King's Curse Read online

  Jean Louis deJuin had been a teenager at the time, during the German occupation of Paris, and even though Cousin Michel was on the most wanted list as a leader in the Maquis resistance movement, Jean Louis’ family had lived quite well during the occupation, by some order from within the German general staff.

  As mother had said, one did not choose one’s family, and Jean Louis had thought little about it until now, when Uncle Carl said those strange words.

  “So now it is up to you, Jean Louis Raispal deJuin.”

  “What is up to me, dear Uncle?” asked Jean Louis.

  “Our hopes, our fortunes, our honor, and our very survival.”

  “Ah well, very good,” said Jean Louis. “Would you care for coffee?”

  “Have you been listening?”

  “Yes, but of course,” said Jean Louis. “Terrible happenings. Life can be so cruel.’’

  “Willingham is gone now.”

  “The pale fellow who worked in the museum?”

  “He was the foremost priest,” said Uncle Carl.

  “Of what?” asked Jean Louis.

  Uncle Carl’s face burst crimson. He slammed a large fat fist down on the pressed leather of an eighteenth century desk. Jean Louis blinked. Uncle Carl was getting violent.

  “Don’t you know who you are? What your family is? Where you came from? Your roots?”

  “We share some great, great, great uncle who was in South America for a while. Is that what you mean? Please don’t be violent. Perhaps some anisette, Uncle?”

  “Jean Louis, tell me now, for this answer must be truthful…”

  “Yes, Uncle Carl.”

  “When we took those walks when you were a child, and I told you things about your ancestors, was your mind paying attention to me, Jean Louis? Tell me truthfully now.”

  “Well, you know how children are, Uncle Carl.”

  “The truth.”

  “No, Uncle Carl. I went with you because as a German you could get the best patisserie at the time. I thought about chocolate.”

  “And the manuscripts I gave you?”

  “I must confess, I drew pictures on them. Paper was scarce, Uncle Carl.”

  “And the name of our possession? That all of us share?”

  “That stone. Uctut?”

  “Yes. Its real name,” said Uncle Carl.

  “I forgot, Uncle Carl.”

  “I see,” said Carl Johann Liebengut, president of Bavarian Electronics Works. “So you think I am a German uncle of a French nephew, and this is such a fine autumn day, what is this crazy uncle doing talking about death in New York City, yes?”

  “You put it rather harshly, Uncle.”

  “True, no?”

  “All right, true,” said Jean Louis. His gray vest tailored precisely to his lean form hardly wrinkled as he brought one leg over the other and formed an arch with his long delicate fingers in front of his face. He rested his chin on this arch.

  “You are no more French than I am German, Jean Louis,” said Carl Johann Liebengut, and such was the coolness of his voice that deJuin forgot about the sunshine and the bookstores and the autumn green of the leaves outside on Rue St. Germain.

  “I said you are not French,” said Carl.

  “I heard you,” said deJuin.

  “You are Actatl.”

  “You mean, I share a bit of this blood.”

  “Actatl is what you are. Everything else is a disguise because the world would not let you be Actatl.”

  “My father is a deJuin. So am I.”

  “Your father was a deJuin and he gave you that disguise. Your mother gave you the blood. I gave you the knowledge, and you apparently rejected it. I am too old to wage the war of survival that is now required, and you, Jean Louis, apparently do not want to. So a thousand years of our heritage, maybe more, dies this day. Monsieur deJuin, may you have a long and happy life. I go.”

  “Uncle Carl, wait.”

  “For what, Monsieur deJuin?”

  “For me to listen. Come, I will go with you. If I was inattentive as a child, let me listen now. I am not saying I will take up the standards of the war of our tribe, but I am saying I will not let a millenia of history succumb without even access to my ear.” As a child, the tale of the last king of the Actatl has amused Jean Louis because of the discrepancies of his childhood memory—the attenuation of unimportant things.

  They walked along Rue St. Germain, up the Left Bank, past restaurants and cinemas and coffee shops and tobacco shops, strung along the way like so many minor potholes to collect loose change. At Rue du Bac, they turned right and crossed the Seine over the Pont Royal Bridge. Now as deJuin heard the story of the last king he could appreciate the man’s brilliant assessment of a sociological avalanche, one that would crush the existing Indian culture to pumice. The Maya had not known this. The Inca had not known this, nor had the all-powerful Aztec. And they were no more.

  But here was Uncle Carl, talking to him about symbols on a sacred stone. Every nuance, every meaning was as clear as on the day the priests of the Actatl had made their last sacrifice in the verdant Mexican hills.

  “Why have we not made sacrifices until recently?” asked deJuin. “Back in our ancestors’ time, it was a monthly thing. And now we use it only for revenge?”

  “It was not thought wise on one hand. And on the other, the sacrifice of the last of the Actatl city was interpreted as the final eternal sacrifice. But if you should look upon the stone and see the living lines as I have done, if you had gone last year as you were supposed to, you would have seen everything in the stone. The meaning of the earth and rivers and sky. To see everything we have heard about. There it is, our history. Shared by no one else, Jean Louis. Ours. You don’t know how insufferable those Nazi rallies were, but I had to do it for the tribe, just in case Hitler should win. What had started out as a protection society for the tribe eventually became a network of each of us helping the other. Then came the desecration of Uctut.”

