What was Alfred-Jean and Livia doing here?
The taxi driver accompanied Max to the second hotel, which was a little less dilapidated than the first one. The paint on the building was worn, the wrought-iron gate stuck by a telephone pole leaning over the roof, but the old interior appeared clean.
In front of the man’s banned mine behind the reception counter, Max signaled to the driver to translate. The man stared at him.
“They’re friends, I was supposed to meet them here,” Max lied.
The man shook his head.
Max slipped a bill onto the counter.
“No, he didn’t see anyone,” the driver sighed, while the receptionist pocketed the money.
“Okay, give me a room anyway,” Max muttered. “I guess we can’t have a drink at your place?”
The receptionist shook his head again and the driver signaled to Max to follow him.
They walked to a farmyard where a few chickens and an injured dog ran; behind them was a bar with a palm roof. Bird cages hung from outside beams. Next to the door, a shirtless man snored, lying precariously on a blue moped, his sandals carefully placed between the two wheels.
The driver looked up at the sky. “It’s going to rain.”
Max had barely stepped into the bar when two young women with white stockings, tight tops with plunging necklines and eyebrows drawn in pencil, stood up to greet him. The driver smiled again, but Max made him understand that he only wanted a beer. The driver spoke a few words to the ladies; they sat down at the next table, and kept their eyes on the young German.
The driver’s name was Harry and he was probably in his fifties. He hadn’t talked much during the trip, but the Saigon Export Max ordered him to do, put him at ease. He undid his green tie, which he stuffed into his pocket, opened his white shirt and drank from the neck.
“So the tourist attractions here are a three-legged dog and a guy sleeping on his moped?” Max asked.
Harry laughed. “No. It’s the women.”
The two hostesses continued to chat as they glanced at them, but Max didn’t even have the energy to laugh at the bad joke.
“The national park is very pretty,” Harry said. “I mean, if you like national parks. But it’s the wrong season.”
“It’s a habit of mine, picking the wrong season,” Max sighed. “What is there to see in this national park?”
“Not much of anything. Not too far away, there is an American who bought a piece of land. He said he would make it a museum, it was in the newspapers, and everyone was very happy. It was going to bring tourists, lots of the. Then we didn’t hear about it anymore, neither from the museum nor from the American. That was several years ago. Last month, I walked past it, the sign was ripped off.”
The rain started to fall outside and within a few seconds, the water pounded against the palm roof and the corrugated steel drowned out the pop music coming from the speakers behind the bar.
“But why would an American come all the way out here to buy a piece of land?”
“There’s a nice view, from what I hear. But I’m not from here.”
Max was about to put the bottle to his mouth when a scream passed through the bar, causing his body to jolt. Then two, very angry screams followed.
The two women next to them had started to vituperate against someone who had just entered.
At first Max only noticed a stocky silhouette and long hair dripping with rain coming out of a hood. The hood fell off, and he discovered the round face of a girl in her early twenties, with acne on her cheeks.
One of the hostesses continued to invective her, while her partner tried to hold her back. The girl in the hood, with her head down, ignored them and sat at a table at the back of the room.
Harry found the show entertaining. The two women now spoke in low voices, but their gazes were still fixed on the teenager girl. Max couldn’t understand what they said, but he was sure that hand-picked swear words spiced up their dialogue.
“What’s the problem?” Max asked.
“Oh, they’re calling her a liar and a traitor. Apparently, she steals customers from them,” Harry said, with a raised eyebrow.
Max looked at the girl at the back of the bar. She was dressed like a boy, didn’t wear any makeup.
“If that’s true, she’s hiding her game well.”
“That’s what the other two say. Apparently, she a virgin, but she’s messing with the rich.”
Max wrinkled his eyes. “Rich people? Here?”
Harry understood Max’s interest and listened.
The angriest hostess seemed to have resigned herself, but the other, with an even darker look, spat on the floor in the direction of the hooded girl, mumbling a throaty word. The bartender passed in front of them to bring his drink to the girl; they insulted her, he ignored them.
“I think they have things to say,” Harry said, looking satisfied.
He tapped on the counter and the bartender opened the cap on two more beers. Then he moved his chair closer to the two women, placed his elbows on his thighs and began the conversation, sometimes giving furtive glances to their necklines. This attention seemed to put them in a better mood.
They spoke quickly, sometimes hitting the hooded girl with their chins. One of them gave Max an intense look. He turned his head and started drinking his beer again, focusing his attention on the large black china cabinet decorated with chinoiseries that served as a bottle shelf. A moth had just landed on a red lantern next to the mirror in the center of the furniture.
He then saw it, in the reflection. The girl in the hood.
She was sitting with her back to him but from time to time, she would look at women over her shoulder. She took off her wet sweatshirt, spread it out on the table. She wore a shapeless t-shirt and jogging pants. There was no femininity in her clothes. But Max couldn’t help but notice one thing.
Her biceps.
This girl was so muscular that the outline of her arms looked like a man’s.
None of the women across in the Asian countryside were carved in this way. She also didn’t have the look of a trendy city girl or fitness fan. She was from around here, he would have bet.
