Rakitaki: A Jonas Quartermain Adventure

by Lee Alexander

  “It sounds like they really need me, and with that money I can afford to take you on a real date.” He started to move away from her before she brought him in for a tight hug.

  “I still wish I could go with. I’ll miss you,” she said. The speakers overhead started to chirp.

  “Now boarding for flight 83 to Frankfurt. Now boarding flight 83 to Frankfurt.”

  “Hey, I’m really sorry,” Jonas said as he extracted himself. “I really do have to go. I’ll see you in a few weeks, okay?”

  Lily nodded with a watery smile. She raised to her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek, then turned away. He heard her sniff and saw her hand wipe at her face. They had grown close in their few weeks together. He turned, unsure of what to do, and left her at the gate. He was dreading the multiple flights over the next few days.

  Once settled, he took a pill his old friend Mr. Holcomb had prescribed to deal with his flight anxiety. He tossed it back with a few swallows from a bottle of water, and tried to relax in his seat. He fell asleep quickly and remained asleep for the duration of the flight.

  “Prepare the altar,” said a rich Egyptian voice.

  “It will be done, my lord.”

  The red moon rose over the horizon. It bathed the desert in its crimson glow.

  He woke only twice during his initial flight. He transferred planes in Germany, and flew the rest of the way to Egypt.

  Once again, he took a pill and slept through the flight. Just before landing, he was awakened by the pilot making an announcement in Arabic and German. He didn’t understand either one. He felt sluggish as he glanced out the window. He was greeted by a familiar sight, sand spread out to the horizon as the plane flew lower and lower. The city rose into view like a glittering diamond in the desert.

  He disembarked, grabbed his luggage, and met the company driver. They took a black town car deeper into the city, stopping at the Hilton Cairo. He was greeted by the same desk clerk as if no time at all had passed. Once the key was handed over, he found his new room. It was two-thirds of the way up the tower, this time, giving him a grand view of the city. He dropped his duffel and checked around. Surprisingly, there was an envelope on the nightstand addressed to him. He opened it to find a bank card and a hand-written letter inside.

  ‘Jonas, this is your card for your stay here. It will be loaded every week with seventy dollars. We look forward to working with you.’ It was signed by a name he couldn’t make out, then ‘Department of Acquisitions’ below. A second page showed instructions on how to use the card as well as the PIN to access his funds.

  He tucked the card into his wallet, took a shower, then slept until he was called on his room phone.

  “This is Jonas,” he answered sleepily.

  “Mister Quartermain, I trust you slept well. The dig is waiting for you,” Jenkins said at the far end of the line. It cracked and popped with the distance. Static was a near constant.

  “Yes, sir, Mister Jenkins. Is the car ready?” Jonas sat up and rubbed sleep from his eyes. He made a mental checklist of what he would need for the day.

  “Already waiting outside,” Jenkins responded.

  “Alright. I’ll be out there in a minute.”

  Jonas hung up, then set about dressing. It was early March and the weather was still very mild for Egypt. He put on a long loose shirt, loose fitting jeans, and a pair of boots, then checked himself in the bathroom mirror. He brushed his teeth, then bade a long goodbye to the comfort of his room. He raced out of the well-appointed hotel room and down the stairs. Two minutes later, he got into the large white company van.

  He kept to himself for the whole ride. The driver never tried to engage him in conversation. When they arrived the driver simply waited. Taking the hint, Jonas opened the passenger door and stepped out into the calm night air.

  The work lights lit the sands in a beautiful glowing circle. Everything beyond was pure darkness. Far above, the vaults of the heavens shone brilliantly. Hundreds of thousands of stars were visible in the sky. They were far enough away from any major city that there was no light pollution to fight. Jonas stared upward in awe for a long moment. Even in the few short weeks, he had forgotten how the sky looked. Eventually, he returned his focus to the job at hand.

  Jonas walked on site with a confidence formerly out of his reach. He understood what was necessary. As he surveyed the site, he saw the work done by the Germans forty years before had been covered by sand. The few exposed buildings he could see were in middling condition. He took charge with the help of a translator. Soon, two dozen men were working feverishly throughout the lit area, with another dozen ferrying excavated sand and dust away from the dig site.

  They worked for hours, excavating the buildings at a torturous pace. He knew what to expect, and found an anxiety paired with excitement building within him. Something of his past few weeks had changed him. He knew the truth of life-or-death, and this was not that. He could afford to take time.

  As the sun began to rise, the diggers put their shovels aside in the new trench between two buildings. They wiped their brows before walking to a nearby tent. Jonas knew from experience that the tent they occupied would smell in the morning, and would only grow worse over time. He asked an English-speaking aide where he could rest and was pointed toward another tent. When he entered, he found a single cot on his right, a small table in the near corner laden with a coffee pot and heating plate, and a large desk filling the left half of the tent.

