The Thirteenth Skull (14 page)

“How come?”

Abby glanced at Ashley. I went on. “And if you say ‘that's classified,' I'm coming over this table at you.”

“Because of his blood, isn't it?” Ashley asked. “Because of what it can do.”

A voice spoke up behind me. “We cannot risk losing the carrier of the most important active agent in Company possession.”

Nueve. He was standing just inside the door, leaning on his black cane. Smiling. Eyes glittering. For some reason I thought of pirates.

“In short, you are simply too important, Alfred,” he said, patting my shoulder as he walked around the table to slide in next to Abby. “A vital concern for people your age, as I understand. More vital than small pores. Even if the Phoenix Protocol succeeds, there is still a chance, however small, that something, oh, shall we say
irreversible,
could happen to you.”

“If you're worried about Jourdain and his boys, you could just kill him,” I said. “Extract him extremely or whatever you call it.”

“It is not merely that,” Nueve said with a shrug. “Of course, we could execute an extreme extraction order upon Monsieur Garmot, but that doesn't preclude the possibility of your demise by other, more mundane, means. An accident, for example. Jaywalking across a busy street and
squish!
no more Alfred Kropp. We cannot risk that.”

Abby had hit another button and a slide show began to run of Camp Omega-I. Pleasant walkways that weaved among the tropical foliage. An Olympic-size swimming pool at the base of a hundred-foot waterfall. Tennis courts. A movie theater. A shining glass structure that sat high on a promontory overlooking the empty sea—my new house? Club OIPEP.

“Isn't it beautiful?” Nueve asked with no hint of irony. “All the amenities. The finest chefs. A staff that would be the envy of the world's greatest vacation resorts, if the world knew of it. There's even a masseuse!”

“Omega,” I said. “Isn't that like the last letter of the Greek alphabet?”

Nueve nodded. “Not just like it, Alfred. It
is
the last letter of the Greek alphabet.”

“End of the road,” I said.

“You'll be safe there,” Abby said. She started to say something else, and then stopped herself. “It's not what either of us wanted, but sometimes necessity trumps desire, Alfred. You of all people surely can understand that.”

“What if we just go ahead with the original plan and I promise to be very careful—like never jaywalking and always riding the bus?”

Abby shook her head. “I'm sorry, Alfred. I tried. I fought to keep the original protocol but”—she glared in Nueve's direction—“I was overruled.”

“And what Ashley said . . . about
forever.
I can't leave?”

Abby said, “We—
I
—may be able to arrange brief trips back . . .”

Nueve stifled a laugh.

“It's a prison,” I said. “Maybe it doesn't have the bars and the cot and toilet in the corner, but it's still a prison. You're flying me to that island and dumping me there, and that's where I'm going to stay for the rest of my life.”

A hand touched mine under the table. Ashley's. She slipped her fingers through mine and squeezed hard, and I felt tears come up in my eyes, like she was pumping them to the surface.

“Nothing is definite,” Abby said.

“Everything is definite,” Nueve said.

Abby ignored him. “I'm leaving tonight to make a personal appeal to the board.”

“And what if the board still says no?” I asked.

“It will,” Nueve said.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“He doesn't,” Abby said. She looked at Nueve, who was smirking at her.

“I know all that needs to be known,” he said. He lost all his smirkiness and leaned toward me, black eyes shining.

“Do you really think my interest in you terminated with obtaining the Seal, Alfred Kropp? Are you so naive or foolish that you can't see where the true value of extracting you lies? In your veins flows a power not seen in our world for over two thousand years. Why that power would be given to you, of all people, is for greater minds than mine to ponder. Nevertheless, because that power exists, we have an obligation to protect it and see that this Item of Interest more important than Solomon's trinket does not fall into the wrong hands or become lost through carelessness and neglect.

“
That
is the purpose of our Office.
That
is the reason we exist.
That
is the mission, and I am the Operative Nine. I
am
the mission, and the mission
will
be accomplished.”

He shouted over my shoulder, “You may come in now!”

