“Not a hint, but between us, Alfred, I have the impression he doesn’t like me very much.”
“He gives everyone that impression,” I said. “Does he know I died?”
“He left before I received the news . . . I don’t know, Alfred.”
“But Vosch was at my funeral. So Jourdain thinks I’m dead. He’ll tell Sam and maybe that will save his life. I’m not sure. Samuel might kill him anyway, if he hasn’t already.”
But I hoped I was in time to stop it. I didn’t think Jourdain was evil—just messed up by his father’s murder and he had thought taking me out would bring him some peace. I knew better.
“Well,” Mr. Needlemier said. “I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but it certainly would solve all your difficulties if Jourdain were, um, shall we say, in your current perceived condition—but in actuality.”
I sighed. Lawyers. “Not all my difficulties, Mr. Needlemier. Not by a long shot. That reminds me. I need cash. There’s a Western Union here at the airport. Can you wire me some?”
“Some what?”
“Cash, Mr. Needlemier. Money. We need clothes and plane tickets—and food. We haven’t eaten in almost two days.”
“We?”
“Me and Ashley.”
“Ah, the lovely secret agent person. Of course, Alfred. I’ll wire you as much as you need. Are you flying back to Knoxville?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “It’s the first place he’ll look.”
“Jourdain?”
“Nueve.”
“Nueve!”
“Well, both. Jourdain and Nueve. The list keeps growing.”
“Ah, so that’s what you meant by difficulties. I thought perhaps you were referring to the Skull.”
“The Skull?”
“The Thirteenth Skull. You asked me about it at the airport, remember? Well, it tweaked my curiosity, so I took it upon myself to find out a little more about it.”
“And?”
“And I did.”
“No, I meant what did you find out?”
“The Thirteenth Skull may be another name for the Skull of Doom.”
“The Skull of Doom?”
“Or then again, perhaps not. The literature is quite contradictory and vague, like all such literature, but utterly fascinating . . .”
“Mr. Needlemier,” I said. “I’m very tired and very hungry and I’m running out of time.”
“Of course. In a nutshell, there are, or were, thirteen skulls, fashioned from solid crystal sometime in the late first century. By whom and for what purpose no one seems to agree, but one legend that I thought you might find interesting—or thought you would if you were alive, because of course at the time I thought you weren’t—one legend has it that the Skulls were made by Merlin—”
“Merlin,” I echoed, remembering my dream in cabin thirteen. The old man unzipping his head and ripping out his skull. “Touch.”
“The magician. From Camelot . . .”
“I know who Merlin is, Mr. Needlemier.”
“Of course you do! You would almost have to! Carved from crystal by Merlin himself . . . including the Thirteenth, the last and most terrible of the Divining Skulls, as they were called. Merlin was so horrified by what he had fashioned that he divided the first twelve between Arthur’s bravest knights, ordering them to scatter the Skulls to the ends of the earth and to tell no one where they had hidden them. The Thirteenth, called the Skull of Doom, Merlin himself hid away—or more precisely threw away.”
“Threw away? Where did he throw it away?”
“Not where, Alfred. When. The legend says he hurled the Skull of Doom into a time warp or vortex, casting it far into the future, so far that the wizard was certain no man would still be alive to use it.”
“Why? What could it do?”
“By itself, hardly anything. It could be used much like a crystal ball—like the others, it was cut from the purest crystal—to see into the future. But the Skull’s real power came when aligned with the first twelve. You see, if the twelve were arranged in a circle, with the thirteenth in the middle, all time and space could—or most definitely would, according to some—be literally ripped apart.”
I thought about that. “The end of the world.”
“No, of everything. The entire universe.”
“No wonder Merlin ordered them scattered.”
“Yes. And no wonder that Jourdain might know of them. His father was, after all, a Knight of the Sacred Order.”
“He went to Suedberg,” I said.
“Suedberg?”
“This little town in Pennsylvania where one of the knights lived—or used to live before Mogart’s men killed him. But his mother is still there—and she’s a soothsayer. She can see the future.”
“Perhaps with the help of a special crystalline object designed for that purpose?”
“Maybe,” I said. It was hard to think it through. I was hungry and tired and still chilled to the bone. “I stayed in that house and never saw any crystal skull, but it wasn’t like I searched the place.”
“No doubt Jourdain has, though.”
“But it still doesn’t add up. Unless Jourdain thinks I knew where the Thirteenth Skull was—which I don’t—and besides he didn’t even give me a chance to tell him one way or another. Nueve swooped in right before he was going to chop off my head.”
“He didn’t ask you where it was?”
“He just said he was on the ‘last knightly quest,’ ” I said. “That must be why Sam’s so bent on finding him. If anyone would know about some magical crystal skull, it would be the Operative Nine for OIPEP.”
I made him repeat Samuel’s cell number one last time before hanging up. I dialed the number and got a very stern recorded message from the phone company that I needed to deposit three dollars before making my call.
In the restaurant, Ashley was working on a sloppy hamburger about the size of my head, a plateful of fries buried under globs of ketchup, and a big bowl of baked beans.