Max frowned, but looked down quickly: the hooded girl had just caught his gaze in the reflection. “These girls are very nice. Very nice, don’t you think?” Harry chuckled as he turned back to Max.
“Yes, yes, yes,” Max lied. “So, what’s the story?”
Harry put his arm around his shoulder. “The story is that I told them that maybe you’d be interested in them.”
Max looked up to the sky. “Not at all, I just want to know – ”
“Yes, I know, but they can tell you. You just have to promise not to go with the other one.”
“Which one?”
Harry discreetly pointed to the girl with the hood.
“Tell them that I will not spend the night with anyone, but if I had to, it would be with them because they are the most beautiful in the kingdom. All right,” Max said, surrendering to keep the peace. “Now, what can they tell me about the rich people who came here?”
“It was an American who came with another a few weeks ago, and he asked for Bian, that’s her name, and you see, this is Cherry and Kendall’s territory. Cherry and Kendall. Those are pretty names, huh?”
Max doubted very much that it was their names, but just nodded.
“And when the American left,” Harry continued, “Bian was able to buy three new cows for her grandmother with the money the American gave her.”
He raised his index finger from his hand holding his beer. “And it’s not the first time. The grandmother bought more cows and a new smartphone two months ago too, just after the departure of Europeans who came in a Mercedes.”
“But where are these Americans going?” Max exclaimed. “There’s nothing to do in this town.”
“Well, that’s why they’re angry! They say the grandmother set up a pleasure house. Next to the caves.”
Ha
rry had tapped on the table, as if everything was obvious.
Max raised an eyebrow, and suppressed a laugh. Harry, on the other hand, wasn’t laughing.
“Well, are you interested? They are really very kind, and generous.”
“You know what,” Max said as he grabbed his wallet. “It’s been a long road. I’m tired, but you deserve it. You’re right, they seem really nice.”
Harry’s eyes widened as he saw the bills that Max placed in his hand.
“That’s enough for one,” he said in a sweet tone. “But we don’t want to offend the other one.”
Max handed him another bill and leaned towards him. “As long as you take them away from Bian, okay?”
Max’s money joined the green tie in Harry’s pocket. The driver smiled a toothy grin and reached out to him.
“Nice to meet you, uh…”
“John,” Max lied.
“John. If you want to go home, you call me.”
He placed an old business card on the counter, but before Max could even look up, the two women and Harry were gone.
Max stood and the pain in his leg made his grip tighten around his Saigon Export. Striving not to limp, he slowly walked towards Bian’s table. She wasn’t looking at him, but he knew she was aware of his presence.
“Can I sit down?”
She didn’t answer, but he sat down anyway. With a pounding heart, he added, “I don’t believe what the young women said, and that’s not what I’m interested in. So relax, okay?”
Bian looked up at him, then lowered her eyes again, but he saw enough distrust in her dark eyes.
“Look, I know there are tourists who have come to this town, and I’m just wondering where they stay, that’s all. I was told there were good places to go. But I can’t even find a decent hotel. Maybe I was given the wrong address.”
“There are tour guides in Dong Hoi.”
Her accent was thick, but she spoke English with ease. Like she was used to it. Max noticed that she stared at him intently.
“But they don’t know the region as well as you do,” he replied.
She continued to sip her drink.
“What is that you’re drinking?" Max asked, motioning to the glass.
“Rice alcohol. Not for Westerners like you.”
Max grinned. “Oh, yeah?”
He hailed the bartender, pointed to Bian’s glass with his index finger and waved "two".
“I have to leave soon,” Bian said, clearing her throat.
“Do you have work tomorrow?”
“My grandmother has a farm.”
“Near the caves, right?” Max asked, falsely nonchalant.
“Yeah.”
The bartender put the two glasses of rice alcohol in front of them and Max took a sip. The liquid burned his throat, and the feeling was strange. For a moment, he thought about the tunnel. The dust, the choking. The rats that wriggled through the bones.
Sixtine and its pyramid.
When he glanced up at Bian, he was almost surprised to have come back to that Vietnamese night, in that damp bar, with its red lanterns and water-dripping bird cages. Fatigue, he thought.
Bian stared at him in silence.
“You don’t like talking too much either,” he sighed at last. “I’m just gonna tell you something. I was in Cairo a few months ago. Maybe you saw on TV what happened, the looting of the Giza Pyramid.”
“Did you go to see the Pyramid?”
“You could say that, yeah,” Max sighed.
“Did you climb to the top?”
Before answering, Max noted that Bian’s face had suddenly changed. She was interested.
“Yes, I went up there. Twice.”
“Over four hundred and fifty feet, at a fifty-one degree angle. What did it take you, ten minutes?” she asked.
Max smiled. “I didn’t time it. But it was quick, because we had the guards on our asses.”
She smiled and plunged her nose into her glass.
“Is that your thing, climbing?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Yeah.”
“Are you doing any climbing here?”
She nodded, but her eyes checked that no one was listening to them. He was on the right track. One slip and the rift would close again.
