by Steve Cash
Once we were on the streets of Luxor, there was only one story being circulated. Twelve days earlier, Howard Carter had discovered a missing tomb in the Valley of the Kings, possibly with its seals still in tact. Carter was going to open the tomb as soon as he returned from Cairo with his benefactor, Lord Carnarvon. He was due back within a week.
I was speechless at the news. Ray laughed and said, “Damn!” Sailor said, “Damn, indeed.”
I am batting. I have just swung and hit the ball deep into right center. I watch it fly as I run to first base. The ball seems propelled by magic and all eyes in the grandstands are following the ball. At the apex of its flight, the ball defies gravity and stops in midair. Everyone is frozen in place. The ball begins changing color and becomes a black dot growing larger, widening, then I recognize it as the moon sliding into place in front of the sun. It is a total solar eclipse, the Bitxileiho, the Strange Window. I hear steps behind me. I turn and the umpire is walking toward me, ignoring the eclipse. He takes off his mask. I know him. He has green eyes, he is familiar, but…something is different…something is wrong.
“You’re out, Z!”
I opened my eyes. Ray was standing over me, blocking the sun.
“What?”
“You went out like a light. You’re dreaming. Wake up, we’re almost there.”
I looked around. We were on water, crammed in a small boat with two dozen others, mostly men, but also several boys about our size. Everyone, including us, wore loosely wrapped turbans, simple linen robes, and sandals. Then I remembered.
We were crossing the Nile on our way to meet with Rais Hussein and his brother Gad in the Valley of the Kings. It was eight days after we arrived in Luxor. The news of Howard Carter’s discovery had spread everywhere in the country. The Valley of the Kings was already crowded and access to the site had become limited. It would not be long before the pompous and the powerful appeared and took over completely. It had taken us six days to track down Rais Hussein. At first, Sailor tried to reach Giles Xuereb on Malta, but was unsuccessful. Then we found out through a contact in Cairo that Giles had gone missing. He had disappeared without a trace, leaving all his belongings in the house and a half-eaten meal on the table. The same thought came to each of us. More than enough time had elapsed in order for the Fleur-du-Mal to realize Giles had deceived him. Revenge would be swift and harsh. We feared for Giles, but we did not speak of it and kept searching for Rais. Eventually, we located him in Gurna, not far from Howard Carter’s residence. Immediately, Sailor made Rais an offer he could not refuse. If Rais would get us on the dig site and near to the tomb, Sailor offered to pay Rais and his brother two hundred pounds sterling. Rais and Gad Hussein were two of Howard Carter’s most trusted workmen. They had access and they could get us close. Rais agreed to the deal. We were to meet him at a specified location in two days. Now, on a mild and balmy Sunday morning, we were almost there.
A nervous, skinny man wearing a fez waited for us as we disembarked. After only giving his name, he led us to another man waiting with donkeys. We followed him on a long trek along narrow trails through rubble and rock until we found Rais and Gad resting in the shadow of a boulder at a crossroads in the trails. They both seemed relaxed and happy to see us. Sailor made the money exchange with Rais and he bowed slightly in return. He said he would take us to Rais Ahmed Gurgar, the foreman for Howard Carter at the site. Since we were small, we could be used to carry the last bits of debris and rubbish from the narrow steps leading directly down to the tomb. Gurgar would arrange it. Sailor thanked Rais, saying that would, indeed, be close enough.
With Rais and his brother in the lead, we snaked our way into the Valley of the Kings. We passed by dozens of workman and boys, some standing in small groups, but most were one behind the other in long lines with baskets of rock and debris on their heads. A few men were animated and shouting. All of them let Rais and Gad through without a question, usually greeting them with a smile or a phrase in Arabic. Sailor, Ray, and I stayed close on their heels and kept silent. Signs of earlier digs and excavations littered the valley on all sides. The tomb Howard Carter had discovered was small compared to some of the other sites. It lay directly underneath the rubble that had accumulated during the construction of the later and much larger tomb of Rameses VI. This was one of the reasons it had not been found by tomb robbers or anyone else for over three thousand years.
