The Count of the Sahara Page 5

  The elevator operator in his black uniform and pillbox hat gave a polite nod. He didn’t have to ask where I was going, because I couldn’t wait to tell him like the big old rube I was.

  “Third floor please. I have an appointment with Count de Prorok.” He seemed less impressed with that knowledge than I was, and pushed the button. The cage door slid shut with a clank, and he checked the clasp, stabbed the “3” and up we went. His eyes never left the door. For such a simple job, he sure gave it all he had.

  I wondered about that job. Were people so bewildered by trusting themselves to push a button and navigate two floors without getting lost? Or were rich people just so used to having someone else do everything for them they’d never developed the skill? Either way, I couldn’t imagine ever being an elevator operator. It would be like driving the world’s shortest streetcar route.

  We got to three and the door opened. “Thanks, don’t want to keep the Count waiting.”

  All that got me was a monotone “Mmm hmm, haveagoodday” and the door clanked shut on me.

  Amber lights in glass sconces lined the hall. The rug was softer and prettier than anything I’d ever walked on. Geometric patterns led away from the elevator and down either end of the corridor. I counted off, “Three eighteen, three twenty,” right up to three twenty-four. I tugged my vest down over my gut and knocked.

  “Un moment,” boomed a familiar voice. The door flew open and there he stood. The same hair perfectly coiffed, the same wrinkle-free appearance. This time he wore a grey double breasted and a snow-white shirt with a school tie of some sort perfectly knotted. He grinned around the pipe in his teeth. He began to reach out to shake my hand, but caught himself and he clasped my shoulder in a friendly greeting.

  “Good to see you, Brown. Right on time. Welcome to my home away from home.”

  I gave the room a quick scan as I stepped inside. I’d never actually stayed in a hotel room, but I could tell this was probably a pretty swell specimen. The bed was already made, or at least the spread pulled back into place. The wardrobe door hung half open, with hangers full of perfectly pressed shirts, a pair of loafers placed dead center on the bottom shelf. Further left, the windows would have offered a panoramic view of the glory that was downtown Cedar Rapids, but the drapes were still drawn.

  It had its own bathroom. Pretty swanky. I scoped out a shaving kit and toiletries perfectly arranged on the vanity. The mirror was still a little foggy, with big drops running down it. This is what the son of a gun looked like straight out of the shower, apparently. How did he do that?

  Then I saw the pile of equipment in the corner. Partly hidden behind the chair, the projector lay on its side, the magic lantern up on end. The crate of relics and props lay ajar and the contents were simply thrown inside in a big jumble. An extension cord was just bunched up and left loose on the floor; an accident waiting to happen.

  I resisted the urge to pick it up and rewind it immediately. I was worried it might annoy him. Plus I wasn’t on the clock yet. Never say I didn’t learn anything from the Old Man.

  “May I offer you a glass of water? It’s all I’ve got at the moment. Well, not all, but it’s awfully early in the morning, and this is Iowa.”

  “N-n-o sir, I’m good.” While I tried to strike a balance between speaking too quickly and letting my stutter get the best of me, or taking too much time and sounding like an idiot, I just rocked back and forth uncomfortably.

  “Well, at least sit down.” He directed me to the overstuffed brocade armchair by the window while he plunked down on the edge of the bed in a perfectly casual way that I guess came from spending so much time in hotel rooms. Who conducts business from a bed?

  He paused to light his pipe. “You can smoke if you’d like.”

  “No sir, I’m good.” I never understood smoking, and once I started working around film at Old Man Mayer’s, I learned it was probably the worst habit you could develop.

  The fire that left me unemployed started because O’Malley decided it was too bloody cold to go outside to smoke, and it wouldn’t do any harm to light up in the projection room. By the time I saved most of Mary Pickford’s “Little Annie Rooney” my hand was burnt, O’Malley was fired, and the theater closed ‘til further notice. It was probably smarter not to take up the habit. A lot less money, too. A pack of cigarettes was a ridiculous fifteen cents a pack, two for a quarter if you got the cheap ones, and a little less if you rolled your own.

