“All set then?” Mike asked. “Great!” He started across the tarmac toward the cargo plane, but nobody followed him. Bennacio turned to Cabiri.
“I am coming with you!” Cabiri shouted at him.
“No. You must stay with Natalia. While I live she is in danger. Keep her safe, Cabiri!”
He turned to me. “I will say good-bye to you now, Kropp. Though not himself a knight, Cabiri is a Friend of the Sword and will help you home if that is what you wish.”
Deep shadows crept along his mouth and under his deep-set gray eyes. He looked very old, and tired. “My path is dark and only heaven knows its end. Pray for me, Alfred. Good-bye.”
He squeezed my shoulder, then turned and walked quickly toward where Mike was waiting by the rear of the cargo plane door. I watched until Bennacio had almost reached the plane, and then I took off after him, yelling, “Bennacio! Bennacio! Wait! Wait for me, Bennacio!
“Bennacio!” I stopped by the gangplank, gasping for air. It was a hard run; I was big and not used to it, and besides, I had just taken a hard one between the thighs. “Take me with you.”
“You do not know what you ask,” he said.
“I could help. I could . . .” I had no idea what I could do. “I could be your squire or lackey, whatever it’s called. Please don’t leave me here, Bennacio. I’ve got to—you gotta give me a chance to make up for what I’ve done.”
He glanced at Mike, who was smiling at me like a preppie Buddha. Then Bennacio said quietly, “And what have you done, Alfred?”
“Took the Sword,” I stammered. Again he was like the stern father and I was like the little kid who just got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “And that got Uncle Farrell killed, and Mr. Samson and all the rest of the Knights, Jules and Milo now, and God knows who else is gonna die just because I didn’t want to live in a foster home. So I can’t go back now, Bennacio, don’cha understand? I can’t go back.”
“Maybe that’s so,” Mike Arnold said. “But you can’t come with us. You don’t have clearance and I’ve got no authorization.”
I ignored him. “You owe me,” I told Bennacio. “I saved your life and you owe me.”
“I saved yours,” Bennacio reminded me.
“Look, Mr. Samson sent you all the way back here just to tell me what happened,” I said. “Why do you think he did that? There’s got to be a reason. I don’t know what it is, but he thought it was important enough to have you drop everything just to tell me. You know he would have said I could come. You know that, Bennacio.”
He didn’t say anything. He turned and walked up the ramp into the plane.
“Gee, what a tough break, Al,” Mike said. “But you really should count yourself lucky you made it this far.”
He hit a button and the ramp started to rise. Something caught his eye over my shoulder and all of a sudden he said, “Great! Company!”
He reached down, grabbed my wrist, and heaved me into the cargo bay. I turned around and saw three dark shapes on the edge of the sky coming in fast, either helicopters or low-flying planes. Mike pushed me out of the way and ran toward the front of the plane, shouting into a walkie-talkie, “This is Mother Goose, we’ve laid the egg and we have three baby dragons heading for the nest. Repeat, we are still on the nest! Request immediate air support!” He slammed into the cockpit at the front of the plane. The bay door was still closing as the plane lurched forward, throwing me backwards. I would have fallen if Bennacio hadn’t caught me. We both peered out the shrinking opening as the black shapes got closer— they looked like the attack helicopters that brought us here. I looked over and saw ours taking off and one of the baby dragons, as Mike called them, peel away from the other two and head after it.
Then the bay door closed and I couldn’t see anymore. Bennacio reached around me, swung the locking mechanism down, and said, “Come, then, Alfred.” I followed him to a small bench against the hull and we sat down as the plane accelerated for takeoff.
“There’s no safety belts!” I yelled at him over the roar of the engines. He ignored me and flipped up the plastic shade of the small window behind us. He craned his neck but snorted with frustration because he couldn’t see anything, I guess.
Then we were off the ground and banking sharply to the right. Bennacio had turned from the window and was sitting with his eyes closed. Maybe he had a fear of flying, like me. I looked out the window and saw two helicopters, one chasing the other, but they were identical, so I couldn’t tell which was ours and which was theirs. Little explosions of bright light were coming from the chasing helicopter as the other one rose and dipped, banked hard right, then left, trying to avoid the fire. We kept gaining altitude, until they were about the size of my thumbnail below us, and then I saw a fireball and a great cloud of billowing black smoke. I wondered where the other two baby dragons were and if our plane was armored and how, if it wasn’t, it ought to be.
I looked at Bennacio and he still had his eyes closed. I looked out the window again and this time, maybe a thousand or so feet beneath us, saw what looked like fighter jets, maybe F-16s or their Canadian equivalents. The jets were chasing down two of the helicopters. I couldn’t see the third one, so maybe the one that blew up wasn’t the one with Cabiri and Natalia on board. I hoped so. I looked at Bennacio again to tell him what I’d seen, but he had fallen asleep.
