But Mei has one more surprise in a box she brought from China. Zara opens the box and pulls out a beautiful black scarf with red-and-gold embroidery. Super-silky soft lamb’s wool. She holds it to her cheek, near tears. “How did you know?”
“Alexander told me about your grandmother’s headscarf,” Mei replies. “He really does love you from what I can tell. I sourced the finest Persian lamb’s wool on the market and had my tailors in Shanghai replicate it based on Alexander’s recollection of her headscarf.”
As Zara begins to cry, Mei offers, “Zara, thank you so much for allowing me to dress you for today. In your holiday dress, I agree, you are more radiant, more exquisite, and more elegant. You have utterly superb taste. Pretty lady, you.”
Zara smiles. “Kind words will unlock an iron door.” She kisses Mei on the cheek. “Beauty passes; wisdom remains.” She kisses Mei on the cheek again. “And may your wisdom last you an eternity.”
And the two hug.
Hearing his monstrous footsteps, Zara pulls back from Mei. “I know him, all too well. What he will ask today, be prepared. Someone may die today.”
Chapter 16
Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.
—Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī,
thirteenth-century Persian Sufi mystic
9:35 p.m. GMT+3, March 18, 2018
Yacht anchored three kilometers off the Crimean Peninsula
“Barren,” she laments as she gazes upon the stars. “I am but barren. Not from what was taken from me. Not the void within my womb. But the emptiness of my heart, of my soul.”
She stands tall upon her Sasha’s yacht. A vessel designed for pleasure. But not tonight. She searches the sky for the North Star, for the legend told to her by her great-grandmother is very clear on what she must do now.
As the damp, darkening fog rolls in off the Black Sea, she shivers, hands shaking. What’s wrong with her? She’s never shaken before with gun in hand. The cold steel made colder by the iciness of her hands, her heart, her soul.
“I know he sent you, Zara. I know it’s you under that mask,” says the man about to receive a bullet to the chest. Clad in a white t-shirt becoming wetter with the fog mixed with his dripping perspiration and clinging to his sculptured muscles. His back against the railing of the rear deck of this luxurious yacht, he holds the gift he had made for her. One that she rejected earlier today when she was not masked. A scarf. Black lamb’s wool with red embroidery. “Sasha said you would love this. That it would have special meaning for you.”
Staring into her dark, angry eyes, the only part of her face exposed by the black mask covering her face, her head, her essence, he says, “I guess not.” He drops his hand holding the scarf. “You need to decide. Are you going to kill me? Or join me? But whichever you choose, show me the respect of letting me see your face. Your whole face and hair.”
He knows her. Too well for her comfort. She glances down in reflection, then gazes back up to the stars. But they no longer shine. Only the darkness of the fog surrounding her. Dark as she is inside.
“I know you’ve killed dozens, maybe more. All without remorse,” he says, standing taller than she without a shiver, without fear. “Why would Sasha sanction my death? Because you refuse my offer that we partner in finding that which we must seek? What we both know needs to be found, needs to be touched? Because I have fallen in love with you?”
Pop.
Wrong words, she thinks, now no longer lost or indecisive.
That beautiful chest, the defined pecs, now tarnished by red. He looks at his right upper chest, at the growing crimson spot on his once white shirt. “But why, Zara? Why?” he asks as he applies pressure to the bullet wound with his right palm.
He is right. Why? How could she miss at this range? What is wrong with her? She could take out his heart at fifty meters with this handgun. Why is it different this time?
“My little Zara,” booms a deep voice from behind her. “You are losing your touch.”
Her Sasha stands a full head and a half taller than her. Her Sasha places his monstrous hand on her shoulder.
Dressed in black as is she, he has a long crimson sash tied around his waist, accenting his black turtleneck and black slacks. His cold, dark piercing eyes beam into those of the now terrified bleeding man. He points at the younger man, half a head shorter than he, and says, “The little Zara I know and love would not have missed. Either accept his offer to be yours, forever yours, or kill him.”