Rais informed us that a day earlier they had cleared the stairs, broken the seals, and opened the doorway, only to come upon another blocked descending passage filled with local stone, fragments of jars, vases, and other broken objects all of a type dating to the Eighteenth Dynasty. Today, they had already cleared nine meters of the passage.
As we approached the activity surrounding the entrance, Gurgar, the foreman, and a man Rais called Callender came forward to confront Rais and Gad.
“Are these the boys?” he asked.
“Yes,” Rais replied. “These are the boys. Are they the proper size?”
The man gave us a quick glance. “Yes, yes, of course,” he said. “Keep them near, Rais. We are about to open the second doorway. We are only waiting for Lord Carnarvon and his daughter, Lady Evelyn. Once they arrive, send me the boys.”
Callender turned abruptly and walked over to confer with another man, an Englishman dressed in a suit. He had a neatly trimmed mustache and wore a wide-brimmed hat that kept his face in shadow. Rais was proud to tell us the man was his boss, the archaeologist Howard Carter.
Though every face of every man close to the entrance looked tense and anxious, there was little being said. The anticipation was palpable. Rais led us to a low stone wall where a few carpenters sat watching the proceedings. They had been summoned the night before by Carter and asked to build a temporary wooden grille over the first doorway to protect the tomb. Sailor, Ray, and I crouched down in the shade of the wall and waited. We said nothing.
Several minutes passed, then I heard a group of voices speaking English in the distance. They were coming toward us. Howard Carter broke away from the men around him and walked to greet them. He was smiling broadly. It was Lord Carnarvon and his party, which included several Englishmen, three men from the Egyptian Antiquities Department, and two women, one of whom was Lady Evelyn. The women wore wide hats and long full skirts. To make sure they were cool and comfortable, a boy about our age followed behind, carrying two unopened umbrellas in the event either or both of the women required shade. Lady Evelyn smiled back at Howard Carter as he approached.
And then my skin began to crawl. I lost my breath and felt a chill run down my entire body. My eyes opened wide and froze. Next to me, I thought I heard Ray growl under his breath. Sailor leaped to his feet and started forward. I grabbed his wrist and stopped him. We could not believe what was in front of us, what was walking by and smiling along with everyone else. The green eyes, the brilliant white of his teeth. The small bitter laugh behind the smile. Evil pure as light. The boy walking by, the boy holding the umbrellas, was the Fleur-du-Mal.
“Hello, mon petit,” he whispered, knowing only I would hear. “I have missed you.”
I could feel my jaw tighten, but I made no response. Their small party passed quickly and joined Howard Carter. He led them all toward the entrance of the tomb. The Fleur-du-Mal turned once and winked at Sailor, who stood still as stone and then spit on the ground. Callender walked up to Rais, saying he would only need one of “his boys.” He turned and pointed to me. “You there,” he said. “Come along, come with me! Come now, boy!” I glanced at Sailor and Ray. There was no hesitation. I nodded and followed him step for step.
The workmen crowding near the entrance made way for Callender. In moments we were facing the descending stairs of the tomb. Howard Carter stood waiting at the top step. Behind him Lord Carnarvon was speaking in hushed tones to another man, followed by Lady Evelyn and another woman. And since candles are always required to check for foul gases when opening ancient subterranean tombs, the Fleur-du-Mal stood wai
ting behind the women, holding candles.
“Hand the boy the candles, Callender,” Carter said. “Tell him to stay near the other boy. Then come along. We are about to enter.”
“Done,” Callender answered.
There was no time to think. I watched Howard Carter and the others begin to descend the stairs. Callender had Gurgar hand me the candles and in seconds the Fleur-du-Mal and I were shoulder to shoulder, unable to speak to each other, descending the stairs and entering the tomb. We walked past the remnants of the first doorway and down the long passage that led to the second doorway. Broken things, potsherds, and scraps of rubbish still littered the floor. Carter cleared the last of it away. Callender helped him. No one spoke. Then he and Carter began to make a hole in the top left corner of the doorway. Carter asked for the candles. All eyes in the tomb turned to us.
I glanced at the Fleur-du-Mal for the first time. He winked, then led us around the others until we flanked the ancient doorway on both sides. Carter lit the candles. He and Callender widened the breach they had started. We held the candles high in front of it. No one breathed. A moment later the candles began to flicker from the hot gases escaping.
