AN: Set roughly after Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, because reasons.
He would like to state emphatically for the record that none of this was his fault, thank you very much.
And that was the line he was going to be resolutely sticking to if Evelyn ever found out.
Swarthy-skinned men, women draped in seeming yards of brightly-patterned tablecloths, and grubby barefoot children stopped in their tracks to stare at the foreign man as he strode past, like they had never seen someone quite like him before.
Jonathan Carnahan supposed in hindsight that he did make quite a sight, shirttails hanging out and laden down with bags like a camel, legs flashing back and forth so fast that he was practically jogging down the main street of Lima. Being coated head to toe in ash with four bloody stinging fingernail scratches across his cheek probably didn't help to dispel the stares. Blimey, he probably looked like he'd done the contessa for her jewels and then gone and blown up Jeeves and the mansion for good measure.
Hell, the two grand burning a hole in his hip pocket was more than enough to raise some seriously awkward questions if and when the local constabulary were alerted to his person and decided it was their civic duty to stop him for a little chat, the man too eccentric for even their streets. And, well, right now Jonathan was entirely too knackered to think of any sort of passable lie, and the truth wasn't likely to fly anytime soon.
Yes, he technically may have been trespassing at the time, but it really was only to ease his own poor burdened mind that everything was well. Only to be confronted the next moment by a middle-aged wide-eyed archaeologist in an expensive suit caked with mud and something that smelled suspiciously like urine, looking at Jonathan like he was an angel sent from heaven and the next moment the flustered Mr Uhle, (discoverer of the chinchorro mummies and media darling,) was pushing money into his hands in exchange for taking care of a little problem of a resurrected Peruvian priestess.
The points of the thing started to get a little hazy after that as the whole situation quickly degenerated into dodging masked cultists, a wild scramble for an enchanted sacrificial blade, and explosions.
Oh, so many explosions.
Jonathan was fully intending to give the funny little man his money back, he really was, but in the bluster and chaos of getting the stubborn old broad back into her coffin to just rest in bloody peace already, the bloody bobbies had decided it was a good time to turn up and Jonathan suddenly remembered a pressing appointment elsewhere and a rather expensive steamer ticket in his hotel room. He was all but running to the pier when Jonathan remembered that he just ripped off the Americas' greatest archaeologist of the moment.
…and that was the only part of the tale that his sister would remotely believe.
Win some, lose some.
Yes, he was on time! Finally something was bloody going his way!
Ticket and passport between his teeth, Jonathan dropped his suitcases on the dock, finally taking a moment to breathe, his back as kinked as an old wire. While the cuts on his face were shallow, they stung like nobody's business, and Jonathan couldn't exactly miss the parents shepherding their children away from the crazy man. See, Arabella, Tommy, that's what a serial killer looks like.
If he had any self-respect left, he'd be offended.
But back to the issue at hand-
Mummies. Always bloody mummies.
He watched the steamer's disembarking passengers with an increasing agitation, bobbing up on tiptoe to see above the crowd, the unfounded anxiety that had seized him telling him that if he remained in South America for too much longer, something disastrous was bound to occur. Twas the way his luck ran.
He stared at the ship, willing the staff to just hurry the hell up already.
He had to be the only chap in the civilised world in a hurry to get to Australia. While the native laddies down there seemed disproportionately fond of their curses, and his few run-ins with the Aussies in Palestine way back when hadn't exactly endeared the country to him, Jonathan had weighed up the odds and decided he could put up with spontaneously sprouting warts and being gnawed on by the occasional crocodile if there were no
Bloody
Mummies.
Now get a hold of yourself, you great lummox! Surely nothing earth-shattering could possibly happen in the next half hour!
"Doctor Carnahan?"
Balls.
He really needed to learn to stop tempting fate.
Jonathan felt himself involuntarily stiffening, as traditionally a stranger's utterance of his name was followed by a good right hook by an offended lady's brother, or on a few memorable occasions, the offended lady herself. But, he reflected wryly, it had been absolute ages since he'd shimmied down a lady's drainpipe in his underpants when the lady's husband came home early. He hadn't been in real proper trouble, the kind without undead fiends, for years. His young self would be truly appalled.
