The Khufu Equation (4 page)

The woman pushed the man forward, and he, with the display of a gorilla, thrust out his chest defensively.

"What do you want with us, mister?" said the little man, his voice trembling. "Who are you?"

"Morals police." said Jean-Pierre. "A bit of an unofficial warning."

A sharp hook to the jaw sent the little man to the floor, and the smoldering joint slid from his hand. The woman sank back in shock, uttering a worrisome sigh.

"Smoke narcosis?" said Jean-Pierre, grinding the joint into the carpet with his boot. "Next time, you'll answer according to law, not for usage but for selling the stuff. I'll make it my business."

The guy with the hairy chest came to his knees, grabbed Jean-Pierre by the pant leg and began to plead.

"Mister, you don't understand . . . ."

Jean-Pierre freed himself from the man's grasp and, with a look of pure disgust, seized the keys from the table, opened the front door and ran out of the hotel. Lucien, down below, had boarded a taxi and was leaving. Watching the car as it bolted away, Jean-Pierre jumped into the nearest cab and gave the order.

"After that car!"

He looked at his watch. It was 11:30. More than an hour had passed since their plane landed on the island. However, little did Jean-Pierre know that the man with whom he'd had the altercation aboard the plan was going directly to a little bank on Francis Rachel Street. Even if he had, such a thing would've seemed insignificant. Recollections about airport events were out. The same was true about his memory of the others who had witnessed the incident.

"And the last!" Brian Limont was finishing the conversation with Jeanette, but finally he had decided to pour oil into her wrathful fire. It amused him. "I don't like your way of talking," he said. "Throw your Carnegie into the dumpster." Sometimes it's no sin to pound the table.

Jeanette was seated opposite Limont at the long table. She truly loathed him, but this time she intended to keep silent. Jeanette was sure of the end of the conversation, and she wanted to leave the smoke-filled office sooner rather than later. As if meditating about something, Brian turned on the air conditioner, flung his legs onto the desk and fired up a cigar. Today he was neatly brushed and shaved and to great Jeanette's surprise appeared in a neat green shirt and properly ironed trousers. Brian held the cigar in his right hand, and with his left he removed a fresh handkerchief and wiped the shine of sweat from his neck. With a similar pretense of calm, he tapped the ash from the cigar not onto the floor, the way he usually did, but into the ashtray instead.

Brian was bald, mean and a little stout. It seemed to Jeanette that he looked slightly better in old clothes. He reminded her of some moth-eaten teddy bear dressed up for Christmas. The idea made Jeanette laugh to herself, and she looked at him with an ironic smirk.

"Do plush bears eat semolina?" she asked.

"What?" he replied, his eyes blinking in surprise.

"I think they do. Only . . . they don't always realize they're just plush bears."

"What is this about?" said the mongrel, confused.

"You'll know, soon enough," replied Jeanette, as she slammed the bottom of her fist against the table. The volcano of her indignation, which only a moment earlier was seething below the surface, had at last erupted.

"For the first thing," she said, rising to her feet, "you know about my husband's death, so you could be more polite. Evidently you are not human at all. As for the second, I am not "baby" to you. Shut your stinking mouth, for once. We, the women of this bank, are bringing an action against you!"

She came in close, ready to slap him in the face if he permitted himself even the slightest frivolity.

"So, speak to me politely! I am not some courtesan from the street, so I'll have respect even from a little plush bear like you."

Brian's eyes had changed. No longer was he indifferent, but now he was searching back and forth for some means of defense, or possibly a way to defuse the situation. Thus Jeanette was witnessing a most curious metamorphosis, which had changed the self-satisfied boa into a rabbit, now backed into a corner. Brian withdrew his legs and snuffed the cigar in the ashtray.

"Yes, yes," he said, "maybe . . . ." He paused with breath held and then exhaled. "You're certainly right. I apologize, and I hope you'll accept."

Jeanette didn't expect such words from the mongrel. Normally, he would never apologize to a woman.

Brian continued: "In general, I have called you for another reason." He was trying not to look her in the eye, hoping she would regain her calm. From his pocket he removed a folded piece of paper. He held it out to her.

"Forget the old," he said. "In spite of any perceived enmity to females, I appreciate you as a specialist. I need your help. I want to rush through one financial operation. Here is the list of literature. It will be necessary to find some books in the National Gallery and look through them. Tomorrow, I'll introduce you my plan and listen to your opinion. You are free today."

Jeanette eyed the rubbish basket behind the boss's chair as she turned to exit the room. His favorite piece of pornography was there. It looked somewhat strange to her.

She was gone. Brian tossed his legs back onto the table and rested the back of his head in his clasped hands. He was once again a boa with shining, bright-green eyes.

"Good for you, girl! Good for you! Plushy bears are fed only semolina."

Jeanette entered her office. Myriad thoughts raced through her mind; so numerous they were, and so random, that she couldn't control them.

"Ironed trousers, neat handkerchief, I apologize, porn magazine in a basket . . . ."

She sank into the armchair at her desk and turned on the air conditioner. The daytime temperature had hovered around twenty-seven degrees centigrade for the past week, and it was oppressive. She wanted to take a cool shower, but of course that would have to wait till she was home. She decided to gather up and dispose of all those unruly thoughts and regain her composure. She sat forward in the chair and reached for her handbag, intending to leave, but suddenly she remembered the computer disc. She opened the box in her desk drawer, pulled out the yellow envelope and placed it into her purse. She could look at it again, back at home. Then, she would take it to the police station.

