The Orion Project: A Novel

by Edward Marin

  When he and Adams got to the customs station, an official inspected Tonemcadu’s travel documents with a frown. The man seemed to get more and more frustrated with each page he reviewed. After a while, he called over a colleague who was standing in an adjacent booth. They both studied the forms in detail, then compared them to information on a computer screen.

  “Is there a problem?” Adams said.

  The custom officials ignored his question and continued to scrutinize the records while talking to each other in a language Tonemcadu had never heard before, but assumed to be Arabic. After a while, the first man addressed Tonemcadu with a few incomprehensible sentences. Failing to get a response, he turned to Adams.

  “You cannot deport this man to Egypt--he is not Egyptian,” he said in heavily accented English. “We don’t have a record of him, and he doesn’t even speak Arabic.”

  Adams looked stunned as he tried to take another look at the documents over the counter.

  “I checked everything yesterday with the authorities of your country. The entry visa should be sufficient to--”

  “I am sorry, but we cannot allow him in,” the official said.

  After complaining without what appeared to be any expectation that the man would change his mind, Adams took back the documents and got on his cell phone.

  A few hours later he and Tonemcadu were back on a plane but this time to Chicago. Tonemcadu was seething with frustration at having made it all the way to Egypt only to fall further behind in completing his mission. As hard as it had been to leave his family and all that he was familiar with when he was mummified, at least once it was over he had lost consciousness. Now, he was all too aware of how his troubles were getting worse by the minute.

  As he closed his eyes, he recalled what he’d learned about dealing with difficult times during his initiation. His trainer Xufu had said, “It’s not easy to face the challenges in our lives when they occur, but they can make us stronger and better in the end. In the same way that we have to endure physical pain to have stronger bodies, we must endure mental pain to have stronger souls. Therefore, troubles can help us grow by forcing us to reconsider things about our lives that aren’t working. Suffering is a sign that we’re ignoring some rule of the universe and need to be reminded of it.

  “In a way, we’re like children who are unhappy when their parents discipline them, not realizing that it is for their own good. Once the children learn what they’re supposed to know, there’s no more need for them to be punished. So when things look desperate, try to discover what you’re supposed to learn from the experience and have faith that things will get better.”

  He fell asleep thinking of the events that had led him to his present situation, second-guessing his decisions at every step. What if he’d stayed at Dan and Linda’s and gone to Egypt with them? What if he and Barbara had left a day earlier? What if he’d fought deportation as Apostolopoulos had advised him?

  CHAPTER 22

  John Robertson kept looking at the previous quarter’s financial statements for Robertson and Holcomb Investigations. No getting around it; Holcomb had made more money than he had during that period.

  He walked into his business partner’s office. Mitchell Holcomb was sitting at his desk, and Robertson took pleasure in being able to look down on him since, when they were both standing, he was a full head shorter and maybe a hundred pounds lighter.

  “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about our partnership agreement,” Robertson said. “The way it’s structured, I come out on the short end every quarter.”

  “Whoever brings in the most business makes the most money,” Holcomb said in his surprisingly high, nasal voice. “That’s fair.”

  “I’m the majority owner. Besides, if it hadn’t been for my initial investment, the firm would never have gotten off the ground.”

  “If it weren’t for all my clients, there’d be no firm,” Holcomb said without flinching.

  Robertson sighed. He was aware that legally there was little he could do.

  “Tell you what,” he said after a few seconds. “Think about it, keeping in mind that we have the same goal--to find the best way to grow the firm. If we do that, we’ll both make more money in the long run.”

  “Sure, sure, fine with me,” Holcomb said.

  A couple of days later, Robertson was sitting at his desk, still mulling over the contract, when the secretary informed him a potential client was on the phone. Fortunately, Holcomb was out.

  “You locate missing persons?” said an abrupt male voice on the other line.

  “Sure do. All I’d need is a name and a good description. A photo would help.”

  “That should be no problem.”

  “Then I can e-mail you a questionnaire that will ask you for details about the person you’re looking for. If you have a picture, send it as an attachment. Our rate is seventy-five dollars an hour plus expenses. We prefer credit cards, but will accept a check as payment. And your name is?”

  “Dan Stoval.”

  “And the name of the person you’re trying to find?”

  “Tonemcadu. Unfortunately, I don’t know his first name.”

  After gathering the rest of the information he needed to get started and getting off the phone, Robertson had an idea. He’d offer Holcomb the opportunity to work on this job and split the fee, setting a precedent for how all of the firm’s revenue should be handled.

  A few hours later, he received the e-mail from Dan Stoval with the completed questionnaire and walked into Holcomb’s office to make his proposal.

  “Found money--sure, I’ll do it,” Holcomb said. “But it won’t be easy to find this guy without knowing his full name.”

  “I’ll start out with an Internet search,” Robertson said and went back to his office.

  The only Tonemcadu he found on the net turned out to be a man who had lived in ancient Egypt. He tried advanced searches with varied spellings; no luck. On a hunch, he tried the airlines and learned that a Tony Cadu had bought tickets on a flight to Egypt for himself and a Barbara Covell. Dan Stoval had indicated in the questionnaire that Tonemcadu was planning to travel to Egypt. Bingo.

