The Khufu Equation (19 page)

"We questioned some of your staff, but none of them had seen this Frenchman. What can you tell us?"

"Haven't seen him, either," said Fisher curtly.

Brett and Slaiker exchanged solemn glances, and the detective inquired:

"Have you seen my boy here, by chance?"

"No," replied Alan, cutting his phrases like a butcher with a meat cleaver. "Don't I know your son Jeff?"

The cold sight of the two men cooled any desire to joke.

"What's the matter?

"My son is being held by a maniac," said Slaiker, his voice giving forth malice and despair in equal measure.

"If you remember anything, call us on the plane headed for runway 47. We're leaving for Bangkok."

"Yes, of course," said Fisher obediently.

His friends left, and immediately afterward Alan sensed a sweetness at the bottom of his stomach. He knew that he was no longer impotent, but he simply couldn't understand why or how the change had so suddenly occurred.

"Is my memory wrong? Had God erected my castle and changed impotence into sclerosis? This is all too strange. All right, then. Well, I'll need to test my equipment."

Fisher stepped into the waiting area. There, under a branchy acacia, stood a winsome redhead.

"How do you do, Selma! Chosen anybody for the night?

"Hello, Alan. Again will you turn out a poor girl?"

"Not this time. Get ready for your lesson in the art of love."

Selma coquettishly closed a very short skirt.

"My mother doesn't let me be alone with men. I'm still a virgin, so what would happen if I turned out to be pregnant?"

"If so, I am a president." The quick slap on her fanny meant he was serious. "Come on. I won't offend." From his pocket he removed a hundred dollars and slipped it into her handbag.

Tinkling with the keys, he quickly escorted the young girl to the place in which he was sure they'd be alone. He couldn't have known then, but it was to be the place where Selma's name would be added to the list of bloodied victims.

May 26. Indian Ocean ,
aboard a Boeing 747 bound for Bangkok: 3:00 a.m.

Captain John Garrett was at the controls that night. His fat eyebrows resembled shoe brushes, and his ears were like receivers of supersonic waves. He more closely resembled a circus clown than a person with responsibility for the lives of three hundred people. Actually, he was an experienced pilot. Moreover, he had a reputation for being a nasty brawler, and many were afraid of him.

Garrett had spent the past twenty years in the air, and during all that time there were at least seven complicated cases involving accusations of one sort or another. According to statistics, pilots, controllers, technicians, meteorologists and other service personnel are culpable in eighty-five percent of air crashes. The remainder is left to the will of God.

The pilot passed a hand over his hair and shook tiny beads of sweat from his forehead. He had a nice brown mane, but slowly it was going ash-gray, the color of dirty snow.

Garrett looked at the flight attendant Sheena, knowing he had just missed an opportunity to peak up her skirt.

"That coffee was excellent. What's the secret?"

Sheena flirted:

"Nothing special. Three drops of Hennessey, a cube of cane sugar, a little love and a pinch of magic root.

"Here, the latter in detail, please." He luxuriated in the coffee aroma.

"Oh, no. That's one secret I'll take to the grave."

He caressed her hips.

"Don't hurry," she said. "Hey, what about tonight?"

"Anything special, I wonder?

"Come down to the Tahiti restaurant, and then I'll give you a massage. I'm very gentle."

"All right. I'll be there. You'd better be there, too!"

The young navigator, having been silent all the while, suddenly spoke:

"She won't come alone. She'll bring her boyfriend, and he's a Tahitian boxer."

Garrett was nearly scalded by his coffee.

"Why a boxer?" he said. "We don't need a boxer!"

The flight attendant giggled.

"You'd better pay court to Rita instead. Her boyfriend left her."

"Oh, no!" said Garrett with a grimace. "She's kind of strange. By the way, is it okay there at her place? Go and check."

The flight attendant Rita Amesbury was helping an elderly woman who had experienced chest pain. An injection of promedol relieved it somewhat, but Rita was reluctant to leave the woman. The attack could repeat, in which case the plan would have to land at the nearest airport, which was in the Maldives, forty minutes away.

Sheena silently approached Rita from behind and, having placed a hand on her shoulder, caused her to shiver.

"Oh, it's you," said Rita, visibly agitated.

She was easily frightened but tried not to show it. She wanted everyone to know she was up to the mark. That day, however, she was to pass the most complicated exam in her life: the test of fear.

"You're so nervous, Rita. What's going on?"

"We need to divert to the Maldives," she answered. "This woman has cardiac infarction."

"Seriously?" replied Sheena.

"I've done all I could. She has a heart valve, and she won't keep as far as Thailand.

"All right. I'll tell the captain. But first, return the hand-cart to the kitchen. Prepare the woman."

Jeff slept stretched out flat in complete darkness. Images of the most recent events were imprinted on his consciousness as gray smudges, but certain details cycled stubbornly through his brain. Grudgingly, the boy's memory spit out fragments of the past. He dreamed that if he collected all of them he would become the real Jeff again.

The first splinter reminded him of the beach where he and his friends had searched for treasure. Being gripped in the vice of someone's intention, he threw the pot of gold and stumbled after the Frenchman. In the next reflection, he saw an open door where, amid shafts of moonlight, a woman in black appeared. It seemed as if she wasn't the only one looking at him. Instead it was the whole universe, bottomless and all-devouring, full of terror and fear. An inner coldness, like a metallic snake, was crawling into boy's being, coiling around him and compressing. Just now, somewhere in the sincipital area, Jeff felt the heat of sharp pain, as if a thousand bees were stinging his brain. He felt himself drifting in and out of consciousness.