Bugger, he was coming to the realisation that sometime while he wasn't looking, he had become an adult.
"Doctor Jonathan Carnahan?"
Yes, that was him.
Wait, that was him.
Jonathan had a strange feeling of precognition right then telling him that he really should just walk away and get on the blasted ship, that it could only end in tears. Carefully taking the passport from his mouth, he slowly turned to look over his shoulder.
There was a woman standing tall behind him in a smart tweed suit and vest, with a creamy Nordic complexion and a cool air about her. Her flaxen-coloured hair was wound up into a bun and held in place by a pencil, that offhand little detail adding a human touch to her otherwise businesslike visage. She was looking at him with a boldly expectant expression, like she knew exactly who Jonathan was and was getting impatient waiting for him to acknowledge her in return like any other human.
"Doctor Carnahan?" Her voice was accented, Europe somewhere, and Jonathan knew it but he couldn't place it, in one of those little things that tripped up your mind and made you wild with the niggling thought that wouldn't let you rest until you solved it.
"Yes?" It came out more like a question and in a rather squeaky voice, like the time Jonathan was five and Mother had asked him if their massive dog Bounder had really eaten the last of the chocolate biscuits. He cleared his throat and tried again, wishing he had been gifted with the deep, bowel-shaking gravitas in his voice that so many of his peers had developed as they went through puberty. But no matter how he tried, Jonathan still sounded like he was fourteen years old and excited about his first boy-girl dance. "Yes, I'm Doctor Carnahan."
There was an element of wonder behind his words as soon as he said them. Yes, Jonathan tended to forget that he really was Doctor Carnahan, or at least that was what the bit of paper from Oxford that was locked up in an old steamer trunk somewhere said.
She thrust out her hand, seemingly unperturbed by him covered in filth, and as he shook Jonathan took note that her fingernails were chipped and hand rough and calloused. Ah, not some secretary then, unless the tea run had become exponentially more dangerous during the time Jonathan had been in Asia.
"Doctor Sarsgard Magnusson, University of Oslo, Department of Archaeology and Antiquities. Pleased to meet you."
Uh-oh.
The next words were out before he could stop them.
"I didn't do it."
"Pardon?" Her nose crinkled in a bemused way, a foreigner trying to figure out whether it was her understanding of the language causing the translation problem, or if he had just said something stupid.
"Sorry, instinct." He gave a nervous laugh and ran an ashy hand back through his dirty hair. Damn it all, he could still taste the priestess. She was under his fingernails and down his pants, for Christ's sake. "I guess I'm a bit tense. Yes, very tense."
"Holiday not going the way you expected it to?"
Pfft.
"Not… exactly."
Or it went exactly as expected, when one looked at the wide and varied history of O'Connell-Carnahan holidays. Guns encouraged. Must bring own ammunition. Jonathan wondered why he even thought it might go any other way.
If Magnusson wondered why Jonathan's first reflex on being confronted by a stranger was to deny all knowledge of a theoretical situation, she was much too classy a dame to ask why. Instead he got the impression that she'd probably sneak around to find out why later. She gave a not my business smile and dropped his hand, effectively dropping the subject. God, Jonathan loved the Not My Business smile. Evy needed to use the Not My Business smile more often. She'd have a much easier time of it and Jonathan's consciousness would be in the clear.
Magnusson's clear and steady gaze didn't waver.
"Let's dispense with the pleasantries, yes?"
Jonathan's brow furrowed. "Let's. Please." He slowly straightened, making what he believed was a valiant effort to gather himself and look somewhat professional in the process. Why, it had been over a good thirty years since he had been taken seriously on the very fringes of academic circles, and a good portion of that was reflected glory from Father, and later, his sister. The situation seemed somewhat odd, to say the least. "While I'm quite partial to getting accosted by attractive blondes in unusual places and will fully encourage it to continue into the future, I kind of have to wonder whether you've got the right bloke, so to say."
