Ingrams & Assoc Prequel: Broken

She needed a plan. She needed to think. And she needed to know why.

"So there we were, Sam - me, Alice and Johnny Burrows. Running around the world, digging stuff up, sometimes grave robbing but always having a great time. We ran from Maoris in New Zealand, dug up antiques in Peru, we even grabbed a large ruby from within the Forbidden City in China itself! We barely got away with that one."

Six months after April made her discovery, Marcus was sitting in another room, with another bed- ridden occupant. This time it was a woman. She was conscious but unspeaking. She'd suffered a stroke three days before and was just coming out of it. Marcus wondered if he was doing the right thing, unburdening himself to someone with such serious health problem, but there was no one else in the residential home that wasn't completely non compos mentis. So here he was, telling his yearly story to Sam Nixon, an elderly woman who in her youth was the wife of the local chief of police. There was certain irony in telling her his story, he had to admit.

Marcus looked across at her, saw her looking back at him with what he sincerely hoped was compassion, and he pressed on.

"We were unstoppable. And the news reelslovedus. We were in the movies, in the news reels, we were on fledgling TV shows, we were interviewed on the radio – it was heady stuff, Sam, let me tell you. We were mobbed when we opened an exhibition in New York. Block busting they called it. And in those days, blocking busting meant the queues went around the block! But then... Then it all changed."

Marcus stopped and looked down for a bit, then took a drink of water from a glass next to him. He took a deep breath and carried on.

"Johnny Burrows was a character. No question. He had no patience for what he called 'the stupid people' – and everyone was stupid at some point or another. He drank when he wanted to – and sometimes to excess. He thought he was immortal and he always had a trick or a dodge up his sleeve. He only came unstuck a very few times in our adventures together and even then, he minimized the damage. He was pretty clever and fiercely brave. He gave the impression of being everyone's friend and completely fair and he was, mostly. But when it came to women...ahhh, even the best of us is undone.

"He was smitten with Alice. I should have realized, but I was young and stupid and thought it was my brain he wanted. And he did, I'm sure of it. But that was the icing on the cake. What he wanted was Alice. He paid her attention and she lapped it up. We made a great threesome when we went to the dance clubs in Los Angeles and Miami – of course she was supposed to be with me, but everyone thought they were a couple. She was gorgeous, he was tough and bold and rugged and I was...well, me really. I could never compete with that personality.

"I know Alice loved me. She did, I know it. But this kind of attention would turn any girls head. And she got it, in spades. Johnny made sure of that. He made sure that when we were out in public, she looked a million dollars. Dresses and jewelry from Tiffany, makeup, the whole deal. 'It's the public image, Marcus, we've got to keep it up' he'd say to me. And then he'd nudge me and say, 'And it's not like you mind, is it? I mean, look at her! Lucky man there Marcus.' And I'd smile weakly and go along with it. I knew though. I knew where this was going to end up – I could see the inevitable end - and I was powerless to stop it.

"Alice wouldn't have it though. When I talked about what I thought Johnny's intentions where – conscious or unconscious, she'd pat my hand and look at me and smile and say, 'Stop worrying. What we have is something he can never touch.' And then I'd just grumble and she'd do something that would take my mind of it. Take my mind off the end of the world, in fact. Now I look back on it, I guess even what she said to me wasn't a denial of where it would end. Just compartmentalization of it."

Marcus paused and looked slyly over at Sam Nixon and said, "I wonder how graphic I can get here, Sam? You want to hear the details?"

He looked into her eyes, and she slowly blinked once. Marcus smiled roguishly at her and said, "I thought so. These young people, they think that because we are old we are used up and no longer interested. They think they invented sex. If only they knew, eh Sam? Well... they'll find out soon enough themselves."

He shifted position and took another sip of water.

"My goodness, that girl could fuck. Yes, I said fuck. Our generation never used to use words like that, did we, Sam? But I think there's an interesting delineation between fucking and making love. A fuck is what you dotosomeone, you make lovewithsomeone. And Alice, she could fuck and then immediately after, make love to you, like no one I've ever been with. It was just astounding. She made you feel like you were the only man who could ever satisfy her.

