The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp (Alfred Kropp #1)(21)

We drank our coffee in silence for a moment. The end of his nose was red and runny; he had a cold. He pulled out the white handkerchief. It had a design of a horse and rider on it. The rider was a knight carrying a red banner. That clinched it for me.

“How is Mr. Samson?” I asked him.

“Dead.”

I thought about my dream and asked, “When did that happen?”

“Two days ago.”

“Mr. Mogart—he killed him?”

“Do not say that name.” He folded the handkerchief into a perfect square and tucked it back into his breast pocket.

“Who’re you?” I asked.

“Call me Bennacio.”

“I’m Alfred Kropp.”

“I know who you are.”

“We’ve met before,” I said. “At Samson Towers. I didn’t recognize you at first without your robe. But I recognize your hands. And your voice.”

He nodded. “The man you know as Bernard Samson was killed two nights ago in Játiva, on the slopes of Monte Bernisa in Spain.” He sipped his coffee. He had taken off the lid and I could see he drank it black. “I was given instructions to find you in the event of his fall.”

I thought about that. It didn’t make much sense to me, but, since Mom died and I went to live with Uncle Farrell, almost everything had stopped making sense. “Why?”

“To tell you of his fate.”

“That’s important—telling me?”

He shrugged, like he really couldn’t make a judgment on the importance of keeping Alfred Kropp in the loop.

“What happened in Spain?”

Bennacio kept looking out the window. “He fell. Four of our Order fell with him. I alone have escaped to bring this news to you, Kropp. It was his dying wish that you should know.”

He sipped his coffee. He had a sharp nose and dark, deep-set eyes beneath thick salt-and-pepper brows. His white hair was swept back from his high forehead.

“Two of the Order fell in Toronto,” Bennacio said. “They were the first, dispatched by Samson to stop the enemy before he could flee North America. Another in London. Two in Pau, before the rest of us arrived.”

I did the math. Mr. Samson had told me there were twelve knights left. “That leaves just two of you.”

Bennacio shook his head. “Windimar fell near Bayonne, the night before we discovered the enemy in Játiva. I am the last of my Order.”

He didn’t say anything for a while. We finished our coffee. Finally, I said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Bennacio.”

“Just Bennacio,” he said. I don’t think it really mattered to him if I was sorry.

I went on. “But there’s a lot of other people in on this, right? Mr. Samson brought in this secret agency, some kind of spies, I guess, or mercenaries; I don’t know what you’d call them . . .”

“You are speaking of oy-pep.”

“I am?”

He nodded. “O-I-P-E-P. Oy-pep.” He made a face like saying the word left a bad taste in his mouth.

“What’s OIPEP?”

“Did you not just say Samson told you?”

“Well, like a lot of things he told me, he kind of did but he kind of didn’t. But I’m not exactly what you might call quick on the uptake. What exactly is OIPEP?”

He glanced around the coffee shop. “We should not talk about OIPEP here, Kropp.”

He stood up. I don’t know why, but I stood up too. I followed him to the door and into the night. The late-spring air was soft and warm. He took out his white handkerchief again and blew his nose.

“It is a fool’s hope,” he said with a little laugh.

“What is?” I asked.

He didn’t give me a direct answer, sort of like Mr. Samson never gave direct answers. Maybe that was part of being a knight. “For Mogart cannot be stopped, not while he wields the Sword. Yet while I live, I must try to stop him.” He turned and looked right at me for the first time. His dark eyes were sad.

“Now is the hour,” he said softly. “Our doom is upon us.”

He walked away without saying anything else and I watched him cross the street. Then I saw two big men step out of the doorway of an antique store and follow him. Both wore long gray cloaks that were too heavy for the warm weather.

Bennacio didn’t seem to notice them; he walked with his head bowed, like he was deep in thought. A little voice inside my head said, “Go home, Alfred.” But I didn’t have a home anymore. Now Mr. Samson was dead and all the other knights except this Bennacio guy, and it was all my fault. I could have—should have—told Uncle Farrell no, I wasn’t going to help him get the Sword. I knew it was wrong at the time, and if I had stood my ground everybody would still be alive and I would have a home. I had hated that little apartment with the worn-out furniture and its old fishy smell. I had wished every day that my mom hadn’t died and my uncle was somebody more like Donald Trump than Farrell Kropp, but now that sounded like heaven to me. I would have given anything to have it back.

Bennacio was walking north on Central, the men keeping pace a few feet behind him.

And for some reason I have never understood, I followed them.

When I turned the corner, they had Bennacio against the wall and were taking turns slugging him, one guy holding him up while the other one slammed his big fists into his gut. They were too busy pounding the crap out of him to notice me.