  “Wise man, a filthy habit really. I started smoking a pipe to look older, now I can’t put the damned thing down. At least it keeps the mosquitoes away.” He put it in the ashtray. “So, what did you think of last night?”

  Think of what? Him? The lecture? The weather? “People seemed to like it a lot.”

  He nodded. “They usually do. What did you think of it?” I couldn’t think of a thing to say. “You didn’t see much of it, did you?”

  “Not really… I mean, I was too busy. It looked real swell, though,” I added, hoping I wasn’t blowing my chance.

  “Too busy saving my bacon, you mean. Every place I go, I get assigned some idiot assistant who’s too busy watching the lecture to actually do their job. I’ve considered being less ‘swell’, but I can’t help it—I’m too marvelous for my own good sometimes.”

  That laugh was infectious. I tried not to join in, but wound up giving a queer sort of snort, which set us both off.

  “How old are you, Willy?”

  “N-n-nineteen, sir.” Eighteen had been easier to say. Anything starting with a N, an M, a B or a P was a nightmare. I couldn’t wait to be twenty and I could answer a simple question without sounding like a moron.

  “Well, I’m only thirty—barely—so you can stop with the sir nonsense. Call me Byron. The whole Count thing is good for business and all, but it’s quite ridiculous. I’m American you know.”

  I didn’t know. You sure couldn’t tell by his snobby voice, which sounded nothing like the American I was used to hearing. In fact, nothing about this guy passed for normal in Milwaukee, or Cedar Rapids. I’d never been anywhere else so I didn’t really know.

  “Mmmm,” he nodded as he relit his pipe. “Raised in England and so on, but my parents were both from Philadelphia. How did you get so good with that equipment?”

  I started to give an “I dunno” shrug and forced myself to answer. “It’s just equipment. People act like it’s voodoo or something, but if you just let it do what it does, it’s just fine.” I could tell I wasn’t making my point very well, so I took another run at it. “If you try to get a m-m-machine to do something it can’t, it’ll go haywire on you. Like that kid last night, shoving the lantern carriage…” I mimed him forcing the works back and forth. “You just knew something bad would happen.”

  I debated whether to continue, but the pile in the corner was mocking me, and I pointed to it. “If you took b-b-better care of the equipment, you’d have less trouble with it. Like this cord…” I reached down and grabbed the offending line. “If you leave it like this, it’ll kink up and make knots. P-p-plus it’ll break and short out on you.”

  I bent my arm, took the plug in my wounded hand and wrapped the cord from elbow to fist, over and over quickly. “If you just wrap it like this every time, it’ll last longer and be ready to use when you need it.” I wrapped the female plug around the coil and knotted it in on itself, while trying to ignore how much that sounded like one of my father’s lectures.

  “You’re very good with all… that. You are looking for work? And you’re not in school?”

  I shook my head. “N-n-nah. I graduated last year. Like I said, I’m nineteen.”

  “Not high school, university. Oh, sorry, you call it college here, don’t you?”

  “I’m not exactly college material.”

  “And that genius last night was? And your cousin… Bob was it? Prime college material I suppose?” My only response was another stupid shrug, proving my case.

  “Where did you say you were from?”<
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  “Milwaukee.”

  He looked confused. “Muhwokee, where’s that? Oh you mean Mill Wau Kee. Wisconsin. Yes, I believe I’m going there soon. Is that how they pronounce it? Muh instead of Mill?”

  Rather than let on I had no idea what he was talking about, I just said, “Spose so.”

  “Do you know how to drive?”

  “I don’t have a car, but I know how to drive, yeah.”

  “I have the use of a car for the rest of this leg. Supposed to drive myself but I’d like to live long enough to see my children again. I have another week here, then off to Washington and Atlanta, but will be back in February and probably into March. I need someone to take care of my equipment, get me where I’m going alive, and free me up to do what I do best. Plus you look like you can take care of yourself.” He made the same mistake a lot of people make, confusing my size with any kind of athletic ability. I let him think it. What was there to keep secure other than some rocks and old clothes?

  “Can you do all that, Willy?”

  “For fifteen a week?” Hell yes. I’d shine his shoes and kill his landlord for that kind of money.

