The Orion Project: A Novel

by Edward Marin

  “What took you so long?” Allen said.

  “I went to the ancient Rome section, before they told me you wanted me to come to ancient Egypt,” Dave said.

  Allen decided to keep his cool. “Get the lift truck over here,” he said.

  He rubbed the bald spot on the top of his head and watched Dave clear up the bottles, mops, and other maintenance items that blocked the path to the lift truck. He then took a look at the three sarcophaguses aligned on the floor. They looked alike to him. Just how was he supposed to tell which was the right one?

  Joyner hadn’t given him any information about how to identify the right sarcophagus. All he’d been told was to take the Tonemcadu one to the conference room. Since he’d assumed the name would be on the sarcophagus somewhere, he hadn’t asked for details. Now he wondered if the museum administration wasn’t setting him up for failure in order to replace him with the young punk he was training. He wouldn’t be the first worker with seniority to be treated that way by an employer wanting to cut costs. Now he’d have to--

  Wait a minute. Instead of showing his ignorance by asking the curator for more information, he’d look up the details about this mummy on the Internet, then open the sarcophagi and see which of the three fit the description.

  He logged onto the desktop computer in the room and learned that Tonemcadu had been a government official who’d probably worked at the court of the pharaoh Akhenaton.

  He then checked on Dave, who’d managed to bring the lift truck into the restoration room, and led him in hauling up the first heavy stone sarcophagus lid. Beneath it lay a small mummy--a child, obviously not the one he was looking for.

  They lifted the second lid, and he saw the full-sized mummy of an adult man. He could see that it had been a soldier and not a government official by the weapons in the sarcophagus.

  Although it was obvious that the last sarcophagus had to be the one he was looking for, he decided he’d better make sure. He couldn‘t afford a screw-up. When they opened the lid and he looked inside, he knew he was screwed. The sarcophagus was empty.

  CHAPTER 18

  The day before Tonemcadu and Barbara were to leave for Egypt, two men who didn’t look like customers walked into Luigi’s. One was short and middle-aged, the other tall, heavy-set, and in his mid-twenties. Both wore suits. After scanning the room, the older man approached Teresa, who was standing by the door.

  “Good morning. We’d like to see the owner,” he said.

  She led them to the back room and pointed to Louis, who was doing paperwork. The man walked up to him and showed him a badge.

  “I’m Agent Davenport and this is Agent Connors, Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” he said. “We’d like to examine your personnel records and talk to a few of your employees. We don’t want to cause a disruption for your customers, but we’d like to make sure your employees remain on the premises for about twenty minutes.”

  Teresa, who’d been standing just outside the back room, overheard the agent and panicked. She told Yvette, who in turn informed every employee in sight with loud whispers.

  Moments later, a few waitresses and the bus boy made their way toward the front door, only to be stopped by the younger agent. The employees protested--loudly.

  Tonemcadu and Barbara, who were taking their morning break in the kitchen, heard the commotion. Tonemcadu got up and looked out the door. After a few seconds, Barbara joined him and immediately turned to him with a worried look.

  “Remember when I told you that I’m an illegal? We have to get out of here right away.”

  Tonemcadu followed her to the back exit door. Once they were outside, they were met by a third agent, who blocked their way.

  “We have some questions for you,” he said. “You‘ll have to come back inside.”

  He grabbed Barbara’s arm and wrenched it. She tried to twist herself free, and Tonemcadu lost control. He struck the man and would have punched him again had not the tall heavy-set agent and one of his colleagues not shown up from behind and handcuffed him before he knew what was happening.

  Another agent dragged Barbara back into the restaurant. Tonemcadu was shoved into the back seat of a Chevrolet Impala, where a tearful Teresa was already awaiting her fate.

  Ten-minute later, the car pulled into the underground parking garage of a high-rise building on Randolph Street, in downtown Chicago. The agent at the wheel parked the car, and the one in the passenger seat ordered Tonemcadu and Teresa out and in through a side door with a plaque that read: Detention Facilities.

  Once inside, the agent led him through a poorly lit corridor and into a cell with sticky cement floors and peeling gray paint filled with men sitting on concrete benches. He took a seat next to a guy who looked as if his life was forever ruined.

  One by one, the detainees were being called to the bars while an agent took down their name, age, country of origin, employment, and immigration status. As he awaited his turn, Tonemcadu looked back on the events of the day. In less than an hour, he’d seen everything that mattered most to him come apart. His prospects for completing his mission looked dim, and he was haunted by the image of Barbara being dragged back inside the restaurant. He had no idea what consequences she’d face for being an illegal and felt responsible for not having been able to protect her.

  After a long wait, the agent motioned for him to approach the bars.

  “Name?” the agent said as he took out a new form from his folder.

  “Tonemcadu.”

  “First name?”

  “Just Tonemcadu.”

  “Citizenship?”

  “Egypt.”

  “Age?”

  “I... don‘t know.”

  The man looked up from his notebook and shook his head.

  “Immigration status?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your status, Mr... Tonucudu. You got a green card?”

  “No.”

