The area looked like a scene from hell with dozens of bodies of dead women scattered around a handful of uniformed men. The cries of anguish and pain from the wounded were the only sounds but they called in vain as there was no one left to aid them. An old Kurdish woman wearing a black chador and veil crawled towards El Kahiri and with her last breath stuck her kitchen knife through his left eye into his brain and collapsed dead over his body. All the women who were still able to run fled the spot as fast and as far as they could.
Fifteen minutes later, three Toyota jeeps carrying machine guns arrived at the site of the massacre. The Islamic State fighters on board could not believe their eyes. In front of them their Supreme Commander lay dead, obviously killed by the old woman lying on his body with the handle of a kitchen knife in her right hand and the blade buried in El Kahiri's head. They picked up his body and the bodies of his fighters, loaded them all on one of the jeeps and set out to take revenge. They then entered every house in the village, forced the inhabitants that comprised old men, women and children out into the village main square next to the mosque. They forced all of them to lie down along the mosque's wall and summarily executed every living soul by a single shot to the head.
During his life El Kahiri made sure that no one could replace him or threaten his position as the Supreme Commander. He did this by nominating several unit leaders that answered directly to him alone, and kept shuffling them around so that they could not develop a cadre of loyal followers. As a result, after his death, brawling among the unit leaders broke out, with each trying to gain control of the entire Islamic State forces. This led to withdrawal of troops from the front lines and loss of ground to their enemies — the Iraqi government forces, the Peshmergah Kurds and the coalition forces. Even the Turks and Iranians managed to gain ground and control some of the Iraqi and Syrian territories that were held by the ISIS forces.
Word of the fate of El Kahiri and the Islamic State movement reached Ollie just as he was about to leave for Padova. The TV news stations displayed cellphone photos of El Kahiri's body with the old woman on top of him. These were taken by ISIS fighters in order to incite the troops to avenge the disgraceful circumstances of their Supreme Commander's death, but were sold to the networks once the leadership infighting broke out. Adding insult to injury was the fact, known to all radical Islamists, that dying in the hands of an inferior person, like a woman, would prevent El Kahiri from reaching the 72 virgins awaiting him in heaven. In between showing these gory photos on all TV channels and the internet, the New Year celebrations all over the globe were broadcasted. Many of the revelers made the V sign for victory and cursed ISIS and its dead leader — a sight that further enraged Ollie.
Ollie now had second thoughts on the Astraea project. He was not sure whether any of the current ISIS chieftains who were still fighting amongst themselves had any knowledge about the project, as he had not contacted El Kahiri after leaving for Sweden to reduce the likelihood of being discovered. He had not tried to contact the old man in Uppsala for the same reason and now had no way of knowing what was going on in Syria and Iraq except what he saw on TV.
In the end, Ollie decided that he could not avoid going on a trip to that region in order to find out if a new leader had emerged to take over the role of Supreme Commander. Ollie estimated that he would need at least one week for this mission and wondered how to explain his sudden disappearance to Andreas. He thought the best cover story would be that he needed to travel to Greece to meet with the heads of the Golden Dawn movement,now posing as legitimate politicians, in order to discuss their reneging on the financial commitments to the project. He planned to then cross over into Turkey and sneak into Syria. Andreas accepted the story but was a bit suspicious about this sudden need to travel to Athens and suggested that Agda should join him. This would provide some cover, he added, as a young, handsome couple pretending to enjoy a vacation in Greece was less likely to draw the attention of the counter-terror forces. Ollie did not like the idea but could not decline the suggestion. He started to think of a plan that would turn Agda's presence from a burden to an asset and came up with a win-win idea.
Ollie and Agda arrived on a direct flight from Stockholm and checked into one of the hotels near the National Archeological Museum since their meeting with the Golden Dawn contact was set for noon the next day at the entrance to the museum. Agda was in a very romantic mood brought about by leaving cold, dark, snow covered Stockholm behind for what she expected to be a vacation in the sun with a little time devoted to business meetings. A couple of drinks in a nearby tavern enhanced her mood, while Ollie was preoccupied with thoughts of executing his plan to disengage himself from Agda for a few days.
Nevertheless, after they had returned to their hotel room, when Agda slowly undressed and as he once again saw the garish tattoos that covered most of her body he stopped worrying about the future. Agda went into the bathroom and came back into the bedroom with nothing on her except two cloth belts she had removed from the toweled dressing gowns provided by the hotel. With a lurid smile she tied a belt on each hand, removed Ollies belt from his jeans and tied it to her right foot and lay on the bed face down. Ollie understood what was on her mind and, reluctantly at first, but then with more enthusiasm, took the loose ends of the cloth belts and tied them to the head posts of the bed. Agda started wriggling with anticipation but then Ollie surprised her by removing his leather belt from her foot, and instead of tying it to the bottom of the bed as she had expected he started slapping her buttocks with the belt in an irregular rhythm. After each slap Agda raised her buttocks waiting for the next slap and when it failed to come she immediately started writhing and with a low throaty voice begged for more. When her backside turned red from the increasingly harder beating Ollie, opened the minibar refrigerator and took out some ice cubes, wrapped them in towel that he placed on the red welts and ordered her not to move. Agda began to uncontrollably shiver thrusting her pelvis up and down and trying to rub herself on the sheets. Ollie who could barely hold himself back knew that the longer he made her wait the more both of them would enjoy the encounter, but then lost his own self-control and lay on her and within seconds he entered her soaking wet womb. She kept her body completely still and only her vaginal muscles contracted spasmodically tightening around his manhood and releasing it. Ollie also tried not to move but his body responded to the contracting muscles and he started to shake. As they both reached their climax, Ollie pulled her chin back putting an ever increasing strain of her delicate neck vertebrae. Just before snapping he released his hold and they both let everything go as they experienced such an orgasm that they thought an earthquake had hit Athens…
The next day, after having a late breakfast, they sauntered over to the museum. The sun was bright in the sky and the temperature was around 7°C, about 15 degrees warmer than in Stockholm, so that the sun and warmth made them happy. As they started ascending the stairs to the museum a handsome young man approached them and asked them in English if they had seen the dawn and the rising sun. This was the code for the meeting and they responded by saying that they liked the purity of the air — which, of course, was not quite true for Athens, even in winter. The young man introduced himself as Niko. He jokingly asked them whether they were really interested in archeology or were ready to follow him to the meeting. Ollie smiled and said that if the exhibits in the museum had waited for over 2000 years to be viewed by them then they could wait another few years.