  “So one week, starting yesterday, then two more when I’m back. After that, the sky’s the limit.”

  I should have shut up then, but I couldn’t help asking. “Why pay so much? You can get someone to do it for a couple of bucks a night. P-probably for free.”

  He took a sizzling pull on his pipe while he thought, then got up and went to the box of slides. He rummaged around, completely undoing last night’s work. It didn’t seem to bother him, though, because he took one of the slides and held it out to me.

  I held it up to the lamp. It was the picture of the expedition from last night. “The gentleman on the end is Louis Chapuis. He’s one of the best engineers in Africa—and the most expensive. He was our guide. Cost us, well our patrons, nearly double what a local would have run. Same with the little man in the kepi—the cloth hat with the tail, there. Caid Belaid speaks seven languages I’m aware of. We could have found someone with three and probably even gotten along with just French and Arabic. Believe me, he didn’t come cheap either. Do you know why I paid them so much?

  My old man would have said because you’re rich and stupid, but I kept my yap shut.

  His voice softened. “Because it was my first time in charge of an expedition. The New York bloody Times was watching. The Logan Museum, the French government, all of them relying on me and I had no idea what I was doing. So I paid people who did. In life, you get what you pay for. I knew Louis would keep us out of trouble, and he did. Same with Belaid. When you scrimp on the front end you wind up paying for it eventually.”

  “So why me?”

  “I need to focus on my presentation. That’s what I’m good at… it’s what people come to see. When the projector goes down, or the trucks are upside down—although that was a good line, maybe we’ll keep it in—the audience gets restless and disappointed. The smoother everything runs, the better time the audience has, and the smarter I look. The better I look the more people ask me to lecture, and the more money I can charge. I literally can’t afford to look like an idiot.”

  “And,” his tone became conspiratorial, “a big-shot Count shouldn’t be lugging his own equipment around like some kind of…stevedore. I am not paying you to run a projector. I’m paying you to keep me out of hot water and make me look good.”

  My confusion must have been obvious, and he was getting exasperated at my thick-headedness. I knew the tone well. “Look. It’s like with that cord. You knew that if you wound it a certain way, and handled it right, it would work when I needed it. You can see those things and you just do them. I don’t see them, and when I do them, it’s half-arsed. It bites me in the backside every time. It’s the same with people. Understand?”

  I knew it was that way with machinery, but I’d never heard the idea applied to human beings. Going cheap on a projector, or bad carbons for the lamps, meant you’d spend more time replacing them than watching movies. Everyone knew that, or should. I was unconvinced real people worked the same way, and I wasn’t entirely sure I was a good investment, but what the hell. It was his money.

  “So a couple of stops, we’ll finish up in Moline, and you bring the car back here. Then we’ll meet up the twentieth of February. After that it’s two weeks… so far. Chicago, Muhwaukee, Madison, probably Saint Louis, and I have a very important stop in Beloit…”

  He had me at St. Louis, even if he pronounced it Saint Looey. Given that Cedar Rapids was the farthest I’d ever been from home the idea of even Beloit and Madison sounded exotic. To think he went all over the world—even to Atlanta and St. Louis—like it was nothing. The job sounded better and better.

  He set the hook with the final question. “Will your aunt and uncle mind if you left tomorrow?”

  They’d probably do a jig. They weren’t the problem. The hole in the schedule left me with two weeks or so with no work. I’d have to go home, but after that I’d be gone for good. Mama could probably buy me that much time. It wouldn’t be fun, but I could tough it out, especially when I knew I’d be able to make my escape permanent.

  “N-n-nope, it’s fine.” I stuck out my hand, bandages and all, and he used a two-hand shake on it.

  “Done. Okay, we leave tomorrow for the bustling metropolis of Des Moines, Ioway,” he said in a surprisingly convincing Hawkeye accent. “What do we need to get up and running?”

  I’d have to realign those slides, and maybe put a lock on the box so he couldn’t muck them up anymore. None of the boxes was properly labeled, that would make things a whole lot easier. We’d need some stuff from the hardware store.