“In Cairo, it wasn’t the ascent of the pyramid, the hardest. It was the tunnels.”
A gleam in her eyes was clearly noticeable and Max knew he had hit the jackpot. He had won her full attention.
“One was found under the Giza plateau,” he continued. “It had been dug by hand. I went with three guys, two came with me and the third was at the other end, to watch the entrance. He had a rope too, in case something happened to us. And something happened, and if I can tell you today, it’s because of the rope.”
He drank another sip of rice alcohol and grimaced.
“What happened?” she asked.
“The tunnel collapsed.”
All the fatigue of the last few days suddenly seemed to concentrate in his leg. His body was heavy with exhaustion; his back cracked when he straightened up.
“We were underground for three to four hours. I thought I’d never get out. When the rope moved, I swear, I made all the promises I could, to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We didn’t have much air left, it was minus one degree.”
She nodded, with a little smile. If he continued on this subject, perhaps he could gain her confidence. And maybe he would go to bed knowing why the rich came to this lost place and why they disappeared without a trace.
“Do you like extreme sports?” she asked before he could speak again.
“No, not like that. I had never done anything extreme, or even terribly exciting before I met this girl, Sixtine.”
Sixtine’s name had arrived without him noticing. And he had just spoken a truth that had never crossed his mind before: the meeting with Sixtine had changed everything.
“Sixtine,” Bian repeated with a strange accent. “Sixtine is a strange name. Did your leg get hurt while you were in the tunnel?”
He was surprised that she noticed.
“My leg was hurt in a fire, we had to jump from the second floor. It was in Cairo, an attack. A very long history,” he sighed. “And you, do you practice extreme sports? Is there anything to do around here?”
She leaned towards him all of a sudden, her eyes sparkling. Max tried to appear absolutely calm.
“Caving. Cave exploration,” she said.
“Caving. In the cave?”
“Yes, the cave,” she answered with a grin. “Do you want me to take you there?”
Max looked at her from the corner of his eye. Neither Alfred-Jean nor Livia had the physique for caving. And yet, he had this strange feeling that there was something interesting in this proposal.
“Okay. When?”
“Now, if you want,” she said in a mischievous voice.
Max took a look outside. It was dark, the puddles reflected the lanterns of the bar. The rain seemed to have reached its cruising speed. He took another sip of rice alcohol, staring intently at Bian, whose eyes suddenly sparkled with excitement.
A few minutes later, the water whipped his face and the motorcycle sputtered in the silence of the rice fields. Behind him was Bian, her hood framing her round face.
10
Winter in New York meant one thing to Sixtine: it started getting dark too early.
How she hated the darkness. At least in the city that never sleeps, it was never completely dark. She loved the large avenues decorated with their Christmas lights. But where she walked the streets of the chic residential area of the Upper East Side, shops and cafés were rare, which resulted in minimal street lighting. There were only a few cars on the roads, and even the residents seemed to have deserted it.
Dr. Cheryl Wood-Smith had agreed to meet with Sixtine; after seeing the pictures of the mummy sent by Han, she said she knew where it came from. The curator had proposed an appointment at the Explorers Club, an English-style bui
lding a few blocks away.
Sixtine pulled up the collar of her coat and quickened her pace, as this neighborhood was far too dark.
She tried to focus on the illuminated windows, but it was difficult. Her conversation with Franklin Hunter, the private investigator she had hired a few weeks earlier and whom she thought was dead, raised even more questions than answers.
Florence Mornay’s disappearance.
The doubts about Nefertiti’s authenticity.
Franklin had offered few details, only offering to meet with her later. She trusted Franklin, but she was afraid they would meet. What if he asked her about the death of Yohannes De Bok, and Thaddeus’s role in all this?
Something else upset her; the man who was spying on her across the road from her house, dressed in a black leather jacket. He was tall, rather thin, probably not very young anymore. As soon as she came out, he would get up and follow her with his eyes. She had always been too far away to be able to see his face hidden away by a red hat.
Upon her arrival at the Explorers Club, a receptionist accompanied her to the library, and insisted on giving her the history of the site. As she walked under the carved wooden ceilings, passed the colorful stained glass windows and on Persian carpets, Sixtine learned that the Club had been founded in 1904 by gentlemen explorers, and they had moved here in 1965. The building itself had belonged to the heir of the Singer sewing machines, who wanted an architectural style for its residence similar to that of the High Renaissance in England. Sixtine recognized pride in the young hostess’s voice when she informed her that women had been accepted since 1981, and that the collection included not only the remains of the USS Explorer – one of the seven boats that survived the Pearl Harbor attack – but also the sealskin mittens of the first man to reach the North Pole and the throne of China’s last empress.
The receptionist left her in the library, assuring her that Dr. Wood-Smith would soon join her. Sixtine explored the room, trying to make as little noise as possible, so as not to disturb the silence. At one end was a huge stone chimney, framed by two massive elephant tusks. As she approached the ivory, footsteps sounded on the floor and Sixtine turned around.
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