  “Well, that makes you an illegal alien. An illegal alien who assaulted an agent, for which you’re about to be charged. You got a lawyer?”

  “No.”

  “Then you get a public defender. No charge.”

  When Tonemcadu finished answering the man’s questions, he asked about Barbara, only to receive a blank look as an answer. An hour later another agent took him to a room where he was formally charged with assaulting an officer, then to a small individual cell.

  The next morning, a guard called his name and told him his lawyer was there to see him. A short balding man in a shiny brown suit stepped into the cell from behind the guard.

  “Hi. I’m Robert Apostolopoulos, your court-appointed attorney.” The man gave him a toothy smile, then turned toward the guard. “Is the consultation room available?”

  The guard said, “Five minutes,” and led the two of them to a small, glassed-in room with a table and chairs.

  “I’ve been able to get some information about your case and, frankly, it doesn’t look good,” the lawyer said as soon as they were seated. “Your chances of getting sympathy from a judge are slim, since you struck a fed. The bottom line is, you’ll probably be deported. If you fight deportation we may be able to delay it, but we probably won’t win in the end.”

  Apostolopoulos paused and looked at Tonemcadu as if knowing from experience that his client would be devastated.

  But Tonemcadu was smiling. From what the lawyer said, it seemed that if he decided not to fight deportation, the authorities may send him to Egypt themselves in time to complete his mission.

  “What’s the best way to insure that I’ll be deported right away?”

  “Well, ah... you can agree to the charges in court, and I can request an expedited removal.”

  Tonemcadu became so distracted by the quick change in his prospects that he only half listened as his lawyer informed him that he disagreed with his decision not to fight deportation. After a few seconds, Tonemcadu regained his focus and interrupted him to ask about Barbara. Just as Apostolopoulos was goi
ng to answer, the agent returned and led Tonemcadu back to his cell.

  The following morning an agent took him to a large courtroom with vaulted ceilings where some twenty detainees were waiting for their hearing. In the front row, he spotted Apostolopoulos, who was conferring with another client.

  A female bailiff called out, “All rise for the Honorable Carl Pucinski, Jr.,” as an elderly man made his entrance, and everyone sprang to their feet. Once the judge was comfortably installed in his seat, the bailiff asked for everyone to be seated, and the court session began.

  A strong baritone voice from the back of the room called, one by one, the detainees to the stand, where Apostolopoulos or another man in a gray suit joined them to face the judge.

  When Tonemcadu’s turn came, the judge read the charging document and, as planned, Tonemcadu admitted to everything. The judge informed him that he would be deported within forty-eight hours.

  CHAPTER 19

  They’d questioned her, checked their computers, and let her go; Barbara still couldn’t believe it. Her father’s efforts to get his family’s immigration status regularized must have finally paid off. She assumed that either he hadn’t yet been given the good news by a slow-moving bureaucracy or hadn’t gotten around to telling her. They didn’t talk as often, now that she no longer lived at home.

  In any case, her first priority was to see Tonemcadu and get him released.

  She got off the bus on Randolph Street and walked a couple of blocks to the high-rise building where the Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices were located. She looked at the panel board by the entrance and decided to go to the detention center in the basement.

  The man at the counter there was writing something in a notebook.

  “Visitation days are on Wednesdays from twelve to five,” he said, looking up.

  “Can you at least tell me if a Tony Cadu is being detained here? My name is Barbara Covell, and I work at Luigi’s, the restaurant where some of your agents conducted an investigation a few hours ago. I believe he was arrested by mistake.”

  “Sorry, you’ll have to come back on Wednesday. Someone will be able to help you then.”

  Barbara left the detention center in tears, worried about Tonemcadu.

  CHAPTER 20

  Linda picked up the phone on her desk and dialed Dan’s extension.

  “I just talked to Nick. We’re in serious trouble,” she said as soon as he picked up. “He sounds suspicious. He’s furious, he--”

  “Slow down. What are you talking about?”

  “He called a few minutes ago and told me the Tonemcadu mummy is missing. I’ve never heard him like that.”

  “How’d he find out?”

  “The board decided to exchange the Tonemcadu sarcophagus and mummy for some Italian Renaissance paintings from the Louvre.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Thank God he couldn’t see my face. I said I didn’t know anything about it, of course. But he wants to see me in his office. Dan, I’m scared!”

  “Calm down, honey. Just stick to your story. There’s nothing to connect you to--”

  “Dan, you know how overbearing he is. And he knows me. He’s already suspicious. How am I going to hold up against him?”

  “Just keep saying you’re as shocked as everybody else. Otherwise, we’d have to come up with a plausible reason why the mummy is missing.”

  “Like what?”

  “That’s my point--there isn’t one. He’s not going to buy a reawakened thirty-three-hundred-year-old mummy who learned English in a few weeks and ran off. You’re better off sticking with you have no idea what happened.”

  Linda walked into Nick Joyner’s office feeling like a child summoned by the school principal.

  “Sit down, Linda. Make yourself comfortable.”

  Nick’s words were polite, but his tone of voice was lethal. Linda knew she was looking at a curator whose identification with his museum was so absolute that he took any snafu as a personal affront.