  “And just the death of this one boy would not do?”

  “Of course not. First, Uctut demands that the United States bear the responsibility for the desecration. And what is the life of a Negro worth?”

  “You forget, our real skin is brown, Uncle,” said deJuin.

  “Have you decided to take up the case of our family?”

  “I want to show you something,” Jean Louis said. “That is all. Do you know why I went into computers?”

  “No,” said the older man, who was having difficulty keeping up with the long strides of the tall, thin man who moved so effortlessly and so quickly while seeming just to stroll.

  “Because, it was untainted by what has made me feel uncomfortable all my life. Computers were pure. I will now show you what is not pure for me.”

  And this bridge led to the Louvre, a giant square of a castle with an immense courtyard that had been transformed into a museum more than two hundred years before. A gaggle of Japanese tourists coming on in phalanx marched into a side exhibit following a leader with a flag. Four Americans laughing noisily brushed aside a vendor who offered to take their pictures.

  “It takes a full week just to properly peruse, not even to examine, the contents of this museum,” said deJuin.

  “We don’t have a week,” said Uncle Carl.

  The younger man smiled. “We don’t need a week.” He spread his right arm slowly in a wide arc, as if offering the entire museum. “I spent, if you would total the time, literally months here in my student days. China, ancient Greece, Europe, even some modern South American painters are all represented here.”

  “Yes, yes.” Carl was becoming impatient.

  “I never felt at home with any of them. None. Since childhood, even though Father told me our family went back to Charlemagne, I never felt at home in France. I felt a little bit at home in computers because it was a life without a past.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “I am saying, dear Uncle, that I am no European.”

>   “So you will help?”

  “Help, yes. Run at someone with a stone knife, no.”

  Uncle Carl became flustered. He angrily announced he had not come to Paris to organize a committee but to seek help in fighting a holy war of the tribe.

  “And how is that war going, Uncle ?”

  “Disastrous,” said Carl.

  “So let us get it going right, eh? Come. We think.”

  “The knife is holy,” said Carl, lest his nephew think he was surrendering a point.

  “Success is holier,” said Jean Louis deJuin. He looked around the spacious and awesomely elegant stone courtyard of the Louvre for the last time as a Frenchman and silently said his goodbye to Europe in his heart.

  Listening to Uncle Carl, it did not take deJuin long to see what had gone wrong with the family. The Actatl had been content to hide, not only for generations, but for centuries, and when a time came that action was demanded, action was beyond the capacity of the family.

  He hailed a cab and ordered it to the small apartment he kept for his mistress on Avenue de Bretuil, a spacious two floors of rooms with large rococo molding on the ceiling. The houseboy, a North African dressed in a silver embroidered waistcoat, served them coffee with heavy dollops of sweet cream. Uncle Carl ate three patisserie, gleaming in syrupy sugar over candied fruit set in an exquisitely light flaky crust, while Jean Louis took a pad from his pocket and wrote down several formulas. DeJuin, oblivious to his uncle, did not answer questions about what he was doing. At one point, he phoned into his office and asked for computer time. He read several formulas to an assistant over the phone and fifteen minutes later got his answer.

  “Ordure” he mumbled when he got the answer. He tore up his notes, flinging them into the air. The houseboy attempted to pick up the pieces, and deJuin shooed him from the room. He paced. And as he paced he talked.

  “The trouble, dear Uncle Carl, is that the tribe is not fit to rule.” He went on without waiting for an answer.

  “We have hidden so long that when the moment comes when we must make a just demand, not only is it ignored, but we do not even know how to make it. All has been disaster, from start to finish.”

  Jean Louis deJuin walked to the window and looked out onto the sunlit street.

  “What must we do?” asked Uncle Carl.

  “We start over,” said deJuin. “From now on, the goal of the Actatl is power. In the future, when our names are known, our demands will be met.”

  “What of our demands for reparation?” asked Carl.

  “From the beginning that was stupid,” said deJuin. “The notes demanding reparations were unclear. Written in twelve languages and none of them English. Forget that. We ourselves will take care of the reparations at the proper time. But our main problem now is these two very dangerous men, the American and the Oriental.”

  DeJuin drummed on the crystal bright window pane with his fingers as he talked.

  “We were unlucky that we bumped into them,” said Carl.

  “No,” said deJuin. “They came looking for us, and like fools, we went rushing into their trap. There is one highly probable course of events, and this is it: After the desecration of Uctut, our actions in the sacrifices somehow stepped on something or someone in a highly sensitive area that employs killers. Men of that skill do not just go wandering into museums on pleasure trips. We must have caused a danger to them. Now, whoever or whatever we have endangered wants us to attack those two. They could hope for nothing better. We will attack, and we will be destroyed.”

  “So we will not attack?” said Uncle Carl.

  “No. We will attack. But we will attack our way, on our terms, at our time. And we will use these killers as they would use us. We will trace from them the secret organization they work for, and then we will seize that organization’s power. That power will become the tribe’s power, and then the Actatl will hide no more.”