  “Not much. I can get most of it at Martinek and Son’s, it’s just down Third Avenue.”

  “Great, make a list and we’ll get it while we’re having lunch. I believe I’ve recovered fully from last night. I’m starving.”

  Chapter 4

  Batna, Algeria

  October 13, 1925

  Pond gave his ankle an early morning scratch through his sock, then his arm through his sleeve. Then his nails scraped over most of the rest of his body. The mosquitoes they’d been so worried about were merely decoys for the fleas that ambushed him while he slept.

  It was barely dawn, and everything in the room was bathed in a cool grey. Tyrrell snored away on one cot under a mound of blankets. Martini, like any other old desert hand, lay on top of the blankets, sleeping the sleep of the just and uneaten.

  Pond got out of bed, slopped some water from a pitcher into a chipped white bowl, then palmed it against his face. He combed his fingers through his hair in a vain attempt to tame it and quietly slipped out of the room. He always enjoyed early mornings. Whether it was the North Woods of Wisconsin or the hills of southern France, there were few things he loved more than being alone with Mother Nature at sunrise. He was in a hurry to experience the feeling of dawn over the desert, but there were at least two more nights of flea-bag inns before then. No sense complaining about it.

  He took his notepad and writing stationery to the lobby. He had time to dash off a short letter to Dr. Collie at the Logan Museum, and hoped it sounded professional. He’d calmed down a little since yesterday, but only a little. Running out of fuel on the first day was annoying. If it happened out in the true desert it could be fatal.

  Surprisingly, de Prorok was already awake, if a little the worse for wear from the brandy he’d consumed. Hungover or not, he was fully operational, sitting slouched in a raggedly upholstered chair with his back to the rest of the lobby, jotting notes in a leather-bound notebook. The Count gestured to the silver urn on the table in front of him.

  “Ahh, Pond, good morning. Everything up to scratch?” He chuckled at his own joke as his nails raked at his own shirt sleeve.

  “Funny,” Pond grunted, and gestured towards the coffee. He always thought cowboys and loggers back home drank thick coffee, then he’d gone to Europe. And even that sludge couldn’t prepare
him for how the Arabs drank it. It was so thick and strong, you could use it for medicinal purposes rather than recreation. There was no way you could spend the morning lingering over these little thimbles that passed for cups. A good American diner mug of this mud would have you awake and crapping for a week. Thank God sugar was in good supply.

  Taking that first scalding sip, Pond studied the other man. The Count was two years younger than he was—they celebrated the Count’s thirtieth birthday in Constantine—and the nearness in age was about the only similarity between them. Pond was short. At best he was five two or three depending on who he was talking to and how straight he stood, while the other man towered over him, literally looking down at him most of the time. While the American was stocky, Byron de Prorok was wiry, and deceptively strong.

  Pond blew a stray wisp of hair from his face. That was another thing that bothered him. De Prorok’s dark hair was always molded into a crest of wavy perfection at any time of the day or night. Even when the Count removed his pith helmet after a day in the sun, it was still pristine, not a hair out of place. Pond hated those stupid hats, preferring a floppy safari-style, but it didn’t seem to matter what he put on, his hair would fly about and stand on end. Sometimes that made him look taller. Mostly it made him look like he’d just crawled out of bed.

  De Prorok’s booming voice shook him from his thoughts. “I’m awfully sorry about yesterday. Not the most auspicious start was it?”

  “No, I suppose not. What happened?”

  “I had the cans filled and loaded as soon as Rouvier granted permission for us to leave. I’m afraid I underestimated the amount of evaporation they’d undergo in such a short time. I’ve seen it happen before. I remember one time outside Carthage…”

  “Evaporation? You’re telling me the gas was there and just, uhh, poof? There’s no chance you underestimated what it would take?”

  This drew a smiling shrug in response. “Oh, it’s possible, of course. Math isn’t exactly my strong suit, and ultimately, of course, it’s on me. Still the boys from Renault told me what they needed and they should know, so that’s what I ordered. Reygasse’s people assure me we have plenty of supplies for the trip. I mean, it’s basically a walk in the park isn’t it? Especially this first leg.”