Zara pulls the monstrous hand off her shoulder and peers into her Sasha’s unforgiving eyes. No one betrays his love, his trust, his will. Not her, not the man she shot, not the hundred others, either. She drops her hand holding the gun to her side as she pulls off the black mask hiding her face, hiding her hair, hiding her soul, hiding her emptiness.
Staring at the cloth of the mask in her hand, she laments to herself again, This is not the head covering I should be wearing. This is not the modesty of the woman I want to be.
After a moment of reflection, she turns to her Sasha and puts the mask and gun into his monstrous hand. “Kill me and not him. I am the one who has failed you the most, who has failed herself the most.”
She takes the red sash from her Sasha’s waist and wraps it around her oval head. With great care, she tucks her shoulder-length dark hair under the crimson cloth and covers the disfiguring scar on her cheek—the curse of her mistake, the reason Sasha should kill her and not the man she shot. For she will no longer be barren. With the tail of the red sash now wrapped securely around her neck and draped along her right shoulder, she says, “This is how I wish to be remembered.”
The giant man beside her places the cold steel against her head. She feels the chill now as she has regained her warmth. She closes her eyes, ready to meet her destiny. Ready to surrender. Ready to fully submit.
Pop. Splash.
And she smells the sulfur from the gunpowder. Obviously she’s still alive. She opens her eyes to see the gun still pointing where the man she shot once stood. She runs to the deck railing and sees him still alive but near drowning as his twice-shot upper torso no longer retains the strength to swim. Hurriedly, she finds a life preserver and tosses it near the drowning man. “Abram,” she yells. “Grab on to this.”
She slips her shoes off, preparing to jump in to save Abram, the man she was about to kill. But Sasha holds her back, pointing the gun at the doomed drowning man.
“But why, Father? Why? I am your son,” Abram pleads. “I did everything you asked of me.”
“Zara made her choice. And you are not her destiny,” the giant man coldly replies.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
Zara closes her eyes, for there are tears forming. The first since he saved her two years prior. She owes everything to this man who just killed his son. Because of her.
Looking at the waters bubbling with the expired air from the lungs of Abram, the black lamb’s wool scarf he held floats next to the life preserver. The only sign left of what he felt for her. She turns to her savior, her Sasha, and cries, “Why? He was your son. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Putting his monstrous hand on her shoulder again, he replies, “My little Zara. If he wasn’t worthy enough for you, then he is not worthy enough for me.”
She forcibly removes his hand from her body as she spits out, “You can no longer touch me. I am no longer your little Zara.”
“Is it not said, the male was born to be slaughtered?” the giant man asks sagely. Around his neck hangs a chain and a peculiar pendant. Something ancient, he told her. A bullhead cranium. With the hand once again on her shoulder, he clasps the bullhead.
“I do not expect you to understand at this moment,” he says. “But one day you will. That which is our past reaches into our beings today, guiding us to our tomorrow. Your tomorrow, your compassion will one day save us all. But not alone. What you yearn for, the emptiness you seek to fill, there is a man who will fill
it. And if that man at your side was not to be the father of your children, then he could not live, so that others could not take from him the secrets you and I share.”
“I don’t know who is sicker, you or me.” She straightens out her makeshift headscarf, tucking in errant strands of hair, and her dark piercing eyes meets his dark piercing eyes. “But what I know now, this is who I am. This is my faith. Take me back to port and we are done. My debt to you is paid in full. Forever.”
The monstrous hands held out, he replies, “I will, if you give your Sasha a hug.”
Shaking her head, looking for the stars hidden behind the fog, she says, “I am no longer that woman. I am not that kind of woman. If you don’t take me back, I will swim home. Newroz started today. I can be back home before the end of the festival. I have New Year’s resolutions, amends, to fulfill.” She looks out over the railing again at the black scarf and life preserver bobbing on the intensely black Black Sea.
“My little Zara, Sebastapol is on the other side of the boat. You’ll die trying to swim there.”
