The Mummy Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (8 page)

He was sipping his drink when he spotted his tuxedo-sporting nephew, Alex O’Connell—
My, the lad cleans up well,
he thought—coming down the stairs from the entryway into the club, carrying himself with a confidence worthy of either of his celebrated parents.

With amusement and perhaps a little pride, Jonathan watched as a beautiful brunette heiress from New York floated over to his nephew, her charms spilling from a low-cut gown.

Jonathan was close enough to hear the conversation that followed.

“Hello, handsome,” she said.

Not exactly a brilliant opening gambit,
Jonathan thought. But a woman who looked like that did not need to sound like a character out of Noel Coward. She was dangerous, though, a slightly soiled debutante who gave a whole new meaning to “The Lady Is a Tramp.”

She was saying, “Just get into town?”

“Yeah,” Alex said, with a brash smile. “I’ve been out west on an archaeological expedition.”

She cocked her head and narrowed her eyes as she squeezed his nearer arm. “That sounds fascinating. Maybe we could find somewhere quiet, and cover some unexplored territory of our own.”

The boy’s confidence fizzled. “Well, uh, er, ah . . .”

Jonathan frowned.
Didn’t they teach these college boys
anything
over in the States?

She was working a gloved hand along Alex’s chest when Jonathan decided he needed to swoop in and save the lad from a fate worse than death. Well, perhaps not worse than death. . . actually quite a nice fate, unless one of her other boyfriends was around . . . still . . .

Jonathan moved in, slipped an arm around his nephew’s shoulder, and gave the heiress a pick-on-someone-your-own-size smile, to which she responded with a mind-your-own-business frown, and walked the lad toward the bar.

“Alex, my boy,” Jonathan said. “Let your uncle buy you a drink . . .”

Alex was craning to look at the brunette ship he seemed to be passing in the night. “Well, that’s swell of you, Uncle Jon, only that young lady seems to have the same idea . . . and to be honest, she’s better-looking than you.”

They were at the bar now.

“That’s a matter of perspective,” Jonathan said, “and trust me, old son, there isn’t much virgin territory to be explored on that continent. Let me put it in archaeological terms—that’s one tomb in which many a pharoah has lain . . . Tell me, have you given any thought to how you’ll handle your parents, when they find out what you’ve been up to of late?”

Alex shook his head and smirked sourly. “It’s not my fault that they got out of the family business.”

Jonathan ordered up a cocktail for himself and a Coca-Cola for his nephew; this may have been Shanghai, but the lad was still only twenty. “My boy, your discovery will be all over the press in a matter of days—papers, radio, newsreels. Your father may not be a genius, but even he will be able to add two to two and come up with four . . . ‘four’ being the simple fact that you have dropped out of college.”

The brunette wandered by, flashing Alex a smile. Virgin territory or not, the boy seemed interested in planting a flag for Great Britain.

“Alex! Pay attention. This is serious business. Can you imagine what your parents’ reaction will be?”

Alex threw down half the Coke, frowned at it when he realized what it was, then said, “Relax, Uncle Jon. The chance of Rick and Evy O’Connell coming down those stairs is a million-to-one shot. Even
you
couldn’t lose with those odds . . .”

“Perhaps not.”

“If you’ll excuse me?” Alex made a face as he put the Coke glass on the counter. Then he moved toward the brunette, who had been lingering on the sidelines. A moment after he got to her, she grabbed him by the arm and dragged him into the adjoining room.

Jonathan sighed, then muttered to himself, “Boy’s going to be eaten alive . . . although Lord knows there are worse ways to go.”

The proprietor of Imhotep’s sipped his martini and surveyed his kingdom languidly. The band was playing “Slow Boat to China,” couples out on the dance floor clinging to each other. His eyes moved to the stairs and he saw a handsome couple coming down, a tall, broad-shouldered fellow in tuxedo and black tie, and a gorgeous, dark-eyed, dark-haired wench in a gold lamé gown. Jonathan was straightening his tie, taking in the woman’s beauty, when the couple moved into the light and Jonathan thought,
Crikey, it’s my sister!

And the tall-broad shouldered fellow, of course, was his brother-in-law.
Of all the gin joints in all the towns of the world,
Jonathan thought,
they walk into mine . . .

He quickly turned his back to the newcomers.