  DeJuin paused at the window, waiting for a comment from Uncle Carl. But there was only silence.

  When he turned, he saw that Carl had gotten off his chair and was kneeling on the floor, his head touching the carpet, his arms extended in front of him.

  “What is this, Uncle Carl?”

  “You are king,” Carl said. “You are king.” Carl looked up. “Come to me.”

  DeJuin moved close to the older man, and Carl leaned forward and whispered in his ear.

  “What is that?” said deJuin.

  “You are a believer now. That is the true name of Uctut and only believers may speak that word. Should an unbeliever say it aloud, the skies will darken and the clouds will fall. You may say it.”

  DeJuin was careful not to smile and spoke the word aloud. As he had suspected, the skies did not darken and the clouds did not fall, which Uncle Carl took as proof that deJuin believed truly and well.

  Uncle Carl rose. “You are king. For thirty years I have waited for you, because you are blood of blood, soul of soul, of that ancient Actatl king of centuries ago. Now you must lead the family to victory.”

  DeJuin was surprised that he did not regard his uncle’s words as foolish.

  “We will do that, Uncle,” he said.

  “And we will avenge the desecration?”

  “When we work all this out, Uctut will have all the hearts it ever wanted,” deJuin said.

  And that night, before he fell asleep, he said the secret name of Uctut again. And when the skies did not darken and the clouds did not fall, he knew.

  He did not know if he was a believer, but he knew that the Actatl had at last gained a king who would lead them to glory.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  WHEN JEAN LOUIS DEJUIN and his Uncle Carl arrived in New York, they went directly to a Fifth Avenue hotel where a battery of bellhops waited to handle their luggage, where they were not required to register, where the presidential suite had been vacated for them, and where the hotel manager gave Uncle Carl a large knowing wink, convincing deJuin that no matter what it might mean as a tradition and religion, the international brotherhood of Uctut followers had a great deal of secular clout.

  “I had never realized the family was so extensive,” deJuin said after he and Carl had dismissed the bellboys and sat in the drawing room of the large five-room suite.

  “We are everywhere,” said Uncle Carl. “You would have known if you had paid more attention when you were young.” He smiled, more critical than mirthful.

  “But I am here now,” said deJuin, returning the smile.

  “Yes, Jean Louis, and I am grateful for that and will indulge in no more recriminations, no matter how pleasant they may be.”

  “Recriminations are pleasant only for losers,” deJuin said, “as an explanation to themselves of why their lives went wrong. You are not a loser and your life has not gone wrong. In fact, it will now go most extremely right, and so recriminations do not become you.”

  Then deJuin directed the older man to begin immediately to call in members of the family to speak to deJuin. “We must plan now better than we have ever planned before, and I must study our resources. I will be ready to speak to people in two hours.”

  He went into a bedroom and on a large oaken desk spread out papers from the alligator leather briefcase he had carried with him.

  Before sitting down, he removed the jacket of his gray chalk-striped suit. He carefully undid his monogrammed French cuffs and turned his shirt sleeves up two precise folds. He undid his collar and carefully removed his black and red silk tie and hung it over a hanger with his jacket, which he placed in one of the large, oil-soaked cedar closets.

  DeJuin clicked on the wood-framed fluorescent light and took the caps off two broad-tipped marking pens, one red and one black. The red was for writing down possibilities; the black was for crossing them out after he decided they would not work.

  He held the red marker toward his lips and looked through the window at the early afternoon sun shining down on the busy street, then he fell upon the pile of blank white paper as if he were
an eagle plummeting down onto a mouse that had the misfortune to wander across a patch of land that offered no cover.

  When again he looked up, there was no sun. The sky was dark, and he realized afternoon had slipped away into evening.

  The wastepaper basket was overflowing with crumpled sheets of paper. The top of the desk looked like the overflow from the wastebasket.

  But one sheet was squared neatly in front of deJuin. On it was written one neat word, printed in red block capitals:

  INFILTRATE.

  When he went back into the drawing room, a dozen men were there, sitting quietly. They were mostly middle-aged men, wearing business suits with vests buckled down by university chains, straight-legged pants, and the highly polished leather shoes favored by practical men who can afford any kind of shoe they wish and choose the same kind they grew up wearing.

  All rose as he entered the room.

  Uncle Carl rose too from his chair near the window.

  “Gentlemen. Our king. Jean Louis deJuin.”

  The dozen men sank slowly to their knees.

  DeJuin looked at Uncle Carl questioningly, as if for the command that would bring the men to their feet. But Carl too had gone to his knees, his bowed head extended toward deJuin.

  “The name of Uctut cannot be defiled,” said deJuin. “It is all holiness and beyond the dirtying touch of men. But for those who have tried, Uctut calls for sacrifice, and we of the Actatl shall provide that sacrifice. This I vow—this we all vow. On our honor and our lives.” He paused. “Rise.”

  The men got slowly to their feet, their faces illuminated with an inner glow, and came forward to shake deJuin’s hand and to introduce themselves.

  DeJuin waited, then waved the men to seats on the couches and chairs in the room.