The Thirteenth Skull (23 page)

“Like you with Vosch,” I said.

He looked at me hard. “With Vosch gone, there is one less pursuer.”

“But one more gallon of blood on my hands.”

“There is no sin in self-preservation,” he said.

“I don't care about all the ins and outs of it, Samuel. All the pie-in-the-sky philosophy won't change the facts. For every Vosch we kill, Jourdain will send five more Vosches to take his place.”

That reminded me. I laid my half-eaten corn dog on the table and went to the telephone by the bed. Samuel shifted in his chair so he could watch me. I got the same recording I got the first time I tried, right after we checked in. I hung up without leaving a message. Samuel shifted again when I sat back down and picked up my corn dog.

“Perhaps Mr. Needlemier doesn't need us to point out the prudent course,” he said.

“I hope it's that,” I said. “I hope he's taken off, gone someplace safe, but what if he hasn't? What if Jourdain already has him?”

“Then may God have mercy on him.”

I looked at his hands. He saw me looking at his hands. I looked away.

“He doesn't know where I am,” I said. “Maybe Jourdain will believe him and let him go.”

“He didn't believe me,” he pointed out.

“Well, one life at a time. One thing I can't figure out— well, there's a lot of things—but the biggest thing is how killing me gets Jourdain the Skull.”

He frowned. “ ‘Jourdain the Skull'?”

I nodded. “The Skull of Doom.”

He didn't say anything. He just stared at me.

“You've never heard about the Skull of Doom?” I asked.

“Of course I have. I was an Operative Nine.”

“Well, he told me he was on ‘the last knightly quest for the Thirteenth Skull,' which everybody knows is the Skull of Doom.”

“That is one of its names, yes. And if that is his ultimate goal, he is doomed to failure.”

“Why?”

“Because the Skull of Doom is a myth. It doesn't exist.”

“How do you know?”

“I was an Operative Nine.”

“And that means what? You're all-knowing like God?”

“Far from it.”

“Then how are you so sure it doesn't exist?”

“Because we could find no evidence of its existence.”

“That doesn't mean it's a myth.”

He shook his head and waved one four-fingered hand.

“It doesn't matter. Jourdain believes it exists, apparently, and that's all that matters.”

“Which is the point I was trying to make! He somehow thinks killing me is going to help him get it.”

“It may be something far simpler than that.”

“Like what?”

“Like revenge.”

I thought about that. He was right, as usual. The
why
really didn't matter. It didn't even matter if killing me had anything to do with getting the Skull. The only thing that mattered was he wasn't going to stop until I was dead.

“Right. On one side, a madman chasing a myth and on the other a sociopath on a crusade to lobotomize me. So we slip between them and head straight for headquarters.”

He said, “Headquarters.” His eyes cut away. The elephant was back.

“Only I'm not sure exactly where headquarters is, but you know and that's where Abby Smith is.”

“Who may or may not be in a position to help us,” he said.

“We don't have a choice.”

“No choice,” he said. He wadded up the wrapping from his sandwich and dropped it into the bag. Then he took his napkin and carefully wiped off the table.

“Why did you do it, Sam?”

He didn't need to ask what I was talking about. He knew. “I was the Operative Nine.”

“And putting a bomb in my head was the thing-that-must-be-done?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“The reason was classified.”

“Declassify it. Now.”

He nodded. Swallowed. “I wish I had a drink,” he said softly, as if to himself.

I slid my Big Gulp toward him.

“Not that kind of drink,” he said.

“You're not the Operative Nine anymore,” I said. “You're my guardian. You owe me the truth.”

“The price for that is very high, Alfred.”

“Whatever it is, I'll pay it.”

“It won't be you who pays.”

“Tell me why you did it, Sam.”

He sighed and his voice now barely rose above a whisper.

“Sofia . . . Alfred. Because of Sofia.”

“Sofia. I've heard that name before.”

He didn't say anything.