“I ordered,” she said unnecessarily. “I couldn’t wait any longer. Lemme guess: the director is ‘indisposed.’ ”
“I’ve got a feeling something bad has happened.”
She laughed. “I wonder why.”
“I’m thinking the board said ‘no.’ ”
“Well, my guess would be it’s not going too well.”
“I don’t get it,” I said. “All this time I thought the director was in charge of OIPEP.”
“We call OIPEP the ‘Company’ for a reason, Alfred. It’s set up like a multinational corporation. Countries who’ve signed the Charter send representatives to sit on the board. The board sets the policies and selects a director to implement them and run the day-to-day operations. But any decision the director makes can be overturned by a simple majority vote of the board.”
“Do you think she can convince them to leave me alone?”
“She hasn’t been able to so far.”
The server came by to take my order. I ordered a grilled chicken salad and a glass of ice water.
Ashley took a big pull on her chocolate shake and said, “Salad?”
“My tummy feels funny.”
“Did you just use the word ‘tummy’?”
I looked around the room. A man was sitting by himself, talking on a cell phone in a loud voice. Something about the meeting in Denver and what a slam dunk the presentation was. A frazzled-looking woman sat in a booth wrangling two toddlers fighting over a red crayon, their faces smeared with what looked like mashed potatoes. Another man sat at the bar wearing blue jeans and a buckskin shirt with the leather danglies on the sleeves.
“Why did he let us go?” I wondered aloud.
“He thought you were serious about hitting the button.”
“Maybe. But maybe he wasn’t bluffing when he said they already had what they wanted. But if they already had what they wanted, why didn’t they just let me go after I shot you? Why chase us into the mountains? Why fly in anoth
er black box?”
“He’s just protecting the Company’s investment.”
“Investment in what? OIPEP used my blood to fight demons before, but only because it didn’t have the Seal. It has the Seal now, so why does it still need my blood?”
She thought about it. I guessed she was thinking about it. She might have been thinking about her fries as she swirled the end of one in a dollop of ketchup. I remembered when I first met her in Knoxville, when she was posing as a transfer student, the big burger and milk shake she scarfed down without taking a breath. She tapped the fry on the edge of her plate like she had to get the ratio of potato to tomato just right.
“The Company was created to investigate extraordinary phenomenon and preserve items of peculiar and special significance. I guess your blood fits into both categories. Nueve doesn’t want it falling into the wrong hands.”
“He’s protecting the world from Alfred Kropp.”
“From what Alfred Kropp can do.”
“Right. We wouldn’t want some kid with the power to heal the world running amok, healing the world.”
My food came. I picked at it. She grabbed the bread stick off my plate and ate it.
“How do you do that?” I asked. “Eat so much and stay so thin.”
“I’m like a lioness,” she said. “I gorge, but only once a week.”
“If it’s true the SD 1031 has a range of only about a mile, then he has no way of finding me,” I said, looking at the guy hunched over at the bar. He was watching a basketball game on the TV mounted on the ceiling. “He’s not that stupid.”
“He knows where you are,” she said.
“How?”
“A Company plane dropped us here.”
“And took off again. Do you think we’re being watched?”
She shook her head. “Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know. We should have killed the pilot.”
She said it so nonchalantly that for a second I couldn’t think of anything to say.
Finally, I said, “So say we aren’t being watched. How will he know where I’m going next?”
“Where we’re going next.”
“Well,” I said. “That’s something we need to talk about.”
Her big blue eyes got even bigger. “Oh?”
“Look, Ashley, the last thing I want to be is alone, but facts are facts and everybody who gets close to me or tries to help me ends up hurt, very hurt or dead. My uncle. Bennacio. Samuel. And you’ve already been stabbed—”
“And shot.”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t counting that.”
“You weren’t counting my being shot?”
“Because I did that.”
“Still counts.”
“To save you.”
“You shot me for my own good?”
“It was a zagging thing; I thought I explained that.”
“You’re cutting me loose.”
“I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I’ve already been hurt.”
“Hurt worse.”
“Maybe I’m a grown-up and don’t need a teenager to make that decision for me.”
“Nueve gets this. You used to be a field operative, so I know you get this. It’s why Mingus used you to test me. It’s why Nueve threatened to kill you to get me to give up. I can’t do that anymore, Ashley. Not to anybody, but especially not to you.”
She angrily slurped the dregs of her milk shake through her straw, if it’s possible to slurp angrily.
“And where am I supposed to go, Alfred? I can’t go back to the Company—what do you think they’d do to me after I helped you escape? I can’t go back to my old life. They took my old life away. God, I wish I knew you were going to do this back at the château; I would have told you to let me bleed to death after Mingus sliced me open. You can’t do this to me. I won’t let you do this to me. I’m coming with you, wherever you go, until I’m dead or you are or we both are.”
“That’s what I’m telling you,” I said. “That’s what I’m trying to say. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me, but if the past proves anything, I’m pretty sure I know what’s going to happen to you, and I don’t want that to happen to you, Ashley. I’d rather be cut open myself than see something happen to you.”