She turns to her once favored Sasha and says, “And is it not said according to your legends, ‘Be wary of the giant Reindeer People; when they arrive, move away from the direction of ice to seek safety. The bright star, the tail of the bird, will be your guide’?”
Pointing over the railing she leans upon, she says, “And that is the direction away from the tail of the bird star. The direction of my home. Of my people. Of my Kurdistan.”
She turns back to the giant man staring at her in bewilderment. “And is it not said that the wolf only repents in death? If my destiny is to die, then I die in repentance, trying to return home. Trying to return to who I once was.”
He reaches out to her. “No matter where you go, your destiny follows you. And your destiny is to be with him. As the legend says, only man and woman together. You will be with him, no matter where you flee to.”
“Then he will have to swim,” she replies before diving into the black waters.
Splash.
Upon the dark, black seas, the crimson sash floats up and mingles next to the black lamb’s wool scarf. And only bubbles are to be seen where Zara entered the water to meet her destiny. Only silent, empty, and dark.
Chapter 17
There are three degrees of filial piety. The highest is being a credit to our parents, the second is not disgracing them; the lowest is being able simply to support them.
—Confucius
3:50 p.m. GMT+1, May 15, 2021
MoxWorld EU Headquarters, Luxembourg
“I am going to put a hole in your head,” says Zara, in a staring contest with the big man, her dark piercing eyes boring into his. He does not flinch. A mahogany box sits open in front of her.
Peter, on the other hand, is shaking and quaking in his chair. Not in apprehension of what Zara will do to Mr. Murometz, but because Mei, holding another mahogany box in her lap, is in total tears.
Forty minutes earlier, after taking a tour of the headquarters with Jean-Paul, Peter entered the main conference room with Alexander, Mei, and Zara already seated around the clear round center table. Mei was jittery, no longer the confident woman she had been on the flight over. Zara’s face appeared heavily lined and wrinkled. And Alexander’s grimacing face shook back and forth, first looking at the two fully covered women, and then more watching what was transpiring on the wall.
Screens all around the circular room blazed MoxMedia WorldNews broadcasts from around the world. But the one of most interest to Alexander and Zara was the live video feed of the Turkish army sending half of their advanced Leopard 2B2 main battle tanks, equipped with Alexander’s latest tech, away from the defensive line with the Arabic Confederation forces around Sanliurfa towards the capital of the Anatolian Kurdish State, Diyarbakır. MoxMedia analysts predicted that from there, they would roll eastward towards Batman and Siirt.
On another screen, videos showed the Russian land, naval, and air forces moving to take positions in Georgia near the Turkish border. MoxMedia analysts predicted Turkish forces would be too stretched to fight on three fronts if the Americans and British did not commit more military support soon. Alexander smirked as he nodded.
The room felt more sterile, nothing but the screens, five high-back chairs, an agitating accent lighting in deep red to light orange, and that very light bleach-like smell, as if something had been sanitized a day or two ago. The lower center circular table had two boxes, slightly larger than shoe boxes, made of mahogany. One was engraved with a five-legged dragon, the other with a falcon, the kind that flew in the mountains of Zara’s father. And Mei only focused on the box with the dragon, not blinking, not meeting Peter’s eyes as he entered.
But Peter’s eyes focused on her dress, or the change in dress. Fully covered from shoulder to ankles, the same as Zara next to her. And yet, the ever-so-confident Mei appeared clearly distressed in what she wore now. Arms crossed defensively across her chest, avoiding eye contact with anyone. Visibly shaking. And the room was not cold.
He took the empty seat between the two women, with Zara eyeing him as if she were a falcon stalking prey. He turned towards Mei, then Zara, then back to Mei. And moved his chair next to Mei to console her.
And the great Alexander Murometz rose. From his altitude, he could command any room, but as Peter looked around, no one was engaging with him, each staying in their own corner of the world. That smell in the room, chlorine? Where did he smell that before? He racked his brain, sensing an impending doom around the room. The troops were battle worn before the war even began. And the commander wore a face so much less friendly, so much less fatherly than the man who had welcomed him only hours before. His sister was so right. He should have reread Faust.