“I heard you saying it in your sleep at the hospital,” I reminded him. “ ‘Ghost from the past,' you told me. Then I overheard Nueve and you arguing about her before we left, and Nueve said you were talking about the goddess of wisdom, but somehow I don't think you were.”

“Hardly,” he said.

“When Mingus had me in his lab, I saw some vials of my blood labeled ‘sofa.' And I thought that was really weird.

What did my blood have to do with sofas? It doesn't have a damn thing to do with sofas, does it, Sam?”

“No.”

“So no more hints and half answers and riddles. Tell me who Sofia is and tell me now.”

He nodded. “Sofia isn't a person, Alfred. Sofia is a thing. An acronym. Special Operational Force: Immortal Army. SOFIA.”

The room was quiet except for the humming of the heater by the window. Suddenly the room seemed very dark. I got up from the table and turned on the floor lamp by the bed.

“Catchy name,” I said. “Who came up with that?”

“The Operative Nine.” He didn't turn to watch me this time. He sat very still, his back to me.

“The idea being my blood could be used to create some kind of supersoldier . . . ?”

“It was conceivable.”

“. . . An army whose soldiers are instantly healed on the battlefield, whose troops are immune to disease and injuries . . .” I saw it then—the only real use somebody like Nueve would have for my blood. I remembered what I said to Ashley at the airport,
We wouldn't want some kid with the
power to heal the world running amok, healing the world,
and felt sick to my stomach. “The possibilities are endless, aren't they, Sam?”

“That it
was
a possibility made SOFIA necessary.”

“And SOFIA made the SD 1031 necessary.”

He nodded. “Necessary, yes.”

“Because the Operative Nine couldn't risk the Item of Special Interest falling into the wrong hands.”

“The results could be catastrophic.”

“So he needed a way to keep a thumb on the Special Item—and a way to . . . terminate the experiment if that became—”

“Necessary,” he said.

“Necessary. Right. The Operative Nine didn't have a choice.”

“No choice,” he echoed.

“Because he's the Operative Nine. He has to consider the inconsiderable. Think the unthinkable.”

“The unthinkable.”

“Not just the zigs—the zags too.”

“Alfred, I—” He turned around to face me.

“And it didn't matter this Item of Special Interest was a fifteen-year-old kid.”

He went stiff on me; I was touching a raw nerve. “Your . . . gift was crucial in recovering the Seals— indispensable, in fact. If we had had access to it in previous missions, lives would have been saved, needless suffering avoided . . .”

“Previous missions? What missions? Missions like Abkhazia? Those kinds of missions, Sam?”

“Of course, yes. Of course, missions like Abkhazia.” He cleared his throat. “You have said it yourself, Alfred. An Operative Nine must think the unthinkable, consider
every possible
application of a Special Item, particularly those scenarios in which it might fall into unfriendly hands.”

“Why didn't you tell me?” I asked.

“You know the answer to that.”

“No, Sam, why didn't you tell me
after
you left OIPEP? Why didn't you tell me when I decided to go with Nueve?”

“Because I thought SOFIA was dead. Dr. Smith told me she killed the project when she took office as director, and I believed her.”

“I guess Nueve overruled her.”

“With the backing of the board,” he said with a nod.

“You still should have told me.”

“Yes. You're right. I should have.”

“Well,” I said. “Well, okay. All right. Abby's working on that. Or maybe she isn't. Can we trust her?
Should
we trust her?”

“I trust her,” he said. “I always have.”

“Okay. So she's gonna work on getting the board on our side and we're gonna work on getting this thing out of my head.”

I slid into the empty chair across from him. He refused to look me in the eye. I should have guessed the reason. I should have figured there was something else he wasn't telling me, but I still wanted to believe the best. I still wanted everything to be okay. Because after everything I'd been through, I was still a kid. I didn't know then that my childhood was about to come to a crashing end.
That
was the
ticktock
inside my head. Not a bomb, but a clock: the clock of my childhood winding down.

“Alfred, the SD 1031 cannot be removed.”

“What are you talking about? Of course it can. You put it in; you can take it out.”