30
Bennacio and I were alone in the cargo bay. His eyes were still closed. He must know something I don’t, I thought. If it were me, I’d be beside myself with worry. Were Cabiri and Natalia alive? Did they make it? I looked at his thin fingers folded in his lap. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t married. Still, she seemed awfully young for him. I had the impression that a lot of these Old World types take younger brides, but like most impressions I had, this one didn’t come from firsthand experience. Bennacio was a knight, very up on tradition— maybe it was an arranged marriage. But Natalia loved him, you could tell that. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have kneed me in the groin.
I rested my head against the hard shell of the plane. Between the droning of the engines and Bennacio’s soft snoring beside me, soon I was asleep too.
I dreamed I was on that plateau atop the same slag heap, under the yew tree, and my head was lying in the lap of the Lady in White. She was stroking my forehead and a light, warm breeze stirred the dark ends of her hair. She was singing something, though I couldn’t make out the words, or they were in another language. I interrupted her song to ask her where I was.
Do you not know? she asked. Have you not been here before?
“Once, but I didn’t know what it was then either.”
What do you think it is, Alfred?
“Heaven?”
She smiled like I had said something cute.
And what am I?
“An angel?”
I am the one who waits. And this is the place of waiting.
“What are you waiting for?”
You know what I am waiting for.
I would have guessed she was the Lady of the Lake from the Arthur stories—only there wasn’t a lake anywhere in this dream—and that she was waiting for us humans to stop mucking around with Excalibur and give it back.
Lying with my head in her lap, I was looking straight up at the yew tree, and the leaves were fluttering in the wind you couldn’t feel, and I noticed something funny about them: The leaves of the tree were multicolored, red and black and white, and then I saw the branches were bare and it wasn’t leaves fluttering at all, but the wings of thousands of butterflies beating uselessly in the air, because each butterfly was pinned to the branch by a long silver needle. That kind of freaked me a little, and I started to pull a needle free to let the butterfly go, but the Lady slowly pushed my hand down.
It is not time.
“Time for what?”
She had a sad, faraway look in her eyes, which were as dark as her hair and shone like she was about to cry.
When the mast
er comes, he will free them.
“The master,” I said. “Who is the master?”
The one who remembers.
“Remembers what?”
What has been forgotten.
I stared at the butterflies fluttering helplessly above my head and thought that was my problem: I wanted to forget everything. I wanted to forget, but I couldn’t.
“What’s been forgotten?” I asked.
She leaned over and pressed her cool lips against my forehead. I caught a whiff of jasmine.
When the hour comes, you will remember.
31
I woke up, rubbing the back of my neck. These military cargo planes were not built for comfort. Bennacio was awake, staring out the window.
“You were dreaming of her again, weren’t you?” he asked.
“Is she the Lady of the Lake?”
“I do not know. She is important, whoever she is, if only to you.”
“It was one of those dreams where you never want to wake up. You don’t think she’s kind of the ghost of my mother, do you? She’s dead, you know.”
“I cannot answer that, Kropp.”
“Only my mother was never that pretty, even when she was young. I don’t think it was heaven. I mean, you don’t picture heaven being on top of a slag heap. Where are we?”
“About an hour from our destination, I would guess. You have slept a very long time.”
“What is our destination?”
“France.”
“I’ve never been to France,” I said. “I don’t have a visa or a passport or anything.”
“That will not matter.”
“Is Mogart in France now?”
He shook his head. “I do not know. It appears Mogart has offered to sell the sword to OIPEP itself. OIPEP operates a safe house in France, where we will wait for Mogart’s final instructions on the delivery of the cash.”
“Bennacio, it’s none of my business, but whose plane is this? Who’s that guy Mike?”
“Surely you have guessed the answer by now, Kropp.”
He reached into his breast pocket and handed me the same business card he had showed the guard at the border. Mike Arnold’s name was on the card. Above the name was the acronym, in bold type, OIPEP. There was an 800 number beneath Mike’s name.
“Bennacio, are you ever going to tell me what OIPEP is?”
He smiled at me. “What do you think it is?”
“Mr. Samson said it was some kind of supersecret spy outfit. You don’t trust them, do you?”
“I do not trust outsiders to resist the temptation of obtaining the ultimate weapon.”
“So that’s the deal? Mogart’s offering the Sword to OIPEP?”
“Perhaps.”
“You seem awful calm about it, Bennacio.”
“I am a man of faith, Alfred.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“There is a purpose to all things.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But I don’t get it.”
“Not many do, when the test comes.”
“I think I failed that test.”
“Do you? Perhaps you have. Yet it is also possible that the true test has not yet come. Who can say? I have given much thought to your words in Halifax. Indeed, Samson did think it important you knew of our fall.”
“Maybe he just wanted me to know what a mess I made of everything.”
“Have you learned so little of us, Kropp, that you would believe such a thing? This mess, as you say, does not belong to you, any more than it belongs to me. Do not concern yourself so much with guilt and grief, Alfred. No battle was ever won, no great deed ever accomplished, by wallowing in guilt and grief.”
He patted my hand and stood up. “Excuse me, I must speak with Mr. Arnold for a moment.”
He disappeared into the cockpit. I yawned. I looked out the little window and saw nothing but a lot of sky, a lot of water, and something glinting in the fading sunlight off our wing. Probably an F-16. I yawned again. I had slept for hours and I still felt sleepy.