She tossed her napkin on her plate, leaned over the table, grabbed my face with both hands, and kissed me full on the lips. I tasted chocolate.
“You don’t get it,” she said, touching my cheek. “I’ve been assigned to you, Alfred Kropp. You own me.”
01:11:57:02
I left Ashley in the restaurant so they wouldn’t think we were running out on the check and went to the Western Union office where the money from Mr. Needlemier was waiting for me. I cashed a twenty and used the change to call Samuel’s cell phone.
On the third ring someone with a vaguely familiar voice came on the line.
It wasn’t Samuel’s voice.
“I believe I know who this is,” the man said in a French accent.
“Where’s Samuel?” I asked.
“Mr. St. John is indisposed,” Vosch said, echoing the OIPEP operator. “But if you’d like to leave a message, Alfred, I’d be happy to pass it along.”
I fell back against the wall and closed my eyes. I could taste the dressing from my salad and wondered if I was going to be sick.
“Is he alive?” I asked.
“He is, but of course you are not. You should have been at your funeral, Alfred. Quite touching, if ill attended.”
“You didn’t buy it.”
“It was a poor sell. Why would St. John need to protect a corpse?”
“I want to talk to him.”
“He’s indisposed. I thought we covered this.”
“How do I know you’re telling the truth? Maybe you’ve already killed him.”
“That would make me stupid and a liar, like a person who would fake his own death.”
“What do you want?” I asked.
“You know what we want.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Excuse-moi?”
“I said I don’t have it. I never had it and I don’t know where it is.”
“Where what is?”
“The Skull. The Skull, Vosch. The Thirteenth Skull.”
He didn’t say anything at first. Then he laughed. “Ah, Alfred Kropp, you are a witty one. Tell me where you are and I shall help you locate it.”
The airport was crowded; a plane had just landed, and people were hurrying to make their connecting flights, vacationers mostly, judging by the way they were dressed. Couples and families rushing past with that flushed excitement of travel, chattering and laughing, pulling tired kids along. Where they were going, I could never come. Where they were now, I could never be. Tell me where you are.
“Outside,” I said.
“Pardon?”
“I said outside Helena, Montana. At the airport. And bring him with you, understand?”
“I’ll make the arrangements. Why don’t we break with tradition, Alfred? Stay where you are and don’t do anything stupid.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “Can’t promise about the stupid part.”
I went back to the restaurant and paid our check. Ashley’s eyes were red, and I wondered if she’d had herself a cry while I was gone.
“What took so long?”
“The wire hadn’t come in yet,” I lied. “I had to wait.”
We ducked into a store and bought some jeans and sweatshirts with BIG SKY printed on the fronts. I went into the men’s room to change.
Ashley gave me the eye when I came out.
“Where are the guns?” she asked.
“Tossed them in the trash,” I said. “Guns and planes don’t mix.”
“Plane to where?”
“We’re flying to Knoxville,” I lied. That was two lies in about thirty minutes. Lying in general is a bad idea, but sometimes you’re shoved between the evil of lying and the thing-that-must-be-done. I pushed that t
hought away; it was Op Nine thinking. In another life, you would have made a superb Superseding Protocol Agent.
“A little obvious, isn’t it?” she asked.
“That’s what I’m counting on. So obvious its obviousness makes it unobvious.”
“Nueve will have an operative at every gate, in every restaurant, probably in every public restroom. We won’t last thirty seconds in Knoxville.”
“I don’t have a choice,” I said. “I’ve got a bomb in my head and there’s only one guy who can help me get it out—the guy who ordered it put there.”
“There’re neurosurgeons in every major city in America, Alfred,” she said.
“Right, and what do I tell them? ‘Excuse me, Doc, but would you mind pulling this top-secret explosive device from between my hemispheres? It’s been bugging me.’ ”
“He’s a lot of things, but I don’t think Samuel is a brain surgeon.”
“Well, I have to start somewhere, Ashley.”
There were no direct flights to Knoxville, so we booked a connecting flight through Chicago, where we would have a two-hour layover. Since landing in Helena, I had the weird sensation of a ticker or clock inside my head, winding down like a timer to some apocalyptic event. I was familiar with apocalyptic events. This time was a little different, though. I wasn’t trying to save the world, just two people in it . . . three, if you counted Samuel. But then, as we settled into our seats at the gate, I thought no, it was just me. Not the world this time around, just Alfred.
I looked down at the top of Ashley’s head against my shoulder. She was sleeping off her burger and fries. What about Ashley? She had nowhere to go either, nowhere she would be safe from Nueve. The longer she stayed with me, the greater the danger. It wasn’t a pleasant fact, but this wasn’t the time to dwell on the pleasant ones, like the way she had looked at me in the restaurant and the way the chocolate on her lips tasted slightly salty from my bread stick. This was the time for necessities. This was the time for doing the thing-that-must-be-done.
Taking care not to jostle her too much, I eased a few twenties into her pocket. She murmured something in her sleep, smacked her lips a couple times (what was she dreaming about . . . chocolate sundaes, big happy slobbery dogs, vampires?), and nuzzled my neck.