The Count of the Sahara

by Wayne Turmel

  Not everything went smoothly. For a brief moment, it looked as though Pond might lose his Tuareg necklace, but he had the appropriate paperwork, and that appeased both Beaumont, who needed to keep things official, and the Caid, who didn’t give a camel’s fart if the Tuaregs were happy, as long as his money came and he was happy to let Pond off the hook as a gesture of good faith.

  De Prorok on the other hand, had a practically new Flyssa confiscated, along with some glass beads that probably came from the Tin Hinan site and a small shiny button he’d lifted from Pere Lavigerie’s gravesite. They let him keep the piece of wood from Shackleton’s sled once it was plain that the scrawled handwriting was in English and couldn’t have come from Algeria. He was leaving with the clothes on his back, the body of Queen Tin Hinan, and a few relics that Reygasse had already claimed in the name of France. His treasure was now just a figment of the New York Times’ imagination.

  Reygasse personally took responsibility for the administrative paperwork. He used the phrase “on my word of honor,” about three times, and the Legion commandant was fine with that, since Reygasse was a Frenchman. With the onus now switched to someone the Commandant could trust—or at least locate, if it came to that—the Count de Prorok was free to leave Algeria.

  He made an executive decision to leave immediately in Lucky Strike, along with Brad Tyrrell and Hal Denny. The cursed oil pan in Hot Dog was leaking again, and the two Renault drivers decided to stick it out together until they could both get home. Chapuis, Belaid, an inconsolable Henri Barth and thousands of feet of film would depart the next day with them.

  There was no farewell dinner, no final toasts, and no ceremonial send-off. It had the feel of a family visit gone on far too long. Everyone wished each other well, and mostly meant it, but there was more relief than pain at parting.

  “Well, Byron, are you ready to go?” Tyrrell was already inside the stifling vehicle as his companion stood with his hands on his hips, taking one last look at the little village.

  “I suppose so, yes… Monsieur Martini… Allez-y…” He ducked into the front seat and slammed the door shut. The little Italian stepped on the gas, and they headed north amid weak shouts of “Bon Voyage,” and, “See you in the Spring,” the skitter of stones spitting out from under tires, and a harmonica playing “Oh Suzanna.”

  Chapter 21

  Paris, France

  December 1, 1925

  Baby Alice spit up on Byron’s shirt for the second time that morning. He couldn’t get up to do anything about it, because two year old Marie Therese had taken up a happy permanent residence in her daddy’s lap. Since it took two days for her to come near him without screaming, he just let her snuggle warmly against him.

  In French, he said “Alice, dear… please.” His wife’s only response was a happy chuckle. She handed him a clean diaper to wipe himself with and kissed his forehead. Her dark curls framed her face, and she looked lovely, if a bit tired. It wasn’t, “I’ve been in the desert for two months and anything would look good, pretty.” She had two babies in diapers and was still the lovely, vivacious, naïve young lass he’d married. Parenthood and marriage suited her much better than him, although God knows he was trying his best.

  “You’ll have to change your shirt before you go. Annie, please take the baby.” She handed her gurgling, wiggling namesake off to the nanny. “Marie, you too, little one. Go with Miss Annie.” De Prorok smiled. Her French was atrocious, but as always his wife was game. It was kind of adorable to watch her struggle so.

  He slipped into English as he always did when they were alone. “You don’t think I should show up at the Embassy with baby throw-up on my shirt? I would think it’s rather a good look. Makes me appear very respectable and domesticated.”

  “Here. Let me…” She slapped his hands away and undid the shirt studs. She took a moment to stroke his chest hair through the gap. “I’m sorry I’ve been so tired, darling.”

  “Well, you do have two babies. I don’t know how you do it. I’ve been home a few days and I’m ready to dash screaming for the door.”

  She grabbed his shirt front and looked him square in the eye, pretending to be angry. “You’d best not, buster. I have you for another ten days before you go gallivanting off.”

