The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp (Alfred Kropp #1)(65)

She was just beaming by this point. “We tore that cave apart, Alfred, and dragged the inlet. The Sword is gone, which is both a great loss and a great boon. Its time on earth has passed, and now there is one less piece of wonder in our world. Perhaps it is the price we must pay for our . . . growing up.”

I stared at her. “Who are you, anyway?”

“I thought you knew, dear.”

“All I know is you guys double-crossed Mr. Samson and his knights, and you double-crossed Bennacio and you double-crossed his daughter and nearly got her killed, and did get me killed and—”

“OIPEP didn’t double-cross them, Alfred, Mike Arnold did.” She made a little sour face, as if just saying the name bothered her. “You of all people can understand the effect the Sword can have on the minds of . . . weaker men. Mike was seduced by it from the beginning. Without our knowledge he contacted the Dragon and gave away Samson’s plans to storm his castle in Spain, and he did agree to sacrifice Bennacio in order to gain the Sword. He also told Mogart where he might find Natalia—all without our knowledge. He was what you might call a ‘rogue agent,’ and he has been terminated.”

“You killed Mike Arnold?”

She smiled. “He is no longer with The Company.”

“The Company,” I said. “What is The Company? What is OIPEP and why does it care so much about the Sword?”

“It cares because its purpose is to care.”

I stared at her for a second, and then I said, because I had learned some things along the way, “That was my fault. I asked two questions, which allowed you to choose which one to answer.”

She laughed one of those gentle trills you associate with very cultivated people or people from England.

“Our organization dedicates itself to the research and preservation of the world’s great mysteries,” she said.

“Really? And all this time I thought you were some kind of supersecret spy outfit dedicated to killing people you don’t like.”

“We are not spies, Alfred. Not in the sense you mean. We are clandestine in that few know of our existence; and we do have certain . . . technologies that have yet to be officially acknowledged, but we are more likely to wear pocket protectors and carry laptops than body armor and guns. OIPEP has more scientists, historians, and theoreticians than field operatives like Mike Arnold. The head of my department is a doctor of thaumatology. And I hold a doctorate in eschatology.”

“What’s that?” I asked. She was being very Bennacian: The more she explained, the more confused I got.

“Eschatology is the study of final things. Death. The afterlife. The end of the world.”

“Oh. Gotcha.”

“And thaumatology is the study of miracles. So you see, it was only natural that Samson should involve us once the Sword was lost.”

She motioned to the large man with the dog face and the big flappy hands, and he brought her the long object wrapped in satin. She laid it on my lap.

“What’s this?” I asked. But I figured it out before she could answer. I pulled on a corner of the cloth and the black blade tumbled out.

“Bennacio’s sword,” she said. “We recovered it at Stonehenge and thought you might like to have it.”

I stared at the sword. “Thank you,” I whispered.

Abigail said, “There is one other thing before I go, Alfred. I must say The Company is quite impressed.”

“Impressed by what?” I asked.

“With you,” she said. “It is nothing less than extraordinary.”

“What is?”

“That you not only survived your ordeal, but accomplished what we, with all the resources at our disposal, could not.”

“Well,” I said. “The whole thing was basically my fault, so I kind of thought it was the right thing to do.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re very young. You have no idea how rare that is.”

“Youth?”

“Doing the right thing. Not only doing the right thing, but understanding what the right thing is.”

“Oh,” I said. “You bet.” Though I wasn’t completely sure what she was getting at or why we were having a philosophical conversation.

“We will be keeping an eye on you, Alfred Kropp,” she said.

“You will?” That didn’t sound good.

“We are very interested in your . . . development.”

A shiver went down my spine. “Look, Abby . . . Abigail . . . ma’am . . . I don’t have any intention of getting involved in anything like the Sword again, so if you’re worried—”

She raised her hand to shut me up. “We’re not worried at all. In fact, I wanted to give you this, in the event you decide you want to know more about The Company. We are always looking for fresh talent—for the extraordinary, if you will.”

She dropped a business card in my lap, shot up from the chair, nodded to hound-dog man by the door, and left me alone. I picked up the card and read it:

OFFICE OF INTERDIMENSIONAL PARADOXES

&

EXTRAORDINARY PHENOMENA

(OIPEP)

Abigail Smith, MD, PhD, JD, MBA

Special Agent-in-Charge

Field Operations Division

Washington • London • Paris • Tokyo