  The plane tickets hadn’t been used, so he assumed the two were still in Chicago. Since he was unable to find more information about Tonemcadu, he decided to start by trying to locate Barbara Covell.

  Holcomb walked in while he was at the computer. “I did an advanced search for his travel companion,” Robertson said, pointing to a sheet of paper with Barbara Covell written in capital letters. “Nothing.”

  Holcomb picked up the telephone directory and flipped the pages.

  “Here,” he said.

  And there she was, Barbara Covell, phone number and address. She hadn’t even listed it as B. Covell, the way most women who lived alone did.

  CHAPTER 23

  A fifty-something agent with the nametag “Jennings” on his shirt uniform was tapping his foot offbeat to the tune of a song playing on the radio of the detention center entrance counter.

  “Is this the guy you called about?” he said when Tonemcadu and Adams stepped up.

  Adams nodded. “The Egyptians say they have no record of him.”

  Jennings said, “He looks more like an Ethiopian to me. But whatever his nationality is, he faces assault charges here. We’re going to have to lock him up until his hearing, unless he makes bail.”

  “Right,” Adams said. “After a few months in jail I bet he’ll be volunteering more information about his life than we’ll ever want to know.”

  Tonemcadu felt that the two men were more interested in scaring him than in informing each other. Their conversation seemed part of a choreographed routine intended to intimidate detainees into telling them what they wanted to hear. But that didn’t change his predicament. If he told them he was from some other country, as they wanted to believe, they might try to deport him there only to discover that, again, his name didn’t show up in the official records and that he didn’t speak the
local language.

  Once the agents were satisfied that Tonemcadu wasn’t going to tell them anything new, they locked him up in a cell, where he stayed for several days. He had to face the fact that he might not be able to complete his mission, nor did he know when he’d get out of jail, let alone see Barbara again. He fought the waves of hopelessness that accompanied these thoughts, until they got to be so overwhelming that he closed his eyes and forced himself to quiet his mind and visualize a more positive outcome to his situation.

  Agents showed up, interrogated him, and left disappointed. He in turn tried to get information from them, but to no avail. On the eighth day Adams came by his cell. It was the first time Tonemcadu had seen him since his return to jail.

  “I have to let you go because of some court order to relieve overcrowding,” he said. “And they’ve dropped the assault charge.”

  Tonemcadu tried not to show his surprise.

  “Can you tell me what happened to the woman who was arrested with me?” he asked.

  “I’m here to release you, not to have a conversation,” Adams said. He pulled a couple of forms from the folder he was holding and handed them to Tonemcadu through the bars.

  “These documents authorize you to work, but you must return every week to renew them if you want to stay out of here.”

  A guard unlocked the door of the cell, and Adams escorted Tonemcadu to the front entrance.

  “You’re free to go,” he said.

  Once outside the detention center, Tonemcadu went straight to Barbara’s apartment. He rang the bell, only to find the door opened by a stranger who told him she’d moved out.

  “Do you know where she went?”

  “Sorry, she didn‘t say.”

  He decided to walk to the pizzeria. Fifteen minutes later, he saw Luigi’s and was struck that the neon sign wasn’t illuminated and that no one was coming in or out.

  A lone woman was standing by the front, on the sidewalk. As he got closer, he heard his name. He looked at the woman’s face, but it took him a couple of seconds to realize that it was Dona Rosa; a different Dona Rosa. Her bleached hair was uncombed, her makeup carelessly applied, her expression defeated. Tonemcadu tried to smile at her. Dona Rosa smiled back and gave him a hug. He could smell alcohol on her breath.

  She shook her head.

  “I kept warning Louis he was going to lose the business, but he never did listen.”

  “What happened?” Tonemcadu said.

  “After his problems with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, other government agencies started to take a look at his business practices. They found violations, and the city closed him down two days ago. I came to see if there’s anything I could do, but it’s obviously too late.”

  “How about Barbara and the others? Do you have any news about them?”

  “I’ve kept in touch with some of them by phone, but Tony, I don’t know where Barbara is. Now tell me about you.”

  Tonemcadu explained what had happened to him, hugged her, and said goodbye.

  As he walked away, he took inventory of his situation. He counted the money he had left; just $200, not nearly enough to book another flight to Egypt. And with only a little over three weeks left to complete his mission, he didn’t have enough time to earn back what he needed.

  He couldn’t just give up and spend his time and energy trying to find Barbara; his upbringing made it impossible for him to abandon his mission. Besides, even if he found her, what kind of a relationship could they have with his knowing that millions of people had died because of his failure? If he somehow succeeded in completing his mission, he’d come back for her. And if he was going to fail, he would at least fail trying.

  He walked aimlessly for about an hour, thinking. And then he had an idea.

  CHAPTER 24

  After leaving the detention center, Barbara decided to ask her family if she could move back in. She hoped to be able to save the money she needed to hire a lawyer for Tonemcadu.

