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 rococco 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 descration 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.