  “Whoa, Tiger. It’s hardly gallivanting. You girls will be with me. Then we’ll all be in Brooklyn for Christmas. That’ll be nice, and I can get home between lectures.” He knew Alice was homesick. She had only the nanny, a good Irish New Yorker, for real company. Otherwise she was alone in a little house in a second-class Parisian suburb.

  “Well, Mary will be here in a few days. That’ll keep me company until we get home. But then, Monsewer le Compt, you are all mine.” Mary was her belligerent older sister, self-proclaimed defender of the family honor, and a royal pain. He wasn’t sorry he’d be shipping out as soon as she arrived.

  “Absolutely,” he said, wrapping his hands around her waist, then stroking her firm bottom through her skirt. “We can leave the girls with Grandmama and you can come with me. Washington, Atlanta, we’ll make a honeymoon out of it.” Given that they’d spent their real honeymoon in a dig outside Carthage, he figured he owed her that much. He very much wanted to be alone with her. They could hit a few of the big Eastern cities, then he’d deposit her at the family manse and head off for the wilds of Grinnell, Iowa. Wherever the hell that was.

  Alice wiggled under his touch. “I still don’t know why she insisted on coming over so close to Christmas, we’re going to be there in a few weeks anyway.”

  Byron agreed it was a good question, but who knew what went on in that woman’s mind. The whole family, aside from Alice, were a mystery to him. His father-in-law, Bill, was an open book. A rude, boorish, terminally bourgeois book, to be sure, but usually you knew where you stood. Her mother Mary was a complete cypher, silent as the tomb. As to their impending visitor, well that was a veritable Ibsen drama of sibling rivalry and repression.

  Close proximity to family was something he’d largely been spared. He remembered something Tolstoy said, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” He looked around him and wondered if any family was really happy. He felt like his could be, if he could break free of the Kennys.

  “Maybe she wants to make sure I’m really putting you on the boat and not keeping you prisoner in decadent, evil France.” She gave a playful scream as he pulled her into his lap and pressed her against his bare chest. Alice gave a quick look around to see if little eyes were watching, then gave him a deep, warm kiss.

  “I’m sorry it’s been so rough on you. It’s so unfair,” she whispered, stroking his face.

  “Hopefully, today will put it all to rest. It’s just good to be home with you… and the girls,” he added quickly.

  Both of them pointedly ignored the stack of Paris newspapers at their feet. Since his originally triumphant arrival, things had gotten sticky. The local press was equally divided between effusive praise and scathing attacks, depending on their politics.

  Les Temps, the house organ for anti-colonialists and left wing academics was being particularly rough on him, and wasn’t done quite yet. Of course, they’d attack anything Reygasse and the establishment supported, and a chance to stick it to the New York Times was raw meat to the jackals. Le Matin was also sniffing around.

  De Prorok could appreciate a good story. Someone in Algeria obviously leaked the fight over missing relics and angry locals to a socialist reporter in Paris who couldn’t wait to fan the flames. Anything supported by the French government, the union busters at Renault and the Americans must be guilty of something.

  He desperately wished he’d found all the gold and gems they thought he had, although that was largely his own fault. The wild tales he told Denny, and continued to tell anyone who’d listen, were just that, stories. He never expected his harmless exaggeration to be taken seriously. When he couldn’t produce the fabled treasure, though, it was either admit to a few fibs or
criminal smuggling.

  The treasure, or lack of it, was only one problem. From Africa came complaints of grave robbing, a ridiculous charge but hard to argue with, since he was clearly in possession of the Queen’s remains. Some of the anti-Reygasse crowd even spread the rumor that the body wasn’t Tin Hinan and probably not even female. Fortunately, the top people in Algiers backed his claims, but rumors lingered.

  The icing on the cake, though, was that someone had gotten the American embassy involved. That was the real problem, since lawyers meant money—money he didn’t have—and that meant asking Bill Kenny for help. True, he had the best lawyers on the Continent at his disposal, but their crude methods, more Tammany Hall than Assemblée National, seemed counterproductive. The mood was turning nasty with cables and charges flying across three continents but things were finally returning to a simmer. Christ alone knew what it cost, and he knew there’d be an accounting at some point.