Bennacio was gone a long time. When he came back he was smiling.
“What?” I asked.
“She lives,” he said simply, and sat down beside me.
“That’s great,” I said. “I should apologize, Bennacio. I was supposed to keep her in that back room, but she kneed me in the crotch.” My face got hot telling him that. Some kind of squire I was turning out to be.
He gave a little wave of his hand. I didn’t know what that meant.
I said, “Is she your wife?”
“She is my daughter.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say, so I added, “She’s, um, pretty.”
He didn’t answer. He was peering out the window again. “It appears we are making our final approach, Kropp. Say nothing of what you know about the Sword to Mike.”
“That won’t be hard because there’s not a lot I know.”
“He is our ally in this quest, but we are strange bedfellows.”
“How’s that?”
“Surely it has occurred to you that evil men are not alone in their desire for the Sword. It is the ultimate weapon. There is no defense against it.”
“I was thinking about that,” I said. “Mr. Samson told me an army with the Sword at its head would be invincible, but couldn’t somebody just drop a nuke on it?”
“It is impervious to any device of man,” Bennacio said, “no matter how terrible. I do not know precisely what would happen, Alfred. All I know is the Sword cannot be defeated or destroyed.”
“After Uncle Farrell died, I had this dream. Well, more of a nightmare than a dream.” I told him about the faceless army and the rider of the black horse, how he slammed the Sword into the smoking ground, how planes fell and tanks blew up, how the soldiers screamed and ran from the blinding light of the Sword.
Bennacio stared at me for a long time after I finished.
“What interesting dreams you have, Alfred Kropp,” he said. “Let us pray they are not prophetic.”
32
Two cars waited for us on the edge of the private airstrip when we touched down in France. Three men in dark suits and dark sunglasses stood beside two black cars parked by the runway. I looked up as we walked down the stairs and saw the two F-16s scream by overhead.
“You guys must be wiped out,” Mike said. “Come on. It isn’t far from here, I promise.”
He opened the rear door of one of the black cars. I looked at Bennacio. He nodded and I slid in. He sat down beside me and one of the dark-suited guys got behind the wheel. Mike sat beside him up front and we started to drive. The other two guys followed us in the second black car.
Mike opened the glove box and pulled out something black. It looked like a rag.
“Al,” he said to me. “I really hate to do this, but it’s a secure location, you know?”
He reached over the seat and, before I could put my hands up, he had slipped the cloth over my head. I couldn’t see a thing. I started to yank it off, but felt a hand on my arm. Bennacio. He patted me as if to say, It’s going to be all right.
“Hope you guys are hungry,” Mike was saying. “Jeff joined us from Istanbul yesterday and he is one heck of a cook. We’ll grab some grub, and then you can take a shower and change your clothes. Al, you especially look like somebody’s chewed you up and spit you out.”
“Where is Mogart?” Bennacio asked.
“No idea, man.” He didn’t sound too concerned about it, but that may have come from the gum-chewing. “We know where he isn’t, which is Játiva. Our folks went in yesterday, took out the whole compound, but he and his boys had already cleared out. Found Samson. Or what was left of him. Man, talk about freaky. You guys operate on a whole different level, don’t you? What in the dickens was that about?”
Bennacio didn’t say anything. I wondered what Mike was talking about. What did Mogart do to Samson that was “freaky”?
I was having a hard time breathing inside my hood. It took ev
erything inside me not to pull it off. I wondered what Mike would do if I did. Maybe shoot me. Casually, though, the way he talked and smacked the gum, like it was a summer afternoon and all he was doing was watching a baseball game. My voice was muffled by the cloth when I said, “Samson was Bennacio’s captain; you shouldn’t talk about him like that.”
He ignored me. “We think he may have slipped into Morocco or maybe even Algeria. Anyway, every border in the free world’s been locked down, but that’s a lot of square footage to cover and not everybody’s a friend of truth, justice, and the American way, if you know what I mean. Anyway, yesterday we get the call he’s ready to deal. Tells us to sit tight and he’ll be back in touch with the final figure and location of the exchange. Don’t know where it’ll be or what the final price tag is—they don’t tell us much at our level, but we’ve got a pool going if you want in on it. The rumor is— and this is unconfirmed and classified, by the way—the rumor is one hundred billion dollars. That’s billion with a capital B, man. You wanna know my personal opinion? I think he did all this just to make the Forbes list.”
I heard a cell phone ringing and then Mike talking quietly. It seemed like we had been driving for a long time, but it was hard to tell with the hood over my face; time passes differently when you can’t see. We went fast, then slow, then fast again, like we were hitting highways, then getting off again onto lesser roads. Then the engine revved as we climbed up a steep incline. Once we leveled off, I heard the engine stop, and my door opened. A hand reached in, grabbed my right arm, and pulled me out.
Somebody said, “Watch your head,” and guided me by the elbow along a rocky path. The rocks or gravel crunched under my feet and I thought about my dream and scrambling up the slag heap to find the Lady in White with her long black hair and dark eyes staring sadly into space, waiting for the Master to come.