  She took the South Shore bus to her parents’ house, resolved not to say why she wanted to make the move. The last thing she needed right now was a lecture from her mother. If she said anything about Tonemcadu, her mother would try to find out if she’d ignored her usual advice about men.

  Barbara got off the bus down the street from her parents’ bungalow. Her mother saw her coming and met her on the steps.

  “What a wonderful surprise!” she said in the middle of a hug. “Why are you here?”

  “To move back with the family--if that’s all right with you.”

  “All right? It’s wonderful. Your daddy is going to be so happy. Come in, tell me what’s new in your life.”

  “Some people from the immigration department came down to the restaurant and hauled in some of us they thought were in the country illegally. But they released me when they found out that the application for our family was recently approved.”

  Once she finished settling in with her family, she went to Luigi’s to see if she could find out anything. When she found the pizzeria closed, she looked up Donna Rosa, who told her she’d seen Tonemcadu the day before.

  Barbara told her goodbye and rushed over to the building where he used to stay. He wasn’t there.

  CHAPTER 25

  It took Tonemcadu half an hour’s walk to make it to the Harrison Street area where he remembered seeing a Greyhound bus station on the first day he’d looked for a job.

  He entered the building and went up to one of the ticket agents.

  “Is there a bus going to New York?” he said.

  “It leaves in three minutes. Otherwise, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning.”

  Tonemcadu checked the fares on the wall and gave the man eighty dollars for a one-way ticket. He then ran to the bus, which he boarded just as the driver was closing the doors.

  After seventeen hours, including a transfer in Cleveland, he saw a sign announcing the New York Port Authority Bus Terminal. He got off the bus and got in line at the information booth. When his turn came, he asked the young woman in attendance for the cheapest and quickest way to the seaport.

  Half an hour later, he reached the passenger ship terminal on the Hudson River in Southampton, where he saw several large ships on the pier. In front of the largest one were three dock workers who were talking excitedly. Tonemcadu heard the words “strike” and “union.”

  He approached the group. “Do you know if any of these ships goes to Egypt?” The men kept talking as if they hadn’t heard him, so he asked again, louder.

  “No,” one of them said.

  Tonemcadu started to walk away.

  “The Pearl of the Oceans is due in this afternoon on pier ninety,” the oldest man in the group said. “I think it goes that way.”

  Tonemcadu thanked him, made his way to pier ninety, and took a seat on a bench.

  Several hours later, the ship came in. It was an impressive structure, tall like the temple of Luxor and long like a mid-sized pyramid. At first, a few people trickled out from one of the exits. Then, all of a sudden, a human flood descended from the boat, cascaded onto the pier, and scattered all over the harbor. When Tonemcadu figured the final passenger had emerged, he went to the main doorway and asked a man wearing a white uniform if he knew how he could get a job on the ship.

  “You’ll have to go to human resources for that,” the man said. “That way.”

  It took Tonemcadu twenty minutes to find the administrative offices for the cruise liner in a brick building in the middle of the harbor. He made his way to an office on the second floor with a sign that read Patrick Smith, Human Resources Director, and knocked on the door.

  “Come in,” a voice on the other side yelled.

  He opened the door and saw a grumpy-looking man in his fifties shuffling papers behind a jam-packed desk.

  “I’d like to apply for a job on the Pearl of the Oceans,” Tonemcadu said.

  The man gave him a quick once-over.

  “Who sent you?” he
said as he went back to working on his files.

  “I was told that I had to come here to get a job on the ship,” Tonemcadu said.

  “I only see people sent by one of our crewing agencies,” the man said without looking up. “Unless you’re applying for one of the jobs on the list.”

  “The list?” Tonemcadu said.

  The man pulled a five-by-eight card from under a pile of documents and handed it to Tonemcadu with his left hand while still shuffling papers with his right.

  As Tonemcadu started to read the form, he realized that the positions were for highly skilled workers in areas he knew nothing about. But the last job on the list caught his attention. They were looking for someone to conduct seminars of ancient Egyptian civilization for passengers who wanted to know more about the archeological treasures they would discover once they reached their destination.

  “I’m interested in the teaching job,” he said.

  Smith put down a document he was holding and for the first time established eye contact with Tonemcadu.

  “What are your qualifications?”

  “I know a lot about ancient Egypt.”

  Smith shook his head.

  “We’re looking for someone who’s taught before and has a degree.”

  Tonemcadu wished he could tell him about his true background, but restrained himself to come up with a different, more believable argument. He doubted it would persuade the man, but it was worth a try.

  “I grew up in Egypt. I can provide your vacationers with a lot of interesting facts about ancient Egypt culture and history,” he said.

  Smith picked up another document on his desk and glanced toward the door.

  “That may be,” he said, “but I’m afraid you don’t meet the requirements for the job.”

  Tonemcadu felt that at this point his only chance of succeeding in his mission was to convince Smith to let him work on the cruise ship. Sensing that he was about to ask him to leave his office, he grabbed a sheet of paper and a pen from the desk and started to write. When he finished, he laid the sheet in front of Smith.