But behind him, his sister called out,
“Jonathan!
Yoo-hoo!”

She’d spotted him. Yoo-hoo indeed.

He turned slowly and did his best to hide his unease, and failing pitifully, thinking,
I must have been a right bastard in my previous life,
saying, “I swear on our parents’ graves I had no idea he was here!”

O’Connell frowned.
“Who
was here?”

A figure exploded out of the adjacent room—hurled from there in a blur of tuxedo and brown hair and indignation . . . specifically, the figure of Alex O’Connell.

Jonathan hadn’t seen this, however, having turned his back, as if contemplating ordering another drink.

Nor could he see Rick O’Connell dividing a look-to-kill between Alex, on the floor in a heap getting gaped at by customers, and Jonathan, who also didn’t see his sister, staring at him accusingly.

She demanded of the back of him, “How long has Alex been in China?”

Unaware he’d been busted, Jonathan said, “Alex, in China? I thought he was in America, studying. Are you
sure
he’s in China?”

O’Connell said, “Pretty sure.”

The couple moved away from Jonathan, just as he turned to see Evy helping Alex up from the nightclub floor. Jonathan closed his eyes, hoping it would all go away.

O’Connell followed his wife over to their wandering boy, whom she was fussing over, brushing him off as Alex stood there frozen in shock at the sight of his parents, who had seemingly materialized before him.

“Mom,” Alex said. “Dad. What are
you
doing here?”

“Funny thing, kiddo,” O’Connell said. “We were just going to ask you the same thing.”

From the other room bounded a big guy in a brown jacket and khaki trousers, fists balled, eyes narrowed, mouth a violent slash in the midst of several days’ growth of beard. The guy was clearly on the warpath, and zeroing in on Alex.

In a voice more than slightly touched with Irish, the strapping brute called behind him to friends still in the side room. “Be right back, lads! I just need to finish the job I started . . .”

He bore in on Alex, who bunched his shoulders and raised his fists, ready to give back as good as he got; but when the Irishman cocked his arm to pummel the boy, O’Connell caught the man’s fist.

The Irishman spun around, ready to take on a second “job,” but when the two men were face-to-face, their features flashed with mutual recognition.

“Maddog?” O’Connell asked tentatively. “Mad-dog
Maguire?”

Maguire frowned. “Ricochet? Ricochet Rick
O’Connell?”

“You got old.”

“You didn’t get younger.”

They seemed about to go at it, but instead fell into each other’s arms, hugging, clapping each other on the back, clearly long-lost friends.

They separated, looking each other over, grinning.

O’Connell said, “Will you look at you? You’re even uglier. How the hell’s that possible? How long has it been, anyway?”

“Not so long, lad. Egypt. ’Twenty-three.”

“We were in the French Foreign Legion together,” O’Connell said, turning with a smile to his wife and son. “This damn maniac could land a plane on a postage stamp.”

“They had planes back in those days, Dad?” Alex asked, openly sarcastic. “What, like in
King Kong?”

Maguire tossed a thumb at Alex. “This scrapper’s
your
kid, Rick?”

O’Connell nodded, then glanced over at the entry to the adjacent room, from which had emerged a group of men who were likely rough-and-tumble pilot pals of Maguire’s, clearly wondering why Alex hadn’t been pureed by now.

“As much as I’d like to let you and your boys teach Alex here a valuable lesson,” O’Connell said, “it might tend to—”

“Upset his mother,” Evy said. “Very much.”

And she began brushing the boy off again, to his displeasure.

“Mom,
seriously,”
Alex said, pulling away. “You’re embarrassing me in front of my new friends.”

That made O’Connell smile, and Maguire, too.

The pilot said, “Just tell your young laddie-buck here to keep his sweaty paws off my lass.”

Alex gestured to himself. “To be strictly fair about it, your ‘lass’ had her hands all over
this
laddie-buck.”

Evy frowned. “Alex!”

Maguire’s upper lip drew back and a growl rumbled in his throat, but O’Connell slipped an arm around his old pal.

“Why don’t you,” O’Connell said chummily, “and your boys of course, head over to the bar.”

“Why should we?”

“Because you’re the lucky one-thousandth customer here at Imhotep’s. You’ve just won you and your compadres a night of drinks on the house.”

Jonathan, who had been keeping his distance over at the bar, perked up and came quickly over. “On the what? Who’s counting bloody
customers?”