Jeanette stopped the car at the parking not far from the patterned metallic clock tower, which stood overhead as a somewhat reduced copy of Big Ben. (For a century, the clock tower had represented the first official marker of colonization, but despite such an intrusion it was a pleasant sight for the island people. Among the residents one could hear remarks such as, "He hasn't even seen the clock.") The main capital arteries took as a reference point the location of the tower, and people used it as a meeting place. From the tower, a broad avenue leads to the old port, which is well known as "the long pier." Two hundred meters from the Big Ben tribute, on the long pier, stood a solid-looking two-story house. The museum was on the first floor and the library was on the second, featuring a wealth of quality resources.

The door of the main museum room opens directly to the street, with neither a foyer or a corridor. Visitors simply stumble onto one of the historical memorials of the Seychelles' past: a huge, carved stone cube, the famous French "Stone of Possession" installed by Captain K. N. Murphy in November 1756 at what is now Victoria. However, the city dates back to 1778, when the first French settlement grew on Mae Island under the name "Etablisment du Rua," meaning "King's settlement."

Jeanette walked slowly, thoughtfully, down the long pier. With each step she waded deeper into the pool of reminiscence. Like a mirage the nostalgia beckoned her, beautiful and delicious in the splendor of image, fragrance, sound and sensation.

It was an embarrassing situation in which to find herself. Jeanette cast her eyes down toward the pavement, which lay like a gray canvas beneath the hovering colors of memory. At this moment or that, she would lift her gaze up to the boulevard and the palm trees. Once she even scanned the shoreline, with its little crowds of fishing boats and yachts. All such objects were real; among them, there was no Andrew. He lived only in the collage of recollections. Images of him were like the pieces of a vast puzzle, which, so soon after his demise, seemed fated to incompletion.

In a mixture of surrounding sounds--the cree-creeing of seagulls, rustling of palm fronds, the emerald crush of waves as they beat into the pylons of the pier, the intermingling of sightseers, the droning din of engines and land and sea--there was no sound of the man she had loved. Absent from her life was his husky sigh and unassuming, friendly voice. Andrew could be found only in Jeanette's heart. Even the most idyllic day, with the most perfect sun, could not change that.

She also remembered the bitter tinge of Cuban cigars that would cling like an invisible patina to his lips. She missed that, like she missed all of him . . . even the casual contempt with which he viewed respectable work. Now, out on the pier, redolent in the odor of iodine-bearing seaweed, scorched engine oil, diesel exhaust, freshly caught fish and snack shacks, there was no such odor. It lived only in a consciousness that refused to comply with reality. The reality was that Andrew was dead. Jeanette knew she had to admit that, but still she missed him so much.

It seemed that everything on the pier reminded her of the day she met the man who would become her husband. His name was Andrew Krishelje, he said, but it wasn't simply happenstance that they met. Instead, he had stepped up and asked her name, doing so with such unabashed simplicity that this pretty girl--Jeanette--was immediately disarmed. Could she then have supposed that the meeting would be the threshold of one of the greatest chess game in the universe? Peculiar as it was, the girl had been offered the role of the white pawn, defended by someone who, despite his affability, was not the white knight.

The talk began between them, and soon, having forgotten about everything else, they lay together on the beach. They played in the water, talked about life, and kissed. He charmed her completely, and after three days he made a proposal.

Jeanette liked Andrew very much, especially in the early days: He'd give her flowers; he was a loving and true husband; and he could hold his own in any company or conversation; and he was eminently likeable. Eventually, though, something strange happened.

Andrew began to leave the country often, and he'd come back with too much money from his "unsinkable" accounts. Jeanette's questions, he would not answer. He'd simply remain silent or try to change the subject. The only thing he acknowledged was that the money wasn't stained with blood. She believed him but demanded that he stop the masquerade for the sake of his own good conscience. However, Andrew went on to play his destiny. But now, with it all having ended so tragically, she cursed herself over his death. Despite all his secretive dealings, she had loved him. He was her husband, forever gone. He was the father of the child she was carrying. What she did not know was her own immutable destiny, or her heritage, for on the day of Jeanette's birth the angels, in bending low to kiss her, had touched their wings to her perfect face.

One can find people of nearly every race in the Seychelles. Such a range of acquaintance would offer more interest than any anthropological exhibit could. The people have such intricate genetic bonds that even the most "respectable" couple would be hard pressed to predict what color skin their baby would have. The offspring of French landlords and sea adventurers, African slaves, English sailors and clerks, Chinese merchants, Indian artisans and Arabian fishermen have blended to form populace of the Seychelles, or, as the natives call themselves, the Creole nation. Jeanette's father was a French legionary, and she inherited his agate eyes and soft, curly brown hair. Her mother was the ancestor of Mae Chinese traders, and from her Jeanette got beautiful mouth lines and the pretty, Eastern eyes. Jeanette was neither tall nor bulky; she had a slender figure. In the lightness of her step, one could perceive a noble intellect and strong will.

Jeanette was attractive to people because she was inclined to say good about good things; to discuss topics of merit and direct the course of her own life. Her ingeniousness and simplicity, which together represented great natural wisdom, were magnetic to others. She, however, disliked foolishness and heartlessness in people. But this was the day when she had finally told that scumbag of a boss he was little more than a moth-eaten teddy bear. She was proud of that, but it was a long time coming.

Jeanette didn't even notice that she had entered the National Library, but suddenly there she was, in the foyer. She went to the second floor and, passing the librarian's counter, faced a maze of bookshelves.

She removed the folded piece of paper from her bag. She looked it over and then located the shelf labeled "Fundamentals of Marketing." Many of the books that Brian had listed were well-known to her. Some of them, she even had in her own library. At the moment, though, she was interested in two things: a statistical reference book by Mikel Bordel and a journal of marketing research by Duglas Rovensol.