The woman's expression turned vaguely amused. "Doctor Jonathan Edwin Carnahan, son of Egyptologist Howard Carnahan, brother of Doctor Evelyn O'Connell, with whom you rediscovered the lost city of Hamunaptra, nightclub tycoon and graduate of Eton and Oxford University. That is you?"
Okay, maybe she had the right bloke.
"And perhaps half a dozen other places in between. I'll have you know that I've been kicked out of the finest educational institutions all across Europe." It was a matter of pride and a badge of honour throughout his life, leaving Evy endlessly exasperated with him. Of course, when he started Imhoteps and started raking it in, all the schools he was booted from claimed him as alumni and wanted money. "Nightclub tycoon. I like that. I might keep it."
An eyebrow tilted. "While I am as interested as the next man in your lack of love for structured academia-" –her accent increased with her sarcasm – "-we're getting off tangent."
"A tangent? We were on a tangent?" Jonathan asked. He eased a finger between his neck and shirt collar, still impossibly starched and stiff after everything, a good British collar. No wonder the English were so irritable all the time, with what constituted high fashion. He loosened his tie, needing something to do with his hands. Maybe that was why he had always been an insatiable pickpocket – busy hands.
At least that was the explanation he was going with.
He could hear Evy laughing now as the woman gave him a look like she was wondering whether he was completely scatterbrained.
Jonathan glanced down at his watch, and his eyes widened. "Listen, Doc, it's been a pleasure, but I really need to get going." He waved his ticket and passport. "Things to do. People to see."
And not just because he was eager to end this uncomfortably odd situation.
"Are you sure you can't spare a moment for a drink? On me."
For a moment Jonathan wavered. A younger, good-looking blonde offering to buy him a drink? He'd thought those days were long gone for him. "As much as I wish I could. Maybe I'll drop you a line at Oslo?"
The other eyebrow joined her first at the top of her forehead. He could just imagine Jonathan-at-eighteen railing at him in disgust.
"Well, I never thought I'd live to see the day. Jonny Carnahan knocking back a drink invitation with a beautiful woman. The End is nigh."
An older man of perhaps Jonathan's vintage joined them on the dock, squeezing Magnusson's shoulder familiarly as he went past, and Jonathan was amused by the flash of what the hell? that had appeared on her face before she schooled her expression into neutrality. He turned his attention back to the man that had barged his way into a perfectly civil conversation.
He was a reasonably pleasant-looking fellow, with wide-spaced green eyes, a jolly smile, and fashionable wavy blonde hair that a lady would kill for, which was unfairly (in Jonathan's opinion) not even slightly sprinkled with grey. Standing next to Jonathan with his torn trousers and smeared with ash, the chap looked like nobility next to a chimney sweep. Jonathan half expected the bloke to toss him a couple of bob to shine his shoes.
After a long moment of studying Jonathan's expression, the man's face broke out into a jovial grin, a lock of golden hair falling rakishly into his eye like some fop out of the bodice-rippers that Evelyn wrote.
"What ho, he doesn't recognise me. That's a healthy kick to the self-esteem; especially after all I did for you in Kandahar."
Jonathan gaped at him. Was the old fellow running a long con or what? The only other person in Kandahar was-
Oh.
He drew himself up.
"Was that before or after you threw me out of the window, Percy?"
The man swished a hand like he was swatting away a bug. "Ah, stop bellyaching, Carnahan. There was an awning under you, after all."
"A sheet of canvas that had stood in the elements for about the last two hundred years!"
The bloke gave that too good-looking to be entirely human smile that always gave Jonathan a barely-controllable urge to kick his perfect white teeth in while all the lasses in a mile radius were busy throwing their garters at him.
"No hard feelings, eh, old chap? It was all a long time ago now, after all."
Jonathan pasted on his stock-in-trade insincere smile.
He had been in competition with Percival Eugene Forsyth-Golding III almost his whole life. Mother called it a friendly rivalry, but the truth was that even during their parent-mandated play dates to introduce their beloved firstborn spawn to others of their social station, each of them had been secretly plotting to somehow do in the other without getting caught, all the while exuding perfect affability and camaraderie to the outside.
Ah, the games that all highborn youth played.
Wankers.
"How are you, Perce?"