  By then, though, he’d be able to support Alice and the girls. Between the digging rights, the books he planned and the lecture tours, he’d control his own destiny. Until then, he was just the ne’er do well son in law. It chafed him, but for the moment—and only for the moment—the family’s involvement was a necessary evil. That too shall pass.

  “Well, back to the salt mines,” he declared, pushing her off his lap.

  “It’ll be fine. Daddy says Mr. Langham is very good.”

  “He is, really. I just wish he’d be a bit more tactful. State Department types are really just pencil pushers at heart, and they rather like being the face of America. They really don’t care much who your father knows in Albany. I can see it in their beady little eyes.”

  “Even Al Smith?” Alice was every bit as proud of her father’s friendship with New York’s governor as the older Kennys, never missing a chance to drop the name. If he was honest, Brad Tyrrell and Beloit College had proven more helpful in the end. Beloit’s president Maurer and his friendship with Calvin Coolidge trumped Bill Kenny and Al Smith every time, although he’d never admit it to his wife.

  “We’ll get it all wrapped up today, I promise. Oh, did I tell you, I got a cable from Lee Keedick about a deal with some film producer in Hollywood, California. Hoag and Somebody or other.” He expected more of a reaction than he got. “Really, Lee is going to be a great asset.”

  “Well, if he can get you Carnegie Hall, I’ll believe it. Daddy says he’s a bit of a shyster.”

  Byron gave her a smile that brushed away any doubts. “You leave that to your brilliant husband.” She smiled up adoringly. Those eyes warmed Byron to his core.

  Things did go better after that. The charges by the Algerians were dropped, more from exhaustion than satisfaction. L’Academie formally announced its findings on behalf of Count de Prorok and the Expedition. There was even talk of a Palme D’Or for him and Tyrrell. The State Department grudgingly admitted everything seemed to be in order, and as long as the French were happy, they were content to let things slide, although not without keeping his dossier, bulging with notes and letters about his character, close at hand.

  The morning of December 15th was sunny and cold with the wind blowing off the harbor at Le Havre. It stung the faces of the de Prorok family as they leaned over the rail, but couldn’t dampen their excitement. Alice and Byron, Count and Countess de Prorok and the girls waved to no one in particular as they waited for the SS Leviathan to set sail. Annie and Mary stood behind them shaking their heads and huddling together for warmth.

  Byron wrapped a reassuring arm around Alice’s trim waist and squeezed. She’d been strangely quiet since her sister’s arrival, but that was just the stress of traveling with small children, a nanny and a royal bitch of an older sister. He only had to pack his film, pictures and a small trunk of belongings. Living life out of a suitcase was nothing new to him. The biggest snag came when he tried to find his piece of Shackleton’s sled. Alice had put it aside, deciding he didn’t need to drag it halfway around the world. He corrected her as gently as he could, and stored it away, wrapped carefully in two pieces of newspaper like he had for fifteen years.

  Alice snuggled close to him, her fox fur collar tickling his nose. “Isn’t it exciting, Darling? The New York papers are already buzzing about our arrival. The Brooklyn Eagle wants an interview, just as soon as the Times is done with you. Wait til you see the welcome we get. And Christmas with the whole family, it’ll be wonderful.”

  Byron kissed the top of her head. Well, all of her family. No, his family now. “The new tour will be a corker, Alice. Everything is coming together.”

  Alice looked up at him, her eyes strangely watery, he thought, but maybe it was the cold salt air. “Really, Byron? It’s going to be okay?” She needed assurance, which he gladly gave her. Why couldn’t she see what he saw?

  “Of course, this is just the beginning of great things for us, sweetheart. Everything is going to be swell, you’ll see.” Byron de Prorok looked off to the channel, and New York beyond that, and America further still. The future he always dreamed of was finally his; a golden career, a beautiful family, financial stability—all of it. It was so close he could reach over the rails and grab it by the scuff of the neck.