Evy gave her brother a sharp elbow and a sharper look.

Jonathan’s face blossomed in a smile. “Yes, of course! Anything for my loving little family.”

Maguire broke out in a grin and held his hand out to O’Connell, who shook it. “Welcome to the Orient, Ricochet me lad.”

“It’s been fun so far.”

Maguire and his boys, in rowdy good cheer, assembled at the bar and Jonathan closed his eyes in painful contemplation of dollars not going into his cash register.

O’Connell, no longer smiling, turned to face his son. “I’m not here five minutes and
already
I’m pulling your fanny out of the fire!”

“How hard was that?” Alex said with a shrug. “All you had to do was play the French Foreign Legion card.”

O’Connell returned the shrug. “Well, like they say, ‘Once a legionnaire, always a legionnaire.’ ”

“When was it they said that? The twenties? Right after they said twenty-three skidoo?”

O’Connell frowned at his son, wondering for a moment why he’d bothered rescuing him from Maguire and the other mad dogs. Maybe it was the boy’s teeth, which had been straightened at some expense, and having them flung all over the nightclub floor would have been a pity, and a wasted investment.

But before any more sparks, or worse, could fly, Evy came over and stepped between father and son.

“Enough, you two!” To Rick she said, “You back down.” To her brother she said, “You get us some drinks.” To her son she said, “You have a lot of explaining to do, young man.”

Jonathan remained at the bar while the O’Connell family reunion moved to a booth where they ignored a lavish Egypt Meets Hollywood floor show, and caught up on more important things.

O’Connell, after getting filled in by his son, frowned and said, “I thought we had a firm no-more-digging-up-mummies rule in this family.”

Alex’s eyebrows rose. “That’s your rule, Dad. Anyway . . . I’m not planning to raise this one from the dead.”

Keenly interested, Evy asked Alex, “Where
is
the late Emperor, at the moment?”

“The Shanghai Museum. We’re waiting for official verification of the discovery. Really just a formality, Roger says.”

“Roger,” O’Connell said. “So Roger Wilson hired you?”

Alex nodded. “Roger was a visiting lecturer at Harvard. He looked me up, because he was friends with you and Mom. Said he’d talked to my instructors and was pleased by what he’d heard.”

O’Connell’s eyes flared. “So impressed he encouraged you to drop out of school?”

“Roger says he’ll get me credit. It’s what they call ‘work study,’ these days.”

“Good ol’ Roger arranged this with your instructors, then? You’re on a kind of leave of absence?”

“Well . . . not exactly.”

O’Connell sighed. Closed his eyes tight. “You
did
drop out.”

Alex leaned forward. “Listen, the professor believed in me all the way—staked his reputation on it.”

O’Connell said drily, “Well, we’ll be sure to thank him.”

But Evy was beaming with pride. “You do realize,” she said to her son, “that with a discovery of this magnitude, the Bembridge Scholars will be knocking down your door.”

The boy shook his head. “No, Mom. That’s not my dream, working at a museum.
Yours
maybe . . . not mine.”

That deflated and hurt her, though her son didn’t notice. O’Connell did, however, and said, “So, then . . . what’s
your
dream? What’s
your
big plan?”

Alex shrugged. “I’d be lying if I said I had one. Look, I like to play it by ear, a little on the fast and loose side. I’m thinking maybe I’ll just travel the world and seek my fortune . . . like you did.”

“Those were different times,” his father said. “And I was in a position where there was no choice but to make my own way. Son, the world is considerably more dangerous today than when I was your age.”

Another shrug. “I’ll take my chances.”

Evy sat forward; her tone was sweet, not at all critical. “Dear, we were rather hoping you might go back to Harvard, and finish up. Maybe Roger can pave the way, as he said . . . ?”

Alex smiled, but more to himself than to his parents. He shook his head. “Who told you I dropped out? Did the college contact you? How did you think this was going to work? You two would just show up and talk me out of it? Crash
my
adventure . . .”

O’Connell said, “We didn’t know you were here.”

“Dad . . . come on . . .”

“Son, we weren’t expecting to find you at all, considering we thought you were in school in Massachusetts.”

With a suspicious glance at Jonathan over at the bar, Alex said, “Well, Uncle Jon knew, in case there was a problem or emergency or something.”