Chapter Seventeen: Pierre

 

 

***

 

Jonathan stood motionless in the dark hallway.  He couldn’t see or feel anything, except the cold barrel of the gun against his skin.

 

“Who are you?” the voice drawled in a heavy French accent.

 

Jonathan hesitated.  It was dark in the room, he had a gun pressed to his neck, and he had no idea who was assaulting him.  It was, all around, a bad situation.

 

“A friend,” he responded.

 

In response, the voice gave a harsh laugh.  “I doubt you’re a friend of mine.”

 

“Look,” Jonathan began, “are you Pierre?”

 

Silence.  Then, slowly, a metallic click, the sound of the hammer of the gun being cocked.

 

“Maybe.  But you have yet to answer my question.  Who are you?”

 

Jonathan hesitated.  The man could be a spy for Imhotep.  If he was, and Jonathan revealed his own true identity, he would completely give himself away.  He would be carted off to be a slave in Egypt, or, perhaps, murdered.  Or the owner of the voice could be a madman.  If he was crazy, he might just shoot Jonathan.  End his life.  End the hopes of the people of the world for redemption.  How pointless.  To come all this way, halfway around the world, to die like this.  How goddamn pointless.

 

Jonathan wanted to weep.

 

In the dark, he felt a hand against his hip, reaching into his jacket pocket.  Pulling out his passport.

 

“Benedict Evans, eh?” the man said, and Jonathan could smell his drunken breath.  “An Englishman.  I never liked Englishmen.”

 

“Are you Pierre?” Jonathan said again, desperately hoping to mollify him before the drunken man did something crazy.  Like pull the trigger.

 

“Who,” the man said, his voice dangerously quiet, “wants,” he continued softly, “to know?”

 

“I was sent to collect a valuable artifact from you.  Something that was discovered in an antique shop over a month ago.”

 

Jonathan held his breath.

 

Suddenly he felt himself being grabbed, lifted off of the floor, moved, and slammed up against the wall.  He gasped for breath, the man’s beefy hands pressed against his throat.  He was being crushed like a paper bag.

 

“How do you know that?” the voice asked, hoarse and, oddly, slightly afraid.

 

“A man named Jacques sent me,” Jonathan gasped.  “From Paris.”

 

Suddenly he felt himself being released, and he crumpled to the ground grabbing his aching throat.  The light flicked on.  He looked up at a great bear of a man, with tousled blond hair and an unshaven face.

 

“Are you Jonathan Carnahan?” he asked, uncocking his gun and sliding it back into the holster against his hip.

 

Jonathan could do nothing but nod.

 

“Why didn’t you say so?” the huge man asked, reaching down and pulling up the shocked Englishman.    

 

“I think,” Jonathan said, breathing heavily, “it had something to do with the gun pressed to my neck.”

 

The other man laughed heartily as he held Jonathan’s two shoulders to keep him upright.  “I’m Pierre.  I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”                            

 

Jonathan could do nothing but nod.  At least the man wasn’t going to kill him.

 

Pierre grinned.  “Come on.  Let’s get you a drink.”

 

A drink?  Jonathan perked up immediately as he stumbled further into the room.  Things were indeed looking up.

 

 

***

 

 

After retrieving Hubert, the three men sat around Pierre’s dingy coffee table, knocking down shots of whiskey and getting pretty damn drunk.

 

“Eighteen years old,” Jonathan observed, holding up the amber bottle to the light.  “Very nice, my newfound friend.”

 

“I only drink the best!” Pierre declared drunkenly, sloshing some more alcohol into his glass.

 

Hubert sat silently, his hands wrapped around his glass, his eyes tearing slightly as the liquid burned down his throat.  He had been trying to drink along with the two older men, but found himself, instead, experiencing a rather acute pain.

 

“Don’t like your cuppa warmth, Huey?” Jonathan joked, pouring some more into Hubert’s mostly full glass.

 

Hubert only responded with a half smile that was more grimace than anything else.  Jonathan and Pierre laughed together heartily.

 

“Can’t blame the boy,” Jonathan continued fondly, ruffling Hubert’s hair.  “I,” he said, slurring his words only slightly, “can drink anyone under the table.  I am an expert at drinking.”

 

“Re-ally?” Pierre asked, rubbing his unkempt beard.  “I used to say that too,” he continued jovially.  But then he stopped, frowning.  “But that was before my wife left me.”