  “Nothing can stop us now, Alice. Nothing.”

  Chapter 22

  Chicago, Illinois

  March 5, 1926

  The Count crumpled the telegram into a ball and threw it at the wall of Mrs. Cudahy’s boarding house. To say he threw like a girl would be an insult to the girls I knew, who could at least get it home from the infield if they had to. “Omaha and Grand Platte. Garden spots of the plains, I’m sure.”

  I tried to put a good face on it. “It’s work at least.” And it was better news than the wire that awaited us upon arrival yesterday. That one had been from the National Geographic Society in Washington D.C:

  No room on schedule spring or summer stop

  Chance something in 27

  JH Finley, President, NGS

  Whenever the Count cussed, it didn’t sound like real swearing, just genteel annoyance. This time though, he let out a string of words that would have gotten him a mouthful of Life Buoy if Mama heard him. The gist of it was, John H Finley had his head firmly up his own arse. I’d have laughed, but the look on his face told me it wouldn’t be a good idea.

  We shared a room in a boarding house on South Dearborn. Lee Keedick, the omnipotent agent, used it for his other show business clients—mostly opera singers and long hair types—when they were in Chicago. It helped keep down expenses.

  That was going to be the way of things now, especially that money was going to be tight. When someone else was footing the bill it was the Pfister, or the Allerton or the Palmer House. When it was on the Count’s dime, it would be boarding houses and shared rooms. That was fine by me, but it bothered him deeply. He must have apologized three times since we arrived the day before.

  “It’s only temporary,” he explained at least twice. “Only until we get the money straightened out again.” It didn’t bother me much, but I could see embarrassment, or maybe even shame, written on his face.

  Then I asked him for the third time. “We’re still going to St. Louis, though, right?”

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Yes, we’re going to bloody St. Louis. Don’t have a lot of choice in the matter do we?” At least I still had a job.

  As boarding houses went, this one wasn’t bad if you didn’t count the Irish biddy running the joint. Colleen Cudahy had a beak like an eagle and a brogue so thick you could smell peat smoke. Her nose wasn’t nearly as sharp or deadly as her tongue, which could take an eye out from across the room. I learned that the first day, when I tracked mud into her parlor.

  She wasn’t shy about sharing information either. Apparently the last two young men Mr. Keedick arranged to share this room did not keep to their separate beds, and she let it be known in no uncertain terms that wouldn’t be tolerated. Not in her house. She knew how those European types were. Degenerates, the lot of them.


  “You look like a good lad,” she confided to me that first afternoon, “but I don’t trust that fancy one. Too pretty by half, and prob’ly English, from the sounds of him. They’re all queer, that lot.” It took a very involved conversation with my employer to understand what it meant and what had her so riled up. I guess I wasn’t pretty enough to be a suspect, and for once I was glad.

  The widow Cudahy’s inability to keep a thought in her head for more than five minutes without sharing had one big advantage. I knew Havlicek was watching the house. Well, not him, since there were twenty-four hours in a day, but another guy, younger and even shorter by the sounds of it. He’d come around asking about the Count, then tried to take a room, but the widow Cudahy had that uncanny Irish ability to smell an informer, and enthusiastically sent him on his merry way. Poor guy was probably still picking broom straw out of his hair.

  The ride down from Beloit had been two and a half hours of silent hell. De Prorok sat and moped, occasionally sipping from a bottle he got from God knows where. Somewhere around Elgin, he began to perk up and by the time we got to Union Station he found his second wind. Since then he managed to keep me hopping.

  The first order of business was to go through all the slides and pictures, and pull every photograph we added before the Beloit speech. Anything with the school’s name on it should be replaced with something more dramatic, or at least Beloit-free. To be absolutely precise, he told me to burn them, I assumed it was just the anger and the brandy talking, and placed them in a separate box.