"She was verbal with me – another no-no from our generation – and she just loved to get it on and be adventurous. I remember her telling me once that when we did an interview forThe Tonight Show– it was with Jack Paar in those days – she wasn't wearing any underwear for the whole interview and she was worried she'd left a mark on the seat because she was so wet the whole time. Luckily, the chairs were leather, but still! Can you imagine? Can you imagine any of the current generation doing something like that?

"Johnny and I were quite close at that time. We'd go drinking together, have poker parties, tell each other our memories of childhood, that sort of thing. I'd confide with him how head over heels I was in love with Alice, how I wanted to marry her but she was a thoroughly modern girl and wanted her freedom. He knew how I felt and empathized. Mind you, he was working his way through a chorus line of girls at the time. It was somehow expected of him, he said. I remember him sitting back and saying how tired he was of the whole image thing, but 'that's what the public expects, and we must deliver.'

"We were a great team, until the Peruvian trip. That's where it all came apart. I'd been tracking the burial ground of an Incan King – it had been discovered by a Spanish group of explorers in 1560 or so, but of the original group, only one made it back. The others were picked off by disease, accident and an attack by a deep forest tribe. The one that returned wrote his memoirs but never described where they found the tomb because, as he put it, 'no one else should have to endure that journey.'

"I spent weeks going over his memoirs, looking at maps, and other texts of the time, and I was pretty sure I'd worked out the route he'd taken. I was pretty smart back then for things like that – it was all deduction and reasoning. He said it had taken three days to get a river, so looking at maps, I could work out potentially which rivers they might be and so on. It took a while, but I was pretty sure I had the approximate location of where tomb was. It was literally carved into a cliff face, with a face on it. It was all covered in creepers and the original expedition only found it because there had been a forest fire a month before, and the creepers had burned away."

Marcus stopped the flow of words for a moment, got up and wandered over to the room window and looked out. It was another sunny day, not a cloud in the sky. It was hard to see how hot it was outside just from looking at it. He paused for a moment, hands in his pockets as he gathered his thoughts, and then continued.

"We were disembarking at Callao, by Lima in Peru, from a flying boat when it happened. I was trying to get off the plane, down the rickety stairs and somehow I fell onto the pontoon. My leg was fractured and I was carted off to what passed for a hospital. They patched up the leg, reset the bones and slapped a cast on me, and I was stuck. The expedition had been sponsored by RKO and they had a crew with them, so it's not like the trip could be postponed. I had to wait behind. I was really upset, and I remember, just before the rest of the crew left, Alice coming to the hospital room and holding my hand and saying, 'It'll be ok. We'll be safe and we'll find this thing'. That I shouldn't worry and she'd be back as soon as she could.

"They were gone seven weeks. Seven weeks of them trekking through the jungle, working out where they were and navigating using dead reckoning and what little landmarks I could give them. Of course today it would be all Google Maps and satellite photos and what not, but back then it was a rope, a compass, a map, stars and lots of back and forth.

"When they returned, I was in a holed up in a hotel – my leg had mostly healed and I was going stir crazy. When the local kids, who were watching for the return of the expedition, came to find me I was down outside that hotel in five seconds flat. The entire expedition had returned! All of them. That was a nice surprise – I had expected them to lose a couple as we often did - but apparently not this time.

"However, I was less happy about the rest of what I saw. Alice and Johnny where hand in hand, and she was wearing an Incan headband, complete with carved icon. No one else knew that meant, but I did. And if I did, then I knew Alice did too. See, when Incans got married, one of their traditions was that the woman presented the man with a headband once they returned home from where the wedding was officiated at. That's what she was wearing – it was a man's wedding present, but in this case, no one would know. To everyone else, it was just nice jewelry. They'd obviously found the tomb and she'd either helped herself, or been presented it from Johnny. I was betting on the latter.

