On the fifth day out, Ray said he felt something brewing quickly, “A big blow from the south, gale force for sure.” Sailor and I looked at Captain B, who did not hesitate. He stuck out his chin slightly, stroked his goatee once, and gave the orders to turn sharply north, maintaining a north-northeast heading indefinitely. In two hours we received word that a sirocco, filled with dust from northern Africa, was blowing with cyclone force winds and about to cover Malta and Gozo. Because of Ray, the Emme and all aboard were spared a possible catastrophe. Captain B handed out cigars for everyone and then toasted Ray for his rare gift. Unfortunately, there was one serious consequence from our escape.
Three and a half days later we anchored in Mgarr Harbor and made our way ashore. We followed a winding trail through the hills beyond until we found Giles Xuereb’s “little home above the cave.” Giles was there and he was alive, barely. The Fleurdu-Mal was gone. We had missed him by no more than an hour or two. None of us knew it at the time, of course, and even if we had known, none of us would have regretted Captain B’s decision. It was the right one, the only one. However, those three and a half days cost us the next three and a half years and very nearly the life of a trusted friend of the Meq.
Giles Xuereb had long been considered to be many things by many people. He was the last heir to an old Maltese fortune, a dealer in illegal antiquities and semiprecious stones, a master forger, a former professor of religious philosophy at Cambridge, tall, dark, and handsome. As a result of the Fleur-du-Mal’s handiwork, he would never again be considered handsome, but at least he was still alive. Giles was lying unconscious and chained to the massive oak table in the center of his kitchen. His entire face and body were covered in hundreds of bleeding cuts and slashes, carved in a distinct and complex pattern, ranging in length from half-inch “thorns” to whole “roses” in full bloom, each drawn in a single stroke with the blade of a stiletto.
Sailor found some water and let a few drops spill onto Giles’s lips, which helped him regain consciousness. He tried to smile once he recognized Sailor’s face. Then the pain hit. He winced, trembled, and passed out again. We dressed his wounds as best we could, but he would need a doctor as soon as possible, followed by an extended rehabilitation in the hospital. Sailor guessed the Fleur-du-Mal had been torturing Giles for information, or had already obtained it and thought Giles had lied to him, which would have been worse. “Much worse,” I added. Sailor said Giles probably would have tried to trick the Fleurdu-Mal rather than betray the contract they had together. It was the way his family had conducted business affairs since the Middle Ages. Giles happened to be the last in a long bloodline of honest pirates, which was the very reason the Meq had begun a relationship with Giles’s family in the first place. Sailor knew that and the Fleur-du-Mal knew that.
“There is something more, Zianno,” Sailor said slowly. He stared into my eyes, making sure he had my attention. “The Fleur-du-Mal may have done this to send a message.”
“A message to whom?” I asked. “The Meq?”
“No. More specific than that.” He paused again. “This is the exact method the Fleur-du-Mal employed to…to torture and kill your grandfather, Aitor. This could be a message for you, Zianno. His aberrant mind compels him to play games when he kills. He may be saying he knows you are with me. This may only be his opening move.”
“Goddamnit!” Ray shouted, stomping the stone floor and slapping his beret against his leg. “He has to go, Z! We need to take that murderin’ son of a bitch out!”
“I know,” I said, but Sailor’s words had stunned me. Why would the Fleur-du-Mal do that? What would so possess him to do something so cruel? What did my grandfather know?
Sailor was genuinely concerned about Giles and his condition. Every day all of us would ferry over to Malta and the hospital in Valletta to visit him. He drifted in and out of consciousness for five days, then on the morning of the sixth day he was able to speak and he and Sailor spoke to each other in whispers. They used Maltese, Giles’s native tongue and a language I had never heard. Even in slow, hoarse whispers, it sounded distinguished and elegant. Once we were out of the hospital, Sailor was openly relieved that Giles was going to live, but concerned about what Giles had told him.
“We shall see if he acted fearlessly or foolishly,” Sailor said.
“What did he do?” I asked.
“He did indeed lie to the Fleur-du-Mal.”
“We already assumed that.”
“Yes, however, the Fleur-du-Mal believed him. That will surely be a death sentence for Giles when he realizes the truth.”
“Not if we find him first,” Ray said.
“Yes,” Sailor said, but I could hear the doubt in his voice.
“What did Giles lie about?” I asked.
“What else? He lied about the Octopus. He told him the box was inlaid with ruby instead of lapis lazuli and the trail to find it begins in Damascus, not Cairo. That means we have an advantage in our search, but Giles will still be here, helpless and defenseless against the Fleur-du-Mal’s anger when he eventually discovers the truth, and he will.”
“How can we protect Giles?”
“We cannot. We must find the Octopus before the Fleur-du-Mal finds the truth. Then we shall bait the trap. It is that simple.”
“That don’t sound like it will be too easy,” Ray said.
“No,” Sailor almost whispered, “it will not.”
Captain B and his crew had the Emme restocked, rigged, and ready to sail by noon of the following day. We would have raised anchor immediately, but Sailor and I were late returning from Valletta, where Sailor wanted to send a cable to Pello. The cable was actually a coded message to Mowsel. Translated, it read, “Find Zeru-Meq now—Giles/Aitor a fact.” While we were there, I wrote and posted a quick letter to Opari in St. Louis. I told her we were on our way to Egypt and I would dream of her every night—I would dream of her face, her voice, her lips…her gift.
On the way back to the Emme, I asked Sailor why he and Mowsel thought Zeru-Meq might be able to help.
“He might be able to unravel the demented puzzle driving the Fleur-du-Mal and his aberrations,” Sailor said. “After the death of Aitor, Mowsel suspected it. Now, with the mutilation of Giles, I agree with him. Aitor discovered something about the Fleur-du-Mal that evoked a vicious response. Mowsel thinks Zeru-Meq may know what it was. I have my own thoughts on the matter, but they are only speculations.”
We walked a few paces in silence. I was confused. “Tell me about my grandfather,” I said.
“That will take some time and make us late for our departure.”
“Then make us late, Sailor. I want to know now.”
“Of course. I understand.” Sailor stopped walking and motioned for us to sit together on a low stone wall just to our left. From there we could see the harbor and the vast blue Mediterranean beyond. “The murder happened there,” he said, pointing north across the sea, “1,739 years ago on the western coast of Italy, near a fishing village along the Gulf of Salerno. The village is where your father was born and the murder occurred on the same night as his birth, a cruel irony that was neither accident nor coincidence.
“Your grandfather and your grandmother, Itzia, before and after they crossed in the Zeharkatu, were a uniquely gifted pair. I used to visit them at least once a year, if only to hear Aitor talk for hours about how it felt, biologically and psychologically, to age. He was obsessed with the science of it. Both he and Itzia possessed keen and curious minds and both had eclectic interests that led them all across the Mediterranean, Near East, and the shores of the Black Sea. Along with being an avid fisherman, Aitor was a student of tidal pools and marine life in coastal waters. He studied every species, but after the Zeharkatu, focused his studies on the cephalopod mollusks, particularly the octopus. Itzia was an expert in the medical sciences and studied for a time under the tutelage of an odd and brilliant Giza, the Greek physician Galen. Oddly, it was Galen who gave Aitor the first bit of information that inadvertently led to his death.