The door opened and a guy built like a tree trunk came into the room. He had a wide square head and a body to match. His eyes were narrow and his lips thin; you really had to look hard to see them. He gave a short, militarylike bow in Abby's general direction.

“Alfred,” Nueve said. “May I introduce Dr. Mingus. He'll be examining you today.”

03:17:15:23

After my examination by Dr. Mingus, a couple of guys from the security detail took me back to my cabin. They
had
to take me back, because I wasn't able to move under my own power. I noticed other dark suits outside the main house and along the trails, even a couple slipping in and out of the trees. All of them wore black and all wore the same dark Ray-Bans. The OIPEP Mafia.

It was around five o'clock and nearly dark. They dumped me on the bed and the lock went
snick
. I listened to the absolute silence—if you can listen to absolute silence.

Dr. Mingus had a funny accent, thick and slushy. Tiny beads of spit hung on his sliver-thin lower lip as he talked.

This will go easily enough, if you cooperate. We'll take
some measurements, run a few nonintrusive tests, sample a
bit of your blood . . .

Beneath the château, behind a sealed metal door, at the bottom of a flight of stairs was a medical complex. Operating rooms. Examination rooms. A room with a gleaming white CT scan machine. And other rooms I didn't get to look in, though I may have been inside them, because Dr. Mingus gave me a shot that put me under, I'm not sure for how long, but it seemed like a very long time. I don't know what he did to me while I was out. I just know when I came to he was just beaming, like a little kid who had found a special surprise under the Christmas tree, and I was feeling like a scooped-out pumpkin from a different, darker holiday.

In cabin thirteen, I buried my face in the pillow.

I am a genetic engineer, Alfred. Do you know what a genetic
engineer does?

Needles extending from syringes the size of my wrist. Vials of dark, arterial blood—my blood—rows of them, each with a different colored label:
Spec Ops . . . GDT . . . Sofa . . .
That last one confused me, but it was about the tenth he drained out of me and my vision was pretty blurry by that point. Sofa? What the heck was Sofa?

This is very exciting. The most significant development in
the field in my lifetime. In anyone's lifetime, Alfred! You are
at the center of the most astounding breakthrough since Watson
and Crick cracked the code!

Dr. Mingus injected me with something that made me feel very good, sleepy, and floaty. His wide face swam in and out of focus as he leaned over me. I was tied to a gurney and they were wheeling me toward the room with the big scanner.

This will not hurt, Alfred, but you must remain very still
while we image your brain. Have you ever had a CT scan
before? It's not painful.

As I lay inside the scanner I think I heard Nueve's voice and the name “Sofia,” but I told myself I was dreaming or hallucinating, but it reminded me of Samuel. He was my guardian and he had sworn to protect me. Where was he? And who was going to protect me now?

After the scan, I looked up into Dr. Mingus's face and whispered,
Am I done?

For today. Tomorrow we have a few more tests. I'm
going to need some tissue samples. Tell me, Alfred, have you
ever had an operation?

They were going to put me under, open me up, and take samples of all my major organs. Dr. Mingus was particularly interested in my heart . . . He was going to slice out a piece of my heart.

You are blessed, Alfred Kropp. Do you believe that?

As he slid a needle into my groin.

A gift to all mankind . . .

As he shined a blinding light into my eyes.

The power of life, yes?

Like some horrible Halloween mask, his face. Wide and flat and blank. He barely had any eyebrows and his eyes were black, death-dark eyes, like a shark's. The only expression I saw in them the whole time reminded me of a kid I knew in Ohio who enjoyed burning ants with a magnifying glass. The truly scary thing is there's a lot of Dr. Minguses running around in the world, but I had the Dr. Mingus-iest of them all. He didn't just like his work and he more than loved it. Like Nueve, he
was
his work.

The power of God himself . . .

The pillow on my bed smelled of lavender. Spit ran out my open mouth and I breathed that in, the smell of spit, the smell of lavender.

