in the German informant's story about his
grandfather’s returning of the Stela texts to Egypt.
A museum visitor moved in and
stood beside Anson at the glass case, directing a jaded stare at Queen
Nefertiti.
“Personally, I think she’s
overrated,” the man said. He had a tired face and spoke with a lazy drawl.
American.
“Stars never quite look the same
off camera,” Anson consoled him.
He saw a movement reflected in the glass
surface and looked around. A glimpse of a blurred head vanished behind an
entranceway.
Was this his anxious and mysterious
informant? He left the display case and went to see. No sign of Reiner
Faltinger. Anson looked at his watch. How much longer do I give him? His eyes
drifted back to Nefertiti. She was fine company, but he was beginning to feel a
twinge of unease.
The tired man at the display case looked
back at him and appeared disappointed. Perhaps he’d been hoping to strike up a
conversation.
I’ve waited long enough, Anson thought.
Coming to this meeting on an impulse had been a long shot. He could ill afford
the time, let alone the cost.
Two men in dark suits, museum staff he
assumed, intercepted him. “Please come this way.”
“What’s the problem?” They guided him to an
elevator. “I didn’t book the guided tour.”
“No trouble,” the other said.
The doors slid open. They guided him
inside. One pressed a button and the door closed, sealing him inside. They were
contained men, yet they crammed the elevator like a crowd.
Anson had a sinking feeling.
“This isn’t the tour, is it?”
The one brushed aside his coat
to reveal a handgun stuck in his belt.
“No trouble… from you.”
They shepherded him out of the
lift and walked him to a storage area. His prospects grew dim, like the
lighting inside. The place was a vault crammed with crates and with the cast
offs of ancient Egypt; also with the casts of its former glories. A vast,
brooding statue of the freakish pharaoh Akhenaten with his swollen hips and
mad, sunken eyes overlooked the scene and several Nefertitis reared their
slender necks on shelves. Plaster casts. They seemed dingy and old. Were they
relics from the original museum’s decoration before it was bombed in the Second
World War?
Museum store rooms were
historical netherworlds, places of dusty shedding where unsightly things lived,
broken things that were not meant to be seen any more, pieces of mummies, their
heads, hands and feet, shattered statues, ugly magical figurines, cryptic
fragments of writing on pottery shards, the remains in stone, wood and clay of
gods pharaohs, men and creatures.
This place was an even more
unnerving place in the company of the two, intent men who moved in closer to
him.
“Okay, you’ve persuaded me,”
Anson said. “I’ll take your explanatory tour. Starting with an explanation of
what’s happening here.”
- Excerpt from The Ibis Apocalypse - 3rd in the 9 investigatory adventure thriller series. Amazon - paperback and Kindle