“Hold them closer,” Carter said, peering inside. No one moved. Seconds ticked and the candles danced in the light. He said nothing. I stared in the eyes of the Fleur-du-Mal. I saw something I never expected. Unconsciously, something much more common than psychopathic obsession appeared in his eyes. Something as common to the Giza as it is to the Meq, and as old. Hope. And that is the real secret of the Octopus. The power of the Octopus is and always has been that it represents the seed of Hope. In his eyes, in his face, I saw what my grandfather had seen, and I knew instantly why the Fleur-du-Mal had killed him.
Lord Carnarvon spoke first. “Well, can you see anything?”
Carter turned his head slightly. “Yes,” he said. “Things…wonderful things.”
To tell a story with words is admirable and usually adequate, but to tell a story with things, real things, is to make it come alive. The discovery of the tomb of King Tutankhamen opened a real and tactile conduit to a unique world and time that had passed three thousand two hundred years earlier. Intact, Howard Carter brought that world directly into the light of the twentieth century. The best story ever. Within forty-eight hours, the twentieth century had descended on the story and the Valley of the Kings. The site was made completely inaccessible to almost everyone. Howard Carter, Callender, Gurgar, and emissaries of the Egyptian government saw to that.
The Fleur-du-Mal had disappeared without a trace immediately after we emerged from the tomb. The general chaos and excitement had created a crowd scene, which he slipped through easily. I was reminded of a real octopus using his own black cloud for confusion and escape.
We were forced to wait another four months before we found a method for viewing the artifacts being removed, one by one, from inside the tomb. Each piece, each object being taken out, was priceless. Couches, caskets, alabaster vases, gold stools and chairs, chests of inlaid ivory ornamented with scenes of hunting and battle, golden bows, staves, and eventually exquisite jewelry and personal effects of the boy king. On and on, the list seemed endless. If the Octopus happened to be in the tomb, it would be brought out. One evening, Ray stated the obvious. He said, “I wonder what they’re doing with all the loot.” Sailor and I wondered the same thing.
We learned from Rais that Carter had been keeping everything in one place for cleaning and treatment before being packed and transported to Cairo. All objects were stored in the tomb of Seti II. Rais told Sailor there was a man he knew who might be able to smuggle us into the site as donkey boys, for a fee, of course. Another man in security might agree to let us have an hour or so inside the tomb of Seti II, for an added fee, of course. Rais claimed this was personally distasteful and also unavoidable. Sailor paid him well and I gave him an extra American double eagle twenty-dollar gold piece, which Rais held and coveted more than anything being removed from the tomb.
I never mentioned to Sailor or Ray what I had discovered in the eyes of the Fleur-du-Mal. I don’t know why. For the entire four months, he had not been seen anywhere. He was out of sight, but not out of mind. I knew better, and on March 14, the news arrived that Lord Carnarvon had contracted blood poisoning from a mysterious mosquito bite. He was transferred immediately from Luxor to Cairo. Lord Carnarvon would die there a few weeks later and the rumor of a curse circulated instantly. I knew the truth. The Fleur-du-Mal had extracted all he needed from Lord Carnarvon and had still come up empty. Blood poisoning may have been the cause of death, but it did not come from a mosquito bite. The real insect and curse was the Fleurdu-Mal. He was angry, active, and probably very near.
The tomb of Seti II is quarried into the base of a cliff face at the head of the wadi, or dry wash, running southwest from the main Valley of the Kings. There is only one entrance and the tomb is cut in a straight line going over two hundred feet into the cliff face with no lateral rooms. Even Sailor would not have been able to get in without being seen. The bribe to the security force, one man in particular, was an absolute necessity.