"They both had to perform interviews with the local press and with the RKO team, on their successful arrival back to base, what they found and so on. Neither of them would look at me, but they never let their hands go the whole time. The interviewers even noticed it and commented that they were now a couple, something neither denied, saying only 'there are others we have to talk to before we can comment on that.'

"But I knew. I knew it the moment I saw them. I think that subconsciously I knew it the moment my leg was broken, and perhaps, even before that. That being around Johnny, it was only a matter of time before the light of my life took up with him.

"I just left them to it, and returned to my hotel room, not knowing what else to do. After a couple of hours, there was a knock on the door and there they were. You could tell how uncomfortable they were, but they asked to come in and sat down next to each other on the couch. Alice reached out to me but I just pulled back. I knew what was up and I didn't want this scene either.

"They explained that nether had planned this, it had just happened – they were in hostile territory, they turned to each other for comfortet cetera, et cetera.I just sat there, not saying anything. Really, there was nothing to say.

"At some point I remember saying to Alice, 'What about all that stuff you said about him never intruding on what we had? That you could never have that with someone else?' and Alice told me that she stood by that. What she had with Johnny was different from what we had. What we had was still what we had and would continue to have.

"I know I was confused by that last statement and said so. Johnny said that the last thing they wanted to do was hurt me and break up the team. You have to understand, Johnny was successful before we all became a team, but what most people didn't know was that most of it was dumb luck – him just being in the right place at the right time – and they didn't know about the six or seven expeditions where he failed outright. For every one thing he recovered or found, there were three or four trips where he came away with nothing.

"When I came on board, his success rate went through the roof. He needed me; he needed my research and detective work to direct him to the right places to find this stuff. But, being Johnny, he wanted Alice too. And he got her, just like he got everything else he ever wanted. He just reached out and took it, because he could.

"So Johnny and Alice had worked out what they thought was a solution. Alice and I were never 'an item' in terms of going out or the public knowing we were together. The media didn't care since I was a background person to Johnny's huge personality and as a couple we hadn't been particularly public in terms of going to events together. So we'd just carry on as we had before, only Johnny would be sharing Alice. Ostensibly she was 'his' girl – 'All about the image old boy', as Johnny kept reminding me – but she'd still come to me some nights, when it would work out, and be mine, the same as before. The other time, she'd be with Johnny, being his other half. Our relationship would be kept in the shadows and publicly, she'd be Johnny's.

"I was stunned. I didn't know what to say. I could see Johnny was not happy about it, but he was going along with it for the sake of the team – to offer me at least something and a way for me to not leave in a huff. I could see Alice trying so hard to make me understand that she still loved me and still wanted me, but she needed Johnny too. She was trying to find a way to make it acceptable to everyone.

"The thing is, Johnny knew how I felt about Alice. He knew that he could throw me this bone and I'd stay, just because I loved her so much. I wanted her happy and if this is what it took, he knew that deep down I'd find a way to accept it. He got Alice, he got me to stay around and publicly we all looked happy and cheerful and that damn image wouldn't be tarnished – it would be brightened, when he mentioned a wedding."

Marcus paused again, and then turned away from the window and went back to his seat. He took a sip of water, leaned forward, clasping his hands in between his knees, glanced over at Sam Nixon, and then took a breath and carried on.

"Johnny sat back and said that I had to know this was coming. That there was no way we could all remain a team andnothave this happen eventually, that Alice would end up in his bed sooner or later and frankly, he was surprised it hadn't happened sooner. That I had to know it had been coming and I should have been prepared for it. His casual arrogance was staggering, but that was Johnny. And, of course, looking back on it, he was right.

"It was also stressed by Johnny, in private, later, that this was a one-time offer. That while he and Alice had been trying to work this out with me like adults, if I didn't take it, I'd be out on my ear and he'd figure out how to find the relics by himself. It was made clear to me that Alice would prefer him over me and I had just better take what was on offer or piss off entirely.