  His tent, his housing space for at least the next month, measured twenty feet on one side by twelve on the other. It was the roomiest housing he had ever had. He eyed the coffee maker suspiciously as he shucked his shoes and socks. The sand had barely entered his tent, leaving the tent floor a nice, smooth surface to walk on. His feet thanked him by tingling, a sensation he both loved and loathed as he skipped and stumbled over to the bed. He spilled atop the unforgiving inch-thick material and cursed how firm it was. He fought fatigue as he removed his jeans, then collapsed as sleep took him.

  Dawn came and went, then the heat of the day arrived in full force. He woke once to drink a bottle of water and relieve his bladder. When he woke for the day, the sun was setting. He could see the browns, reds, and oranges leaking through the entrance of his thick canvas tent. The interior was stifling from his sleep. He quickly dressed and walked into the rapidly cooling night.

  The second night on site progressed much as the first. He ordered diggers around through interpreters, telling them where to dig as the orders were shouted along by the few who could speak both English and Arabic. He watched and pitched in when able, hoping to close the gap between the diggers and himself. He was quickly reminded that they believed that having him join them shamed all involved.

  Jonas stopped helping that night, confused and tired. He flopped on his cot, appreciating it more than the night before. The next day was much the same, save he was bored out of his mind without work to occupy him. He was limited to ordering men around. They nearly finished excavating the outside of the first building. It had a doorway spilling sand into the trench by the end of the day. He announced they would spend the next however long clearing the trench and excavating the building.

  He started spending more time in his tent, filling out paperwork. When he ran out, he started pre-filling paperwork to save himself time down the road. The third day was much the same as the previous two. He directed men to dig as he sat and did paperwork. The next day, the team shifted to the next building. His days began to run together. The first weekend arrived. He spent two nights back at the hotel, which passed in the blink of an eye. He returned to the site and the tedium of paperwork. His hand hurt from writing for hours. He began to take regular breaks to walk around the small city.

  They had five buildings uncovered in the first two weeks. The Germans had been thorough and clearly made more progress than expected. His crew found no artifacts. He began to wonder how the city had fallen to the sand again. The journal had pointed him straight to th
e site, yet the city had been undisturbed for forty years. He was deeply curious how it had gone unnoticed.

  When he returned to Cairo, he hurried to his room. He used his room phone to place a long-distance call to the library at University of Akron. The librarian answered, though the line was thick with static.

  “Uh, hi. This is Jonas Quartermain."

  “Oh yeah, I remember you,” she said brightly. “Where are you? I can barely hear you.”

  “I’m in Cairo. I need some help.”

  “Yeah, what can I help you with? It must be important to call from all the way across the world.”

  “That journal we borrowed, can you tell me how it ended up in the library?”

  “What? You’re–” the line went completely silent for a long moment. “Say that again?”

  “Can you tell me about the journal?” He asked louder. He waited for a response until a different voice came on the line.

  A young man spoke with an Egyptian accent. “Sir, it appears the line has dropped. Would you like to retry the call?”

  “Yes, please.”

  The line clicked, then he heard the call connecting across the ocean again. The librarian picked up on the first ring.

  “University of Akron Library.”

  “Hey, it’s Jonas again. Can you tell me how the journal ended up at the library?”

  “Yeah, I’ll look it up. It’ll probably take a few days. Can you call back?”

  “Not with this connection. Take down my information, send it in a letter please.”

  He heard nothing for a moment. Then her voice returned. “Okay.”

  He read off the address on the notepad next to the phone, gave her his room number, and asked her to send it quickly. The line faded again, and she said something that wasn’t clear.

  “–onas. You want to–” and the line went dead.

  The operator came back on once more. “Sir would you like to try again?”

  He thought about it, then decided the trouble was too much.

  “No, thanks.” He sighed, hung up the phone, and turned on the tv in his room. He thought about the final words he heard from the librarian. It had sounded like maybe she was talking to someone else. Lily seemed to practically live at the library. The static had been too thick at the end of the call to hear anything but the librarian, and faintly at that.

  When he returned to the site, the men were working with little input. They had all fallen into a routine. New buildings were discovered and excavated regularly. They were into the dozens by that point. He wished he had someone to sit and talk with. The translators were too busy giving his orders and watching the site to be able to take time for conversation and coffee. In his increasing isolation, he started having chats with an imaginary Lily.

  “It’s been going really well,” he said as he completed another form. He slid it to the ‘finished’ pile and started on the next. She sat on his bed, feet barely touching the tent floor.

  “Has it? It seems like, based on what you’ve seen, it’s all empty.” She wore a light-blue floral-print sundress and yellow flipflops. Her brunette hair had large curls that splayed across her bare shoulders, accentuating her face and eyes. A faint smile played at the corners of her mouth, never going away, yet never fully taking shape.

  “It’s not fair, you know.”

  “What is?” She asked back. She had a gleam in her green eyes. One he knew and loved.

  “You, teasing me like this.”

  “How am I teasing you?”

  “You don’t exist anywhere but in my mind. The real you, the one I want to actually talk to, she’s back in Ohio.” He studied her face, taking in her beauty. Her pale complexion contrasting with her brilliant green eyes.

  She looked sad. Like he had wronged her, deeply. He felt bad for saying it to her. Then she spoke.