The call came from Rais on the morning of April 6, the day after Lord Carnarvon died. All work at the site had been suspended in his honor. Rais said his man would give us one hour inside the tomb. We crossed to the west bank at noon and led our donkeys along the road to the Valley of the Kings. We were in place for our rendezvous just as the sun sank over the almost vertical cliff face surrounding the tomb of Seti II. The man met us at the perimeter of the temporary security. The air was cool inside the shadow of the cliff. He hurried us toward the tomb, then handed Sailor a portable gas lamp and a key to the makeshift gate across the entrance. In Arabic, he said he would be gone until his belly was full. If we were still there when he returned, he would arrest us. There was another man waiting inside. He would be our escort, our guide, and our guard. He knew by memory where every single object was stored, so behave. Without another word, he left, rolling a cigarette and whistling as he walked away. We were completely alone, ten yards from the gate. Sailor lit the lamp.
Before we took one step, I heard a sound above us. I looked up into the glare of the last rays of light coming over the cliff. Then I felt it everywhere, the net descending. The presence of the Fleur-du-Mal was coming directly toward us, down the stone wall of the cliff face at a rapid pace. There was a cloud of rocks and dust, but in his wake, as if he were skiing. In seconds we saw the reflection of his ruby earrings. We saw his white smile. He was climbing down the steep rock at an impossible speed and angle, as quick or quicker than Geaxi, and he was laughing. In a few more seconds he stood between Sailor and the lock on the gate. His legs were spread wide. He wore leather boots laced to the knees and a long black linen tunic embroidered with tiny diamonds. He was missing his green ribbon and his black hair hung long, uncut, and loose.
We said nothing. He looked at me and grinned, then glanced at Sailor, then Ray. “You are Ray Ytuarte, no?”
“Who’s askin’?” Ray said without hesitation or a trace of irony, a poker player’s voice.
The Fleur-du-Mal dropped his smile and stared at Ray, taking a short step toward him. Their eyes were the exact same color. “I beg your pardon?” he asked. He kept gazing at Ray as if he had never seen a Meq before. Then suddenly, he broke into a loud, bitter laugh, a roar that echoed off everything around us. “Perfect! And I must request your permission to use it myself, should the occasion arise. ‘Who’s askin’?’ Brilliant, absolutely brilliant, do you not agree, Sailor?” He dropped his smile again, producing a stiletto from under his tunic. He made a move and before anyone blinked, the point of the blade was pressing into Sailor’s stomach, just above the navel. “Do you not agree?” he said again, whispering through his teeth.
“You are repeating yourself,” Sailor said calmly.
The Fleur-du-Mal ignored the response, but released pressure on the stiletto. “Now, unlock the gate, Umla-Meq. Let us see what Monsieur Cart
er has stumbled on, shall we?”
“I want to know something first,” I said.
“Is it not obvious, mon petit? I care little or not at all about what you want. Do you understand? It is meaningless what you want. You are as stupid as your father.”
“Let’s leave him out of it. Why kill Lord Carnarvon? Why torture and kill Giles, which I’m sure you did? Why murder Unai and Usoa? Because of what might be stored inside this tomb? Is that it? Is that all?”
The Fleur-du-Mal sighed deeply, dramatically. “Oh, Zezen, I am afraid you are destined for a short, miserable, frustrating life of inglorious ignorance.” He paused and glanced at the point of his stiletto. “Business, mon petit, business,” he said. “I would have thought that old fool, Solomon, had taught you about the sacredness of contracts…and the consequences if they are breached. I am a professional, Zezen, do you know what that means? I have a certain…reputation to uphold. My word is my truth. Your ideas of truth, reason, and morality are false and archaic, as they always have been, and they have nothing to do with business. And by the way, I had nothing to do with those annoying little monkeys, Unai and Usoa.”
“Unai and Usoa?” Sailor broke in. “You did not murder Unai and Usoa?”
“Now it is you who are repeating yourself, Sailor, but to answer your rude query, no, I had nothing to do with it. Why should I?”
“But, then…” I couldn’t finish my question.
“Think, mon petit, think. Who wanted Baju dead?”
I remembered Baju whispering to me as he was dying, “This is not about theft.”
“Who was in Africa? Who hates everyone? I am certain she detests Opari and I believe the poor girl even hates me. She is riddled with envy. She also impersonates me from time to time. Once, not so long ago, I told you to ask Opari about these things. I said you had the wrong villain. There is one who was a protégée of mine and a student of Opari. She has been called many things, including the Pearl, however, her name is—”