They brought me into the last room, the worst room, where a dentist's chair was anchored to the floor. The two goons dragged me across the tile floor and my toe scraped across the metal drain cover in the middle of the room. They threw me into the chair and tightened straps across my arms and over my ankles. Dr. Mingus swung the chair around and brought his face very close to mine. His breath smelled very sweet, as sweet as cotton candy, and my stomach rolled.

One last test for the day, Alfred, more for my own benefit
than science's, for I am curious and I will confess a little skeptical.
Like a Missourian, I wish to see it with my own eyes.

He stepped away and I saw Ashley standing between the two stone-faced goons. They were holding her arms out from her sides. I was still pretty dopey from the shot, and at first I thought I was hallucinating. What I was seeing couldn't be what I was
seeing.

Dr. Mingus stepped between me and Ashley, but I could see her face over his shoulder—she was at least a head taller than him—and I could also see what he held in his right hand.

A scalpel.

I jerked in the chair. The straps yanked me back. Mingus's shoulder hunched and pivoted forward as he shoved the scalpel into the middle of Ashley's chest.

Then he pushed the blade straight down toward her belly button. Her knees buckled, but the two guys kept her on her feet.

Mingus stepped away. Ashley's chin dropped to her chest. A swirl of blond hair and the
drip-drip-drip
of her blood splattering on the cold tile, forming rivulets that ran toward the metal drain, and I remember thinking,
Oh, that's why
there's a drain in the floor.

Mingus turned to me.

Show me the gift.

Candy-breath, whispering.

Show me the power of God!

He cut a four-inch-long groove into my palm, threw off the straps, and flung me out of the chair. The men holding Ashley stepped away, and she crumpled to the floor as if in slow motion, coming to rest on her side, curled up like I was curled up now on my little bed in my little cabin, breathing in lavender and the smell of my own spit.

I crawled to her.

Her eyes were open, but I saw no spark of life in them.

Then a voice I had heard before whispered inside my head,
Beloved!

My vision clouded. I was seeing her through a white film, a mist of shadow and light.

My beloved . . .

Something familiar and warm had come to me—or was it always there? I had felt it first in Merlin's Cave, a being at once intimate and alien, so familiar but at the same time so terrifyingly
different
. The Sword of Kings, the gift passed down by heaven's hands, was
in
this world but not
of
this world, my father had told me, and so was this presence around me now, between me and Ashley, joining me to Ashley.

Lying beside her, I pressed my bleeding hand into the gaping wound in her chest, and with my other hand I smoothed the blond hair away from her face.

In the name of Saint Michael . . .

I couldn't feel the floor beneath me. I was floating in the white cloud. I was still in that room but also in a different place, a place where Mingus and the OIPEP Mafia couldn't go. A still place that didn't touch any other place on earth. A place with no center.

Prince of Light, hear my prayer.

Her eyelids fluttered, black butterflies, and her hands gripped my wrist. Our blood mixed. I could feel the beat of her heart.

She was going to live.

03:04:27:51

I dreamed I was sitting on a hilltop with an old man. We leaned against an ancient oak tree, watching workmen on the promontory below stack great white stones, one on top of the other, and when one stone slid into place more workmen filled the cracks with mortar.

I asked the old man what they were building.

“Camelot,” he answered.

The castle was rising three hundred feet above an inlet filled with jagged rocks and razor-sharp outcroppings of stone. I could hear the crash of surf and, just beneath it, a high-pitched wail, like a swift current hidden beneath calm water.

“I've been here before,” I told the old man.

He nodded. “So have I.”

“Who's that crying?” I asked.

He smiled at me. “It is I.”

Then he reached up and unzipped his face. The flaps of skin fell away. He pulled out his skull, white at first, like the stones of the castle beneath us; then it turned clear as glass. Only the eye sockets remained dark, filled with a shadow that no light could chase away.

“Touch.”

I woke up soaked in sweat, still lying on top of the covers in my jumpsuit, my wounded hand throbbing beneath its bandage. Someone was in the room with me. I saw his hiking boots and, resting between them, the end of his black cane.