"And I... like the idiot in love I was, I stayed. I soon found out what he meant about 'When it would work out.' It was rare, if he could help it. If he was in town, he found all sorts of reasons for them to go out and be public and so I didn't see her. When he went out of town, she came to me every night. We still made love and I could feel she made an extra effort. It was...endearing and depressing at the same time. It was clear she still loved me but she was torn and I was on the losing end.

"She told me that she loved making love with me, that with Johnny it was good but it was more animal and raw and with me it was more about emotion and love. Not that she didn't love Johnny fucking her – she was quite blunt about that – but that she needed both and how lucky she was that she got both.

"When the wedding approached, it got even worse. Again, that fucking image Johnny presented got in the way. Who else could he ask to be his best man, but his right hand man? If he hadn't asked me, the media would have been asking why.

"So there I was, forced to stand up and hand the rings to the man marrying the love of my life. I had to give a speech extolling his virtues at the reception, and wave them off as they went off to start married life. I remember Alice sitting there, with a single tear running down her cheek when I'd finished my speech. Everyone thought the tear was for the wonderful job I'd done talking about Johnny and their future—there's a famous picture of it if you look it up on the Internet—but we both knew better. She was crying for the position I was in.

"After that, our times together grew less. She told me that when she did come to me, Johnny took her roughly the next day to, in his words 'fuck the Marcus out of her.' Reclamation sex I think they call it now. She confided that to start with it had been exciting, but more recently it was just angry and upsetting.

"Johnny kept trying to get her to bring me his cream pies – that's what they call it now I think - and she was resisting, insisting on giving me whatever respect and dignity she could. Thinking back, there was quite a back and forth of sexual conflict going on and it was more between her and him than it was me – I was just the pawn they were fighting over in their attempt to create dominance. If I'd had one ounce of respect for myself, I should have just gone. But I was in love and blinded by it.

"She didn't know how much longer this relationship sharing was going to last because Johnny was getting less and less happy about the notion of sharing her – that she wasn't 100% his, as she should be.

"And then she was pregnant. Again, it was inevitable really. Almost two years to the day from when they returned from the Incan tomb, Alice gave birth to April Burrows, my faux niece. I was there at the hospital with Johnny, pacing up and down outside. In those days the father was never in the room.

"She was born all complete and beautiful, and I couldn't help but burn when I saw Alice and Johnny, posing for pictures with April, while they were still in the hospital. Alice looked at me, smiled tentatively and I just left. It seemed like the best thing to do.

"After that, things slowed down. Johnny told me that he felt it was time for them to stop globetrotting. He had been approached by the ABC TV company to do a special on him and Alice and April – the first reality show – and he'd agreed to do it. The archeologist at home, kind of thing. It was a smash hit and then ABC approached him about him hosting a regular show on his adventures and the cultures he'd investigated.

"He'd told them he would think about it, but with his personality and the fact that April was tying the two of them down, it was a no brainer. Apparently I was tapped to be the onset advisor to 'make him look good'. In the meantime, we had one last trip planned.

"I had an idea of where the tomb of the last crusader was, in Jordan. Everyone has been looking for this for years. It had been a hobby horse of mine since I read books about the Knights Templar when I was a child. I had thought I had an idea of where it might be, based on a memoir I'd found in a bookshop in London. I did some research, and thought I had a good idea where we should be looking. Johnny was on board instantly. No jungles to search through, we could do a lot of it from hotels and he could take Alice and April with him. Plus, if we found it, it would be huge. Quite the find to leave the business on. The very definition of going out on top.

"So we planned the trip and off we went. Jordan was busy, hot and interesting. Alice and April wandered the souks, and Johnny and I did some reconnoitering.

"I was pretty sure I had located the church where the tomb was, buried underneath another tomb and heavily disguised to hide it from the casual observer and the searching grave robbers.

"We planned to go back at night, and lever the tomb open. What we were doing wasn't strictly speaking legal and the Jordanian authorities weren't about to grant a license to celebrated grave robber Johnny Burrows to go poking around. We hadn't even asked, because if we did, we'd reveal our interest and we'd be locked out.