And the giant’s booming voice said, “And as you see, the war situation has quickly taken a grave turn. The key areas where we believe the object of Peter and my oral traditions lies are in the midst of impeding mortal conflicts.”
He turned to Zara and added, “And my condolences to your family for what might happen to them if the Anatolian Kurdish forces are not successful.” Peter could not clearly tell, but it seemed like that man had a tinge of a smile as he said that.
The monstrous man turned to Jean-Paul. “If you would, please brief the team on exactly what we need Mr. Gollinger’s dream imagery to decide for us.”
With a wave of his hand, Jean-Paul put up a 3-D map of the world, projected from the center glass table. “Here are mapped the identified high-probability afflicted people from around the world. The lines represent the ancestral paths from their previous generations.”
“And with much thanks to you, Jean-Paul. The Vatican records were invaluable to this mapping of the ancestral lines,” Alexander said. “I want to draw your attention to the highlighted area around the Black Sea, Caucuses, Anatolia, and the Levant. It would appear from Jean-Paul’s work that the origins of the traditions emanate from this area.”
Jean-Paul pointed at a new spot illuminated in red on the map. “This is the location of Göbekli Tepe, the oldest temple known to us today. Carbon dating suggests it is over twelve thousand years old, possibly built around 9500 BCE. Note its location is central in our triangulated origin of the traditions.”
He then overlaid a bumpy roundish area highlighted in light blue around the Black Sea. “In this area, we have found a very slight pattern of electromagnetic disturbance representing several different possible epicenters. Crimea is a notable epicenter, perhaps the strongest. Keep in mind, these are minute low-level EM signatures, only made detectable recently by Alexander’s newest satellite EM sensors.”
Jean-Paul overlaid another set of lines. “These are the pathway of proto-Indo-European, or PIE, language development. The Kurgan hypothesis suggests that PIE first started in the Pontic-Caspian steppes here above the Black Sea. Alternatively, the Anatolian hypothesis suggests it started within our oral tradition origination area.” He then overlaid the two target sites and dates with the
first pre-Neolithic sites where agriculture has been found, which fell within the same zone.
The good Father further summarized, “And this is why we believe the originators of the tradition may have spread their language, farming, and the oral traditions from Crimea to Anatolia.”
He highlighted the dot for Göbekli Tepe. “And most importantly, they may have started the first large-scale organized religion. This site may very well be where mankind first truly communed with God. Our object may have allowed them to communicate with God. Mei has tracked the genetic mutations that have led to the God Gene complex, which may have originated during these times.”
Alexander smiled at Jean-Paul and merely said, “And QED, quod erat demonstrandum.”
Communicating with God reminded Peter of something. First feeling the bump behind his neck, Peter gently touched behind Mei’s neck and rubbed. She smiled at him as she put her fingers on his. He closed his eyes; he had found a woman like his mother, a woman with a God Gene bump. He opened his eyes and saw her in a different light, as his heart opened in the way his mother would want.
Zara rocked back and forth in her seat, pondering watching them. She then rationalized out loud, “According to the People of the Book, Yaqub ibn Isḥāq ibn Ibrāhīm, Jacob son of Abraham, laid his head on a stone pillow and had a dream of a ladder to heaven. And there Xwedê spoke to him. My grandfather told me the Torah’s account of Jacob’s dream of the ladder was allegorically similar to the Prophet’s ascendancy to heaven in the Mi’raj journey, where he spoke with Xwedê.”
God Gene aside, the old alien-loving Peter snapped back into action. “Let’s not discount the possibility that this object is a device for communication with the aliens who profoundly influenced human history. I agree with Alexander about the monolith hypothesis. It’s like 2001: A Space Odyssey, where the monoliths were technology from aliens sent to influence the development of humankind. They somehow changed our DNA and changed our evolution. My DNA aberrations, they were caused by this alien object, which zapped my prehistoric forefathers.”
The Matriarch Matrix Page 21