 

There was dead silence in the room.  Suddenly, at the same moment, both men started laughing hysterically.

 

“Before you’re wife left you?” Jonathan gasped out, clapping Pierre on the back, his face turning red.

 

Pierre could only nod, guffaws spilling out of his mouth.

 

“My good man,” Jonathan began, holding his stomach which was aching from laughter, and raised his glass for a toast.  “It is wonderful to find such good company here in Shanghai–and such good spirits!”

 

Pierre roared with laughter at Jonathan’s little pun, and reached over to refill his glass, which had grown, curiously, empty.

 

Hubert, quite sober, was amazed at the transformation a little alcohol did to his friend and mentor Jonathan Carnahan.  It was good he didn’t like the taste of whiskey, he thought ruefully, for someone in the room should be alert enough to defend the book, if the need arose.  He took off his jacket, balled it up as a pillow, and attempted to sleep on the fluffy chair, amidst the roaring laughter and shouting and clinking classes.  It was amazing, he thought before he fell asleep, exhausted, that two men could make so much noise.

 

“You haven’t tried my Jack Daniels yet,” Pierre slurred, stumbling over to his liquor cabinet.

 

“We drunk that hours ago,” Jonathan said, flopping down on the couch and holding his glass above his head, amazed at how the glass looked when the light from the table lamp hit it.  “This is ama-zing,” he said slowly, turning his glass this way and that.

 

“Why, you’re drunk!” Pierre exclaimed, shocked, watching Jonathan stare, completely absorbed, at his shot glass.

 

“My dear sir, I am not drunk!” Jonathan asserted, trying to sit up but only sloshing more alcohol onto his shirt.

 

“Then try some of this, laddie,” Pierre mumbled, breaking the seal on the new bottle of Jack Daniels.  “You know,” he said contemplatively, looking at the bottle.  “I knew Jack in the Great war.  But he just couldn’t hold his liquor.”

 

Jonathan spit out the gulp he had just taken, laughing uproariously.  This had to be the funniest man he had ever met.

 

Pierre was drunk, and he was enjoying being drunk, he thought admiringly, just before he passed out on the couch.  The two of them, he was sure, were going to get on famously.

 

 

***

 

 

“What do you mean you’re not going to give us the book?” Jonathan asked incredulously, holding an ice pack to his throbbing head.

 

It was the morning after their little party, and Pierre was proving to be quite a handful.

 

The Frenchmen paced towards Jonathan, his tousled blond hair, athletic strides, and straightforward manner oddly reminiscent of Rick.  “I’m not ready to place the book into your hands,” he declared, staring back at Jonathan.

 

The Englishman gaped openmouthed at him, finally succumbing to the first thought that popped into his head.  “How do you not have a hangover?”

 

Pierre shrugged.  “I’ve built up a resistance.  It’s all about habit, you know.”

 

“Ah,” Jonathan replied amiably.  Then he seemed to shake himself from his headache.  “Wait a minute,” he protested.  “We came all the way from Paris, dodging Imhotep’s spies and police, risking our very lives, and you’re not going to give us the book?”

 

“And I held onto it for over a month, concealing and protecting it from Imhotep’s minions,” Pierre shot back.  “Besides, I don’t know if I can trust you.”

 

“Trust?” Jonathan asked incredulously.  “Jacques sent me, you must know–”

“Yes, yes,” Pierre interrupted impatiently.  “You’re Jonathan Carnahan, one of the heroes who stopped Imhotep before.  I’ve heard the fairy tale already, thank you.”

 

Jonathan stood up, wobbling only slightly.  “Fairy tale?” he asked indignantly.  “My good sir, the story of our past with Imhotep is not fit for children in the least!”  He stopped, thinking over his last statement.  Then, shaking his head in disgust at his own inane comment, he continued.  “And anyway, the stories are true!  How dare you suggest it didn’t happen?”

 

“Well,” Pierre commented dryly, “you don’t exactly seem like the type to save the world.”

 

“Wait a minute,” Hubert interjected from his seat on the couch, standing up between the two men.  He turned to Pierre.  “How do we even know that you have the book?  You could just be lying and wasting our time.”

 

Pierre turned, incensed, to the younger man.  “I have the book, don’t you worry about that.”