The next fragment of the past returned Jeff to the airport. Horrified, he saw his body from the side, clad in a girl's dress. He was terrified with feeling that his own feet obediently followed the woman in black.

"Who is this woman? Where am I going? What's my name?"

The more persistently he tried to understand, the more that painful sensation stung his brain. Intending to think of nothing, he concentrated and his own hands and stopped the inner dialogue. There were no thoughts but only observation. Then there was the loss of memory. When Jeff opened his eyes again he found himself in a plane with the woman in black in a neighboring chair. Through means of intuition he discovered that the woman was reading his thoughts like pages in a book. Now the vice of her intention was weakened just at the point his brain wouldn't burst.

Sometimes the waves of her intention left him paddling, as if he would soon sink in the boundless ocean. However, as soon as he understood what was required of him, the waves would toss him ashore. Obeying her unspoken commands, Jeff had fastened his seatbelt for the takeoff, had supper and even went to the toilet, but the slightest slip made him feel as if his head was in a furnace.

Unexpectedly, Jeff fell asleep. He dreamed of his mother. They were bathing in the Indian ocean and racing with one another on the beach. He was dissolving amid the modulations of her voice, and he was happy. He wouldn't have to cry at night anymore, because his mother was close. She was alive! Let it be in dreams, since he didn't another reality. He could stay there in the dream forever, in the presence of his mother.

An inner punch made Jeff wake up, only to find himself amid the foulness of his present circumstance. The stinging caused him to leave his seat. Catching the thin, energetic trace of the woman in black, he followed her to the kitchen area.

The flight attendant Sheena felt the urge to turn toward her back. Before her stood a beautiful woman dressed in black. Behind the woman was a girl-doll whose face was distorted in pain.

"Who are you!? Take your seats immediately!" ordered Sheena with indignation.

"Silence, bitch!"

Sheena opened her mouth to answer this rude woman properly, but the terrible gaze of the adversary froze the words in her throat.

Jeff stood behind the unearthly creature as she extended a hand and touched the attendant's forehead with a fingertip. Being in the energy channel of the Essence, Jeff felt the degree to which her energy streamed through that finger into Sheena's body.

A sickeningly sweet smell, like scorched marzipan, wafted into Jeff's nostrils. A dry, cracking sound informed him that the soft skin of the woman in black had shrunk. The rest of the skin rapidly converted into a purulent lunar landscape, becoming warped and dark. The body lost its volume and dropped like an inner tube exhausted of its air.

Jeff's sight tore away the reality of what was happening, and his body retreated to exit. Suddenly, though, he stumbled and fell. In front there was something. It was the black velvety dress plus a piece of dead flesh that looked like a hybrid of an ancient Egyptian mummy and a baked apple.

Empty eye-sockets of this something looked laughingly at Jeff: "Soon it will be your turn, you little rat." The boy looked at the flight attendant and stepped back. From her eyes radiated a familiar cold; a cold from which it was impossible to hide. The cold was deep inside, where the heart should be.

"I must be insane," he thought. "There's no need to run."

The latter idea provoked thousands more stings, and Jeff lost consciousness. This was the last splinter of recollection that Jeff could summon, after which he awakened in a wooden trap.

Fisher and Selma were busy screwing on a leather sofa, on a writing table, against the window sill, as if to test all these things for solidity. Three hours of sex, with the occasional break for a cigarette, was to him a mouthful of deliciously cool water after a long drudge through the desert of a starved existence.

Covered with just a sheet, they lay on the sofa with the poisonous puffs of cigarette smoke hovering above them.

"Selma, you are incredible."

"And you, Alan, are a maniac. I've had more men than there are stars in the sky, but none of them has ever done what you can. I've never felt such pleasure!"

"You're a perfect lover, too. If you weren't a streetwalker, I'd marry you."

"I wouldn't marry you, though. Children may appear . . . the whole sniveling lot. I live for myself."

Pause hang in the room, after which Selma took away Alan's cigarette.

"Give me that smoke. Next time, Alan, I won't even take money. Instead, I'll pay you."

Alan wanted to thank her but hesitated, took out a new cigarette and lit it.

He told himself, "I must remember something, by all means. I was hopelessly impotent, and suddenly there it was. I just have no memory of how it happened."

He stared at the ceiling as he tried to pull something important from his memory. Somewhere distant, it seemed, Selma was chattering, and with each puff of smoke he drifted further away. He was walking in a dried-up river bottom, and he knelt and touched land with his lips. There wasn't the slightest hint of life-saving moisture. He stood up and walked on along the undulations of this strange river. Cloudy shadows like hounds were in the lead, and he believed them. At last he came to the dam, whereupon he expected to find a hole in the fence. There was no end. There was no edge.

A shot of acute pain returned Alan to the sinned earth. He hadn't noticed the cigarette burning his hand. A bright flash dawned upon him, and his memory--which had been blocked by the Beast--was returning. A dense stream of information brushed past the artificial barriers in his mind, and all the data, like a properly arranged mosaic, began to overlay the foxholes of absent recollection. The process of restoration was moving ahead at full speed, and only death could stop it.

"Well, well, it seems . . . . No, I remember exactly. A little girl was with the woman in black. She was about ten years old."

Almost intuitively, Alan compared the features of Jeff and the girl he had seen.

The nose was the same, as were the mouth and eyes. He simply hadn't seen the similarity before, due to the hair. The height and the walk were absolutely the same, too. So, it was clear to Fisher that the girl was in fact Jeff.