  “You’re right, I’m not her. And what you have to say to her you can’t rightly say to me.”

  He stopped meeting eyes with the figment. She stared at him, something he could feel on a visceral level. Finally, she spoke.

  “You know yourself better than you think.” She smiled at him before disappearing from the cot. He sighed and put the pen down. He had two days left before he could return to Cairo. At least, that’s what he thought. His days were blurring together. He wanted to talk to her, to hear her voice. Even if it was through the terrible connection. He hoped when he returned to the hotel and called, she would be at the library.

  40

  Jonas picked up the phone. Anxiety beat at him from the inside. He had no idea why he was feeling that way. When the operator came on, he gave the number for the University of Akron Library again. The connection seemed to take forever. A series of clicks sounded, then a voice at the far end.

  “Hello, University of Akron Library, how can I help you?”

  “Hey, this is Jonas. Did you find out about that journal?”

  “Jonas, hey! One moment–” the phone suddenly shifted, audible even over the static of the line.

  “Jonas!” The new voice was instantly recognizable.

  “Lily!”

  “How are you? I miss you.”

  “I miss you too. I’m exhausted most of the time. Work is going well, and we have a huge number of buildings. No artifacts though. The Germans really did a good job when they were working the site.”

  “I’m not surprised. I hope you’ll find something.” The line started to crackle and pop as the connection weakened.

  “Me too. Who knows how long they’ll keep me here for if I don’t,” he said. He sat back on the bed and looked over at her on the couch. He knew she wasn’t actually there. He was happy just to hear her voice. She had her hair up in a ponytail with a pink ribbon, which drew more attention to her brilliant green eyes. She wore blue jeans that cut just above her Vans. Her white flowy blouse completed the look for conservative but cute. Her eyes twinkled as he looked her over.

  “The way Mister Jenkins talked about you; I don’t think I’m the only person that has faith in you. When will you come back to America?”

  He shook his head, even though she couldn’t see him. “I don’t know. We need something bigger than finding a nearly untouched city. Something flashy. You can’t put a building in a museum. Well, not without a lot of work.”

  She laughed, though the distortion of the line made it sound faintly robotic. “Of course finding a whole city isn’t good enough for you.”

  “That reminds me, what did the librarian find out about the journal?”

  “She has a name, you know. It’s Aimee.”

  He sighed, then laughed. “Okay, fair enough, you got me. What did Aimee find about the journal?”

  “It looks like the University was gifted it in an estate. An alumnus that attended a long time ago passed a few years back. The journal was catalogued, but never translated. It seems it just fell under the rug, so to speak.”

  “Okay, but how did it end up in that estate?”

  She took on a mock-stern edge to her voice. “Well, if you had some patience, you could read all of it for yourself in the letter she sent to you.”

  “Did she now? And when was that?”

  “Just a few days ago.”

  “And you just so happen to know what was in it?”

  She sighed. “Okay, you caught me. As soon as I heard from her that you were needing research done… again… I started looking into it.”

  “Well, thanks for doing that. Did you figure out how it made it to America?”

  “Well, there were orders in the effects that were given to the library. I don’t think I was supposed to know what was on them. It seemed the alumnus attended university here after his career in the military. He was assigned to Egypt, but I couldn’t understand much else about the orders. If I had to guess, he chanced upon the journal and brought it home. Then donated his personal library to the University when he passed a little over thirty years later.”

  “That would have made him, what, sixty? That’s
pretty young to have an estate to will to the university.”

  “I guess, unless he was really successful with no family. Does the name Jimmy Perkins mean anything to you?”

  He shook his head again. “No. Thanks for looking into that though.”

  She smiled at him from the couch. “I can’t wait for you to come back.”

  The operator broke in. “That’s five minutes sir. I have been instructed to put a time limit on your international calls.”

  “Okay. Let me say goodbye.”

  The operator remained silent, then Lily was back.

  “What was that?”

  “My time on the call is up. I think the Department is keeping a close eye on my calls. I’ll talk to you as soon as I can, though.”

  “Take care, Jonas.”

  “You too, Lil–” the line went dead part way through her name. He sighed, then put the handset down on the rocker. As soon as it touched down, the phone began to ring. He picked it back up and asked “Lily?”

  “No, Jonas, it’s Davion.” The big man’s voice was clear, almost as if he were in the room. It had to be a local call.

  “What can I do for you, Davion?”

  “I need you to limit your international calls to business only.”

  Jonas shook his head. “That was business. I was finding out about the journal.”

  “I know.” The cold edge in Davion’s voice sent chills down Jonas’ spine.

  “I found out some interesting facts though. A man named Jimmy Perkins donated the journal.”

  “I am aware. He was special forces in Egypt during the Second World War. How he managed to bring the journal home without our notice is being investigated. Now, I need you to forget that name. Forget the whole conversation, in fact. Stop worrying about the journal, we have our people on it.”

  Jonas stiffly nodded. “Okay, sir.”

  “One more thing, Jonas.”

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “No more calls to Lily. I need you focused.”