 

“Prove it,” Jonathan said irately.

 

Pierre looked at him long and hard.  “Fine.  I’ll show it to you.”  He turned and walked briskly towards the door, where he rechecked the three locks.  Then he walked towards the windows, where he lowered the shades, until the room was almost in complete darkness, save the small table lamp still lit from the night before.

 

Finally, Pierre turned towards Jonathan again.  He seemed slightly less confident, a bit out of his element.  And it occurred to Jonathan that despite his bluster, Pierre understood the power of the Book of the Dead.  And he was, as he should have been, afraid.

 

“I’m prepared to show it to you.  But prove to me that you have seen it before.  Prove to me that you held it in your hands.”  Pierre looked at the Englishman expectantly, but with a note of fear, a note of uncertainty.

 

An ironic smile passed over Jonathan’s face.  “It was the Book of the Living I held in my hands,” he said softly, “not the Book of the Dead.”

 

There was silence in the room.  Jonathan sighed, and tried to explain what it was like to hold an object not of this world.  “There are no human words to describe what cannot be described,” he began, remembering as he held the Golden Book, trying to read from it to control the mummies and save Rick and Evy.  “Holding the book is like...holding a ticking bomb.  You can feel the power.  It seeps into your skin, into your being.  It makes you feel as though you could almost be a God, but at the same time you are wholly human, wholly vulnerable.  And you know deep down, that if you try to control it, the powers of the Book will defy you.  The powers in that book do not comply with human wishes, but only with the wishes of the Gods.  That much I know.”

 

Silence consumed the room.  Jonathan dared to look up and meet Pierre’s eyes.  They glistened in the dim light.

Pierre’s voice broke the hesitant silence, the sounds harsh and scratchy.  “I’ll get it.  Wait here.”

 

Jonathan sat back down on the couch, exhaustion seeping through his body.  They had come so far.  And he was so tired.

 

He sat with Hubert in the silence.  They could hear the sounds of a safe clicking open.  Pierre returned, holding the book awkwardly in his arms.  He handed it to Jonathan, almost as if he were glad to be rid of it.  “You asked for it,” he said.

 

The book lay heavy in his arms.  Jonathan closed his eyes and ran his hands over the familiar designs.  He could have drawn those images in his sleep.  His forefinger ran lightly over the winged scarab.  He opened his eyes, hardly believing that he was finally holding it.

 

Here, in a shabby apartment in Shanghai, was the potential power that could end the reign of a dictator.  Of an absolute ruler.  Could shift the power balance of the world.  If he had not seen and done all that he had in his short life, Jonathan would not have believed it.

 

He knew his eyes were wet, but he did not care.  “This is it,” he said, to no one in particular.  “This is the turning point.  Now we have the advantage.”

 

Pierre turned and leaned up against the desk, facing Jonathan from across the room.  He crossed his arms across his broad chest.  “I’m not an expert on Egyptian curses and whatnot, but try to explain your plan to me.”

 

Jonathan smiled ruefully, shifting the weight of the book in his arms.  “I don’t have a plan yet.”

 

“So,” Pierre began sarcastically.  “You’re going to waltz into Egypt with the book and do what?”

 

“We’re going to find the remaining Med Jai.  They are the keepers of the ancient knowledge.”

 

“So you’re going to rely on some ancient warriors, who are probably all dead, to figure out your plan?”  Pierre asked incredulously.

 

“Do you have a better plan, Frenchy?” Jonathan exclaimed, standing up again, allowing the book to slide onto the couch.

 

Pierre gazed back at him, trying to control his anger.  “No.  But I wouldn’t want to traipse around Egypt with a book that Imhotep wants without, at least, a decent plan.”

 

“No one’s asking you to traipse around anywhere,” Jonathan argued pointedly.  “Give us the book and let us do the dangerous part.”

 

“Are you suggesting that I am afraid?” Pierre asked, shocked.

 

The two older men glared at each other from across the room.

“The English,” Pierre muttered disgustedly.

 

“Hey!” Jonathan exclaimed.

 

“No, no,” Hubert interjected hurriedly, trying to placate them.  “No once is suggesting that you are afraid.  But it is not your duty to make that risk.  It is our responsibility, not yours, to transport the book back to Egypt.”

