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| Egypt action adventure |
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.”
“You see that box?” The taller of them
moved his head towards an open crate half-stuffed with packing chips. “You can
go out of the museum in that, or on your own two legs.”
Where would the crate be headed? To Egypt?
Returning artefacts from the museum? Not if the treasured bust of Nefertiti on
exhibition was any example.
He reminded himself that this place was
built on Museum Island. He could end up taking a trip to the river.
“Depending on?”
“Depending on whether or not you are
convincing and tell us where you believe the missing stela to be.”
“The Destiny Stela, I take it?”
“Precisely.”
Who were they? Not the German law, he was
guessing. Perhaps the New Dawn group his informer had warned him about.
“What about some introductions?”
“Meet my fist.”
Pain exploded in Anson’s face as a
right-cross sent him crashing to the feet of Akhenaten.
“I will introduce my shoe.”
The second man introduced Anson to the
point of a black leather shoe in the pit of his stomach. Anson gasped and
doubled up on the floor.
Who said Germans didn’t have a sense of
humour?
(Excerpt from The Ibis Apocalypse, no 3 in the Anson Hunter series of Egypt-based action adventures)