  “The sarcophagus was in your care,” he said. “Now it’s empty. What happened?”

  “I don‘t know, Nick.” Her words were loud, but not firm. Her voice shook.

  “I think you do, Linda. What happened?”

  It took less than a minute to break her down.

  “All right, Nick,” she said. “But you’re going to find what I know hard to believe.”

  “If it’s the truth, I’ll believe it. Start talking.”

  She was quiet for a long moment, her thoughts racing. Finally, she said, “Right before I took my vacation, I heard a noise in the restoration room. When I went in to check, the sarcophagus lid was partially open. I have no idea how. Dan and I opened it the rest of the way, and... the mummy didn’t look right. So I decided to take it home in order to care for it while I was on vacation.”

  “You took it? Home?” Nick’s eyes were bulging. “That’s stealing! Are you out of your mind?”

  He paused for a few seconds, as if he were too angry to speak. Then he said, “As head of the department, you had the resources and the responsibility to take care of it here.”

  “I felt I didn’t have a choice. I tried to make the best decision I could under some very unusual circumstances.”

  “What you’re saying makes no sense. Obviously you’re going to bring the mummy back, right away.”

  “Can’t you send another sarcophagus to Paris?” Linda said.

  Nick looked as if he were about five seconds from a stroke.

  “I want that mummy back here. Go get it,” he yelled.

  “I... I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t have it anymore.”

  “You don’t have it anymore,” he said in the same cadence she had used, mocking her. Then, in a deadly soft tone, “What did you do with it?”

  “It disappeared from our home.”

  “From your home. That’s right, you and Dan live together,” he said slowly. “I’m going to need a much better explanation than what you’ve given me. I expect a full written report tomorrow morning on what you did and why you did it. I’ll let Dan know that I need the same from him. Now get out of here!”

  She and Dan spent all night working on their reports. They tried to be as creative as possible while making sure that they didn’t contradict each other. Since they couldn’t tell the truth, they worked hard to make up the most believable story they could come up with.

  The following day, they showed up early in the morning in Nick Joyner’s office. He took both reports without even looking at them and laid them on his desk.

  “I talked to several members of the board last night,” he said. “They insisted that I suspend you both while we conduct an investigation. So as of now, you’re both on administrative leave. As soon as we decide what to do, I’ll let you know.”

  Nick called them at home, three days later. They each got on an extension to listen to him.

  “We’ve completed the investigation and have decided to terminate you,” he said. “We’re also initiating legal action to recover the Tonemcadu mummy. You have until noon today to remove your belongings from the museum.”

  Learning at the same time that they were being fired and sued was too much for Linda. She burst into tears and walked out into the back yard.

  Dan followed her and pulled her face against his chest.

  “This isn’t over,” he said. “We have the money to hire good lawyers to fight the legal thing. And to hire detectives to find Tonemcadu--if we knew where he is...”

  CHAPTER 21

  Two days had passed since Tonemcadu’s court hearing; two days of worrying about Barbara and whether he’d be deported in time to complete his mission. Nothing else had happened. No one had come to tell him anything, his efforts to get information about Barbara had been stonewalled, and he didn’t know if the judge’s order was still valid.

  In the afternoon of the third day, a bald middle-aged man in civilian clothes came to his cell.<
br />
  “I’m Agent Adams,” he said. “Here to carry out the deportation order.”

  The man took a pair of handcuffs from his pocket and motioned for Tonemcadu to approach an opening in the cell.

  “These are because of your assault charge,” he said. “Remember, it’s only been suspended, not dropped. So it’s in your interest to cooperate if you don’t want to end up spending time in prison before you’re deported.” He put the handcuffs on Tonemcadu and unlocked the door.

  He then led him to a Chevrolet Impala parked in the garage and drove him to O’Hare airport without saying another word. They boarded a Boeing 747 ahead of the other passengers and took two seats in the back of the plane. The agent removed his handcuffs and warned him not to try anything stupid.

  Slowly at first, then faster, the plane filled up. All around, Tonemcadu observed people shove their luggage into the overhead bin before trying to take claim to their seats. Half an hour later the plane took off and Chicago disappeared below them.

  Agent Adams read a book, while every now and then surveying the area around him.

  Tonemcadu closed his eyes to get some rest, but spent more of the time daydreaming about Barbara and completing his mission.

  Fourteen hours later, the captain announced that they were approaching Cairo International Airport.

  As the plane flew over the city, Tonemcadu was struck by how different everything looked. There were a few more pyramids than during his time, but that they were all in terrible condition. The vegetation had become more arid, and the tall buildings, the roads, the automobiles reminded him more of America than of the country he had known.

  A few minutes later, they landed in the middle of the runway, and his impression from the air was confirmed by the people on the ground who rushed to remove the cargo from the plane. They looked somewhat different from his contemporaries, somewhat as the people in America had looked different from the inhabitants of the land thousands of years ago. He could see in their faces signs of the intermarriages with invaders from Persia, Nubia, Greece, Rome, the Arabian peninsula, and Turkey over the last three millennia.