 

“So after all I’ve done you want me to just give the book up to strangers?”  Pierre asked, staring from Jonathan to Hubert and then back again.  “Do you know what I went through to get this thing?” he asked, pointing to where the book lay innocently on the sofa.  “The shop owner wasn’t that eager to sell it.  I had to use some,” he coughed, “er, tools of persuasion.”

 

If Jonathan weren’t so indignant, he would have smiled.  Pierre was indeed similar in many ways to his brash American brother-in-law.

 

“Look,” Jonathan started again more calmly.  “Right now we have no other options.  Nothing else has been known to stop Imhotep.  We must bring the book to Egypt and find the Med Jai.  You understand that much, do you not?”

 

“I understand that in theory,” Pierre replied, gesturing wildly with his hands.  “But think of the reality.  I am a soldier.  I think in realistic terms because I have to.  How are you physically going to transport the book into Egypt?”

 

Jonathan did not answer.  He didn’t have an answer, at least not yet.

 

“I am a patriot,” Pierre continued.  “I fought for my country.  I love my country.  And I would do anything to murder Imhotep with my own bare hands.”  He paused again, running his fingers through his dirty blond hair.  When he spoke again, his voice was husky, his words tinged with anger and hopelessness and sorrow.  “You know, I saw an entire army swept into the sea.  The Priest raised his hands, and washed away a million soldiers.  A million soldiers, drowning without even a chance to defend themselves.”

 

He shuddered, turning to face Jonathan.  “I am sure that I do not have to explain to you his powers.  But understand this: I know how powerless against him I am.  I accept that.  And I know that the Priest is smart and ruthless.  And so I won’t let the two of you dance the tango into Egypt without a shred of a plan, probably give yourselves away, and let the book fall back into Imhotep’s hands.”

 

Jonathan sighed.  “Pierre, we may not have a brilliant plan, but we’ll think of one.”  He paused, gesturing emphatically.  “Plan or no, we have to take this chance.  The longer we wait, the more difficult our task becomes.  And if we never try, then we will never have any weapon against him.”  He hesitated.  “We will think up a good plan.  Trust us.” 

 

He waited, as Pierre thought over his words.  But the Frenchman slowly shook his head.

Jonathan glowered.  “I will not just stand here and allow you to stop us, after we have come so far.”

 

“I will not give up the book,” Pierre stated firmly.

 

“The book is useless to you.  You can’t even open it!” Jonathan cried exasperatedly.

 

“As if you can,” Pierre shot back.  He sighed, turning away from them, looking down at the shotglass resting on his tabletop from the night before. 

 

When he spoke again, it was calmer, softer, with a haunting ring of truth.  “Even if we kill Imhotep, do you truly believe that another will not rise to take his place?  In this shattered world, you really think the people will cry for democracy and freedom?”  He turned back to Hubert and Jonathan, gently shaking his head.  “No.  People are animals.  They will cry for order, for a strong leader to make them forget the horror of their past.  But they will just be trading fire for fire.”

 

He straightened.  “As much as I want to crush Imhotep, do you really believe killing him will make the world a better place?”

 

Jonathan moved towards him.  “We must believe that, or we will all go crazy.”  He patted his shoulder.  “You do not truly believe that.  You are like my brother in law, Rick O’Connell.  Surely you have heard the tales about him?”

 

Pierre nodded.

 

Jonathan continued.  “He will fight forever against evil.  He will pretend it is because of his family, or because of revenge.  But that is not the reason, old boy.  My brother fights because it is in his blood, because he must fight for freedom or he is nothing at all.  You are like him.  I can see it,” Jonathan said earnestly.  “You, too, will always fight for freedom.”

 

Pierre appeared immobile.

 

“Look,” Jonathan said, moving to stand directly in front of the Frenchman.  “This book is our only chance.  Our last chance.  Without it, Imhotep will rule forever.  You say you hate him.  That you love your country.  Then this is your chance to defeat him once and for all.”  He stopped to breathe, looking to Pierre’s eyes.  “Let us take our shot.  Please.”

 

Pierre’s mouth opened slightly, and he looked down at the floor, then back up to Jonathan.  The two men locked eyes, silently assessing each other.  Jonathan waited.  The fighting spirit slowly returned to Pierre’s eyes.

 

“Fine,” he said firmly.  “But I’m coming with you.”

 

Jonathan smiled.   “Deal.”

 

The two men shook hands.

 

 

 

***