Golding looked him up and down, lips twitching in amusement.
"I'd reckon a fair sight better than you right now, old son. Have you been cleaning the attic with a bellows?"
Arrogant little twat. While normally Jonathan would have thrown himself into the game wholeheartedly, being his witty and charming best, right now he was impatient and tired and dirty and sore and just wanted to curl up in a corner somewhere with a big bottle of Scotch. Behind them, Magnusson's lips had thinned, definitely not appreciating Golding bombing into her conversation, but Percy either ignored or didn't care about her looking at him daggers.
He flung an arm around Jonathan's neck and dragging him close, like they were co-conspirators on some grand adventure. The alarm bells ringing in Jonathan's head kicked it up a notch. Percy gave his greasy, snake-oil seller's smile, and Jonathan braced himself for the hard word.
"Thing is, old chum, I've got a proposition for you."
Jonathan thought of all the times he had said the very same thing, and his teeth itched.
"All my money is tied up in properties."
The man grinned.
"Ah, Jonny, what must you think of me!"
Oh, so many things.
At that Doctor Magnusson cleared her throat pointedly, reminding them that yes, she was still there too. Percy whirled around, dragging Jonathan with him. "Of course, you've met Sigrun already, she's efficient like that."
He shot her a big conciliatory beam. She shot him a look that Jonathan fancied said piss off and die in a hole.
"Sig, Jonathan and I knew each other all our lives!"
"Rather to my detriment, old boy." Jonathan carefully disentangled himself from the entirely-too-affable bloke, smoothing his waistcoat. A moment later he remembered the ruined state of his clothes and how ridiculous it must have seemed, and winced.
Percy didn't seem to mind, if his ego allowed him to notice anything beyond his nose in the first place.
He looked between Doctor Magnusson and Percy. "Ah, so you two-?"
"Don't be absurd." Magnusson said swiftly, with the slightest roll of her eyes. Jonathan recognised that look. It was the same look Evy used to get when he suggested fixing her up on a date with one of his mates, one that clearly said you really think I can't do any better than that? "We are… how you say, colleagues. Work colleagues."
Golding gave a little wince at her abruptness. "No need to be so sharp." He sounded wounded, but by her flat expression, Sigrun Magnusson wasn't buying any of it, boosting her profile immeasurably in Jonathan's humble opinion, since it was a rare woman who wasn't spellbound by his good looks and easy charm. It also made him a little nervous; Magnusson wasn't a sucker. He'd have to work on his material.
"Not that I don't appreciate the domestics, but I really do have plans that I'd be rather dismayed to postpone-" Jonathan waved his steamer ticket.
"Pfft." Percy gave a dismissive gesture, like he was waving away a bad smell. "Who in their right mind wants to go to Australia anyway? Full of savages and murderers, not to mention all the aborigines, eh! Come and have a drink with us, let me outline my business plan."
Jonathan tried to resist getting sucked into this man's vortex of evil, he really did. There were problems when Jonathan Carnahan refused to do business with you because he thought you were just a touch shady. Percy had inherited his father's title in the House of Lords, and although Jonathan couldn't prove anything, he was fairly sure he had embezzled public money to support his lavish lifestyle.
Jonathan suspected that one of the reasons Percy irritated him so much was because the man was exactly what he'd have been without Evy to provide him with at least some moral compass.
"I'll have you know that this ticket was rather expensive and I-"
"I'll pay you."
"Forget it, old boy, I can't be bought. I have the steely resolve of a Benedictine monk."
Percy just smirked and Jonathan hated their shared youth.
Finally he caved.
"How much money are we talking about here?"
Percy gave a toothy grin, knowing full-well that he had hit on Jonathan's Achilles' heel. It wasn't like Jonathan just had to be ridiculously rich, he'd just always wanted enough to be able to sleep in the sun all day with an endless supply of booze and those two outcomes always seemed to intersect.
He slung his arm back over Jonathan's shoulders. "Let me buy you a drink, partner."
Well, poo.
"I think that's the worst name anyone's ever called me."
Percy laughed.
The road to hell was paved with blondes and dollar bills.