He slowly shook his head.

“Any attempt to extract it will cause the device to detonate.” His head was bowed, his shoulders rounded, his hands pressed together in his lap, palm to palm, as if in prayer.

“It can't be removed,” I said.

“No.”

“Or disabled.”

“No.”

“Or the signal jammed somehow.”

“Alfred . . .”

“And OIPEP will always know where I am.”

“It isn't a matter of . . . yes. Yes, Alfred. Always.”

“And anytime it feels like it, it can hit the red button, and I'm dead.”

“Yes.”

“And there's not a damn thing you or Abby Smith or any other of the six billion people on the planet can do about it.”

“Yes.”

I stood up. I shoved the table out of the way. I grabbed him by the shoulders and hurled him onto the bed. He fell next to the gun. I picked it up and rammed it against his temple.

“You were my
guardian.
You swore you would protect me. ‘I will never abandon you or betray you.' That's what you said. That's what you said!”

He didn't say anything at first. Then he whispered, “Forgive.”

“God's business,” I said. “Not mine.”

“Your business too,” he whispered. “Especially yours.”

I ignored him. “You've done it now, haven't you? Just like

Mogart, just like Paimon, only you've aced them, you've done 'em one better. You think you can save me? You were supposed to, you promised to, but instead you've killed me, Samuel. You've killed me.”

00:23:39:07

We were interrupted by a soft, insistent rapping on the door. Samuel heard it before I did.

“Alfred,” he said.

“Shut up.”

“Alfred, there's someone at the door.”

“Good. Maybe it's the maid and she can clean up the mess after I blow your ugly hound-dog head off.”

But I rolled off the bed and took a position a few steps from the door, gun raised, as Samuel got up and peeped through the peephole. Then he glanced back at me.

“Extraordinary,” he said. He opened the door and there was Ashley standing in the doorway. She looked at him; she looked at me; and then out came the sunny Southern California prom queen smile.

“Hi!” she said.

Samuel grabbed her arm, made a quick survey of the parking lot, and pulled her into the room.

“Are you going to shoot me again?” she asked me.

I lowered the gun. “How did you find us?” I asked.

“You gave me this, remember?” She was holding the black box. “If you're going to give someone the slip, Alfred, you should take the tracking device with you.”

Samuel pulled it out of her hands.

“Why are you here?” he demanded.

“The same reason you are,” she shot back, looking at me. “Some things matter and some things don't.”

“Alfred,” Samuel said. “Give me the gun.”

“He's going to shoot me, Alfred,” Ashley said calmly. “You can take the Op Nine out of the job, but you can't take the job out of the Op Nine.”

“You may have been followed. Alfred.”

I handed him the gun and he disappeared into the night. I sank onto the end of the bed. All of a sudden I was very tired, the most tired I'd been in a long time. She sat beside me.

“I thought—I was sure—you were dead,” she said. She took my hand.

“I'm not.”

“I'm glad.”

Then she hauled off and slapped me across the cheek.

“Don't ever do that again, understand?” she said. She punched me as hard as she could in the chest. “You're my
assignment
.”

She burst into tears. I held her while she cried. Then she pushed away and angrily brushed the tears from her perfectly formed, perfectly tanned cheeks.

“You shouldn't have come back, Ashley.”

“You shouldn't have dumped me.”

“You know why.”

“Doesn't make it right.”

“ ‘Right.' Does it still matter, Ashley? Not what's necessary, but what's right?”

“Of course it still matters.”

I nodded. “So if it still matters, if right isn't wrong, then there's just one thing left to do.”

“What?”

“Complete the circle.”

Samuel came back in. He locked the door. He looked at Ashley for a long, uncomfortable moment. She looked right back at him, her chin raised in defiance.

“I wasn't followed,” she said.

He ignored her. “Alfred, I've been thinking, and perhaps your instinct was correct. Our hope lies in Director Smith. She still might be able to persuade the board to abandon SOFIA and reinstitute the Phoenix Protocol.”